People Love Animal Shaped Things

For some reason people just love animal shaped products, including adults. Now wood workers that want to make a little extra income can cut out animal shapes with plywood.

You may wonder why is there a demand for this, simply said people love animals. I wouldn’t spend money on stuff like this but I have some animal shaped products that serves a cosmetic purpose.

I got it a coat hanger that you can stick on the wall, that is the shape of a cat. It was a gift from a friend that just purely loves animals with a passion.

A dog grooming store I used to work at would have a few of these wooden animal cut outs for decorative purpose.

So you can imagine why is there a demand for things like this.

Wood Worker With Little Space

This type of work requires little space, literally just get a bunch of plywood and a wire saw.

I remember my neighbor always wanted to be a wood worker, but his wife won’t let him because she wants to use all the space for herself to decorate.

Pretty dogshit, but it is what it is, and I think this is a good compromise if you have restricted space.

Possibilities

On maximum output you can make 4 of these per an hour. Imagine if you have 4 hours of free time after work, you can make about $160-$240 per a work day. It’s not crazy to imagine this turning into a full time job.

I know a person that makes 300k a year, putting stickers of celebrities on a dollar bill. I find that even more fascinating than animal cutout, but it works, there is a demand from nick knacks like this.

Negatives

This is a labor intensive side hustle, there is not much technology that can automate wood cutting.

Everything done will most likely be done by hand, but with a little bit of marketing, you can increase your prices, and call your work hand crafted good. People will pay premium for it, even though machine made goods are better quality.

Managing Orders

This is the biggest problem that stops most small business owners. After work most people want to rest their, because they have laborious or mentally intensive work.

Imagine the sad thought that once you go home, you have to fulfill orders, and they come randomly. If it’s too little, you’re demoralized, thinking your products are low demand, if its too high, you may have to work until 3am to fill the orders.

Products like this don’t have stable sales, so lots of people are not confident if it’s worth quitting their job over.

You may think money is the motivation, I know people making way more than $300 a day from their side business selling anime products, but they quit because they don’t want to worry about fulfilling orders after their 9-5.

How To Start

You can go online and buy yourself a table wire cutter, they’re relatively easy to find, you can find them at Lowes too if you’re in a rush.

Then you can go online and look for outline drawings of animals, they’re free on Google image.

then you get a black only printer to save money, you don’t need a color printer for any reason, for a side hustle like this.

Then go back to Lowes and buy a bunch of plywood for what you want to produce.

Pricing And Size

Now I mostly see people selling them from 4-12 inches, measured in height and length. Price can vary from $8 to $25 dollars, or you can go gigolo can charge a dollar an inch.

I do recommend you don’t spend too much money on start up, especially if you’re tight on a budget, like a college student. Just put up the listing on Etsy and wait until someone make an order.

Don’t forget, most businesses are cheap to start, don’t go and immediately buy all the equipment for a business until you actually have business.

Etsy

There is a thing against Etsy, men with a fragile masculinity get the impression that Etsy is a arts and craft place where women go to make money sell their little crotchets.

That is far from the truth, woodcraft, Legos, statues are commonly sold on Etsy.

I am willing to bet that if a masculine man is making 300k a year knitting, he would jump on it as soon as he learns it.