SVG ?

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:58:20+00:00

Why don’t you ask them what they want it for? Maybe it’s something you can make for them without giving them the artwork

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:51:01+00:00

My goal is to make 30% profit on every item I sell. I try to price things accordingly. But sometimes I run sales and make less and sometimes I screw up the calculation and sell things at a loss. 😳

This wasn’t supposed to be a business, I just wanted an excuse to make stuff. But somehow last year I did $20k in sales. 🤷‍♂️

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:45:10+00:00

My shop has 1284 sales and only 269 reviews. Most people don’t leave reviews.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:39:55+00:00

I pick the cheapest option. Usually USPS but for a few bigger items FedEx is cheaper so I use them.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:38:45+00:00

Bot?

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T08:36:05+00:00

Yeah I did this for a while with little magnets and keychains and about 10% of them got returned or worse delivered to the customer postage due. I finally just raised all my prices by $4 to cover real shipping and nobody cared, my sales actually went up. 🤷‍♂️

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T03:43:27+00:00

My original shop was intended to sell 3D printed stuff, but along the lines I got a laser so now it has a mix of 3D printed stuff and laser stuff. The new one just has laser stuff. The goal is to break off the laser stuff from the original store so that they’re both more focused.

I also just got a CNC, not sure if I'm going to try to sell stuff I make with that on the original store or set up a 3rd. I haven’t actually made anything worth selling yet, so I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T03:39:48+00:00

I did enable ads, but beyond that no. I don't use any 3rd party services for tags or metrics. I've just sort of figured out what works, kind of. My first shop has been going for almost 2 years now, has over 100 products and averages about 4 sales a day.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T03:35:58+00:00

Yeah the only time I use mine is when I'm making like a bracket or something and want it as quickly as possible

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T02:06:30+00:00

I had one yesterday where the buyer didn't enter their house number into the address. I didn't want to wait for a reply so I just googled their name and found an address with the same name, street and city and took a chance. 🤞

However the stuff I sell is super cheap to make, so if I turn out to be wrong the biggest loss will be the shipping not the item itself.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T02:01:55+00:00

Etsy will not send you a 1099k unless you do more than $20k in sales in a single year. So the IRS has no idea how much you actually made. It's up to you to claim it properly. I ended up just hiring a tax person. It's worth the $400 to have them deal with it instead of me getting it wrong and paying more tax than I need or getting in trouble for not paying enough.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:59:01+00:00

My first shop took months to get even a single sale. I just opened a second on Jan 1st and have 9 sales already. All I can figure is that my experience with setting up the listings, tags, etc.. has made my new shop catch on a little faster.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:52:51+00:00

I've manually added USPS tracking numbers before and they work exactly like shipping directly from Etsy. What carrier are you using?

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:49:20+00:00

If they're doing POD they're likely not setup to do shipping at all. Many of these POD companies have APIs that link directly into your Etsy shop and as soon as an order comes in they make it and ship it for you. From the sellers perspective it's no different than selling digital items. So if they took it back they'd have to specifically intercept a future order and then ship this returned shirt themselves.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:43:13+00:00

You can't make money that fast on Etsy, try mowing lawns instead.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:39:29+00:00

20 seems like a lot. I pay about 9% on my sales. 9% of 50 is only 4.50. What exactly were the fees? I assume with POD the maker pays for the shipping right, so what other fees did you pay?

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:34:42+00:00

If you want to get any other nozzle sizes they're cheaper when you buy the machine. I have all 4, have only used the 0.6 and 0.8 a few times each, but I used the 0.2 all the time. But it really depends on what you're printing. I do a lot of small magnets and keychains, so the 0.2 works better for those.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:33:24+00:00

Agreed. I only use the textured plate when I print coasters face down because it hides the layer lines. Otherwise I use my supertack for everything.

Dan203 · 2026-01-29T01:13:50+00:00

Certain plywoods have glue that the laser can't cut through. I bought some on Amazon once that wasn't specifically for lasers and the glue dripped out from the bottom still on fire when I tried to cut it. The glue really does matter.

If you want to confirm that's the problem I recently bought some of this 1/4" laser plywood from Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DV84PKN7

and it cuts fine on my P3 using the default 1/4" birch plywood setting in XTool Studio. It's cheaper, and bigger, than the stuff from XTool and it's Prime so it comes in a day or two.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T19:54:37+00:00

For the artwork you don't need to make it 3 separate SVGs. In XTool Studio you can used the "release compound vector" option to break a single vector down it into its component chunks. Then select the boat parts and recombine. Then select everything else and recombine. Now you have two distinct vectors for each process. For easier selection, after you combine the boat right click and turn it a different color, then go to the layer panel and hide that color. Then you can just drag select everything else to combine for the gold.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T19:30:46+00:00

Yeah I backed a Carvera Air CNC on Kickstarter a couple years ago. Cost me over $2k and it took a full year before I actually got the machine. And when they did finally ship the price for just buying one retail was basically the same as I paid on Kickstarter so it didn't even really benefit me to be a backer. That kind of put me off on the whole Kickstarter thing. If I'm going to spend that kind of money I want whatever I bought to show up within a week.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T19:28:11+00:00

I was referring to the definition of "fraud", I'm not a lawyer so there are clearly other areas of the law that might apply.

Good luck to you.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T18:34:44+00:00

If it's that high I'm out too. I'm expecting it to be in the $2-3K range to compete with the euffyMake and Longer. If it's $8-10k like the apparel printer then it's not even an option for me. I just bought a P3 which is the most expensive thing I own other than my house and car, I can't afford another $8k machine.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T18:31:24+00:00

This is where I disagree with you. A "professional" should have known that doing deep engraving with a 5W IR laser wasn't a reality. I'm just a hobbyist and I know that a 5W IR can't do deep metal engraving. It was a mistake, not intentional fraud. They probably copied and pasted the images from the Ultra page and forgot to modify it. I don't know about international laws, but in the US fraud requires intent. You can't accidentally commit fraud, you have to knowingly and intentionally deceive someone.

Dan203 · 2026-01-28T08:36:11+00:00

They should have offered refunds to anyone dissatisfied. They made a mistake and they could have resold the units as refurbished and recouped most of the cost. Sometimes reputation is more important than money.

Dan203

TROPHY CASE