Is there something wrong with my Hub?

[Nikolay]

Hello,
So I’m a bit confused as to why I don’t have any orders(apart from the 2 from my friends) yet I have 188 hub visits.

Would be great to get some insight into this.

Cheers

[keebie81]

Just having a hub does not mean orders will start magically appearing. You could be in an area with low demand for 3dprinting, there could also be an established hub in the area also. The area could also be oversaturated with hubs.

You should try advertising locally, put up fliers at schools and shops and such.

[Nikolay]

Low demand: Possibly but then again even if half the hub visits were myself, that would mean about 90 other people came and left.

Established hub: https://www.3dhubs.com/3dprint#?place=Croydon,%20United%20Kingdom&latitude=51.35&longitude=-0.0333&shipsToCountry=GB&shipsToState=ENG&materialGroups=prototyping-plastics&sort=distance

Only B3’s hub could be seen as established but the others have an average of 5-6 orders.

Oversaturation: There are only 15 printers within a 17km distance so I wouldnt say that’s a ton.

I guess maybe my specific area isnt filled with people wanting prints

Cheers for that flier idea though, I will think about it

[wirlybird]

I have had 11,000 hub views and I am working on my 5th order. It takes time and exposure to the right people.

[Nikolay]

wow

[wirlybird]

A lot of views can be from people reading the forum and just checking you out but have no intention of actually getting something made.

[Nikolay]

true

[TafThorne]

This is not a unique problem to you. I have 682 views (622 in search results) and 60 profile visits. If anyone can spot a problem with either of our profiles I would be glad to hear some recommendations too.

I suspect there is not the demand to drive the need for Rookies to perform prints in many cases. Why pick someone with less than 10 prints when for the same price there are people with dozens or hundreds of prints?

[3dprintingguy]

@keebie81 suggestions are good ideas, hub views arent always indicative of orders, ive had close to 200,000 views on my hub

trying to get your hub services started is always slow at first, some ideas are to join local makerspaces, go to the next 3d hubs meetup, do more prints for family and friends! feel free to ask me any questions if I can help

[Nikolay]

If it is the fact that we dont have many orders, we could internally inflate ourselves by getting new hubs to print for other new hubs

[TafThorne]

I guess that would work. I could order 10 prints from you and you could order 10 prints from me then we would both have more under our belt :-p

[TafThorne]

Going to a few 3D printing and makerspaces would probably help me. I think doing a few more showpiece prints would help me too.

[Nikolay]

I could setup a subreddit for this and invite low order number hubs

I think like 3 or 4 orders per hub would be enough since it will trigger the “returning client” flag in 3d hub’s algorithm for suggested hubs

[Nikolay]

The thing with that is a big majority of the people at those events have a printer so they wouldnt order from other printers.

[chunkysteveo]

Hi Nikolay. Don’t forget my response from your other forum post - building a Hub on 3D Hubs will take months of time, not days. Glad to see you have taken my advice on the UK postage rules, that’s nice and clear for customers to see. Repeat custom is key too - you need to entice users to use you via cheaper prices, faster turn around, going above and beyond. Then they will not even check other hubs for other projects they may have. I am very fortunate to have won several users custom and they come back to me with parts several times a month.

You’ve got some great looking pics, so I think they will help you sell your quality, you don’t need to worry about that. It’s just orders through the door now!

To help with your stats and expanding on @wirlybird info - I have 75 orders done and over 33000 views of my hub… it’s a slow process, don’t be relying on this to pay your rent!!

Best of luck with the Hub!

Steve

[FactoryStandard]

I’m working with a 0.1% Conversion with no advertising.

30,000 Views, 30 Orders.

Its paid off my printer though and that was the intention.

With advertising you might hope to bring that up to 1%, but it will never be much higher than that.

[Nikolay]

Over what amount of time is that?

[keebie81]

So instead of working on legit ways to improve your hub you’d rather just scam the system? @Filemon

[keebie81]

11,000 hub views just means when they clicked the 3d print button you showed up in the list of hubs to select

[TafThorne]

I was reading this is a lighthearted discussion about ways to best improve the likely search result metrics rather than a serious plan to cheat the system. I am not sure that using redit to advertise for more jobs would be a scam of the system either.

It would be better if hubs were encouraged to order prints off of one another rather than buying a new colour filament or similar. That would be a more honest reason for one hub owner to order prints from another. Rather does go against the motivations for most hobbyists though. We got printers to print stuff ourselves instead of contracting others.