How can we make money?

No Judgement
61

We need a Maslow Conference. Find someone who is willing to host for free. Charge $350, cap initial attendance at 25 people. I could host a smaller group of 5-10 people. Attendees could bring their actual Maslow for trouble shooting. Might need a couple of temporary frames.

Find a network of trusted people to do support calls, $150 for 90 minutes. Maslow takes $35 people meeting, the people get $115. This could also be done as a charity fundraiser.

As others have mentioned, paid web seminars would be good. The going rate for cooking classes in Seattle is $150 for two hours in a group setting.

Raising the price of the kits to $750, and includes access to a set of open office hours might be another option.

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A solid user guide for getting set up and calibrated and be able to do the most common things on the most common sizes should be a priority. This will free up all of the experts times who are giving free support on the message board to fix bugs.

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Wes wrote:

A solid user guide for getting set up and calibrated and be able to do the
most common things on the most common sizes should be a priority. This will
free up all of the experts times who are giving free support on the message
board to fix bugs.

That would be a huge help, and the first draft should ideally be done by someone
who just went through the pain. Us ‘experts’ bring things up as we see them, but
don’t always remember them all at once, or explain them in order.

David Lang

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I’ve been keeping a pain a suffering log in gpt; so I’ll have lot’s of good notes should I have the time to help with this. My issue is that I haven’t been successful at actually cutting much yet and am in a time crunch. I’ll keep taking notes so I’m ready to contribute to the user guide.

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I am working on these documents in the repo. We can make a new one for quick start set up? What would you call it? Please contribute as you see things that would help.

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I just started one here: Maslow_4/docs/QuickStart.md at Maslow-Main · MaslowCNC/Maslow_4 · GitHub

I think that the key is going to be to keep it as minimal as possible with just the basic information that folks need. Basically its an extension of the assembly guide, just the next steps.

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I would do 2 things:

  1. monetize this great community you have created with a new maslow-maker-marketplace. you control the transaction system, so think of it like ebay for all maslow activity
  • maslow owners selling plans to each other
  • maslow owners selling time on their machines to potential new maslow owners who want to try before they buy
  • maslow owners selling built products to clients - this one is harder, you might have to make it into a storefront system where each maker could have their own store
  • some small fee maslow local community groups - similar to the storefront idea but you create small fee based maker webspaces for maslow groups to interact
  • allow maslow owners to sell video tutorials on how to build a particular product or how to solve a particular problem with the maslow, a particular type of usage
  • sell your own tutorials and videos like this - again as a fundraiser - no one would begrudge you trying to make a couple extra bucks on a tutorial that’s in depth as way for you to make a support fee for this great product you’ve basically given away
  1. If you’re out of money in between production runs then you’re just not charging enough per unit to cover whatever those additional costs are during the low sales periods. Your market is low cost DIY who would prefer to trade their time fiddling for the huge cost of the 6k alternative, I think trying to make the product more attractive to those who are daunted by the experience, at this point, 7 years and 3 revisions later, with all the improvements to setup and calibration, you’ll just have to spend enough money and time that you need to charge 6k per unit in the end, or close to it. 800$ would have been just as reasonable to most of your clients, IMO. It wasn’t that it was 525$ instead of 800$ that got them to buy, it’s that it wasn’t 6k to get started.
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68

^^^^ YES!! THIS! ^^^^

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fwiw just got a Maslow video Ad in while watching too much YouTube. Nice Ad, well targeted :slight_smile:

Sharing incase you’re looking for insight/feedback on where your Ad spend is going.

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70

New here - I Want to purchase a Maslow but now I am concerned they may not be around if I do, so I hope you can use some of the ideas here to improve things. Just based on what I have read and seen I would offer a few suggestions:

If you can handle orders then definately do some marketing.

Possibly do some sessions where you offer a free Maslow to an attendee of the class who attends a presentation where you demonstrate it (like maybe a corporate DEWALT sales group) since you use their routers.

Push the RESULTS of using your product MORE than the actual product itself… You need project results on sites like pinterest.com etc. and get people to add that the item was created using the Maslow!

I think your approach has been more from a CNC machine for DIY’ers to build and now you need to shift to it being a CNC machine for people to Make Money with or things they want.

