Jasmine Brackett says:38 minutes ago

If you don't know me, I'm Jasmine. I used to be the Hackaday.io Community manager, but for the last 9 months I've had the pleasure of working on Tindie.

Yay Tindie!

Dirty Engineer says:40 minutes ago

So who here has actually quit their day job to sell product on Tindie?

spencer says:40 minutes ago

Me :-)

MobileWill says:40 minutes ago

I wish I could.

Gordon Williams says:40 minutes ago

Me - ish.

spencer says:40 minutes ago

Well, I sold stuff on Tindie then quit my job so I could do it properly.

Jasmine Brackett says:40 minutes ago

First question from DirtyEngineer :)

Evan Salazar says:40 minutes ago

I did, but I have to do a lot of other consulting to get by

MobileWill says:38 minutes ago

Does anyone sell on multiple sites like Amazon etc along side Tindie?

Jasmine Brackett says:38 minutes ago

So those of you who haven't, is it because you're not selling enough volume on Tindie or because production is time consuming?

Dirty Engineer says:38 minutes ago

@spencer what product do you sell?

@Kuldeep Singh Dhaka I know this tool, but i don;t like it. What I want is something integrated in kicad. Moreover not only a wizard for building footprints/symbols/3d but also a library managment tool. I will update my question in the sheet with more details.

MobileWill says:38 minutes ago

For me its not enough volume, sells dropped in the last year or so compared to what I used to sell

spencer says:38 minutes ago

RC2014 (Z80 based retro computer kit)

37 minutes ago

@MobileWill what changed about how you were selling it?

anfractuosity says:37 minutes ago

i just saw someone mention that on HN recently, spencer, it sounds v. interesting

MobileWill says:37 minutes ago

I think I need new product dev. Also now you can get those cheap chinese usb meters, which I want to take credit for starting ;)

Jasmine Brackett says:36 minutes ago

@MobileWill, I'll take a look as overall traffic to the site has ramped up.

Gordon Williams says:36 minutes ago

I effectively quit doing consulting before because of a KickStarter, but have managed to keep going because of Tindie (and other distributor) sales of my stuff. Sadly Tindie alone doesn't bring in enough

MobileWill says:36 minutes ago

Also there is still a lot of people that don't know about it

36 minutes ago

@MobileWill what's stopping you from new product dev? Also, we're going to be working on getting the word out in 2017!

MobileWill says:36 minutes ago

I have been working on new designs but its slow going as I have to learn a lot as I go.

Dirty Engineer says:36 minutes ago

@spencer aww yess, of all the Tindie sellers you would have been my only guess of someone full time. And maybe that guy that sells the ultrasonic record cleaners

MobileWill says:35 minutes ago

I wish I could get help in design reviews and input but that doesn't come free.

Jasmine Brackett says:35 minutes ago

@Gordon, doesn't Adafruit and Seeed also distribute your items?

spencer says:35 minutes ago

@mobilewill Are you making products that *you* want, or products that you think other people want?

MobileWill says:34 minutes ago

Its stuff I want. I am working on a USB Multimeter and a pro model

Bhavesh Kakwani says:34 minutes ago

@spencer good question, can I also know your answer?

Philip says:34 minutes ago

@MobileWill I would be glad to do design reviews with you for free (or maybe a lunch)

MobileWill says:34 minutes ago

There is road blocks I hit because of my knowledge limits

Gordon Williams says:33 minutes ago

@Jasmine Brackett yes, they do - so that all helps too - but it's amazing how much you need even to pay yourself a minimal salary

spencer says:33 minutes ago

I only make things for me. I'm always flattered when other people want them too!

Gordon Williams says:33 minutes ago

Or maybe I'm just not marking my products up enough :)

32 minutes ago

@Gordon Williams how many different items do you sell?

spencer says:32 minutes ago

If you're making products that people want, you don't hav to sell them cheap ;-)

Jasmine Brackett says:32 minutes ago

Ok, it looks like we jumped right in there. Just to check, is there anyone here that doesn't know much about TIndie.com?

