Profitable circuits

[overture3d]

I have been building electronics for a while and can build lots of cool stuff. A lot of stuff I have built is technically worth some money and, in stores, sells for way more than the cost it took me to build it.

Has anyone ever made money building electronics?

 

[davenn]

yup, I run a nice home business building specialist sound monitoring equip and a couple of other units. It provides a good side income away from my full time day job

Dave

 

[overture3d]

Cool! Where do you sell your stuff?

 

[BobK]

Profitable circuits for hobbyists are ones that are not mass produced in China. If you can buy it at Walmart, it is unlikely you can build it for less money without skimping in some way.

Bob

 

[overture3d]

Any recomendations on what you think would be more successful to try to sell? I am thinking about making something that would be easy to customize for each person, but I'm not sure what. How well do you think custom gaming equipment (keyboards, controllers, speaker/headphone systems, etc.) would sell?

 

[davenn]

Any recomendations on what you think would be more successful to try to sell? I am thinking about making something that would be easy to customize for each person, but I'm not sure what. How well do you think custom gaming equipment (keyboards, controllers, speaker/headphone systems, etc.) would sell?

there's already a mass of that stuff available out there all mass produced in China at a price you could never compete with.

You need to find a niche market ... produce something that is needed but maybe no one else is producing or maybe only one other producer then you can look at competing with that product.
There is absolutely no point trying to compete against common day gear that is already made in China and other mass manufacturing countries. You would be wasting your time and efforts

3 of the 4 units I produce, no one else in Australia produces them, the other one I know of only 1 producer but they havent been around long and my unit is well established in the market place
One of those 1st 3 items I make goes into every ALDI store that is built in Australia.
That's what I mean by a niche market.... They want/need the product and I'm the only one producing it

Dave

 

[Raven Luni]

I have been building electronics for a while and can build lots of cool stuff. A lot of stuff I have built is technically worth some money and, in stores, sells for way more than the cost it took me to build it.

If thats the case then why dont you sell your own versions of these things at a lower price?

Other than that, field equipment for various types of 'outdoor science' is a good bet. This usually involves specialist instruments not widely available, many of which have simple design principles but are very expensive simply because they're highly specialised and hard to come by. For example metal detectors (before their popularity exploded that is)