How Blacktail Studio Makes $15K/Month Woodworking
How Blacktail Studio Makes $15K/Month Woodworking
Have you ever seen a stunning handmade piece of furniture and wondered: do they make money woodworking? Cameron Anderson is owner of Blacktail Studio, a woodworking business that turns resin and recycled wood into beautiful art pieces and furniture, and today we’re touring his studio to see behind the scenes of his business.
Woodworking started as a hobby for Cameron, whose work as a pilot gave him lots of days off in a row. Today, his luxury tables, epoxy art installations, and custom woodworking projects sell for as much as $30K a piece. His Blacktail Studio YouTube channel is equally successful, with more than 1 million subscribers and millions of views on most of their videos.
In our interview today, we’ll get all the details of what it takes to start a successful woodworking business, from the equipment and space you need to get started to how he learned the skills and where he gets the wood. Unsurprisingly, many of his clients come to him from his popular YouTube channel, so we’ll also find out how he built such a strong following there, and what kind of content he posts that keeps viewers coming back.
Along with making his own woodworking projects, Cameron hosts epoxy and woodworking workshops at Blacktail Studio to help other makers learn the craft and design their own pieces. We’ll find out how this educational side of the business has helped him grow, and hear some of his tips for succeeding in the woodworking business.
Creative entrepreneurs in any medium will learn a lot from watching this video. You can learn more about Blacktail Studio at their website, https://www.BlackTailStudio.com, or check out their YouTube channel at https://www.YouTube.com/BlacktailStudio.
Link to Cams workshop: https://www.blacktailstudio.com/resin-workshops
Want more insights from experts that can help you start or grow a business? Check out our podcast: https://www.UpFlip.com/podcast
You can also see our interviews with other handcrafts business owners:
How to Start a $30K/Month Woodworking Business ►
Candle Business Makes $300,000 In 18 Months ►
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:20 Starting a WoodWorking Business
1:19 Breaking Down Revenue
1:42 Scaling A WoodWorking Business
2:18 How YouTube Can Help Your Business
3:28 Advice for Woodworking Beginners
4:31 Tips For Starting Out
5:36 Expenses To Be Aware Of
6:25 Crucial Skills and Techniques
7:38 How To Increase Profit Margins
8:33 Is It Time To Quit Your Day Job?
9:16 The Benefits of Cam’s Woodworking Course
10:13 Must-Have Equipment
10:56 Finding The Best Wood
11:51 FREE Marketing Techniques
13:21 The Importance of a Website
14:10 Tips on Closing Deals
15:44 Sneak-Peek Into Cam’s Process
16:15 How To Make a Full Time Living Woodworking
16:52 How To Avoid Failure
17:24 The Key To Pricing Tables
18:32 Cam’s Personal Projects
19:43 Where To Sell Your First Product
21:06 Systems and Software
21:53 Don’t Get Lured By Money
22:39 The Makerspace Database
24:06 Blitz Time With Cam!
24:57 Tips on Shipping Large Items
26:20 From Hobby To Business
27:15 Custom Furniture Order Process
28:09 The Table Making Process
29:06 The Best Business Book
#blacktailstudio #woodworking #blacktailshop
Very inspiring and helpful.
Great video. Very inspiring😊
I’m WATCHING this 3 times already…
Love wood and stone.
MAYBE MY NEW PROJECT TO START WITH AMAZING IDEAS WITH WOOD.
😁😁😁
Best advice… “spend the money first on the tools that touch the material last” 😎👍
LOL. "I don’t see why anyone would spend money on advertising…." Cue ads.
NICE
It’s kinda crazy that ppl think redwood is like a mythological creature there cut on a regular basis and grow really fast for a tree the growth rings are huge on them they call them redweed
When the dollar crashes who will buy 30k furniture
By lying about the price of his tables. Anyone can sell a 10,000 dollar table if you just say "i sold a 10,000 dollar table."
Great stuff.. really enjoyed this and makes me want to further my own dreams
they say $15,000 ia month, but is that Gross or Net? either way is great, but it is an important detail. using his estimate of his average profit margin of 65% it could be the difference of $9,750 and $15,000.
