Say you’ve got a great idea for the perfect bedroom shelving unit to suit your needs. You know you’ll have to build it yourself, which means buying the materials, borrowing tools and spending hours preparing and cleaning up. But if only there were an easier and less expensive way!

Well, there is: 3D printing.

3D printing offers a world of possibilities for creating your own customized products. Take Shapeways, a site where you simply upload a 3D model, and they print it for you.

The author, for example, wanted to create a custom bracket to mount his new MacMini to the wall. He made a simple sketch of his idea and used the online outsourcing platform Fiverr to find someone who could make a complete 3D model of it. He then sent this model to Shapeways and, a week later, the completed bracket was waiting for him in his mailbox.

If that sounds like a success to you, then get this: the author then used the Shapeways ecommerce platform to sell his MacMini bracket, and made $400 by selling six of them.

Customization won’t just save and earn you money, however. It will also give you more free time.
Consider Vitamins on Demand, a service that collects all the medications and supplements you require and then organizes them into separate packs for each day. Say goodbye to loading up your holiday suitcase with all your pill bottles while worrying whether you’ve got them all. Instead, just grab the number of packs you need and head out the door!

Want another example? Think about the arduous task of finding a suit that fits. If you want to cut that time in half, sign up to Indochino. This company produces tailored suits and will guide you through your measuring process, ensuring you’ve got measurements you can use again and again for a suit that fits just right.