Heres

It feels like everyone needs a side hustle these days. If your hobby can help make you some extra income, it seems like a no-brainer to at least try and do it. 3D printing, laser engraving and using vinyl cutters like the famous Cricut machine all give you a chance to make something beautiful, unique and sellable. Etsy has been the storefront of choice for almost 20 years, and despite other options being available, it still boasts 8.13 million active sellers in 2025, according to a recent Contimod report.

Recently, the company has clarified its policies surrounding the “Made by a Seller” category, specifically relating to “items produced using computerized tools.” The updates are subtle but could fundamentally change the way a lot of small businesses operate moving forward.

Are all of these the same dragon, or are they different enough to be unique?

Etsy/Screenshot: James Bricknell/CNET

If you’ve ever searched for 3D-printed dragons on Etsy, you will likely have seen a screen like the one above. While each dragon looks very similar — they are all articulated with little to no painting — no two are the exact same. Almost all of the dragons you will see have been made by a small group of designers who license their digital models out to the Etsy seller, who use small print farms, or even single 3D printers, to print the physical model for sale. Etsy’s latest update to its company policy around computerized tools has removed a key component that allowed for this type of licensing, leaving many sellers confused as to where they stand.

Items produced using computerized tools: Physical items that a seller produced in their personal shop or home, using computerized tools such as a laser printer, 3D printer, CNC or Cricut machine. These items must be produced based on a seller’s original design and are often personalized or customized to a buyer’s specification.

An Etsy spokesperson told me that the above policy has always been Etsy’s standard position on products that are made by sellers. The area I have added emphasis to is the part that has been edited. Originally, the Etsy guidelines included the phrase “…or using a templated design or pattern…” which seemed to allow for the use of designs from 3D modelers. By removing this section and keeping the part about the original design, it seems to say that each seller must design the digital file themselves, as well as print it out, post-process it and ship it out.

Etsy has said this update in policy is to clarify its position, rather than change it. According to the creative guidelines, an item that doesn’t qualify is “A commercially available base item with only superficial alteration, such as addition of a simple, mass-produced stick-on adornment.” The sticking point seems to be the “commercially available” part, as a lot of 3D print sellers on Etsy use a commercial license from 3D modelers as a source to create physical models.

The business of 3D printing

Patreon/Screenshot: James Bricknell/CNET

3D modelers that sell commercial licenses through sites like Patreon, Thangs, and Printables have sprung up over the last few years, to much success and accolades across the 3D printing space. Christian, or CraftyKid3D, as he is known on Patreon and social media, creates 3D models based on books and reading, including beautiful dragon bookends and small book holders to help you hold your paperbacks open. His Patreon has a commercial license tier that allows you to sell physical copies of his digital models online or at craft fairs and farmers’ markets. He currently has 860 Patreon subscribers, whose $10 per month subscriptions make up a significant portion of his income.

Etsy’s updated policy is likely to significantly reduce Christians subscribers’ ability to use the models he releases on that platform, causing both his and his subscribers’ ability to sustain themselves. Worse, because the policy is vague, Etsy sellers could find themselves in violation by not knowing where the line is drawn. Even Etsy’s own customer service seems to be confused, offering contradicting answers to questions asked by sellers.

Two different responses to the same questions.

CraftyKid3D/STLFlix/Screenshot: James Bricknell/CNET

My colleague and fellow 3D printing enthusiast, Russell Holly, said the vagueness may be the point of the phrasing. “I suspect the current guidance is vague on purpose to discourage these mass production groups from making one small change and moving on, but that reality is inevitable.” My question in answer to this is, where is the line for making small changes, and who else does it affect?

James Bricknell/Russell Holly/CNET

These two prints are clearly the same model, but each of us used a different color material and a different level of effort to paint the model in the slicing software. Digital files can be “painted” in the software to assign different colors to certain areas of the print. My copy (at left) is a fairly easy two-tone change to give me a brown front of the house surrounded by green, but Russell’s (right) uses different colors and has had more time spent delineating which areas are which colors. This is a digital process to be sure, and not as manual as, say, weeding a Cricut vinyl and sticking it onto a Stanley tumbler, but it still takes time and effort and changes the look and feel in a material way. The question then becomes, what is enough of a change to constitute an original piece? That’ll be up to Etsy to decide on a case-by-case basis, which itself offers a lot of issues.

