One problem with your cost and time estimates is you show 17 or 18 of the same name. In reality the bag tags will be all different names and the table place settings will all be different names. So your quantity per sheet may vary, and you will have 17 times more design time. If each name takes you 5 minutes to design, that's 90 minutes of labor you have to add in - not including any assembly or clean up time. If you're fussy about the designs looking good and spend 10 minutes each name, now you're up to 180 minutes (3 hours) of just design time. How long does it take to clean, assemble, and package each order? That labor needs to be accounted for as well. Also you didn't account for the cost of the tassels and clips on the bag tag key rings. So in reality the high dollar numbers you are saying you can make in 4 hours is not accurate without accounting for all labor and we didn't even get into overhead, wear and tear or maintenance on the machine, cost of advertising or marketing and so on. However entertaining videos like this are, they cause people to try and jump on the bandwagon to make a quick and easy buck, they fail to do so and then try to sell their equipment 6 months or a year later.
I stopped after the place setting. I don't think people are going to spend $100-$150 just to put names on the plates before a meal. There would be a decent amount of finishing on these. I wouldn't want a sooty, laser cut wood edge on my dinner plate.
Have to agree... The keychains were the first thing I made with my laser. I could probably bang them out real quick now. In fact I sat here with my 11 year old and talked him through making one for his friend. Real easy to make.... BUT, am I going to sell THAT many? I am certainly not going to sell them for $13 each. They are a $2 or even $5 trinket at best. Batching stuff out like that means you are just going to have stuff sitting in boxes or on the shelves for (potentially) years. It is a bit misleading to say you can make $1,000 per hour for 4 hours work.... You have to actually sell the stuff to make that money
I think you should consider the cost of electric to run the Gloforge, your time spent on set up, the cost of packaging and finally the value you place on your time.
Totally agree - I usually sell these locally. Which means, I don’t spent anything in shipping and or packaging. But yes - I’d definitely account for that if I was shipping it. Probably should have mentioned that I sell them locally!