3-D Printing Niche

I've been thinking about it. Are you interested in selling products for the printers themselves? Most people that make money online with 3d printing at this point are selling kits to make the printers. There are tons of people on IRC doing this and making a good profit I am assuming. Other people set up online stores selling filament (I think it would be hard to compete with already existing plastic or material supply companies on this one) or individual parts such as extruders, pulleys, hot-ends, ect. Many people doing this sell on ebay currently, though there are a few stores (websites) set up entirely for this purpose.

I almost think that these are too narrow minded. People want to take advantage of a new expanding field and just settle on selling items that people in the field need which is the natural way to go. However, 3d printing opens up much more than that. There are thousands of products which can be made more cheaply with 3d printers (think anything made of 1 material, produced in small quantities, custom made). You can set up online store and COMPLETELY avoid the entire problem with eCommerce which only drop shipping has solved so far. With a 3d printer you can create the product only after it is sold. You don't even need your own 3d printer to do this (you can use shapeways, i.materialize, ect.) Also with these sites you have a larger variety of materials that you can create (stainless steel, ceramic, nylon, ect.)

Anyways those are some of my initial thoughts.

I've been looking into this lately. I entertained the thought of starting a site where you can design and create custom things (coffee cups, smoking pipes, iPad stands, or ANYTHING else you could imagine) and sell them to people. At only about $40 a spool for material, you could easily make a profit if you had enough customers.

is there a marketplace for the design files you run to produce a 3D product? I think that is where the oppty is, software if you will.

I did a quick search Cuboyo, GrabCAD... You start throwing ideas out there and you will get people excited.

One of my suppliers is offering a full 3D printer for £540 - I was wondering if this had possibilities for people to have their stuff printed! Looks like someone else had the idea too!