Sales figures?

Does anyone know how much a typical Shapeways shop makes every month? I'd be interested in knowing how much a successful shop can really make.

A typical shop?

Zero...

There are by my count 36924 different Shapeways stores. Shapeways doesn't really break down the numbers related to average sales or profits per store, and to do that they would also need to distinguish between models ordered for development by the store owner and those ordered by unrelated customers. And for a lot of stores the designers aren't really intent on making a profit. They simply offer things they designed for their hobbies to the general public. In addition there are designers without stores that purchase their designs and sell them elsewhere such as on Etsy or EBay.

There are blog posts on the Shapeways blog highlighting some "successful" designers/stores in terms of their sales or profits but they aren't the norm. My guess is that the "average" store is in the red having spent more money on models for personal use or printing prototypes than they have received in mark-up royalties from general sales.

Yeah, as in every open marketplace the top end is high, but that's theoretical for most people, and the mode is 0.

If each store spent as much as I have that would be; One hundred fifty-three million two hundred thirty-four thousand six hundred.

If each store made as much as I have that would be: Four hundred fourteen thousand two hundred eighty seven.

So yeah don't quit your day job. -S

I posted all of my profits over the last few years here.

I never really gave it much effort. Just messing around mainly. I'll start putting in some effort later this year I think. Notice that I only have two products that sell well? Keep that in mind because if you want to make money with Shapeways you need to find out what products and product categories sell well.

I've been bugging Shapeways for years to provide data to help people figure out what products and product categorizes would be good to work on, but they have mostly foot dragged in providing this very important information. Here's the best they could come up with so far. Some of these products you see on this page are top selling products mixed in with products that never sell or may be trending briefly. No way to use this page for anything unless one spends years studying it. I can tell you for certain that the dice products sell very well. How well? Shapeways wont say. I'd say Ceramicwombat is making 7000 to 10000 profit per month. I think they are Shapeways' number one seller.

I'll give an estimation of what I think some other shops and products are profiting per month averaged over a whole year.

I'd say Shekhtwoman dreams is making a profit of around 500 to 800 per month from her cityscape rings.

somersault18:24 is probably making something like 1200 per month selling science jewelry.

Most of the shops selling miniatures are probably making anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand per month.

NiqueGeek, with his custom branding lighter is probably making something like 3000 per month. He hired computer programmers to make software to help him sell these on Etsy! That's how many he's selling!

For Bathsheba I'd say something like 2000 to 3000ish? She's been doing it a long time and has developed a following. If someone were to try something similar they'd make very minimal profits I think until a couple of decades passed by.

TheoJansen is another artist that's been doing it a long time. I'd say he's making 1500 to 2000.

Mr_Props! There are a LOT of doll collectors in the world! I'm going to say something like 4000 to 6000.

Mythic Articulations & Richardson Creations has a HUGE FOLLOWING on Etsy! I'd say he's making at least 4000 to 5000 per month.

There are LOTS more shops and products worth mentioning, but that's just a few that caught my eye on the trending page.

If you apply the standard 80/20 rule, that'd be 7385 shops that have sold something, 29539 shops that haven't sold anything.
I think it was 2014 where Shapeways said they printed one million items..
If you also apply the 80/20 rule to personal orders versus sales to customers, that works out to an _average_ of 27 models sold/shop/year.

As to my own feeble attempts.. https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/23389-congratulation s-stony-smith-on-hitting-10000-at-shapeways-marketplace.html

Having smatterings of different types of products like I do probably doesn't help either. I don't think @UniverseBecoming would be impressed with my sales results! I wish it were easier to spin off successful classes of items into their own stores without losing all the print histories and having to port over everything to new models in a new store. Just judging by what I do when I look at a new store I look at the first page or two and move on. If you've got 20 or 30 pages of stuff in different categories you're probably dependent on customers finding something using a search tool (internal or external) or if you're lucky it's been highlighted somewhere on a blog. I don't know how much stuff is sold as an impulse buy versus something specific a customer is looking for. Anyway there are a lot of factors involved!

I think Shapeways needs something like that. It's a good suggestion I think.

It would be nice to be able to hire Shapeways to do all the setting up of shops and products stuff too. I know I hate doing that stuff and I'll bet others hate doing it as well.

At times when looking at videos or images of whole rooms full of Shapeways employees, I think to myself what is everyone doing there? HAHA! Yes, I know there are lots of things they're doing that I know nothing about , but it sure would be cool if I could hire one of them to organize my shop data and get it looking good.