Joshua Shank says:31 minutes ago

If you're just getting into it, is kickstarter a good place to initialize the capital to sustain oneself on tindie/amazon?

31 minutes ago

you should sell them at a price that you can make money at. I spoke to someone yesterday who sells on Amazon and he said that Amazon takes nearly 50% of the gross

Gordon Williams says:31 minutes ago

Types of items, or actual items? I sell 4 different Espruino devices - it fluctuates a lot so I don't have up to date figures, but I'd say I've sold around 20,000 devices to date

Dirty Engineer says:31 minutes ago

@spencer probably because items you make are not available elsewhere. You do see a lot of product on Tindie that is just an expensive respin of product available elsewhere.

MobileWill says:31 minutes ago

@philip lets talk offline later

30 minutes ago

@Gordon Williams WOW. That's a lot. 20k devices!

Jasmine Brackett says:30 minutes ago

Also, there are more hurdles and packaging issues for stocking in Amazon.

Gordon Williams says:30 minutes ago

@spencer - we're on Hackaday - someone's going to complain that it's too expensive, even if others think it's fine :)

Evan Salazar says:30 minutes ago

Markup is tough as the parts are labor for almost any board seem to make the board too expensive to sell

Joshua Shank says:29 minutes ago

@Jasmine Brackett how does tindie compare in that respect that sophie mentioned? Whats the average percentage that tindie maintains off gross product sales?

Anool Mahidharia says:29 minutes ago

a lot of the young kids I refer Tindie to correct me by saying I meant Tinder. True story.

MobileWill says:29 minutes ago

I think people realize we are little guys and its worth paying a premium for products

28 minutes ago

@Evan Salazar can you do a high level example? I think if people think that the product is something they can;'t get elsewhere, they will pay a premium

Adam Vadala-Roth says:28 minutes ago

bingo mobilewill!

Gordon Williams says:28 minutes ago

Yes, markup is difficult - I do an insane amount of support for Espruino - both software and answers on the forum - so I spend a lot of my time on that

Kuldeep Singh Dhaka says:28 minutes ago

Anool lol :p

28 minutes ago

Has anyone experimented with doubling their prices?

Benchoff says:28 minutes ago

> a lot of the young kids I refer Tindie to correct me by saying I meant Tinder.

28 minutes ago

@Gordon Williams: chatbot

MobileWill says:28 minutes ago

Another thing is good documentation, which can be hard. I use wordpress site for that

Philip says:28 minutes ago

@gordon I got toasted on Hackaday a few weeks ago when someone did a nice writeup on one of my products.

Jasmine Brackett says:27 minutes ago

Tindie's cut is 5% of the total price (product price + shipping costs), plus there is a ~3% for payment processing which is charged by Paypal/Stripe.com

Gordon Williams says:27 minutes ago

@Anool Mahidharia maybe Tindie should add a mobile swipe-based website, just to confuse things a bit

Anool Mahidharia says:27 minutes ago

Swiping could work !

Jasmine Brackett says:26 minutes ago

I live in LA - the Tindie/Tinder things is a common mistake

MobileWill says:26 minutes ago

Yeah because for in person tranactions I have use paypal here

Joshua Shank says:26 minutes ago

thats awesome in comparison to amazon

Evan Salazar says:26 minutes ago

I designed the Power DAC Shield. by the time I get all the parts from digikey, PCB from China, hours SMD soldering it already close to $20 and I dont think I can sell it for much more and most people done pay more than $40 for a shield

spencer says:26 minutes ago

The Tindie fees are much lower than eBay or Amazon. The barrier to entry is much lower with Tindie than Amazon

Kuldeep Singh Dhaka says:26 minutes ago

Sophie doubling you mean manuf_pricex2 or (manuf_price+profit)x2 or what?

Jasmine Brackett says:25 minutes ago

Tindie and the community do expect high quality product support and customer service.

