In 2023, I started selling solid wood rolling trays designed by my little sister and I on Etsy (The Stoned Craftsmen).
Almost immediately I was making $1200-2000 per month. Some months can be big months (especially around Thanksgiving/Christmas) where I'm getting $75-200 a day in sales, but some months can be dogs (July and August this year were literally $0 months - the only 2 on record - I think an algorithm changed on Etsy and we got punished or something). When the sales were growing, the work was fun, when they plateaued then dipped, it made it hard to feel energized to do the work.
The first year I spent a lot of time optimizing everything on the manufacturing side. Better tool paths, less tool changes, better speeds to not break everything, better use of materials, better use of disposables. I tried optimizing my Etsy store, but I couldn't get anything to increase sales, and moving to my own Shopify was a waste of $40/mo for 6 months because driving my own paid traffic from social media (which has rules against paraphernalia) was hard, so eventually I dropped that and stuck with Etsy and tried to wholesale to dispensaries and headshops around me, but my wholesale price is too high, and I don't want to offshore my manufacturing to get my price low enough.
I had grand plans on growing the brand. I was in talk with major brands in the space for collaboration, but our wholesale price point was too high, and 1 celebrity brand said the gap was too large, the other never got back in touch after sending them our wholesale sheet.
So I think I'm just going to have a nice side biz as a niche maker of solid wood rolling trays.