Two months ago, I just did small side-project selling bracelets and keychains on Amazon and Etsy.
These two products are supplied by Laser Chili, another cool print-on-demand company managed by my team.
I know these two products sell extremely through Facebook Ads because my team has made over 8 figures from them in the past few years.
But I never tried selling them on marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy.
Some friends on the Laser Chili team have been doing it, and they told me they can make good sales from the free traffic.
I wanted to try it myself. It would be a good example for my Laser Chili members to follow.
In this case study, I’ll show you what I did in this side-project, the results, and what I’ll do next.
Let’s get started.
What is Laser Chili?
Laser Chili is a new print-on-demand company based in Georgia, United States and operated by my team.
We’re focusing on engraved products.
We should call this business “engrave-on-demand” because it provides products like bracelets, keychains, dog tags, or wallet inserts.
We use a laser machine to “engrave” designs on the products.
These products are unique. Only a few companies make them.
Most people love them because they are accessories they can wear and keep with them all the time.
Apart from products, the Laser Chili also provides a system you can use to quickly upload products to Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, and other marketplaces using a .CSV file.
If you have hundreds of designs, you can use this tool to upload them quickly. The system will schedule a time to upload products to your connected marketplaces.
It’s the secret weapon that’s helping many sellers grow their stores quickly.
What I did
Basically, I worked for just two hours on this project and sold some bracelets on Amazon and Etsy.
Let me divide what I did into 5 parts:
- Product Selection
- Niche Creation
- Quote Creation
- Design Creation
- Product Creation and Distribution
Let’s dig into each part.
Product Selection
I chose two types of bracelets and keychains from Laser Chili to create my own products.
The two bracelet types I chose were glide-lock and rope bracelet:
Here’s an image of the keychain:
I selected these three products because they’re the three top-selling products in Laser Chili.
Etsy requires a $0.20 fee to list one product, so I don’t want to upload other types of products there yet.
I might expand to other products later if this project seems to work.
Niche Creation
Next, I chose two categories to create products for:
- Family
- Professions
These are two categories I’m very familiar with. I’ve made many sales from these niches with other types of products.
I listed all the niches in each category.
For example, there will be “dad”, “mom”, “son”, “daughter”, and so on in the Family category.
Niches like “Engineer”, “Nurse”, or “Teacher” will be listed in the Profession category.
In total, there are 50 niches in my Family category and 250 niches in the Profession category.
Together, I have 300 niches in these two categories.
Quote Creation
Then I picked up two quotes.
My trick was to choose two general quotes that I could use with both the Family and Profession categories. This allowed me to create a list of quotes easily and quickly.
I went to the sales report in my Amazon account and picked two general quotes from the top-selling products in my account.
Let’s assume these are the two quotes from my two top-selling products:
“Coolest Dad”
“Best Engineer Ever”
(Sorry guys…I won’t give you my “real” top-selling quotes lol)
As you can see, we can replace the word “Dad” or “Engineer” with other niches I found in the previous step.
I used these two quotes to create quotes for all the niches on my list.
I ended up with quotes like “Coolest Daughter”, “Best Son Ever”, or “Best Teacher Ever”.
I finally had 600 quotes in total. (300 niches x 2 quotes)
Design Creation
Next, it was time to create designs.
I didn’t do it myself because I’m no good. I hired my graphic designer to do it for me.
I sent these 600 quotes to my designer and asked him to create two sizes of designs for each quote for me.
These are the two sizes:
- 2000 x 640px (for the glide-lock and rope bracelet)
- 1000 x 480px (for the keychain)
Both the glide-lock and rope bracelet can use the same design size. So, my designer had to create 1,200 designs (whew!).
I paid him $240 to create these 1,200 designs. That’s $0.20 per design.
The design on a bracelet or keychain doesn’t need to be complex because the space for an engraved design is very small.
Just simple text is enough to make good sales, so I didn’t have to hire an expensive graphic designer.
If you want to learn how to find a designer to create this kind of design at this rate, read my guide on how to find a graphic designer.
Product Creation and Distribution
While I waited for my designer to create those 1,200 designs, I prepared the .CSV file I would use to upload products to Laser Chili.
In case you don’t know, Laser Chili has a PRO plan you can use to upload products in bulk a .CSV file.
I used these 1,200 designs to create 1,800 products.
I used 600 designs at the 2000x640px size to create 600 glide-lock bracelets and 600 rope bracelets – 1,200 in total.
I used another 600 designs in the 1000x480px size to create 600 keychains.
I had 1,800 products in total.
I had to create .CSV files for these 1,800 products.
Here’s the product info you need in the .CSV:
- Product Title
- Niche Keyword
- Keywords
- Price
- Design
- Product Type
This is an example of the .CSV file required by Laser Chili.
I created six CSV files for the 1,800 products I was going to upload.
- Quote #1, 300 niches (profession and family), for Glide-lock Bracelet
- Quote #1, 300 niches (profession and family), for Rope Bracelet
- Quote #1, 300 niches (profession and family), for Keychain
- Quote #2, 300 niches (profession and family), for Glide-lock Bracelet
- Quote #2, 300 niches (profession and family), for Rope Bracelet
- Quote #2, 300 niches (profession and family), for Keychain
I spent just an hour completing these .CSV files for 1,800 products. I wrote an article describing some of the tricks I use to create this .CSV file fast. Check it out here.
When I got the designs from my designer, I compressed them into a ZIP file and uploaded it with the .CSV.
I set the number of products uploaded daily in Laser Chili to 100 products a day, so these 1,800 products would be uploaded in 18 days.
My work was done. All I had to do now was wait for the Laser Chili system to upload the products for me.
I spent less than two hours doing all these things.
My Results
After I did the above work, I didn’t upload more Laser Chili products because I had other projects to focus on.
Two months later, I had received over 96 orders from both Amazon and Etsy. I sold the bracelets and keychains for $29.90 ($24.95 base cost plus $4.95 for shipping).
Overall, I made $2,810.60 from these 1,800 products in two months.
How about the costs?
The average cost for production was $9.90 per item, so the 96 units I sold cost me around $950.40.
Amazon Pro Sellers – $39.99 x 2 month = $79.98
Etsy Listing Fees – 1,800 x $0.20 = $360
Designs Cost – $200
In the end, my profit was $1,219.62 from 88 products.
Not bad for two hours of work.
If I’d uploaded more products, I could have made even more sales.
And these results were from Q3 – the slow months. These products will well a lot better in Q4.
So overall, I’m satisfied with my results. Not a big profit – but there was room for more.
What’s Next?
This side project has the potential to grow, so I plan to set up a team to do the work for me. I’ll have to train them how to use Laser Chili to upload products.
I’m pretty sure that if I have more Laser Chili products in my Amazon and Etsy stores, my total revenues will keep growing.
Apart from uploading more products, I also plan to send some SKUs to the Amazon Warehouse as well.
Laser Chili products are very small and don’t take up much Amazon storage, so it’s safe to send many units to the warehouse.
I’ll pick 3-4 SKUs and send 50 units of each SKU to the Amazon Warehouse.
Making them FBA products will increase your sales for sure.
Okay, these are just two things I’m going to do with this small side project. I think it’s enough to make me an extra $1,000 a month.
Hopefully, this case study will help you get some ideas on building and growing your print-on-demand business with Laser Chili. 🙂
See you then,
—Bank K.
