These days, it feels like everyone needs a side hustle and bustle. If your hobby can help you earn some extra income, at least it seems like no effort to try to do it. 3D printing,,,,, Laser engraving And using vinyl cutters like the famous Cricut Machine can give you the opportunity to make something beautiful, unique and sellable. Etsy has been the go-to storefront for nearly 20 years, and despite other options, it still has 8.13 million active sellers in 2025. contimod report.
Recently, the company has articulated its policies around the “manufacturing” category of sellers, especially those related to “projects produced using computer furniture.” Updates are subtle, but fundamentally may change the way many small businesses move forward.
Are all these same dragons, or are they unique enough?
If you’ve ever searched for 3D printed dragons on Etsy, you might see the screen above. While each dragon looks very similar – neither of them has almost no painting expression, no two are exactly the same. Almost all the dragons you will see are made by a small group of designers who license their digital models to Etsy sellers who use small printing farms, or even a single 3D printer, to print out physical models for sale. Etsy’s latest update to company policies around computer tools removes key components that allow this type of licensing, which makes many sellers confused about where they are.
Items produced using computer furniture: physical objects produced by the seller in his personal store or house, using computer tools such as laser printers, 3D printers, CNCs or Cricut Machines. These projects must be based on Original design of the seller And it is usually personalized or customized according to buyer’s specifications.
An ETSY spokesperson told me that the above policy has always been Etsy’s standard position on products made by sellers. The area I added the focus is the edited section. Initially, the Etsy guide included the term “…or design or pattern using templates…” and it seemed that it could be used by 3D modelers’ designs. By deleting this section and keeping the parts about the original design, it seems that each seller must design the digital file itself and print it out, post-process it and ship it out.
Etsy said the policy update was to clarify its position, not to change it. according to Creative Guidelinesan item that does not meet the criteria is “marketary basic items with only surface modifications, such as the addition of simple, mass-produced adhesive ornaments”. The sticky point appears to be the “commercially available” part, as many 3D print sellers on Etsy use commercial licenses from 3D modelers as a source for creating physical models.
3D printing business
3D modelers sell commercial licenses through such as websites Patreon,,,,, Tangand Printable In the past few years, it has been successful and has been successful in the field of 3D printing. Christian or craftykid3d, as he knows Patreon and Social Mediacreate 3D models based on books and reading, including beautiful dragon bookends and small bookshelf to help you open paperbacks. His Patreon has a commercial license layer that allows you to sell physical copies of its digital models online or at craft fairs and farmers’ markets. He currently has 860 Patreon subscribers, and his $10 monthly subscription accounts for a large portion of its revenue.
Etsy’s latest policy could significantly reduce the ability of Christian subscribers to use the models he posted on the platform, resulting in him and his subscribers maintaining their own abilities. Worse, due to policy ambiguity, Etsy sellers may be subject to infringement for not knowing where the line is. Even Etsy’s own customer service seems confusing, providing contradictory answers to the questions raised by the seller.
Two different answers to the same question.
My colleague and 3D printing enthusiast Russell Holly said ambiguity might be the point of wording. “I suspect the current guidance has a purpose, and is intended to prevent these mass production groups from making a small change and moving forward, but this reality is inevitable.” The question I answered is, where is the boundary to making small changes and what impact is there?
Obviously, the two prints are the same model, but each of us uses different color materials and different efforts to draw the model in the slicing software. Digital files can be “drawn” in the software to assign different colors to certain areas of printing. My copy (left) is a fairly simple two-tone change that gives me a brown front of a house surrounded by green, but Russell (right) uses different colors and spends more time describing which colors are which. It’s a digital process that’s sure, rather than weeding cricut vinyl like you would manually and glue it to a Stanley glass, but it still takes time and effort and changes the look and feel in a material way. Then, the question becomes, changes are enough to form the original work? This will be Etsy, which can be decided on a case-by-case basis, and this itself provides a lot of questions.
Maintaining a site as large as Etsy is very difficult and depends heavily on IP infringement reported by that IP holder. This is different from the case where creators of 3D models actively approve people using them to produce physical copies, so they won’t report usage to Etsy. This means Etsy will have to use resources for these models of policing. Etsy is said to use reports from other sellers to destroy IP violations, but manual It points out that it is not “…accepting anybody’s infringement reports – only from the intellectual property owner or the authorized agent…” So it’s unlikely that it will go this way, but if they want anything actually changed, they will have to do something.
While talking to me and other members of the Craftykid3D Patreon community – I am a member and using his model to test the best 3D printers – Christian expressed concerns that Etsy will struggle to enforce this policy change. “Etsy has been poor in terms of moderation. Companies like Universal, Sony, Disney will contact Etsy to remove copyrighted products. But even Etsy can’t control that.” He went on: “Unless they have new technology, I’m very suspicious that they can perform this function.
What does this policy mean for you as a seller?
The helmet on the left may not be covered by Etsy’s policy, but the helmet on the right may be covered by the helmet on the right.
If you sell 3D printed products using Etsy, you need to consider the products you make yourself and the products you are willing to change them. One of the biggest profit considerations is how long it takes to post-process 3D printed models. The biggest profit always comes from something that can be sold with some basic cleanup, and nothing else, so if you have to spend time and materials to significantly change the print, your profit margin will drop.
“If you print a role-playing helmet designed by someone else, but then go through the work of polishing and painting, all of this is no longer when it is taken off the printer and will not be bound by this policy,” Holly said. I agree with him that Etsy could almost certainly allow such use cases, but we don’t have a clear idea. In this photo, you can see two Mandalorian helmets I printed. On the left is the original file, no changes I print with soft PLA So my daughter can wear it without worrying if she throws it down. I took a little time to remove the support and clean the support, but I could sell it for a profit as this is another way to print the helmet.
The one on the right took a lot of time. The steps I have to perform are:
- Remove the support for 3D printing
- Grind the entire helmet until smooth
- Fill in any layer lines left in the first polish
- Stain dry filler to make everything smooth and even
- Spray filler/primer on the helmet to create a uniform layer
- Spray the helmet with black gloss primer
- Spray a helmet with silver paint
- Stick the individual ears to it
- Spray with a clear gloss to protect the silver paint
Now, I can sell my second helmet on Etsy. I’m sure the policy will cover this adjustment and even deliver on a good profit, but even if I can charge more for it, it’s far less than the profit of the first helmet. However, I don’t think the first helmet is qualified as my original design.
If your business relies on other people’s documents, either the dragon illuminates it from cinder Or from craftykid3dyou may have sold them on other storefronts like Facebook Marketplace or Amazon’s Handmade websites and physical locations. If you don’t, you may be worth diversifying the places for sale. There are many things we don’t know about how Etsy will regulate its revised policy, having other income paths is a good idea.
It will be interesting to see how far this change will go. Do Cricart manufacturers need to design their own decals instead of buying commercially available SVGs? Do manufacturers of laser grinding need to do the same? This type of service is used throughout the manufacturer community, which gives a huge business area that turns hobbies into a legitimate way of income. According to contimod34% of all sellers of Etsy see it as their sole source of income, so the potential losses are considerable. Etsy isn’t the only storefront, but it’s one of the largest, and its decisions could have a lasting impact in the field.
