- design time earned about $25/hour
- $3666 total revenue
- $3352 in expenses
- ~50 orders fulfilled
- ~3000 hours of logged print time.
This tells the whole story... these numbers are so far off from what they should be that this is not a business, but a charity cosplaying as a business. It's a pity you are going to drop this, I think if you adjust your pricing and become a bit more efficient you can easily make it work. But great you're sharing your numbers, you really just need better customers.
Rules of thumb: 10x on materials, base fee of $3 / hour of print time, $100 / hour design time if < 1000 parts, above that you can start pricing it into the job total.
It is PMF discovery. It is a survey cosplaying as a business :)
well, there's that, and there's this https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ec...
Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted. And if the $3352 represents mostly fixed upfront costs, the issue is revenue imo.
> Expanding your plastic filament palette requires upfront investment
Just a guess, but the number includes buying an entire 3D printer which you don’t have to keep doing.