- The same order is $1.30 USD cheaper on the Amazon listing. (After factoring in your local tax rate, it's probably at or near the Tindie price.)
- Amazon will ship your order promptly. Previously, when manually shipping myself, I would wait several days to group together shipments.
- Free one or two day shipping! Previously, the shipping I offered was 3-7 days.
- Don't need a Tindie account. It seems like everyone already uses Amazon.
- I don't have to manually pack and ship each order!
- (That also means I can't make packing mistakes anymore! 😅)
- ... and that's it.
- Amazon takes a huge cut of each sale, so I estimate I'll make ~50% less on each sale.
Long story short, I'm spending more time than I'd prefer to right now, manually filling and shipping orders from Tindie. I love enabling people to revive and enjoy old electronics, so I've been looking for a way to reduce the daily/weekly effort I must invest to continue delivering these mods to you.
Using Amazon, I should be able to ship them a big box of the mods, then they will handle all the legwork of each shipment. So I can reduce my effort to just prepping that big box once a month or whenever.
I'm pretty satisfied with the solution I've arrived at, I think. According to my back-of-the-napkin math, customers will save about $1.30 USD compared to the same order on Tindie, and Amazon will ship much faster than I could. I will make less money per sale compared to Tindie, but profiting off this was never my goal in the first place so that's fine.
One way I can simplify my time investment is by reducing the different options available. I previously offered unassembled/assembled options, with or without the 3D printed bezel part. The overwhelming majority (70%+) of orders were for the assembled board, with the 3D printed part. So to consolidate and simplify my packaging I've opted to only offer that from now on.
If you would still prefer to order unassembled board without the 3D printed part, you can find the PCB design files under /gerber/, which includes the BOM for you to order any parts you don't have on hand. You can use these to place your own order with a PCB manufacturer.
I'm still trying to figure out how to sell to other countries through Amazon. For now, as a backup, I will aim to occasionally restock my Tindie store so that I can fulfill several international orders at once (much easier than one-at-a-time). I'll remove the US domestic shipping option from this product on Tindie, so US-based customers can only purchase through Amazon.
So if you want this shipped outside the USA, and Tindie is out of stock, join the waitlist! You'll get an email notification when I restock!
I never expected so many people would want this mod! I'm grateful for your support and trust, and I sincerely hope my mods serve you well. Keep your eye out (hopefully next month or so!) for when I finalize and start selling the NDS-lite and 3DS-XL USB-C mods!