In reality, I have never looked for a side hustle since I consider that financially I am minimally satisfied with what I earn in my full-time job.
However, at the beginning of this year I decided to buy a 3D printer, initially to have a hobby of printing some pieces and maybe even learning how to paint them to have my personal collection.
I have no knowledge of 3d modeling so when I started simply printing some small parts that I found on 3d model websites such as printables, thangs, thingverse and makerworld.
Initially I think I didn't make any prints longer than 6 hours because it was my first contact with 3D printing, and I was afraid that the print would fail and since I didn't have much knowledge I just had to place the filaments, choose the profiles and click to print.
I easily began to understand that I had to learn some basic things like adjusting the temperature for each filament and how to adjust supports so that it was relatively easy to remove them.
I slowly gained confidence to start making larger pieces with 10 hours of printing, and I gradually increased until I started printing pieces with 1 day of printing time.
When I started sharing some of the impressions on my social networks and showing them to some family members, they started saying that maybe there was an opportunity here to have a side hustle with potential since people are looking for customized pieces that are different from what we initially see.
I don't know if all side hustles start this way, but the first “orders” were made by family and close friends until the point came when I decided to see if I could put some pieces up for sale on advertising platforms like OLX (Portugal), Wallapop (mainly Spain) and Vinted.
The first platform I joined was OLX, and honestly, it didn't take long to get the first order for a Minnie lightbox.
It was a great feeling to have the first order.
Clearly, this made me learn to modulate more lightboxes with different characters or themes.
However, friends or people close to us started asking us for customized pieces such as specific key rings, christening souvenirs and magnets to give as gifts.
I tried to create an account on Vinted to put my articles there, but they were refused because I had to have a Pro account which I cannot create even though I am registered as an individual entrepreneur because the platform expects to find a tax number starting with 5 (in Portugal are taxpayer numbers linked to a company).
Currently, it is not in my plans to create a company as this involves monthly costs for an accountant even if there are no sales.
Remembering that we are approaching Christmastime, I decided to register on Wallapop and take advantage of the fact that people are looking for Christmas decorations and gifts.
One of the items I “launched” for this Christmas season was the personalized Christmas ball with a photo of your choice.
This product received a lot of attraction, and we received orders from different platforms, including the first international order.
I was very happy to have an order from Spain and to have had some contacts, as this means that in some way people look at the products and ask questions about them.
I'm currently considering whether I should also create an account on Etsy and post my products there to have another platform to promote products.
I haven't defined my future path yet, but one thing I know for sure is that I'm loving this adventure in 3D printing despite some of the headaches I've already had.
