Many people bought 3D printers in order to print personal protection equipment
during the pandemic but now that that's faded a bit, what do you print?
Well how about printing something that you can actually sell and help pay for
your 3D printer. I've been doing it for years. I'll explain how I got started and
how you can to making money with your 3D printer, right here at Filament Friday.
My whole journey started when I need a clip for the valance of our vertical
blinds in our living room. I had broke one and rather than go out and buy one I
just took a good one scanned it in turned it into a 3d object, 3d printed it,
snapped it in place, and it worked great. My sister came by saw what I did and
said can you print me a couple I need them. And then while they were printing she
looked it up and said hey did you know that they sell these on eBay? And they
were a lot higher than what it cost me to print them. So I threw a few up on
eBay just to see if I could sell them and I sold like a dozen of them within
like 30 days. It wasn't big money. I only made like a dollar a clip but there's
like twelve dollars in my pocket that I didn't have and I thought what else
could I sell? Then it occurred to me I had created a mailbox flag for my
Rubbermaid mailbox that was a video I did early on in the channel. And it
worked fantastic and I did it because I couldn't find a mailbox flag anywhere.
The only thing I could do was buy a whole new mailbox which I didn't want to
do. Well that flag turned out to be a great seller. I put it up on eBay and I
sold like 25 in the first week. It was incredible how many people needed that
flag. And I was making a dollar or two dollars a piece so that was like
twenty-five to fifty dollars a week I was making with this mailbox flag and it
pretty much stayed at that rate for quite a while. And then I hooked up with
someone on Amazon and they were selling ten times that amount buying them from me
I also allowed them to print some of them so we were both making money off the
flags. By the time I was done I was selling a thousand flags a year and that
built my print farm. This flag is what built my print farm and with that money
I was able to pay for all the printers, paid for the filament and also tools and
things to fix my printers because when you're running a print farm things are
going to break. And eventually I got to the point where I was buying filament in bulk like
a pallet full. In fact we'd buy a couple pallets to get enough filament plus
at a price that we can make more money. And that's what turned into the Filament
Friday filament because the filament Friday filament is basically an overflow of
those pallets that we bought for the print farm. So see there's a lot of ways
you can make money with your 3d printer if you just get started.
The biggest thing you've got to find is something that you need, that fixes a
problem that you have. And once you've proved that the design works then you
can try and sell it to others. The flag also becomes a great test print
on the v2 the Ender 3 v2 or the cr6 they've both been printing them so I can
see how consistent they can print a flag and they both do a great job. That glass
bed works beautifully so it's a test print I don't really advertise but I use
it all the time when I get printers. Another thing that you need to be aware
of is don't go grab someone's Thingiverse file, start selling it and
say oh look what I've done, because it's really not right. You should contact them
and see if they're willing to sell it. Or give them a royalty. Now see I used to
share the flag file in my original video but I had someone actually grab the file
and sell it on Etsy 50 cents less than me and was stealing sales and I thought
you know what, that's not right because I didn't release it commercial. I released
it for people to use personally but not sell it. And he fought me on it.
Well eventually I got him taken down at Etsy because he was using a
copyrighted design. My buddy Clayton over at the Uncle Jessy channel, he made
a video where he said he made $18,000 selling an accessory to an xbox
controller. It was someone else's design but he worked out an arrangement with
them so he did it all the right way and still making $18,000. I'll put a link to
his video in the description below. But the idea is to find something people
need that is the key. I had a product that didn't do well. I had at the back of my
shed, a rack where I could hang the paddles from my kayaks. I thought it was
great. I put those up on eBay thinking these are awesome they're gonna sell a
ton. I didn't sell a single one! I ended up giving them to friends and
they thought they were great but they said they probably wouldn't have bought one.
Okay so there's some products that just aren't a hit even though it worked good
for me and good for them, it just wasn't something you go out shopping for. And
there's other benefits from printing something that sells because
you're printing all the time. So this is like a fifth-generation flag. I'm
constantly changing or improving it and also you find settings you can do in
your profiles to make the prints come out better. Nice and smooth and flat, no
warping, nice smooth finish on the bottom, good bed level. All that came from
printing flags. I've also learned how to fix the 3d printers because they're
printing all the time. I learned all the shortcomings like the PTFE tube that the
last 20 millimeters kind of burns on these things after many hours of
printing. So there's a lot of benefit for printing something besides just making
money from selling it. But I also love about this is no one can complain about
me buying filament or tools or accessories for my 3d printers because
I'm paying for it. So I hope this helps you. Let me know in the comments below
your ideas of how you're gonna try to make money with your 3d printer. If you
like what I'm doing here maybe check out some of the videos popping up and if
nothing else click on that CHEP logo and subscribe. That way you don't miss an
episode. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday.