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Customer Instructions - DIY Vinyl install.
- Thread starter HulkSmash
- Start date
Stacey K
I like making signs
Victor has a nice gig, IMO. He has no walk-in clients to deal with and no design BS. His buyers are from all over vs. mine which are just in my county. The cons for me would be that I enjoy installing and it's nice to see your signs hanging up around town. If/when the recession comes he has a much larger customer base than most of us do.
On a similar subject: I made a decal for this guy who restores old campers. The camper company is out of business since the 70's so he asked if I would be interested in putting this design on my website for his friends. I said I need to check into that, how many friends do you have? He then showed me his TikTok thing on his phone. Only 30,000 to 850,000 views of him in "fast motion" restoring these campers. He said if he puts my link on his TikTok I could have thousands of orders. I kinda want to find out more about that copyright...Victor's post reminded me of this...
On a similar subject: I made a decal for this guy who restores old campers. The camper company is out of business since the 70's so he asked if I would be interested in putting this design on my website for his friends. I said I need to check into that, how many friends do you have? He then showed me his TikTok thing on his phone. Only 30,000 to 850,000 views of him in "fast motion" restoring these campers. He said if he puts my link on his TikTok I could have thousands of orders. I kinda want to find out more about that copyright...Victor's post reminded me of this...
victor bogdanov
Active Member
The big problem with selling on Amazon are the returns, Amazon makes it way too easy to return anything for any reason. I'm at about 5% return rate which is pretty good as it is estimated 20% of stuff purchased on Amazon gets returned. it is sad what happens to the returns, we just dump most of them as the time to sort, repackage etc is not worth it when you have new orders coming in. half the time what gets returned has decals missing, customers abuse returns, there are ways to get reimbursed for these types of returns but the time and documentation involved makes it not worth it, so customers continue to abuse returns.
How Amazon plans to fix its massive returns problem
In an exclusive interview, Amazon tells CNBC reselling and donating used items is key for "goal of zero product disposal."
www.cnbc.com
BTW here is an image a customer sent me today of my decal applied to a RV.
pricing is very competitive online too, this 6ft tall tree sells for $40 shipped, only a few $$$ profit after all the fees but I print these by the roll and only work involved on my end is clicking print. loading cutter, Weeding, transfer tape, packaging done by employees.
Gino
Premium Subscriber
A 6' tall by about 28" wide piece of vinyl because that's your widest printer...... laminated and weeded, then packaged, shipped and you pay shipping...... That's insane. What do you make ?? About $2.00 ??
That's gotta take a few minutes each, for laminating a roll at a time, at least 10 minutes to weed, then package, label it and ship it. I guess it's not all that good a gig, afterall. Not to mention all the returns you just talked about. When you count in your waste from all ends, it doesn't seem like you make anything at the end of the week.
Nope, I'd rather make $600 bucks on 2 sides and rear of a truck and have maybe 3 or 4 hours invested. Might have about the same time involved, but a who-o-o-ole lot less material and monkey time involved. And you're paying others to help make this process move along.
Cripes, I thought you meant like 6" circles with an emblem on it and ya made 500 a day after its all said & done.
That's gotta take a few minutes each, for laminating a roll at a time, at least 10 minutes to weed, then package, label it and ship it. I guess it's not all that good a gig, afterall. Not to mention all the returns you just talked about. When you count in your waste from all ends, it doesn't seem like you make anything at the end of the week.
Nope, I'd rather make $600 bucks on 2 sides and rear of a truck and have maybe 3 or 4 hours invested. Might have about the same time involved, but a who-o-o-ole lot less material and monkey time involved. And you're paying others to help make this process move along.
Cripes, I thought you meant like 6" circles with an emblem on it and ya made 500 a day after its all said & done.
victor bogdanov
Active Member
All vinyl is paneled to 28" wide because that size is perfect for shipping ( avoids oversize charges etc ) and no experience first time applying vinyl customers can handle the 28" wide size. I have 2 64" printers and 2 30" printers. No lamination, most decals are applied indoors and will last years outdoor (5 year vinyl and OEM inks still look new after 5 years in my testing)
I do make less than $5 on an order like this after all expenses and while I'm sitting here typing the Colorado 1650 is printing me 50 of them an hr. Only work involved from me is 2 minutes loading a roll, rest is handled by the team.
Doing about 10% profit on the volume business model, pretty good when I'm printing 15 rolls per day
victor bogdanov
Active Member
Ok I just did the math, this tree uses 35sq ft of vinyl (including waste) and the vinyl, ink and transfer tape costs me 40 cents sq/ft. $40 selling price - $14 material, $6 Amazon fees, $8 shipping - $3 labor = $9 left over for other expenses. Sell a dozen of these per day and 500 other designs and I'm happy
Edit: just checked and I'm selling this for $43.99, raised prices recently because my transfer tape went from $65 per roll to around $80
it is a different business model from the regular "sign shop" I would say I'm more of a "decal manufacturer"
Gino
Premium Subscriber
So, how do you figure $3 for labor ?? That would be like you can completely manufacture it, weed it and tape it all up in 2 minutes each. You don't have overhead in there, no employee wages, insurances, packaging, taxes, labeling...... and you get all that out of the $13 ?? Are you crazy ??
Doesn't matter what business model ya have, ya still hafta make money. Are you working outta your mom's basement ??
Doesn't matter what business model ya have, ya still hafta make money. Are you working outta your mom's basement ??
victor bogdanov
Active Member
I've timed how long it takes to make a batch, the person weeding can weed about 40 of these per hour at no rush pace, person applying transfer tape and rolling up can do about 30 an hr at a no rush pace. packaging can be done at 60+ per hr.
So I can have 30 of these ($1379 revenue) done by 3 people in under an hr, the 3 man hours of labor costs me less than $75, that's $2.50 in labor per item.
Run this 8hrs per day and it is pretty good money
victor bogdanov
Active Member
I do advertise new products and it can cost as much as 30% of cost of sale but as product gains sales rank it will be easier to find, Amazon will make established products easier to find. I've been able to greatly reduce my ad spend in the last few years. My best sellers are 10+ years old with lots of product reviews (very important to have product reviews)
Etsy charges an additional 12% if the sale comes from an offsite ad but offsite ads make up a small percentage of my sales on etsy. Overall fees are about 20% (with ads) on etsy for me
Launching a new product is expensive, few months selling to break even or at a small loss to gain reviews and sales rank then reduce ads and let organic traffic take over
Stacey K
I like making signs
That's all very interesting Victor, thanks for sharing that! Years ago I did very well selling race car number packages online through my website. I had considered trying it again as this year I've done many standard number packages. I have quite a bit of apparel for order online with groups that I work with on a regular basis. Much of school items go online also.