Denamian
Night Janitor
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CNC (Lasers, Routers, Etc)
- Thread starter Bandwagon
- Start date
Definitely agree with the others, that compass looks boss to take up some of the empty space. The many rainbows look makes it a bit cluttered (to me) and the ones that the ENTIRE one is topographical lines is too much as well. The ones that are like 60% island, 40% blank space + Compass = $
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Honestly selling this stuff is kind of a point of irritation for me right now because I've been telling my woman to get off her ass and register a business & start an Etsy account instead of staring at Instagram all day. Instead, she takes pictures of what I make and posts it on instagram with a caption that says "Look what we made!", gets 30 comments from people asking where they can buy some, replies with "we're working on it", then goes back to browsing Instagram. Seriously....for about 6 months now. She has about 5-7 friends right now that are persistent about asking for some of the earrings she posted and I told her to register a business and start an Etsy, which is about 2-3 hours total. Still nothing. Man I wish I was gay.
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Adding on to this....Just had two customers walk in to work to talk about a new vineyard survey with my boss. I guess they saw 2 of the contour coasters in the break room and my boss brought them downstairs afterwards because they want custom coasters for their grand opening.
Not sure how much more convincing this woman needs to start a business.
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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The_Black_Log Foler
Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Two completely different things here, co2 lasers can engrave wood/slate/rocks (some at least)/leathers etc and metal only with some kind of spray on surface (cermark comes to mind), fiber lasers are what you'd need to engrave metal as it is.
Depending on the size of what you wanted, you can get a pretty large bed co2 laser for under 10k (probably upwards of 3x3' if not a little bigger). Not sure about fiber lasers, the only thing I've really heard is that to get a similar sized bed you'd have to add a zero or two to the cost.
For buying co2, keep in mind that pretty much anything you find is going to be made in china, whether its assembled here or shipped over the ocean its all the same parts in a different shell. You can get something like a glowforge (akin to an apple product, aesthetically appealing, easy to use out the box, higher price & smaller bed) or you can go with a chinese laser thats more android (lots of DIY, upgradeable parts, YMMV). I just bought a 20x28" 100w laser for 3k after selling my glowforge and have spent several weeks just trying to align the damned mirrors and gantry because it didn't come squared up already and everything is a pain to get right. If it's not properly alligned, you lose a shit ton of power in the laser between the tube, mirrors and where it finally touches your material.
TL;DR, go to reddit and look at any of the laser forum threads on it.
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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I've been getting a ton of private messages asking for custom designs since posting up those coasters for free. I'm a little leery about going for that because I'm brand new to using these graphics programs and I have a shitty eye for "pretty" apparently. But thought I would look into. Any recommendations on websites or services to handle that type of thing? I think Etsy is just for selling tangible objects, right? Not services? Could I charge $30/hr or something for design time and then bill someone for 2.5 hours for an SVG through Etsy? I guess I'll finally order that desktop today so I have something better than the laptop at home.
You guys gave some good input here for the designs, but do we have any poopsocks that do graphic design?
You guys gave some good input here for the designs, but do we have any poopsocks that do graphic design?
I've done a little bit of both, my gf set up an etsy shop to throw my shit on and if it sells great if not its stuff I like putting on my office shelves (3d models of things).
I don't think you can setup a variable like that in etsy though, you might have to do it as "x $ for the coaster itself" and then agree to something like venmo for design time. Same with shopify, we'd put in the listing "This can be created in multiple wood types, personalized statements etc email us what you want specifically" and no one ever would.
One thing I would absolutely stress is to either list a limited number of free design change/edits/tweaks and the rest are charged, because you will get Karen's who go "Oh can you move this, oh and now do it that way, now this" and its a pain in the ass. Other advice would be getting a deposit up front (regardless of how much), a $5 'get started' fee will weed out 99% of people who have no interest in ever actually paying you for your work/time.
I don't think you can setup a variable like that in etsy though, you might have to do it as "x $ for the coaster itself" and then agree to something like venmo for design time. Same with shopify, we'd put in the listing "This can be created in multiple wood types, personalized statements etc email us what you want specifically" and no one ever would.
One thing I would absolutely stress is to either list a limited number of free design change/edits/tweaks and the rest are charged, because you will get Karen's who go "Oh can you move this, oh and now do it that way, now this" and its a pain in the ass. Other advice would be getting a deposit up front (regardless of how much), a $5 'get started' fee will weed out 99% of people who have no interest in ever actually paying you for your work/time.
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Thanks Km. I haven't ever used shopify or Venmo, but I'll check those out. How's this work come tax season? I don't mind setting up all of that bullshit if we're going to go hard at creating a business, but I'm really not there yet and would prefer just to do under the table stuff if we're going to be getting $50 worth of orders every other month or something for now.
And as for the last bit of advice, I think I've learned that lesson pretty well since coming to my current place and offering drone services. Both of my bosses/mentors would say "Limit your scope and make sure it's well defined" every single time we were writing proposals. I started getting pretty firm on it and would do the same thing for this kind of stuff. Sure as shit learned my lesson about free demos/examples, too. If you say "free", people will say yes no matter what. I started telling people that If they pay for the field time, I'll donate the office time for free on the first one. That's actually worked out really well.
Shopify and Etsy are basically the same e-shop with different shells, toss things in there and people can add to cart/buy it.
Venmo/Zelle/Paypall, some form of pay-up-front / send an invoice system but they all kinda work the same way.
Good luck getting that going, I'd say overprice things like crazy and then taper down so you can get an idea and you aren't fucked with orders you can't find time to complete.
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I'd also add that whatever design work you do, any images you send to the customer have a big ass watermark over the whole thing, perspective view, or some other thing so they cant directly rip the image into a printer. The amount of people that will take your work and then shop it to their buddy will blow you away. Beginning of the pandemic i was 3d printing face shields from a design i made that would allow things like magnifiers and loupes. Sure enough, a week later the kid of the doctors office i was supplying began to sell my design on facebook. My business dried up that day.
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Thanks guys.
And
Kais
- That would probably just be karma coming back my way at this point. I've ripped a lot of people's designs, but thus far it's only been for personal use. Going to have to figure out a way to catalogue bought designs & fonts from now on so I can keep track of licenses and stuff.
And
Kais
- That would probably just be karma coming back my way at this point. I've ripped a lot of people's designs, but thus far it's only been for personal use. Going to have to figure out a way to catalogue bought designs & fonts from now on so I can keep track of licenses and stuff.