MobileWill says:25 minutes ago

For larger volume I don't solder at home anymore.

25 minutes ago

I mean doubling the visible price to the consumer

25 minutes ago

or doing 1.5x, finding the spot where you make a profit

MobileWill says:25 minutes ago

Daves jones's video recomends 2.5x rule of thumb

Joshua Shank says:25 minutes ago

do you have multiple products or so much volume that it made at home work difficult?

spencer says:24 minutes ago

I started with quite a high markup, and figured I could always lower it later if needed. Haven't needed to yet.

MobileWill says:24 minutes ago

I do have multiple products but the ones that I need 100+ I use seeedstudio

Philip says:24 minutes ago

For realistic pricing, this is a great talk by eevblog:

MobileWill says:24 minutes ago

easier to lower than raise the price

Bhavesh Kakwani says:24 minutes ago

@MobileWill will seeed studio assemble it for you?

Gordon Williams says:24 minutes ago

@MobileWill is that the one-off price? Distributors demand a big cut

Actually that's one of the nicer things of going through Tindie

MobileWill says:24 minutes ago

to be honest starting a higher price is why i am still able to operate

MobileWill says:23 minutes ago

that video linked is the one

Jasmine Brackett says:23 minutes ago

I would recommend @Spencer's model. As it means he can deal very quickly with cs issues.

MobileWill says:23 minutes ago

Seeedstudio will do everthing

MobileWill says:23 minutes ago

I love them

MobileWill says:23 minutes ago

My black usb testers are made by them

Gordon Williams says:23 minutes ago

It's worth noting that if you get it made somewhere like Seeedstudio you're going to have to buy quite a few to make it worthwhile, so you'll end up with a lot of stock

Joshua Shank says:22 minutes ago

do you just send them the schematic and BOM then they mail them to you?

MobileWill says:22 minutes ago

Not really. You can do 50 or 100 no problem

spencer says:22 minutes ago

Also, I was doing very low volume to start, so I based my price on buying small qty of components. Now I'm selling more, I buy in bulk for higher profit :-)

MobileWill says:22 minutes ago

You send the gerbers and bom and any comments needed

Gordon Williams says:22 minutes ago

But totally, +1 for Seeed - I get everything made there now - especially since getting burned by a ritish CM

Jasmine Brackett says:22 minutes ago

@Gordon, I noticed your bulk pricing on Tindie and realised how much Adafruit must be buying them in for .

Anool Mahidharia says:22 minutes ago

I'm able to get seeed to build 5-10 samples for me. They just charge me an extra setup fee

MobileWill says:22 minutes ago

Seeed isn't going to rip off your design either

MobileWill says:21 minutes ago

seeed can even make stuff in the US for small prototypes

Evan Salazar says:20 minutes ago

@MobileWill Do you use seeeds parts only or do you have them source parts for you

spencer says:20 minutes ago

The last couple of PCB orders I put in with Seeed were very slow and quite poor quality compared to places like DirtyPCB :-/

Philip says:20 minutes ago

I'm in Silicon Valley and I use local PCB and assembly companies. This makes resolving issues easier. The obvious trade off is price, but surprisingly not as much as you would think.

LazyHD says:20 minutes ago

If i am not mistaken, seeed does manual hand soldering for small quantities

Joshua Shank says:19 minutes ago

MobileWill, is this your profession now? hardware dev/engineering?

MobileWill says:19 minutes ago

I send them part numbers from digikey but they also have their in house stock parts they cna use

MobileWill says:19 minutes ago

I wish it was my profession. I do IT by day.

MobileWill says:18 minutes ago

I am a self taught engineer.

Anool Mahidharia says:18 minutes ago

For small batches, another great option is people like Bob Coggeshall who runs Small Batch Assembly

Evan Salazar says:18 minutes ago

So how much marketing do you do?

spencer says:17 minutes ago

I was a network engineer for 15 yearsuntil I did this for a living

MobileWill says:17 minutes ago

Bob is a great buy but I could work out the cost.

lukasz.iwaszkiewicz says:17 minutes ago

Hi, I also wanted to know about marketing.