Policing a site as big as Etsy is incredibly difficult and relies heavily on IP infringements being reported by the holders of that IP. This isn’t the same scenario as the creators of the 3D models actively approve of people using them to produce physical copies, so they wouldn’t report the use to Etsy. This means Etsy will have to spend resources on policing these models themselves. It has been said that Etsy uses reports from other sellers to take down IP violations, but in its handbook it states that it doesn’t “…accept reports of infringement by just anybody — only from the intellectual property owner or the owner’s authorized agent…” so it’s unlikely it will go that route, but they will have to do something if they want anything to actually change.

In conversation with me and other members of the CraftyKid3D Patreon community — I am a member, and use his models to test the best 3D printers — Christian expressed his concern that Etsy would have trouble enforcing this policy change. “Etsy has always been poor on moderation. It’s the companies like Universal, Sony, Disney, that will contact Etsy to remove copyright products. But even Etsy can’t keep that under control.” He went on to say, “Unless they have new tech, I highly doubt they can enforce this….”

What does this policy mean for you as a seller?

The helmet on the left likely wouldn’t be covered by Etsy’s policy, but the one on the right would.

James Bricknell/CNET

If you use Etsy to sell your 3D-printed products, you’re going to need to think about what products you make and how much you’re willing to alter them. One of the biggest profit considerations is how long it takes to post-process a 3D-printed model. The most profit always comes from something that can be sold with some basic cleanup and not much else, so if you have to spend time and materials to alter a print significantly, your profit margin decreases.

Holly said, “If you’ve printed a cosplay helmet designed by someone else but then gone through the work of sanding and painting and all of that, it’s no longer the same thing it was when it came off the printer and would not be subject to this policy.” I agree with him that this use case would almost certainly be allowed by Etsy, but we don’t have a clear idea if that’s true. In this picture, you can see two Mandalorian helmets that I’ve printed. The one on the left is the original file with no alterations except that I printed it in a soft PLA so my daughter could wear it without fear of breaking it if she dropped it. It took me a little time to remove the supports and clean it up, but I could have sold it for a good profit because it’s a different way to print helmets.

The one on the right took a lot of time. The steps I had to go through were:

• Remove the 3D printed supports
• Sand the whole helmet until smooth
• Fill any layer lines left over from the first sanding
• Sand the dried filler so that everything is smooth and even
• Spray filler/primer over the helmet to create a uniform layer
• Spray the helmet with a black gloss undercoat
• Spray the helmet with a silver paint
• Glue the separate ear pieces on
• Spray with a clear gloss to protect the silver paint

Now, I can sell this second helmet on Etsy. I’m sure the policy would cover this kind of adjustment, and I could even turn a decent profit, but it would be far less than the profit from the first helmet, even though I could charge a lot more for it. I don’t think the first helmet would qualify as my original design, though.

If your business relies on the files of others, be it articulated dragons from Cinderwing or book nooks from CraftyKid3D, you likely already sell them in other storefronts like Facebook Marketplace or Amazon’s handmade site, as well as at physical locations. If you don’t, it may be worth diversifying where you sell. There are so many things that we don’t know about how Etsy will police its amended policy, that having other revenue avenues is a good idea.

It will be interesting to see how far this change will go. Will Cricut makers need to design their own decals instead of buying commercially available SVGs? Will laser-engraving makers need to do the same? The entire maker community uses these kinds of services, and it has empowered a huge business sector that turned hobbies into a legitimate way to make an income. According to Contimod, 34% of all sellers on Etsy cite it as their only source of income so the potential loss is considerable. Etsy isn’t the only storefront out there, but it is one of the largest, and its decisions here could have a lasting impact across this sector.

Source link