How to Make Money with a Digital Printer/Cutter
How much money can I actually make with a printer/cutter device? This is a question some people may think about, I have come up with a few ideas on this subject.
If we take into account all of our costs involved in printing and work out what we can sell it for and then further work out an expected volume of printing we can finally come to a figure. The most obvious cost is our ink used to do the print. On the Roland machines we have an average cost of between R15-R25 per square meter. This is an average so some jobs are more and some may be less. If we were to be printing onto self adhesive vinyl, our cheapest vinyl would be around R12 per square meter and our good quality vinyl would be R19 per square meter. Again we can take an average of say R15 per square meter. With these two cost we have our biggest components in printing namely the ink and the media. Together we are getting an average of around R30-R40 per square meter. The third cost that most people do not take into account is time, as the saying goes time is money. The best way to work out a time cost is by the hour. We can easily cost our time to R150-R200 per hour(avg R22000 per month). Thus the faster the machine the more money you can make in an hour, or the more efficient the machine the better. If we have a machine which is printing at 10square meters per hour then we have a time cost of R15 per square meter. This gives us a total cost, including time, of R45-R55 per square meter. This does show you that the ink is only a third if that of the total cost, so this would be pointless in chasing the savings in the ink, rather make your machine more reliable and efficient so you can produce more in an hour. The last thing people should want is down time as this is huge money lost.
Now that we have the costs we can work out the profit. The average selling price for vinyl or PVC should be around R200–R250 per square meter to the general public. If you are charging less you are not taking into account your time. If we are charging R250 we can work on a gross profit of between R180-R200 per square meter. If you are using a machine which is printing even 6m²/hr which is normally considered high quality you will have R180 x 6 = R1080.00 per hour profit. This would pay the machines instalment in the first two hours of printing.
Some may argue that there is not enough work for the machines to keep them busy the whole month but all you would need is 4 days of printing to make upto R20000.00 with the machine. And because the Roland’s are print&cut devices you have so many different opportunities to print. When you are not doing PVC or vinyl you can print posters, stickers, labels, name badges, t-shirt transfers, vehicle graphics, wallpaper and canvases. With some of the other mentioned options you profit margin will increase by as much as double especially if it is a custom specialized product like wallpaper or canvas.
If you are keen to find out more about these amazing machines then book a demo to find out how you could change your life and get out the rat race and into the fast lane.
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