Selling Your Homemade Tool Plans on HomemadeTools.net

[Jon]

oops

Actually I just reread my first post in this thread, and I can see that while it mentions the percentages, it's not clear on who gets which percentage. I've edited my first post to clarify that.

There are a million ways to crunch the numbers. I think authors can break even when they sell 25-50 plans, depending on a million factors of course. The big upside is that, once they hit that figure, if the plans are good, their work is done after that point, and the 70% of revenue they receive for all future sales would be pure profit, with minimal (or even zero) work on their part.

It's also important to consider online shopping conversion rates - the percentage of people who visit a site vs. the percentage who make a purchase. Industry average is around 2-3% conversion rate for online shopping sites, so out of 100 visitors, 2 to 3 make a purchase.

If our conversion rate was just 1%, and all purchasers only purchased a single set of plans, we would sell 60 plans per day.

[PJs]

Great to hear from Christophe and Altair and others (C-Bag, Paul) continued feedback bringing other good points to the idea/thought process. Love to hear from more people, as I think Jon would.

Paul, yours and Jon's simply stated point of bringing more novice/intermediates to the forum and posting really hits home for me. I still consider myself a complete novice to the HS machining world as I have only had my peanut for ~2yrs. And, I just recently did my first single point threading in 20yrs (JC class), and it came out pretty darned good on CRS, IMHO - Whoohoo! The point is that we are all novice, intermediate and advanced in various traits and backgrounds and that brings a load of brain/skill to the trust fund here. As Jon pointed out about the time/$ donation and term limitations, my wife and I do similarly and have also reached limits, however upping the ante wouldn't necessarily be a criteria for me to submit plans.

Chris's (Clickspring) plans are a give-before-take, but with heart, quality and geared for novice & intermediate HS levels, I believe...not an in your face or sickly sweet like some out there. He is quite a wizard with a Good plan, spread through YT (56k subs, 2M views), a myriad of social networks as well as Patreon and now makes videos for Make on YT...quite an accomplishment in a year, even for a gifted soul. Basically he has jumped in both feet because he has a quality purpose for himself and gives well for others. The idea that Make has brought forward for young and old alike is a real boon to humankind, just like this forum. If this "Sell Plans" endeavor would bring more novice and intermediate creativity and fresh perspective to the trust, I am all for it and would likely post plans for that...whether it makes small or large duckets is a bonus or boon as a perspective for future decisions.

Jon, Thanks is not enough for your diligence in bringing all this/us together and kindly responding in clear detail as to your idea to bring this to light. It's clear the data and plan supports the vision based on the analytic's and your plan so far. Again thanks for sharing that. It's also clear that you would absolutely be the right person to spearhead this. There would be some Lurkers who may come in and submit for this and a definite percentage of those would actually buy plans, based on the exposure you've created here and about the net.

The one question that still seems to be looming in this thread is how many members would submit Plans, future or past? How many new subscribers would too? How many would buy plans? Perhaps these could be answered with a poll for subscribers and visitors...Yes, No, Maybe. Maybe's will skew the data positively with good reason, statistically >50% will submit/buy plans. It might also avail a price point strategy based on the analytics and ebook data and the G-B-T strategy as a starting point.

I really liked Christophe's use of the word "Catalog" and Hopefully more members chime in so the big concern can be addressed further. I'm on the fence still but now trust that if anyone can pull this off without too much of a hitch, Jon is the one that could.

Till Then,
~PJ

[Jon]

We've been working on getting the marketplace setup.

The shopping cart and payment gateway are ready to go (you can actually test it with a 1-cent purchase right now), and we're ready to accept submissions of plans.

Full details are in this thread: Submit your tool plans for sale on HomemadeTools.net.