Lutetium
agree
https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantArtifacts
Original Home Goods, Novelties, & LED Cosplay Props! by RadiantArtifacts
You searched for: RadiantArtifacts! Discover the unique items that RadiantArtifacts creates. At Etsy, we pride ourselves on our global community of sellers. Each Etsy seller helps contribute to a global marketplace of creative goods. By supporting RadiantArtifacts, you're supporting a small business, and, in turn, Etsy!
Nice! So you're appealing to the art, home goods, cosplay crowd it seems?
@Caleb Maybe with a big BUT. Etsys primary audience is WOMEN. I
Yes, exactly.
sadly marketing maker stuff rarely works for me, as i buy it when i need it, not when i feel like it
Etsy is great for custom items or items more at the consumer end, rather than boards and shields.
That's a good point, @Michael Graham : know your audience. Has anyone tried selling more bare hacker/maker electronics on Etsy? Any lucj there?
@Michael Graham your stuff does have more of a craft bent than the kind of thing I make.
*luck
Yeah, that was going to be my point. I only know Etsy through my daughter, who always wanted to start a store for her leathercrafts. Is it really the place for boards and widgets?
I would think Tindie or rolling your own ecommerce site would be the way to go, but I don't have the data to support it.
I hit enter too soon. @caleb I do not think a custom pcb by itself would do well on etsy. BUT if you integrated it to create some custom solution that only you offer that appeals to women then you have something. Just my opinion.
Michael a lot of interesting stuff
It's one thing to get a lot of eyeballs on your products, but it's another to get the right eyeballs on it.
I can say that you get some free views on tindie. A (small) number of people do seem to browse the site.
@Dan good point...that brings up my next slide: how do you figure out your audience?
What about starting with CrowdSupply? anyone try stuff with them?
CrowdSupply and GroupGets seem to be like the Kickstarter of electronics
I don't think they offer a storefront once your campaign is done (I could be wrong)
Did anyone do a preorder or a campaign before? So that it was possible to order a larger batch without risk of not getting customers?
@Shawn Hymel they do offer a storefront
@Arsenijs Good to know!
With full ecommerce like what Tindie offers?
I think all of the major crowdfunding sites let you keep the campaign page up so you can take orders through it or direct people to your new store.
Not sure what you mean by that, but they do have an option to "sell" stuff after the manufacturing's... either gone through and the stuff's been sent, or right after the campaign has finished (I don't recall exactly, sorry)
Yeah, I was able to purchase a limeSDR mini through CrowdSupply after the campaign ended.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed
HiFive Unleashed
The world's first RISC-V-based, Linux-capable development board
there's an "add to cart" version
Ah! That's a good one with "Add to Cart."
Many people over order for their crowdfunding campaigns and then sell on Tindie or their own store after.
@Shawn Hymel Maybe before moving on to another slide, I'd like to know your opinion on crowdfunding platforms such as kickstarter as marketing vectors.
I couldn't find an example...only pre-order stuff
crowdfunding is really more a marketing thing than actual financing strategy
@Leo I started a CrowdSupply but tripped in the homestrtch on my design and never released. They were helpful but I had to do all the legwork creating the pages using the github UI. It was way more work than I anticipated and looking forward I dont think I will ever do a crowdfund again.
these days, at least
@Nicolas Schurando I jumped the gun a bit :) Kickstarter-like sites can be really useful for gauging interest and to help seed some manufacturing money. However, it's still not a substitute for marketing. Just like posting your product on any site, it won't necessarily drive eyeballs to it magically.
@Shawn Hymel What about some tips on funding a project?
@deshipu I agree to me they are proving people will buy your product
@Michael Graham How would you go about making a batch of slightly more expensive product? Would you just order it and hope it sells out, or would you do some kind of preordering?
@Asher Gomez Build an audience first. That can be with a newsletter, social media followers, forum people, etc. Once they know you exist and like what you're doing, then pitch them.
@Shaw
@Asher Gomez Otherwise, you
@Shawn Hymel Thanks again.
*you're hoping that your product goes viral on it's own merits. Not necessarily a good strategy.
@Asher Gomez np :)
* @Shawn Hymel Is there any standard correlation between number of people / views and number of sales?
@The
@Shawn Hymel I agree, however the fact that they provide a landing page for a project that you can redirect people to through inbound marketing is, in my opinion, interesting.
I am doing a startup, medical device, that has a dozen people on the team, but it is all self funded. We are using https://slicingpie.com/ for the self funded.
@TheMarpe I would say yes, there is definitely a correlation, but that number can vary wildly. It's more important to get the right people looking at your page/profile rather than just a lot of them.
If you untick "enter to send" in the bottom left, you won't accidentally send a message with part of someones name b/c you hit enter instead of tab.
Whoops, bottom right.