MobileWill says:17 minutes ago

To start out I have a converted toaster oven at home and use stencils to make it faster

17 minutes ago

hey if people are having issues with lag, please refresh

Bhavesh Kakwani says:17 minutes ago

Marketing me too!

MobileWill says:17 minutes ago

I did a blog post on use the toaster oven

lukasz.iwaszkiewicz says:17 minutes ago

how and ehere to spread the word about youyr product

Gordon Williams says:16 minutes ago

It was only one experience, but I'd be very wary of bigger CMs now. I did the 4k Espruino Picos in England, and I was very obviously very low priority - wasn't fun at all

MobileWill says:16 minutes ago

I don't really do any marketing

Shulie Tornel says:16 minutes ago

In terms of Tindie, we do email newsletters and do loads of social media push. Through Tindie, Hackaday and Hackaday.io.

MobileWill says:16 minutes ago

I think my blog helps

Jasmine Brackett says:16 minutes ago

So, I can see that Spencer sends a lot of traffic to his page. He has a really good website for his products and only sells on Tindie.

MobileWill says:16 minutes ago

Twitter helps too

Joshua Shank says:16 minutes ago

is small batch based out of Reston, VA?

lukasz.iwaszkiewicz says:16 minutes ago

And how many visitors/subscribers do you have (approx)

spencer says:15 minutes ago

The "I sell on Tindie" badges on my website seem to work well

Anool Mahidharia says:15 minutes ago

Small Batch Assembly runs out of NoVa LAbs in Reston

Joshua Shank says:15 minutes ago

Sweet!

Evan Salazar says:15 minutes ago

So having constant traffic from a blog and some tweeting

spencer says:15 minutes ago

I also use Google Adword Express to drive customers to Tindie website

Bhavesh Kakwani says:15 minutes ago

Yes the espruino website is incredible

MobileWill says:15 minutes ago

how is adwords working for you?

Gordon Williams says:15 minutes ago

@MobileWill I'd love to manufacture here - with the components I'm using Seeed can't get them much cheaper than me now. I know folks like Pimoroni and MeArm are 'vertically integrated' now and it seems to work great

Jasmine Brackett says:15 minutes ago

@Kris Winer is also another top seller, who just makes small boards that people want, and I think does very very little of his own marketing but other people share on social media and link to his pages.

spencer says:14 minutes ago

Pretty good I think. I vary which countries to target and there seems to be sales that reflect that.

Jasmine Brackett says:14 minutes ago

I didn't realise that you used adwords @Spencer.

Jasmine Brackett says:14 minutes ago

We'll have to talk more about that

MobileWill says:13 minutes ago

@Gordon Williams You have larger volumes so that makes sense. I almost went with a fab down the street but Seeedstudio understands our market better

MobileWill says:13 minutes ago

@Jasmine Brackett I have used it in the past but haven't used it since. I got a letter with $150 credit the other day

Anool Mahidharia says:13 minutes ago

Does Tindie send out a Newsletter weekly/monthly ?

Joshua Shank says:13 minutes ago

anyone ever done qfn flashing? currently working with a TI bluetooth qfn chip

LazyHD says:13 minutes ago

can i sell services on Tindie ? @Jasmine Brackett

Jasmine Brackett says:12 minutes ago

There is a newsletter that goes out twice a month

Gordon Williams says:12 minutes ago

It seems there's this middle-ground where you can't assemble enough yourself but it's not worth getting the kit to do bigger runs - Seeed handles that great though

Jasmine Brackett says:12 minutes ago

No services at the moment. We only allow physical items

Hmm, turned off uBlock and Ghostery and it still lags more than on an Atom netbook.

Jasmine Brackett says:11 minutes ago

Every other week

LazyHD says:11 minutes ago

when you say at the moment, does it mean there are plans for adding services in the future ?

