Once you’ve established a business using our Complete Beginners Guide on How to Start a Small Business Selling Your 3D Printed Products, you will need to set up a shop to sell your 3D printed products or designs. In this complete guide for beginner’s wanting to sell 3D Printed items and designs online, we’ll walk through some fundamental considerations when it comes to setting up an online 3D printing business and selling, pricing, and marketing your products and designs online.
Where Can You Sell Your 3D CAD Designs Online?
A lot of hobbyists post their designs on free design servers like thingiverse. But these design servers are not appropriate for selling designs
With MyMiniFactory and Cults3D you get access to a ready-to-go marketplace of consumers and like-minded creatives interested in 3D products and designs.
Myminifactory.com
MyMiniFactory is a space for creatives to share their 3D printable designs with others. With 3D designs ranging from educational and tech and gadgets to creating mini-worlds and props and cosplay, there is a broad selection of design ideas. On MyMiniFactory, you can sell your premium designs by opening a store and becoming a ‘store manager’. The cost to open a store is $24.99 per month plus a 10% commission on items sold. Alternatively, you can opt to be a designer and share your designs worldwide for free.
Cults3D.com
Cults3D is a marketplace for 3D designers and creatives which prioritizes the accessibility of 3D printing. With Cults you can share your 3D designs for free or at a cost. There is no monthly fee to share your 3D designs on the platform, however, they do take 20% commissions on all sales made on the platform.
Places Online Where You Can Sell Your 3D Printed Products?
If you have products you want to sell, there are several companies that can aid you with this. You may have to pay a fee to use their market place, but they are a good place to start out.
Etys.com
Etsy is a marketplace for a broad spectrum of creators, and that includes creators of 3D printed products. You can open your own Etsy shop for free, with no monthly subscription required. There is a $0.20 listing fee for each item you post in your shop, and Etsy keeps a 3-4% commission and charges a $0.25 processing fee once the item is sold. From 3D printed figurines, face masks, and keychains to 3D printed jewelry and planters, you can find it and sell it on Etsy.
Amazon.com
Amazon is a great place to sell products thanks to its universal name recognition and global reach. With Amazon, you can sell 3D printed products as an individual without paying a monthly subscription fee, however, Amazon will charge $0.99 per item sold plus a referral fee of 12% for 3D printed products. You can also sell your 3D printed products using Amazons’ professional plan. With this plan, you’ll be charged a monthly seller’s fee of $39.99 plus the 12% referral fee per product sold.
eBay.com
Like Amazon, eBay has good name recognition and a wide reach. With this platform, you can list up to 50 items per month without needing to pay a listing fee. After using up those 50 fee listings, the cost is $0.35 per listing. When your 3D printed products sell, the site will take a 10% ‘final value fee’.
As we mentioned above, you will have to pay a fee to sell on these sites, which can hurt your bottom line. Another strategy is to test out your products on these sites above to see which ones are selling the most and then begin to sell them out of your own online store where you can avoid their fees and make the majority of your profit.
How to Sell Your 3D Printed Products from Your Own Online Store (WordPress, Wix, Shopify)?
Having your own online store is a great option when it comes to selling 3D printing products online. This option gives you the freedom to set up your store exactly how you want to, it frees you from seller fees on other websites, and it allows you to add and remove products at will. Plus, you can have your own store while still using another selling platform like MyMiniFactory, Etsy, or Amazon, and that allows you to expand the visibility of your 3D printing products and make more sales.
If you’re interested in starting your own online store, two great options to get set up are WordPress and Shopify.
WordPress Sites
WordPress is a website development tool that, with the right plugin, can allow you to create your own online store that is set up exactly how you like it. There is a slight learning curve with WordPress, especially for those who have little to no experience with websites, but with a little effort, it can become second nature to manage your own WordPress site.
You can get a website domain name and wordpress website setup easily with Bluehost for a very low price (we’ve seen it as low as $2.95/month) and their servers are very stable which is very important to your business and customers, as some hosting services have outages and security issues.
A great site to learn about setting up a WordPress site and selling online is WPBeginner. They have some great tutorials and they are designed for beginners.
Wix and Shopify Sites
If you want something that is easy to set up and a more ‘out of the box’ option then Wix or Shopify might be the best fit for you. These websites offer tools that are specifically created for an e-commerce platform and allow you to create your own online store and start an online business quickly and easily. The basic plans start from as low as $23 per month for a WIX business account and Shopify plan starts at $29 per month. Though these sites make thing easy, they don’t offer as much variety as starting your own WordPress site as you many times have to use their set website templates that might not fit your own company branding desires.
How to Set a Price for Your 3D Products?
Once you’ve figured out where you want to sell your 3D printing products, it’s time to figure out how to set a price for your products!
First, consider how much the item cost you to make. If it’s a 3D CAD design the cost may be lower than a physical 3D printed product.
To understand your total cost investment consider things like:
- Time spent
- Material costs
- Overhead business expenses
- Shipping fees
- Taxes/fees on sale price
- Product completeness (e.g. does the buyer need to purchase additional materials to complete the product?)
- Level of competition for the product (supply in the marketplace)
- Demand for the product
To make it easier to figure out all of these different factors, you can take advantage of digital calculators that will help you set a price for your 3D printing. The MakerOS calculator is one great example.
And remember, a useful way to judge the price for a product you’re selling is to consider what price you would be willing to pay if you were purchasing the product yourself.
How to Advertise (Market) my 3D Printed Products and Designs?
Finally, when it comes to online selling of your 3D printing designs or products it’s important to advertise them to your target market. This will increase your profits substantially. A great way to do this is through facebook ads and google ads. This helps bring awareness to your 3D printing products, increase your sales, and increase your profits! To create effective ads that turn views into sales, you’ll want to make sure you create great marketing copy that shows the value of your 3D products to potential customers and convinces them to make the purchase.
Google ad campaign types include:
- Search network
- Display network
- Shopping
- Video
- App
Facebook ad campaign types include:
- Image
- Video
- Carousel
- Instant Experience
- Collection
For each, you can select keywords to target a specific audience. This can be a little challenging at first to learn. We recommend the following course Ultimate Google Ads Training to learn more about Google Ads and we recommend the course Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Mastery to learn more about Facebook Ads.
In Case You Missed It
- How to Make Money 3D Printing: A Complete Beginner’s Guide
- How to Choose the Best 3D Design Software for Your Business: A Complete Beginner’s Guide
- How to Choose the Best 3D Printer for Your Business: A Complete Beginner’s Guide
- How to Start a Small Business Selling Your 3D Printed Products (Prints) and Files (Designs): A Complete Beginner’s Guide
