MY TOP SELLERS // Laser Engraver Small Business Talk - YouTube

ever since getting my laser engraver and  mentioning to you guys that they have become  

integral to my small business income that i bring  in for my workshop and things that i make and sell  

a lot of you have been asking what exactly are you  selling well today's a little bit of show-and-tell

hey everyone my name is sam and welcome back  to samcraft that's right in today's video i'm  

going to be showing you guys what exactly  i make and sell using my laser engravers  

and i guess spill some beans so let's go i have  the jimitsu laser running here over on my cnc  

which oh my gosh so this is an abomination  to think about but whatever that's a place  

where it can sit for now the reason  i've done that is because of your tour

dominating the space and i'm working on finishing  up that video so that video is probably gonna  

be up first so you'll kind of see how real  life and youtube life pans out but whatever  

squirrel i have the jimitsu set up over here on  my cnc and it is being run by my fusion 5 tablet  

if you don't know that tablet is really awesome  for use with laser engravers and my cnc machine  

it is a cheap windows 10 operating system  tablet and well worth it for a fanless  

relatively dust proof gonna be safe in your  workshop computer to run the various machines with  

my only complaint is it only has one usb port but  that's okay the number one thing i make with my  

laser engravers are coasters i have several  designs that i've come up with and listed them  

as sets on our small business website and i also  offer some custom monogramming options as well  

after some research and development on my part  with my specific audience that my small business  

has right now so disclaimer this is really going  to vary based upon your business structure your  

current clienteles or your target audience i  found that the slate coasters was the first  

thing and probably a pretty sure bit of a good  product to offer that would have a good reception  

i've been making them for a couple of months  now and i have to say that yeah i think i chose  

correctly i have a pretty good response from  our customers have pretty good influx of orders  

kind of a more organic flow i don't do a lot of  marketing campaigns however we do have a lot of  

traffic to our store from our youtube channels  so i guess in that sense we do market our store  

through our youtube channels but otherwise  i don't push them a lot they do sell pretty  

well they're not running off the shelves per se  but they do keep these lasers running at least  

probably four or five times a week we'll  have laser engraving days and fulfill orders

go ahead and grab the box here of  coasters i purchased these from amazon  

because i mean on amazon's fulfillment service  and turnaround time from order to delivery  

is just about unmatched so these coasters are  100 natural slate and i choose to get circle  

coasters or circular coasters to mumble that these  come pre-stickied with little feet on the back  

and overall their quality is good it's acceptable  it is not as perfect as if i were assembling these  

coasters or if i was the one picking them  for the end result but i mean this kind of  

manufacturing and bulk purchase of items you're  going to get bad stuff and i call them seconds  

or you know things you're not really going  to pass on to your customers all in all i've  

probably purchased i will say about 300 coasters  so far and i've been pleased with this particular  

manufacturer's quality control i'll leave a link  to these down below if you want to check them out  

as well for yourself hopefully their quality  won't fall through the floor in the meantime  

but if i do change vendors in the future i'll  make sure i update this link as well to make  

sure whenever you're coming to see this that  i'm pointing you to the current vendor i use

as far as preparing the coasters  for going to the laser engraver  

i use some acetone and a microfiber cloth and wipe  the tops down and also the backs because i put my  

business brand on the back of these coasters i  found that that does well to remove any kind of  

residue from the factory or from shipping or just  from fingers and it helps give okay at least i'm  

assuming and thinking that it helps give  a better quality engraving in the end  

overall it's pretty cheap and easy to do so  it's one of those measures that it may not  

help a ton but in the instances where it could  or may 1 out of 100 it's worth it in my book

as far as software for designing there is only one  software you should ever use for a laser engraver  

and that's light burn recently their prices have  gone up which is boo on light burn so i don't know  

if that's temporary or permanent however at the  price point they're at right now it is still worth  

it in my book being able to use one program for  designing and controlling laser engravers being  

able to use that same program on multiple machines  meaning i design in my office on one machine  

save it to a network attached storage device hard  drive and then run it from the fusion 5 is awesome  

and also being able to load up multiple laser  engravers in the software for communication  

parameter settings and all that stuff is  awesome so the money you spend for light  

burn is well worth it so just consider it  part of the package for laser engraving

as mentioned earlier i designed my own coasters  however you probably could find some files  

