My wife and I are currently finishing up our degrees (Business Management for me) and both have about 60 hours left. I make and sell furniture/home decor on Etsy to make a little extra income to pay for the few bills that we have. We currently don't have rent or a mortgage as we are living with family while we finish school.
Woodworking is extremely enjoyable to me but it takes many hours to produce a few items and as we start to fill up our time with classes, I see myself running into a problem with time management. I plan to keep selling furniture but I will perhaps limit the items that I sell to just a few. With that said, we are seriously considering a laser to make home decor (clocks, laser cut maps, names, cutting boards, and the hundreds of other things you can possibly create with a laser) and probably seek out some local business for traditional laser engraving services (name plates, signs, plaques, etc.) My question is: does it seem reasonable to make anywhere from $500-$1000/month in profit to cover our small bills and probably a $200/month finance charge for the laser. We are considering a Boss LS2436 60W or 100W.
I have read from many people on here that there isn't money to be made in the custom design area, but it won't so much be custom design, but rather us putting forth the effort to design what we want at the outset and selling from our Etsy shop. Therefore we won't be spending the majority of our time working with CorelDraw but producing. There will be some custom work, but that will mainly be names, words, pictures, etc.
There are MANY successful laser engraving Etsy shops out there, I guess I just need to know that with a good business plan, good designs and good marketing, that we can make $500-$1000 a month in profit minimum. Any local and online marketing tips are appreciated too.
I feel that this is a prime opportunity to invest in the laser and make a little bit of money while in school, and that way once we graduate we are potentially in a position to take it on full time.