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- Jan 27, 2009
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How long does it take you to produce and box up a kit for shipping? $4 is not really your profit, it is most likely paying for your time...make sure you are at least getting paid for your time. That includes development, testing and driving to the post office to mail them. You can save a bit of $$ using online usps shipping labels instead of paying at the post office if you use flat rate.
When I started making my glider kits, one of the biggest problems for me was keeping shipping reasonable, if you can fit things into flat rate usps boxes that's an advantage, I wound up having to buy boxes that were just under the size cutoff where the prices took a step up and then designed my parts to fit that. I have designed using parts and components that I would use for my own personal use and cut them to order so I would not be stuck with a lot of product that I had to sell, if no-one bought, I would eventually use the parts for my own rocket gliders.(except for the boxes) I decided to put the instrutions online instead of printing them, so that if I needed to make updates I did not have to re-print anything. Make a youtube video and post it, showing your designs and them flying, that goes a long way for folks to have confidence in them. Make sure to consider the cost of getting the parts to you, ie what is the minimum order you need to do to keep costs down, have alternate sources of components in case you lose one or they are out of stock. Make them the best that you can, your name is on them, do not send out something that is not well crafted, look at everything with a critical eye. If you paid for that kit and opened it up is there anything you would not be happy with? If so, fix it.
Make sure your designs are unique or different enough to justify the price, there are a lot of 3fnc/4fnc kits out there. People may be willing to buy a kit or two because you are young and they want to encourage you, but that won't last forever, they need to be a good product to sustain the interest.
I started selling direct from the forums, If things get going, you can consider a web page for selling them, with paypal buttons for payment, that's another learning experience that will go a long way toward your education. There are a lot of free blog page options you can use for posting instructions etc that don't cost you anything but time.
Frank
When I started making my glider kits, one of the biggest problems for me was keeping shipping reasonable, if you can fit things into flat rate usps boxes that's an advantage, I wound up having to buy boxes that were just under the size cutoff where the prices took a step up and then designed my parts to fit that. I have designed using parts and components that I would use for my own personal use and cut them to order so I would not be stuck with a lot of product that I had to sell, if no-one bought, I would eventually use the parts for my own rocket gliders.(except for the boxes) I decided to put the instrutions online instead of printing them, so that if I needed to make updates I did not have to re-print anything. Make a youtube video and post it, showing your designs and them flying, that goes a long way for folks to have confidence in them. Make sure to consider the cost of getting the parts to you, ie what is the minimum order you need to do to keep costs down, have alternate sources of components in case you lose one or they are out of stock. Make them the best that you can, your name is on them, do not send out something that is not well crafted, look at everything with a critical eye. If you paid for that kit and opened it up is there anything you would not be happy with? If so, fix it.
Make sure your designs are unique or different enough to justify the price, there are a lot of 3fnc/4fnc kits out there. People may be willing to buy a kit or two because you are young and they want to encourage you, but that won't last forever, they need to be a good product to sustain the interest.
I started selling direct from the forums, If things get going, you can consider a web page for selling them, with paypal buttons for payment, that's another learning experience that will go a long way toward your education. There are a lot of free blog page options you can use for posting instructions etc that don't cost you anything but time.
Frank
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