- In 2022, Austin Ziegler started 3D printing products to sell on Etsy.
- His first concept, a battery case, didn't sell. But he kept experimenting and eventually started making side money.
- In 2023, one of his popular products took off and he did $10,000 in sales in a single week.
Austin Ziegler keeps a running list of hundreds of product ideas on his phone.
He 3D prints prototypes, most of which go into "a huge prototyping box," he told Insider. "I don't get rid of any of them. I probably have 500 to 1,000 different products that I prototyped over the last year and a half."
The concepts that make it past the prototyping stage get listed on his Etsy page. Some are practical, like a soap travel case designed to keep your toiletry bag completely dry, while others are fun, like an ornament that holds cash — and some catch fire, while others completely flop.
The very first product Ziegler listed for sale fell into the latter category.
He made battery cases to store your double and triple As.
"I didn't make a single sale in the first four months I had it on Etsy," said the Portland-based 27-year-old, who started his online store in April 2022. "It's a very humbling experience when you finally get it on Etsy and you make nothing."
Launching on Etsy with 2 Prusa printers and packaging supplies
Ziegler, whose day job is managing an engineering team that designs medical devices, actually bought two 3D printers for a separate side project he started in 2020. He designed a fidget toy, bought the printers for prototyping, and then started the patent process, which can take a couple of years.
Not wanting to launch the product until he had a patent on it, he found himself sitting on two fully functioning, fairly expensive 3D printers and thought, "I should probably use these to make some money," he said. "So then I started just 3D printing products and trying to sell them on Etsy."
The printers were his biggest start-up cost. He went with a brand called Prusa and spent about $1,400 total, plus shipping. He saved a little bit of money by doing the assembly himself. If you buy them pre-assembled, they're closer to $1,000 each, he said.
He also bought 3D printing filament and downloaded a design software called SolidWorks.
Since he would be fulfilling the orders himself, he bought boxes, packaging paper, a paper cutter, a tape gun, and a Rollo label printer.
"All of that stuff is relatively inexpensive in the long-term," he said. "It's a one-time upfront cost that you're going to use for the remainder of your business: The Rollo printer was about $120, the paper ripper was like $60, and the tape gun about $10. Those are the three things that I use every day."
Another good investment was a photo box, he added. It helps him create a clean, sleek background for his product photos, which he does himself using his iPhone camera.
Before taking his first product to Etsy, his knowledge of the platform amounted to "absolutely nothing except for what YouTube could tell me," he said. What he learned from the battery case flop is that he needed to build credibility: "I have zero sales on Etsy, I'm a brand new company, I have no reviews. No one's going to want to buy a product from me because I'm not a credible seller."
To build credibility, Ziegler decided to make inexpensive keychains and magnets, hoping that a cheap product would drive sales and, in part, reviews.
"I made these little keychains and magnets and posted them for 99 cents each," he said. "They cost about 75 cents to make, so if I include shipping costs or anything else, I'm really not making any money. But that ended up driving my first 20 sales and my first 10 reviews, which gave me a little bit more credibility."
Growing from zero sales to $10,000 in a single week
Armed with some seller credibility, Ziegler just needed a product to resonate with customers. His soap travel case did just that.
It was an idea that stemmed from a personal problem Ziegler was trying to solve: traveling with a bar of soap.
"I was in Hawaii and I was using a travel Ziploc bag," he recalled. "The travel Ziploc bag is only so good — at some point it'll puncture — and it got open and got my entire toiletry bag all soapy and gross. I was like, I need to make a product for this."
He designed a soap box to create a completely dry travel experience and, turns out, he wasn't the only person struggling with a soapy toiletry case: The product became a bestseller on Etsy and his side project officially transitioned to a profitable side hustle.
His next big win was a gas can ornament labeled "2022" to commemorate the record-breaking gas prices that year. He came up with the idea after filling up his tank last November and paying an eye-popping $5 per gallon.
According to a google search, other sellers had the same idea. The product already existed. Rather than scratching the idea, Ziegler thought about ways he could make his product stand out, he said: "I thought, 'Is there a way to gift money with this ornament because of the high gas prices?' And that's when I thought of just putting a simple hole in the middle of the gas can."
He designed and printed the ornament, listed it on Etsy, and it took off in a way none of his previous products had. He was in Spokane, Washington with his family for Thanksgiving when sales started blowing up.
"I was ecstatic, and I was also stressing out," said Ziegler. "I would get stressed when I had 10 open orders on Etsy but at Thanksgiving, I had 100 open orders."
He shipped two more 3D printers to his place in Portland and cut his trip short to assemble the printers and start fulfilling orders.
"I would set two eight-hour print cycles and one four-hour print cycle, so I was printing 20 hours a day," he said. "When I left for work, it was printing. When I got home from work, I started printing the four-hour one. When I went to bed, I started printing the eight-hour one."
He also made it part of his morning routine to stop by the post office to ship orders before heading to work.
Before listing the ornament, Ziegler's monthly sales had grown from nothing to a couple hundred dollars a month, and plateaued around $1,200.
In November 2022, he did $4,000 in sales.
Less than a year later, in late August 2023, he brought in $10,000 in a single week, mostly from the gas can ornament, which now is labeled "gas money" and doesn't include the year. Insider verified his sales by looking at screenshots of his Etsy dashboard.
Other products carry him through the non-holiday season, like coat hooks, soap dishes, and business card holders. Between January and May of 2023, "I averaged $1,400 a month in sales, which is still good for a hobby." He made his first ornament sale in May and things have ramped up significantly as we approach gift-giving season. In September, he did $16,000 in revenue.
Long gone are the days of stressing over 10 open orders.
"I constantly have between 50 and 200 open orders that I'm working on," said Ziegler, who currently owns 12 printers.
He invests most of his profit back into the business, which he hopes to scale to the point where it's bringing in enough passive income that he can live off of.
"The whole goal of the 3D printing was to make some side cash so I could woodwork," said Ziegler, who specifically wants to do epoxy projects. "The goal is to woodwork in the future and have a company that can generate enough money where I can spend minimal time on it and maximum time on woodworking."
