It could be as simple as that. You design a product, Personal Factory makes it, you add a margin on top...Profit!

Or you could provide a service, say turning a photo of your cat into something Ponoko can make, and charge for that service.

Or if you have a great app idea, sell copies of your app.

Etc, etc...

Henry

PS. If there is anything we can do to bring your head above the water please ask. We want the API to be as easy as possible for you to use.

Well I have a tool I want to build for myself first. That will get my feet wet and probably be free to use if I get the time to finish it. I also have a larger project in the works that will be for profit but still thinking about that one.

The biggest hurdle for me is the basics of stuff like using SSL. I generally need a project to help me learn these kinds of things. I might give it a go after I finish another project I am working on.

Can Ponoko host the downloads or do I have to find a solution for that and it will simple be listed on the ponoko site?

You don't need to worry about SSL, but you will need to know about OAuth which is our method for logging into the Ponoko API. There are lots of libraries available for OAuth which you might be able to use and we will walk you through the process of getting it going. What language are you thinking of using?

Ponoko won't host apps on our site, but if we like what you have done we will add a link to your app in the App Gateway.

Henry

Still looking at what language to use. I have experience in C,C++,C#, Python, VB, and some java but nothing extensive and very little UI work at all. I'm leaning towards Java right now. Whatever I use I will have a big learning curve.

Whatever you choose we'll try and help out where we can.

Henry