i think only you can make that choice. I know no politics here, but tariffs are not going away, you may need to do something.
It is always hard to know how to put a value to my time.
A friend of mine is a boat mechanic, kinda, he makes an insane hourly for doing even super basic stuff. He is pretty colorblind and doesn’t care to learn much about electronics because of it. When he calls me over for a hand with it, he pays me very well and he is still making money on top of that. I guess I just need to take a long hard look at how much time I am spending on things and where I can lower prices and where I can bring in a little extra.
I am sure you will see more donation links popping up, I already added one and I have some docs edits to make here real soon so I will add some there as well.
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No, that’s easy. Hard may be accepting or being comfortable in charging for that value.
Why?!?!?! That’s back to the hesitancy to value your time mindset. There’s no point in holding inventory and shipping stuff for minimal margin. People can use your Amazon links for that. There is value in the provision of a known good/correct kit of parts. Charge for it. If someone needs it cheaper they can spend their time instead sourcing individual parts with your affliate links or otherwise.
I would be looking at two product lines… the “value line”, but still with appropriate margin, and a “much better” pro line that offers speed and rigidity at an additional premium cost.
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I have noticed some of the parts are not worth it to carry. At that point I am just trying to beat Amazon. I have been clearing out some of the smaller items. Even if I triple my money, it takes longer than the $0.30 profit to bag them up and ship them. The old 6 strand wire was the worst, took a fairly long time to measure, cut, wind, box for a $1 average profit.
Even worse when someone orders 100’ of it 
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My $1.19 on Patreon a month definitely keeps you going! 
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I thought the business model was to start a small business that has some super useful tech and get some gazillionaire to buy it and make it all at the sale. Open. closed, whatever… I dont fault folks for busting it, getting pennies, and then taking the windfall when it catches if it aligns with their license scheme. It is the nature of capitalism.
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It all adds up!!! Patreon looks to have at least covered the forum cost this year that is awesome.
That was nice to clear out the last of the inventory.
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And got you some exercise
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I wonder if you would enjoy making some projects. Plywood furniture or shop furniture you could take some pretty pictures of and sell pdf plans for.
It looks so easy on youtube 
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@vicious1 Have you considered an online course or build instruction video set such as how to build or use the lowrider or zenxy? This would be some (a lot of) up front time investment, but could be purchased and viewed off of patreon and not require your touch each time it is purchased. Just an idea. I believe leveraging your knowledge and experience would be a benefit to the community and it could help both those who self source and those who purchase kits. Make it a license with a view window of 90 or 180 days or maybe a minumim monthly pledge for continuous access. I know a guy who might be able to help with the video… @azab2c and his zoom tube would be one way. Afterall this is his thread and he has college kids who need to eat.
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I have every intention of doing this for free when I can get it right. I have tried several times and am just not happy with how it turns out. I am trying though.
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I wanted to do a build video for Blue Steel as well, recorded a lot, but never explained something. And now I have to cut it and record explanations. Ugh.
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How much?
Captured 203 files, ~63GB, 18hrs, for my LR4 build. Just capturing that much content for an entire build was time consuming enough. No way am I editing on top of that. So, I organize, name and markup the filenames, then wrote a tool to auto generate cleaned up indexed content from that with titles/emoji overlays based on markup in the filenames. Tool is private until if/when it’s less rough, and easier for others interested in using.
Content Creator generates videos using the tool, then uploads to their YouTube account, they get the the views. ZoomTube is just a wrapper for helping view and scrub through long form content hosted on the Creator’s YouTube channel. Viewer gets to filter and zoom through hyper indexed content at whatever depth they have time for, in that moment…
Content’s free to access https://zoomtube.com/@azab2c/make/v1e-lr4, viewing experience needs improving, hasn’t been a priority.
I haven’t been pushing the LR4 content hard because it was for a RC2.5 assembly, and a tighter updated organized version would be more useful for new builders. I’d put more effort in if there was more usage, chicken-egg.
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For what it’s worth, he used to have a print your own kit and sold just a hardware kit to the Bosch dust collection chute, but the link 404s now.
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