Sell What You Print

You own a 3D printer, you have got good with it, and you have started wondering whether it could pay for itself. Maybe you already listed some prints and sold almost nothing, or took a custom job and suspected afterward that you lost money on it. Here is the uncomfortable part: the printer is the cheapest part of the business. Printing is a manufacturing capability, not a product and not a market. Almost everyone who fails starts from the machine and goes looking for something to sell. The ones who succeed start from a specific customer with a specific problem that plastic happens to solve. This book works through the economics honestly. What a print actually costs you once labor is counted, and it is nearly always labor that decides. Why cost-plus pricing sets a floor rather than a price. Why you cannot win on unit cost against mass production, and what you can win on instead. Which of the six quite different 3D printing businesses you are actually in. Where the legal risk sits with other people's designs, and what you should not sell at all. No income claims, no revenue promises, no get-rich pitch.