Phil

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Hi Bar,

First of all, I would like to thank you for posting this up. One of the biggest reasons why I like your products is YOU. You are humble, helpful, and driven to share great things with as many people as you can. Don’t ever stop being who and what you are. That is something that is important to your success, and you have it. Keep doing what you are already doing.

Let me establish a couple of things. I have a MakerMade M2, and I am aware of your undesireable relationship with how that all worked out. It really is an excellent machine and works great, even if I paid about double what I should have, I simply did not know about Maslow until I got into things. MakerMade had good marketing. I still get ads on my phone and computer for MakerMade products on occasion. Their support is non-existent, but you and this forum are here for people, and that is actually a really good plus.

I have not yet ordered an M4. I have a tiny workspace, my M2 works, and I don’t have room to have both right now, and I honestly am waiting for a more successful product before I make the change.

So… here I am, the kind of customer you want, but I’m not ready to make the plunge (hey, good pun!), so what would it take? Let’s try to get into it…

If possible, it would be great if the machine could be assembled as much as possible before shipping. I enjoy building stuff, but if your target market is a beginner who has no experience with CNC yet, the more you make them do without any knowlege or experience, the more frustrating it is. I as well as many people here had the drive and fortitude to take breaks and figure it out slowly, but let’s face it - most people are not like that. Use the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

As mentioned, I do not have an M4 yet, but my M2 came with some documentation on how to build a couple of frames, with pictures and measurements. Do you provide that with the M4 kits? Definitely make sure there is a link to forums.maslowcnc.com on the documents, and encourage people to join and ask questions. This forum is an excellent resource, and I do believe it is a key to the success of your product.

More social media. Anna made some cool videos about making things and so have you. Keep doing that. GoogleAds? So many people have ads through games on their phone, and if you show some things that can be made that catches interest, you can get clicks. Your price is great, but I think you could and even should charge more. Two reasons - one, more assembly before shipping, and two, just to show that a large format CNC machine for a fraction of the price of a namebrand unit is not just some cheap piece of junk. I paid more for my Genmitsu 4040 Pro than you are charging for an M4. A low price and DIY is great, but it is not really attractive if the price is too low. I had to assemble the Genmitsu as well, so that is not unusual. Just keep it as simple as possible.

Amazon. Do it. Set up an account and you could offer an affiliate program, which Amazon will support. I can make a video of creating something on this machine and give a link during the video or in the description which can generate a sale for you, and a small commission for me. Anyone on this forum could do the same thing, and you both make money. Amazon is also really awesome for distribution throughout the world with warehouses everywhere, and tariffs are lesser in general.

Some of the other ideas in here that I like are the ‘versions’ of package that you could sell. As I said above, a mostly-assembled unit is desirable, and I frankly would pay $50 or more for delivery if I had to. Again, Amazon delivers anything.

Having Area Reps would be great - Someone who could go to a customer’s home and help them set up their machine and get started. I don’t know that I would offer that as a “premium” or whatever, I think it should be negotiated between the customer and the Area Rep, but I do think it is a good idea. Think about it this way: If Ikea can set you up with some kid who will assemble their stuff for whatever fee, why can’t you? To that effect, work with places like Home Depot, Lowes, Rona, and they can build a frame based on a detailed pdf. It will cost more, but it can be an option, and they can deliver.

I said it above, and I will say it again. Charge more for the machine. When I look at buying something, I don’t really consider the cheapest price. Sometimes, something will be so cheap that I just don’t trust it. I paid $1200 for a used M2, and I can buy an M4 for less than that brand-new. That’s great for anyone who signed up for kickstart, but that’s over now. For a 4x8 (ish) machine, $1200-1500 is still a bargain. If you look at MakerMade, they are still selling the M2, starting around $1,800! That’s your work that they are still making money on… You have a better product now, and you absolutely can succeed.

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72

This is fantastic feedback, I basically agree with everything that you are saying and I really appreciate how you laid it all out. In particular I think that you are spot on about the need for a machine which isn’t a kit. The original design was also a kit, but since it is so much less complex it was much easier to build and also to troubleshoot.

I really don’t want to increase prices unless we absolutely have to since the goal is to make large format CNC routing accessible to everyone I think that it’s important to keep the price reasonable. I do think your point about the price being too low making people think it’s not as good, especially when our old design is still being sold for $1800 which is wild. It would be easy to assume that is the better machine given just the price information. Charging that much markup also leaves a lot of room for spending money on advertising. Spending $300 on ads per sale is probably financially viable at $1800, but not at $500.

