Experiences with selling your designs?

[IRobertI 521]

A few times now I've been contacted via Thingiverse by people who claim to run different 3d printing services or repositories for 3d models and asking if I would like to partner up with them. Does anyone have any experience with something like that?

I've been thinking about putting a couple of designs up on Shapeways for ages now but I've never gotten around to it. That, and I think the prices seem high and doubt anyone would be willing to pay... I'm actually working on a thing now that I think could become popular at the right price.

So, just generally, has anyone done this and do you have any pointers or other insight?

 

[Dim3nsioneer 558]

I guess this is not possible if you put your design under a non-commercial license, right?

 

[IRobertI 521]

I'm sharing under a NC licence but I still own my work and can do with it as I please.

 

[Dim3nsioneer 558]

You can do with it as you please but not a partner. He would be bound to the NC term, wouldn't he?

 

[illuminarti 18]

You can make the license available to different people under different terms. So you can, for instance, give it away for personal use under NC terms, but sell it to someone else for money in return for letting them use it commercially.

[Dim3nsioneer 558]

This might be legally possible, but wouldn't that be somehow bad style?

 

[IRobertI 521]

What... why? Someone wants to make a few bucks off their own hard work, but simultaneously giving the design away for free to those who want to print it themselves, that's bad style?

Regardless, that's not really what I wanted to discuss with this topic.

 

[gr5 2,270]

I met Bathseba a few months ago. I think she has moved back to the Boston area if I remember right. She has done very well on Shapeways. She is a "shapeways star".

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/bathsheba

She sells a lot of those metal klein bottle openers. I see them for sale in Scientific American sometimes. I think she has made quite a bit of money this way. I suspect it's hard to make much money through Shapeways unless it is "art" or jewelry.

She also has cool laser crystals including the structure of insulin which is very nice:

http://www.bathsheba.com/

 

[gr5 2,270]

I also heard a story form a shapeways employee about some guy who keeps designing really nice, but illegal stuff. Things like ninja turtles, mickey mouse, minions, whatever is popular, clever, and unavailable anywhere. He sells like 10k the first 2 weeks, then 100k, then 2 million orders and suddenly disney or whatever notices, shuts it down, they cancel the last 2 weeks of orders and he only ends up selling 20k but makes plenty of money. Something like that. A strange, dubious niche market. Of course most of his things aren't so popular but sometimes he does well.

 

[IRobertI 521]

Oh I don't expect to make much money at all. My little designs aren't nearly cool and hip enough for that. But making some pocket change would be a nice validation that someone appreciates it enough to spend their hard earned cash on it. If 5 people bought something I'd be happy

Just wondering if Shapeways would be the way to go or not. Or maybe I should just carpet bomb and accept the couple of offers I've gotten.

 

[gr5 2,270]

Personally I would go with shapeways. I think they are probably much bigger than anyone else out there.

There are some interesting sites that sell 3d models for non-printing purposes - some of these companies are probably bigger than shapeways as lots more people need models: artists, game designers, brochure makers, tv producers, and much more.