@Nicolas Schurando are you talking about CrowdSupply?
oh you mean your other left
Usually, yes
that slicing pie website hurts my eyes....
main picture seems upscaled...
yes but very successful and extremely helpful
@Caleb thanks :)
@TheMarpe Depending a lot on the product, seems to me like sometimes its a cheaper/easier strategy to simply give customers a chance to buy it directly and see what happens. Skip the hub-ubb of a big campaign and just build a couple units and see if ppl bite. Just a thought but nowadays it seems like people dont even trust that they will ever receive a Kickstarter 3d printer for example.
When first starting out participating in interested communities helps you gauge interest. Linking to your product or store from you online profiles (hackaday.io, github, twitter, etc) can be very helpful to start converations and later make sales.
@Jasmine Brackett agreed! I even recommend starting before or while you're working on the product. Kickstarter launch day is the wrong time to begin marketing.
@Michael Graham I think crowdfunding is a good way to get pre-orders if you're already established, but need the capital to do a big run of something. See the recent fomu project from TimVideos.
@Michael Graham So just build a couple of more expensive prototypes with intention to sell like you have a stock in place, and see from there on if audience is interested enough that it will sell through even if you order a bigger batch?
If you can...sometimes products (medical, etc.) need to be secret for various reasons.
conference badges :(
Hi @Rob Reynolds ! I'm gonna call out my fellow SparkFun person in the room :)
Some badges are open. The bomb one (can't remember the actual name) for defcon is/was being crowdfunded.
@Shawn Hymel seems to me a early on slide is why are you doing this in the first place?
@doug.leppard Are you talking about the funnel slide?
@Shawn Hymel I had kickstarter in mind, and tbh didn't know about crowdsupply until 30 minutes ago, but I suppose my comment applies to both. I think those platform have value if you send a few prototypes of what it is that you're going to manufacture to people who have a bigger reach (youtube channels, instagram accounts, etc.) and make sure that when they talk about the product, they mention the landing page of the ongoing crowsourcing campaign. But I might be wrong.
No not the funnel, why are you wanting to sell things? Make money, personal pleasure that you can sell something, help the world?
@Nicolas Schurando That is definitely one approach. I think most agreed that Kickstarter-like campaigns can help raise initial funds to manufacturer. What you're talking about is "influencer marketing." You send prototypes to people and have them review it.
Hey Shawn! Wanted to jump in from the beginning, but of course, project needs to get completed for video shoot, and I'm about three months behind for something I found out about Monday and have to have done tomorrow :-)
@Nicolas Schurando The key there is that you need to have an amazing, basically complete project or be willing to shell out money to those reviewers.
*product
We (https://www.tindie.com/stores/visgence/) sell, on average, a couple of units per week on Tindie. ASFAIK, it's all organic traffic from Tindie itself, as we don't really do any extra marketing. The most successful products were built for a market that we knew existed because either:
a) we saw either a specific interest from at least one person or
b) the product was something we needed and assumed someone else might, too
@doug.leppard Me personally or in general? For me, I basically only sell my services as a content creator. Electronics are a tool to that end (and what I like to teach). In general, I think that's a personal question for each person wanting to sell something.
@Shawn Hymel Agreed!
@Michael Harris How do you go about manufacturing your products? How big are your batches?
We have another familiar Sparkfun face who is heading to MakerFaire with several small batches of kits he's designed. Basic soldering kits, but with a cool take home project when they're completed. I definitely think that's going to help him to get a little more recognition as someone who has a line of products to sell.
@Rob Reynolds No worries. Good luck!
@Shawn Hymel I meant each person needs to answer that question for themselves else they will be frustrated and not hit their goals
We get PCBs from PCBWay and use a very sophisticated neural network-powered system (me) to place components, then reflow with one of the small chinese batch ovens
@Rob Reynolds Yes, I've been watching Nick's posts on Twitter and Instagram. I'm excited for those kits.
@Michael Harris Tindie does ok in search engines and has a pretty long tail for SEO keywords.
@Caleb what I mean is that they are usually secret before the conference
@Jasmine Brackett That's good to know. I think a lot of our customers share stories or hear about each others projects and probably find their way via search
@doug.leppard Ah, yes. Good point. If someone doesn't have the why, it will be very frustrating. I've definitely started off thinking I could make a living off some small project (open source laser tag comes to mind), but ultimately came to the conclusion that it was a project and not really sustainable.
@TheMarpe as for batch sizes, we usually do stuff in batches of 25-50. Small enough to finish in an afternoon (or two, if there are through-hole components)
to me it is the joy of making it, rest (marketing support etc) is a lot of work
Does anyone here have any luck maintaining a subscription list (newsletter, Hackaday.io following, YouTube subscribers) and selling to them?
My startup www.sensive.io was fun at first but now it is real work.
@Michael Harris Interesting, thanks :)
@Shawn Hymel your open source laser tag weapon is sitting here next to me as we speak. And not generating any income. But I know exactly what you mean. What I think is an amazing product might just be an interesting project. It's tough to know what the market wants
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