Jasmine Brackett says:11 minutes ago

You can sign up on the home page if you want to get it

Dirty Engineer says:11 minutes ago

why is the Tindie forum so hidden away on the website?

Gordon Williams says:11 minutes ago

@Spencer did you find adwords to be worth it when you used it? My wife wants me to do it, but it looks like it'd be $0.7 a click or so, and on a $30 board I wonder if it'd be worth it

spencer says:10 minutes ago

I pay a max of 50GBP per month (normally around 40 or so), so only need a couple of decent orders to cover that cost

Michael Harris says:9 minutes ago

does AdWords allow you to cap your monthly spending?

Philip says:9 minutes ago

To help with visibility, getting interviewed on The Amp Hour, Embedded.FM, or giving a talk at one of Chris Gammel's HDDG has worked for me.

anfractuosity says:9 minutes ago

For those who use seeed, can they also do very small runs of pcb assembled boards out of interest, like 10?

anfractuosity says:9 minutes ago

For those who use seeed, can they also do very small runs of pcb assembled boards out of interest, like 10?

spencer says:9 minutes ago

Yes, you can set a maximum monthly spend on Adwords

MobileWill says:9 minutes ago

Or get your product posted on hacakday, that helped me a ton at the start

MobileWill says:9 minutes ago

@anfractuosityYes!

anfractuosity says:8 minutes ago

awesome :) i will have to investigate that

Gordon Williams says:8 minutes ago

@MobileWill - yes, me too - I've had a great response from Hackaday posts :)

MobileWill says:8 minutes ago

One think I miss from Tindie that help tremendously early on was when Tindie did mini fundraising. Some of use are not ready for full blown kickstarters

Joshua Shank says:7 minutes ago

anyone use osh park as there main board distrubutor? I've heard good things

Jasmine Brackett says:7 minutes ago

OK, I'm going to research adwords for sellers and put together some tips.

7 minutes ago

hey everyone...can we move to the Dog Park? https://hackaday.io/project/19393-tindie-dog-park

Michael Harris says:7 minutes ago

getting posted on HaD does seem good for exposure. Other than posting something up and hoping for it to get noticed organically, what are some good ways to get noticed and picked up?

MobileWill says:7 minutes ago

I use oshpark for everything

Joshua Shank says:7 minutes ago

quick turnaround?

Jasmine Brackett says:7 minutes ago

If you post a relevant project on hackaday.io and link ot your tindie page, that helps.

7 minutes ago

Moving to Dog Park since Kicad chat starting here in 20 minutes : https://hackaday.io/project/19393-tindie-dog-park

Gordon Williams says:7 minutes ago

Interestingly I managed to get on the frontpage at news.ycombinator.com once and I got a massive amount of traffic. Absolutely no orders though!

Jasmine Brackett says:6 minutes ago

also you can submit the project to the tips line and the hackaday.com writers can see it

Jasmine Brackett says:6 minutes ago

Before we move out. Anyone got any current discount codes? Please provide code and link to product.

MobileWill says:6 minutes ago

Also some of my blog posts get picked up by Adafruit. SOmetimes I email them with my latest project.

anfractuosity says:7 minutes ago

Gordon, your product is the Espruino?

Gordon Williams says:6 minutes ago

@anfractuosity yes, that's the one

Jasmine Brackett says:6 minutes ago

Please join the dog park for more Tindie discussion https://hackaday.io/project/19393-tindie-dog-park

Dirty Engineer says:6 minutes ago

so.. none of the questions on the Google sheet were addressed? Point of the google sheet?

Jasmine Brackett says:5 minutes ago

OK, let's go over to https://hackaday.io/project/19393-tindie-dog-park and I we can go through them. :)

Dirty Engineer says:4 minutes ago

why didn't we just stater there..?

Jasmine Brackett says:3 minutes ago

Because it's a smaller project and we wanted to get more hackaday.io peeps involved.

Jasmine Brackett says:3 minutes ago

If you can't get in https://hackaday.io/project/19393-tindie-dog-park message me and I'll sort it out.