I’m working on doing more social media and making a fully assembled version of the machine, but both of those things take time and money (and time is basically the same thing as money at some point).

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Bar wrote:

I really don’t want to increase prices unless we absolutely have to since the
goal is to make large format CNC routing accessible to everyone I think that
it’s important to keep the price reasonable. I do think your point about the
price being too low making people think it’s not as good, especially when our
old design is still being sold for $1800 which is wild. It would be easy to
assume that is the better machine given just the price information. Charging
that much markup also leaves a lot of room for spending money on advertising.
Spending $300 on ads per sale is probably financially viable at $1800, but not
at $500.

I agree that $1800 is wild, but something along the lines of $500 for the kit
and $1000 assembled may be reasonable. You may be able to ship batches of kits
to some people on the forums who then assemble them for you and ship them
(obvious risks, but you only have so many hours, and I don’t know how much labor
is available where you are)

David Lang

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I like the idea of crowd sourced assembly labor. I might be interested in assembly side hustle.

Dano

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I have not read all the suggestions but I have a couple:

  1. Offer paid support services
  2. Give users a supporter option or start a patreon or something where you upload content that people can pay for.
  3. Offer educational courses
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I’m definitely not an expert in marketing, but I really think you should consider raising prices at least a little. If you are selling at a price that is not sustainable and does not support an advertising budget, you can’t “make large format CNC routing accessible to everyone” because 1) you will have to shutter the business and 2) you won’t reach your audience. I think your history of giving kits away to schools and non-profits demonstrates that there are ways to spread the love to folks who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. That too should be a factor in your pricing.

I agree with the others who say you need partially assembled and fully assembled options. I bet that you and this community could come up with some clever tooling that would make pre-assembly much faster than the average consumer using the average consumer’s available tools. Think about the parts of the assembly process that are the most confusing (I’m talking about you, rollers with magnets in them), require just the right amount of brute force (folding the end of the belt into the belt end), or require clever tools or coordination (the screws in the towers). These would be great candidates for pre-assembly and good challenges for the community to help make them faster and easier.

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77

Think in the end it will need another round of kickstarter/funding to transform this into a robust commercially viable product. In the current form the value proposition is not very strong in my opinion. I admire everyone that sells kits to advanced monkeys and it is genius to be able to design this all in plastic with on type of screw, but the compromises required for this now work to the disadvantage. (1) absolutely daunting build experience, (2) buggy hardware, (3) breaking plasic parts/limited durability, (4) complicated to diassemble/maintain, (5) space inefficient for smaller working areas (6) overall subpar usability. There number of people that are so enthusiastic about the technology to go through with this are limited. If I buy a kit I want to have some assurance that if I follow the instructions I get something that in the end will fulfill its intended purpose.

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Atarax wrote:

Think in the end it will need another round of kickstarter/funding round to
transform this into a robust product. In the current form the value
proposition is not very strong in my opinion. I admire everyone that sells
kits to advanced monkeys and it is genius to be able to design this all in
plastic with on type of screw, but the compromises required for this now work
to the disadvantage. (1) absolutely daunting build experience, (2) buggy
hardware, (3) breaking plasic parts/limited durability, (4) comlicated to
maintain, (5) space inefficient for smaller working areas (6) subpar
usability. There number of people that are so enthusiastic about the
technology to go through with this are limited. If I buy a kit I want to have
some assurance that if I follow the instructions I get something that in the
end will fulfill its intended purpose.

what would the new kickstarter round do/change?

David Lang

79

Matthew wrote:

I have not read all the suggestions but I have a couple:

  1. Offer paid support services

paid support does not scale well. the cost for the support would have to cover
the cost of the support people sitting idle between calls (plus the problems in
training the support people)

David Lang

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80

I think that kits generally are never going to be really financially viable. It’s just hard to sell DIY robotics kits because there is always a limited number of folks with the skills and interest in building a robot.

We could do more marketing and it does scale well to bring more people in, but doing more marketing catches more folks who want the machine but don’t want to deal with the hassle of a DIY kit and that’s not a win for them or me.

I think that we really really just need to build a version which isn’t a kit, and that’s going to take a ground up redesign.

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