How do I sell homemade terrain online

[brianfowler713 3336xp 0]

Hello, I am a long time member of OTT, who has been away from the forums for awhile (perhaps at least a year, or close to a year).

In one of my last posts I showed a collection of trash I was planning to make war gaming terrain from. Since then the collection has gotten… A little larger, and I’ve made two conclusions.

If I don’t start making terrain now I may never do it.

If I do make the terrain, I won;t have a place to store it.

So I’m thinking of selling the terrain I make online, and I was wondering if anyone here would have any advice. Should I sell it on Ebay, or get an Etsy account? For now I plan to start with simple terrain, like making goblin huts out of the Pringles cans, or lab tanks out of the smaller pill bottles.

Any general advice you can give at all would be appreciated, please.

Thank you.

[sundancer 44670xp 1]

If you don’t plan to make it a side business I’d stay with an ebay account. Starting bid of 1 USD/GBP/EUR and see where it ends. Though I’m not sure if there is a market for DIY “trash to treasure” terrain. There are just too many options out there. Paper Craft, plastic card, resin, plastic, MDF and the dreaded 3D ones and zeros files.  Again this would be a plus on ebay’s side. simple to set up and if it goes nowhere just delete it. If it takes off and you could make real money you can always start an etsy shop later.

[brianfowler713 3336xp 0]

I’m making terrain to sell because there’s no way I’ll be able to store any of it in my current living situation, which I should have realized when I started collecting the junk to make the terrain in the first place.

[sundancer 44670xp 0]

I get that. The question I’m posing is: do you want to build and sell for fun (and possibly not make any money from it) or do you need to make “some” money to finance back the building or (third option) do you want to make a living from it? Then you would need to have some kind of margin on top of material costs and time invested.

[brianfowler713 3336xp 0]

I want to make as much terrain as I can, if only to prove I can, and find a home for said terrain, because I sure don’t have space to make a home here.

I’m not expecting “to make a living” off of this, but I’d like to avoid losing too much money (although with our Postal Service apparently being sold off, I expect to lose too much and then some).

I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it better.

[orinoco 5385xp 0]

I’ve included a couple of links that might be interesting. The first is Annie from Badsquiddo showing some junk to terrain she bought and the second is a link  to the etsy store.

I think the biggest problem will be getting enough people to find your terrain, although from what I understand your main goal is the build and getting the terrain to a good home.  I would go with whatever platform is easiest to use.  EBay might be better for sporadic sales.

I would also put your finished terrain projects into the OTT project system so at least some people can see and enjoy them. You might even win a golden button or be featured on the prestigious Unofficial Hobby Hangout on Twitch

Annie https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roplrgUkgj4 and store https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Berlintuesday

[brianfowler713 3336xp 0]

Stupid argument deleted, hopefully before anyone read it.

[brianfowler713 3336xp 1]

As @orinoco advised, I set up a project page, you can see the first piece I’m working on here:

Amatuer Crafting of Fantasy or Sci Fi Terrain.

I hope you like it.

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