Selling niche STL files commercially
I’m looking for advice from people who sell functional STL files commercially in niche markets.
I run a small 3D printing business and have had around 2500 sales within a year with very little marketing, so i know they sell... Most of my designs are functional products. Many of them have taking a very long time to design, prototype and test properly.
I’ve started considering licensing some of my designs instead of spending most of my time printing orders, but I’m struggling to understand how people actually approach this.
My biggest concern is that if I release STL files publicly, even under “personal use only”, people may ignore the license and start selling cheaper versions themselves.
I’m also not very interested in subscription models or Patreon style systems, since my catalog is relatively small and highly niche. Because of that, I also don’t really want to sell commercial licenses for next to nothing, when buyers could potentially earn a lot from the products.
So I guess my biggest questions are:
- Where do people actually find serious buyers for commercial licenses?
- And how do i price my files?