55-Year-Old’s Engraving Hobby = $200K/Year

Rodney Melton is the founder of Melton Memorials, which specializes in creating gravestones for pets 😔

CNBC reports…

[Rodney] started his side hustle for two reasons. His friend’s dog Molly died, and he happened to own a $15,000 engraver for his stone-carving hobby. Molly’s concrete headstone turned out well, and Melton decided to open an Etsy shop in March 2021.

Apparently…

The store brought in $207,000 in 2022 revenue… About 65% of that was profit, Melton estimates.

⚒️ But it was slow progress in the beginning, with each headstone taking Rodney about 5 hours to create…

At first, he could only fulfill 16 Etsy orders per month.

The extra cash was great, he says, but he wanted to shorten his lead time. After researching online, he discovered that his process was somewhat obsolete.

So…

Three months after opening his store, he spent $7,000 from his savings on sandblasting equipment, because an expert online told him he’d “be crazy” not to.

The equipment cut his production time down to 45 minutes. In the second half of the year, he brought in between $5,400 and $8,300 per month.

Then…

Melton invested [another] $38,000 — from both his savings and the previous year’s proceeds — in a laser engraver, further cutting down his production time.

In other words, Rodney invested quite a bit of time and money making his business more efficient, which laid the foundation for his $207K year in 2022 🚀

And now it’s become a family affair…

[Rodney] quit his job and enlisted his wife to help him make pet headstones full-time. Last year, he hired his daughter and daughter-in-law, too.

Rodney is based in Arkansas, and I expect there could be a market for this kind of thing in other areas.

It also reminds me of the guy in Slovenia 🇸🇮 earning $4000/month selling concrete sculptures online.

Seems less people want to work with their hands and craft physical products nowadays, but that likely means there are lots of opportunities there 🤔

Also, shout out to this article on Side Hustle Nation, where I first heard about Rodney…

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