from etsy or another online place to  download and make them for yourself  

just be careful if you plan to do this  as a business make sure that the person  

you purchase the designs from allow you  to do commercial reproductions some do  

some don't and i'm generally of the opinion if  they don't clearly spell it out then you can  

assume that as a no and i don't tread in those  waters that being said you can do what you want  

it's your business it's your thing and i'm not  the graphic business coaster police so have at it  

so here's a little overview of our coasters that  we currently offer in sale as you can see there  

are some monograms there's some honeybee style  sets there is a farm life set at least that's what  

we call it and then of course there's the custom  monogram as well unless i already said that i've  

also developed some pop culture-esque coaster  sets things based upon some movies that i enjoy  

such as the goonies or princess bride those have  not been as popular of a seller hands down the  

most popular design that we've sold are the custom  monograms which i understand totally see that  

but we have sold a couple of the pop culture ones  and those are kind of fun to do looks like the  

jimitsu is almost done with these two coasters  let me take some time to swap them out load in  

some new ones and get it rock and roll and again  to fulfill this customer's order and then we'll  

talk about order fulfillment how we package these  up and a few other things that i can think about

as you see here i have developed the workflow to  have my template burned onto my actual wasteboard  

all i do is visually line up the coasters  within their circle that has been burned  

and i found that that does perfectly fine for  my needs it allows me to have a multi-purpose  

template it never moves these points are  locked into the homing point of the laser  

and that has given me very good very repeatable  

results so far i say so far because who knows  what may happen but so far this has worked great

as you can see i have still  not updated the homing speed  

of the jin mitsu laser so she is a little slow  but that's okay still gets the job done for these  

particular coasters my speed is 4 000 millimeters  per minute and power is at 100 for this laser

all right it is homed and my new file is loaded  i'm going to go ahead and frame this i always  

like to run through the framing procedure to  make sure this guy is going where i expect it to

looks great we'll go ahead and start this job

all right let's talk about packaging for a second  that giant roll over there that looks like a  

huge roll of toilet paper is my package roll for  coasters it is some pre-formed tear-off as needed  

bubble wrap pouches i got these from a company  called uline they are an online supplier of  

everything you can think of as far as packaging  these are extremely heavy duty good quality poly  

bubble mailers and they include their own adhesive  strip as well not sponsored by uline at all but i  

can tell you these are great and well worth the  purchase you will have to buy them in bulk okay  

maybe not hunt a lot of bulk i can't remember  if you have to buy them in bulk or not but i  

bought several hundred at a time and have been  going through them quick which is good hey means  

business is good but i've been very very pleased  with these have zero complaints and honestly  

we'll probably never use anything different for  packaging up these coasters to ship out the door  

i won't seal it up because i haven't put my  brand on the back yet but you can see i picked  

a size that fits the coasters fairly well there  is a little bit of wiggle room still in there  

but i've not had any problems with coasters being  damaged upon shipment or anything yet if i do  

it's as easy as replacing it for your customer  but i think this gives a nice good presentation  

this shows that i'm trying my best to  make sure the product gets the customer  

in the end in perfect shape and honestly  from a labor time investment of packaging  

up items to sell plop it in the pouch pull  the strip off fold it over and you're done  

you have a very nice tight package it's not  going to go anywhere and is super easy to do

all right so the last thing i want to talk about  i didn't know i wanted to talk about this until it  

literally just happened and we're going to call  that anomalies from your workshop here's a look  

at the first coaster that was on the  laser just got engraved notice how it  

looks really really feathered around  the edges and basically doesn't look  

good compare that with this one that is an  exact rerun of the job on another coaster

quite a big difference huh well i can't tell you  what exactly happened i have the same settings  

these coasters are the same thickness the design  is the same i prepped them the exact same way  

i can't tell you why this one looks junk  and this one looks good what i can tell you  

is to always factor in this happening at  random times hopefully doesn't happen too  

often for you and consider that in your  product purchasing or material purchases  

to give yourself so much percentage of waste  mess-ups or things that just don't work out  

all right guys that's going to be it for  this video hopefully you found it helpful  

encouraging entertaining or otherwise i finally  answered the question of what exactly i'm using  

these laser engravers for how it's bringing  money in for my small business and why i just  

seem really excited about having them in my  shop if you have any questions or comments  

leave them for me down below otherwise take care  and i'll see you guys next time in the workshop

you