Where and how to sell CNC work
Sell locally first, because it is fastest and teaches you what people actually want. Add one online channel, usually Etsy, once you have a product that repeats and photographs well. Build your own list of customers from the first sale, because it is the only channel nobody can take away from you.
Decide what you are before you decide where to sell
Hobby sellers drift into trouble by being three businesses at once. Each of these is a legitimate way to sell CNC work, and each one wants a different channel, a different price and a different day.
| Repeat products | Custom one-offs | Digital files | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you sell | The same few designs, made in batches | Personalised signs, gifts, commissions | The design itself, as SVG, DXF or STL |
| Where the time goes | Finishing and packing | Talking to the customer and designing | Designing once, then support |
| Best channel | Etsy, markets, wholesale to local shops | Local word of mouth, your own site, Etsy | Etsy and your own site |
| What limits you | How many you can finish in a week | How many conversations you can hold | How good and how tested the files are |
| Read next | Batch production | Custom orders | Selling digital files |
You can do more than one. Price and present them separately, because a customer who sees a 20 dollar coaster next to a 400 dollar commission assumes the commission is overpriced.
Channel 1: local
The fastest feedback you will ever get. Someone picks the piece up, turns it over, asks what it costs and either buys it or puts it down, and you learn more from an afternoon of that than from a month of online analytics.
- Craft fairs and markets. Booth fees vary enormously, so ask other vendors what a normal day looks like before you pay for a big one. Take a card reader, a way to take custom orders, and a sign with your name on it that you made yourself.
- Local shops on wholesale or consignment. Gift shops, breweries, farm stores. Wholesale means they buy it from you at roughly half of retail. Consignment means you are paid when it sells. Know which one you agreed to, in writing.
- Businesses as customers. Signage, menu boards, branded gifts, awards, realtor closing gifts. One business customer reorders; fifty retail customers mostly do not.
- Word of mouth. Every piece that leaves the shop should carry your name somewhere discreet, and every customer should know how to find you again.
Channel 2: online marketplaces
A marketplace rents you its traffic. That is genuinely valuable when you have none of your own, and it comes with fees, rules that change, and competitors one click away. For handmade and personalised work that means Etsy for most people, and it has its own page: selling on Etsy.
Channel 3: your own audience
A customer list and a following are the only channel you own. A marketplace can change its fees or suspend a shop overnight; nobody can take an email list away from you.
- Collect an email address with every order, with permission, from the first sale. It is worth more in year three than it looks in week one.
- Process video is the native content of this hobby. A bit entering wood, chips flying and a finished reveal is watchable in a way a product photo is not. Film the machine, not just the result.
- Pick one or two platforms and be consistent. Posting a little every week beats a perfect post once a month, and spreading across five platforms means doing all of them badly.
- Give every post somewhere to go. A link, a shop name, a way to order. Attention with no next step is a hobby.
Photography decides more sales than the work does
Online, the buyer cannot pick the piece up. The photograph is the product until the box arrives.
- Light. Diffused daylight from a window, or a daylight balanced LED panel. Shop fluorescents turn every wood the same sickly yellow.
- Raking light for carved work. V-carving and 3D relief are read by shadow. Light from the side, low, and the carving appears. Light from the front and it vanishes. This is the single most CNC specific photography tip there is.
- A plain background for the main shot, and one photograph of the piece where it will live: on a wall, on a table, in a hand for scale.
- A close-up of the detail, because that is where your work differs from a printed sign.
- A tripod or a phone clamp. Sharpness is most of what reads as professional.
- Consistency. The same angles and background across every listing make a shop look like a business.
Packaging and what arrives
- Wood moves and corners dent. Pack for being dropped, because it will be. Corner protection matters more than padding in the middle.
- Let finish cure fully before wrapping. A finish that is dry to the touch and not cured will print the texture of the packaging into itself.
- Include a card with your name, how to reorder and how to care for the piece. A handwritten thank you costs nothing and is remembered.
- Weigh and measure a packed box before you set a shipping price. Large flat signs are expensive to ship by dimension, not by weight, and that surprises every new seller once.
Where hobby sellers go wrong
- Pricing from what competitors charge instead of from costMost common
Somebody is always cheaper because they have not counted their time. Work out your own number first. See pricing CNC work. - Selling everything to everyoneCommon
A shop with signs, coasters, furniture and files has no identity and no repeat process. Pick a lane, get good at it, widen later. - Not photographing the workCommon
The piece gets picked up, you have no photo, and the portfolio never grows. Photograph everything before it leaves. - Making things nobody asked forCommon
Sell one before you make twenty. A market stall or a single listing is a cheap way to find out. - Carving other people's brandsCommon
Team logos and cartoon characters sell fast and get shops shut down. See legal basics. - Ignoring the boring halfOccasional
No separate bank account, no records, no idea at tax time. See taxes, bookkeeping and insurance.