How to create your own 3d printing website to make money

There are many 3D printing websites now. Many people have bought their own 3d printers. A lot of people plan to make money from 3D printing. You can start your 3d printing business in multiple ways. You may want to offer prototyping services, offer commercial services, offer 3d printing courses, create customized products, and so on. Whatever you provide, there will be one question: how to present your services to a wider audience?  According to my experience, there are two ways: You can list your services on some websites or you can create your own 3d printing website to promote your business.

In this article, we don’t talk about the methods to make money. And we don’t talk about what 3d printing platforms you can use too. Because most 3D printer owners are not skilled in IT technology, we will only discuss the simplest way to create your own 3d printing website. You don’t need to know any coding knowledge.  If you are an IT engineer, you can ignore the article.

1. Choose and purchase a domain name

A domain name is the address that internet users can access your website. Some web hosting suppliers might provide a free domain name. But it is best to buy a domain name and hosting services separate to make sure you have ownership and control over your domain. You can buy a domain name on Godaddy easily. You can buy web hosting on Godaddy too, but we recommend you to buy web hosting from other suppliers.

2.Purchase web hosting

When purchasing your web hosting, please ensure it supports WordPress and SSL well. If you don’t know more about that, you can choose hosting packages from Siteground, Vultr or Bluehost. There are some other web hosting services, but I have not bought other services. So you can make your decision yourself.

3.Install WordPress

If you bought web hosting from Siteground, Vultr or Bluehost, you will find they all offer a quick install option of WordPress. It is easy to do that. If your hosting service supplier doesn’t provide the installing service, you can download WordPress and install the free program by yourself. If you have issues doing that, just contact the support.

4. Choose and install WordPress Theme

WordPress offers some themes, you can use one of them directly. You can browse and install themes from WordPress theme library or some template markets. There are free and paid themes. You can use a free theme, but we suggest buying a paid theme. With a paid theme, you don’t need to spend much time on optimizing the website, you should pay more attention to your 3d printing business. Because we focus on 3d printing, you can try to choose one theme from the following themes.

4.1 AlphaColor | Type Design Agency & 3D Printing Services WordPress Theme + Elementor

AlphaColor is a fresh, colorful & vibrant Type Design & Printing Services WordPress Theme with highly visual look and feel. It especially fits modern printing business organizations, print shop and corporate copying services company, type design companies, typographies agency, graphic design studio and individual designers bureau.

4. 2TriPri 

TriPri incorporates the Cherry Services plugin. You can use this plugin to reveal your services in a professional and clear way. 

It is SEO-friendly. That means it is possible to improve your internet site place in the internet search end result.

Responsive design makes sure that your website will provide a great viewing experience for all users with different gadgets.

4.3Joomla

Responsive design means your site will quickly adapt to any gadget with any screen size the user has in hand. Images and text are flexible as well.

Its front page has been optimized to increase conversion rates. There are phone number modules and Google Map widget which can increase orders.

4.4 3D Side

If you want to create a project-focused website, this print shop theme should be a smart choice. It is responsive and the layout will change according to the width of the display. It comes with many features including contact form, online chat, scroll-to-top button, dropdown menu, audio and video options, different gallery scripts, and much more. There are sharing buttons to let your website get a deserved promotion in social networks.

4.5 3Form

You can represent the data about your company, your offering and upcoming events in the most prominent place of the homepage. It is a responsive design too.

4.6 ThreeD

It has integrated with many packages including Woocommerce, visual composer, child theme, widget, revolution slider, architect WordPress theme, Google Map, creative WordPress theme, 3d printing WordPress theme, and much more. And it is fully responsive too.

5.Install Plugins

There are many plugins. We only talk about 3d printing related plugins here. You can install these plugins as needed.

5.1 Woocommerce

It is an open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress. Some themes have integrated with this plugin. You can install the plugin independently too. With this plugin, you can sell your products. For example, you can design and manufacture some products and put them on your online store.

5.2 WordPress 3D Printing （Discount Coupon: T54MNOQFD5)

This APP turns your website into a platform to sell 3d printing services. It is an ideal solution for small and medium business. The author offers free updates and free support too. You can visit the DEMO page to have a test first.

It supports FDM/FFF, DLP, SLA, and Laser Cutting technology. It supports STL, OBJ, STP, IGES, DXF, ZIP format files. You can arrange multiple STL models from a ZIP file. A customer can upload 3d models onto your website, get the price and put an order directly. It has the function to convert some high contrast 2D images into STL file (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP). The layout is responsive, so visitors can upload files via a mobile too. If you want to start a 3d printing business, it is a good choice to use this WordPress plugin.

5.3 Woo3DViewer （Discount Coupon: T54MNOQFD5)

Display your 3D models (STL, OBJ) or protect them by converting to GIF or WEBM video. Files supported: STL (bin,ascii), OBJ (including MTL support), GLTF, VRML. Can convert models to PNG, animated GIF, WEBM video format. Option to show a WEBM or a GIF only on mobile device

To use this plugin, you need to create 3d models of your products, and then upload them onto the plugin. It supports FBX, Collada, and JSON file formats now, and the author has in plan to support more formats. If you don’t know will your product 3d model work with this plugin, you can test them too.

6.Configure and add content to your site

After you configure the theme, plugins, and add some content, you can publish your website. There are many articles which talk about that, so we won’t discuss that in detail here.

If you don’t know how to do that, you can try to hire a freelancer too. And we suggest you to look into some 3d printing platforms to get ideas about your website.