Project Building Plans

[RFGuy]

I guess I would have to ask who exactly do you think SS is marketing their products to then? The Mark 7 is a $5k machine and out of reach for many at this price point IMHO. At $5k for just one machine, this sure seems like they are marketing it to "professionals" with A LOT of discretionary income. This doesn't even count adding a dust collector, bandsaw, jointer, planer, clamps, hand tools, lumber, etc., etc. that one needs to get started in woodworking. I can't speak to what SS roots were, but back then I thought the product was priced and marketed to the average homeowner who had "some" discretionary income. JMO.

RFGuy to be fair you have to remember that you can purchase a base model Mark 5 from SS for $3500 to make it more affordable. Not to mention with some patients and negotiation you can get all the SPT's for a very affordable price. I think the most I spent for an SPT was $200 bucks and I now have all of them. I have 3 SS's... Two of them are Mark 5s and I paid $100 for each of them. And you are getting 5 machines not one for that price. FB is your friend guys.

Bargains can be had and for the average homeowner with SOME discretionary income a SS can be had.

My two cents.

Kevin,

Yeah, but you are illustrating my point here. IF you are buying from the aftermarket, e.g. eBay, Craigslist, FB marketplace, etc. then you are NOT buying from Shopsmith. They only make money when people buy brand new machines from them. We actually did a kinda deep dive on SS prices from 1950 compared to today on a recent thread that was rather interesting. You can find it on this thread: viewtopic.php?t=31775 I was just pointing out that Shopsmith, in my opinion, markets to the higher end of the market, i.e. working professionals who have the excess discretionary income to afford it. At $3500 for a Mark 5 or even $5k for a Mark 7 you could buy a brand new Sawstop and get a cheap bandsaw, beltsander, etc. off of the used market to go with it. Or, if you are primarily into woodturning you can buy a very nice lathe and standalone bandsaw, etc. to accompany it for the same price of a new Shopsmith machine. For many, a brand new Shopsmith is less affordable today than it was in 1950 for half of the population.

[KCollins]

So just join the spammer parade.

I don't follow JPG? Are you saying this thread is a spammer parade?

NO! However a now deleted post was making it so.

Ahhhhhh.... Gotcha. Scared me there for a minute. LOL...

[KCollins]

I guess I would have to ask who exactly do you think SS is marketing their products to then? The Mark 7 is a $5k machine and out of reach for many at this price point IMHO. At $5k for just one machine, this sure seems like they are marketing it to "professionals" with A LOT of discretionary income. This doesn't even count adding a dust collector, bandsaw, jointer, planer, clamps, hand tools, lumber, etc., etc. that one needs to get started in woodworking. I can't speak to what SS roots were, but back then I thought the product was priced and marketed to the average homeowner who had "some" discretionary income. JMO.

RFGuy to be fair you have to remember that you can purchase a base model Mark 5 from SS for $3500 to make it more affordable. Not to mention with some patients and negotiation you can get all the SPT's for a very affordable price. I think the most I spent for an SPT was $200 bucks and I now have all of them. I have 3 SS's... Two of them are Mark 5s and I paid $100 for each of them. And you are getting 5 machines not one for that price. FB is your friend guys.

Bargains can be had and for the average homeowner with SOME discretionary income a SS can be had.

My two cents.

Kevin,

Yeah, but you are illustrating my point here. IF you are buying from the aftermarket, e.g. eBay, Craigslist, FB marketplace, etc. then you are NOT buying from Shopsmith. They only make money when people buy brand new machines from them. We actually did a kinda deep dive on SS prices from 1950 compared to today on a recent thread that was rather interesting. You can find it on this thread: viewtopic.php?t=31775 I was just pointing out that Shopsmith, in my opinion, markets to the higher end of the market, i.e. working professionals who have the excess discretionary income to afford it. At $3500 for a Mark 5 or even $5k for a Mark 7 you could buy a brand new Sawstop and get a cheap bandsaw, beltsander, etc. off of the used market to go with it. Or, if you are primarily into woodturning you can buy a very nice lathe and standalone bandsaw, etc. to accompany it for the same price of a new Shopsmith machine. For many, a brand new Shopsmith is less affordable today than it was in 1950 for half of the population.

Fair enough RF...

[RFGuy]

I'm thinking about throwing in my hat to develop plans for building jigs and crafts and wood projects and selling them online...

Kevin

Kevin,

It has been a few months since you posted this and I don't know if you are still looking into this. I forgot to mention a good data source is the guy that has the Shop Nation YT channel. I don't regularly watch his content, but I know every year he posts a breakdown of how much money he earns from all of his endeavors to be transparent with his viewers. It could be a good resource for you to make a decision on this. He breaks down how much money he makes from Google (YT) AdSense income from his YT channel, how much he makes from affiliate links, how much he makes from selling merchandise (hats, t-shirts, etc.), how much from sponsorships and how much he makes from selling plans, etc. His channel is more generic garage shop type content, but he does do woodworking in his shop and sells woodworking plans, etc.. Since he has a more general YT channel, rather than focused on just woodworking or even more narrowly on a particular tool brand, he has a larger following as a result. He is over 220k subscribers now and made $46k last year from AdSense income alone. However, he made significantly more money from selling shop related stuff that he makes with his 3D printers, merchandise, etc. Check out his latest YT breakdown below if you are still interested. Not an easy path to carve out, but IF you can get the followers there is serious money that can be made at this. It is A LOT of work to get there and requires a bit of luck IMHO. Wishing you well if you go down this path.

P.S. For anyone wondering how much some of the SS YT channels make you can attempt to extrapolate it based on subscribers and # of views on their channels compared to the Shop Nation guy. Keep in mind the real money is in affiliate links, sponsorships and other stuff they sell - because a few years ago Google pillaged the ad money that had been going to content creators on YT in the past.

[KCollins]

Thanks RFGuy... I knew it had been a while since I last visited the forum but I didn't realize it had been this long. LOL... I've seen this guy and I bought one of his plans to see how he puts them together for sale. They are very simple to create and nicely detailed. It's something I know I could do but like you said you need the followers and a lot of luck. I think anyone given enough time and reasonable effort could accomplish this. Given enough consistent time. Which I don't have much of right now. LOL... So I'm going to keep this in my back pocket for now and if life will ever slow down enough give this YouTube thing a try. Thanks for the post though.