I did it with woodglut woodworking plans.
Reyes sent me
Excellent video, now following both channels 👍 I liked Cameron’s comment on spending money on tools: spend the most money on the tools that touch your piece last, i.e. a sander. I’ve got a cheap-ish circular saw that does the job, cheap-ish drill, but no sander yet, so I know where my money’s going yet (that said, I’m an occasional hobbyist, but my dad was a professional carpenter/coachbuilder, so it’s in my blood 😉)
Thanks for the video! But, would you mind to give up on those short video breaks and make it more live? I’ll explain why… when you so into the interview on some topic like revenue etc, you brake it with the short video transition and then start with another topic, then you brake this topic and go back to the location of revenue etc. In my opinion it is a bit confusing, because I want to know now all about revenue and money topic and take some notes from there, but this jumping doesn’t let me concentrate on this + those video brakes which I usually try to skip forward, because I am so curious about the interview and don’t like to see sometimes those short (usually the same) videos.
Or you could make it really short for 1-2 sec, should be not that bothering.
But anyway it is just a honest opinion, I think a lot of people will agree!
The overall work you do is amazing! Thanks for this 🙂
I had no real interest in woodworking… But I saw one of Cameron’s videos and I was hooked. His work is amazing but his personality makes it very watchable.
Great interview with 2 great guys!!
Great video. Very honest and informative
Great information! 🎓
The guy is a really good hobbyist woodworker, but he is an even better journalist, which is why he makes more than $5k/mo.
Such a great and informative video…beautiful work! Thanks for sharing .
Talking to someone like a hooman. That’s all it takes.
I started this business by having an awesome job and being absolutely fucking loaded beyond 80% of the population, then sold a couple things to get one of the best wood shops that’s feasibly possible to own – oh how some people live 😂
This guy is living my dream to be able to create. But I don’t have a space to do so. I miss my passion since I was a kid.
Cameron is great. Very personable and knowledgable. I’ve watched almost all of his videos. I’m a budding woodworker myself, so I try to learn a lot from him. The biggest hurdle for me, I think, is the social media aspect. I have IG right now, but I have a lot of younger people telling me I have to do more, so I’ll probably enlist my kids to help. Anyway, his story is inspiring and I hope to have even half his success.
CHE TIPO DI TRAPANO SERVE PER FARE UN FORO IN UN TRONCO DI UN METRO DI CIRCONFERENZA
Looking to build custom grandfather clock cases using wood / epoxy and lighting to create unique one of a kind items. Think it would be interesting to see his take on one.
Great interview!!! I’ve learned a lot!!! And it’s been an inspiration for me to start working on wood thank you so much 👍
Huge fan from Nova Scotia, Canada! Been watching for awhile
I’ve been building boxes for 7 years and I want to change my focus to something where I’m not doing installs. I love wood, love finishing and love the look of a gnarly piece of burl or pretty grained wood with or without epoxy. Sounds like there may be plenty of business out there so I’m gunna be watching all your excellent videos. Thanks for putting this out there! I don’t know what we would do without YouTube, I learned a lot of my cabinetry skills and prevented many mistakes by watching other folks stuff…:)
It is easy to start when you have money.
Great video! I’m gonna check out Cam after this!
Guys a pilot ffs cmon
GREATEST VIDEO!!!
Where do you take the scraper you used to remove say excess of glue ?
Is 15k/month revenue or profit? If it’s only revenue, it’s not worth it.
Thankm you so much for this interview! I’ve always wanted to see "behind the scenes" of Cam’s outfit. Very informative!
Super stoked u talked numbers. Very helpful!
There are tons of amateur epoxy table on sales everywhere because of him. I think he’s promising dreams he can’t deliver. I love his woodwork but as he said, that’s not his main business.
If wood working is so good, why is he switching to content creation?
The only thing this guy doesn’t do is buy his furniture
That slab of redwood would be great in the shape of a United States map……….
Here’s an idea for a "Man cave" table, a tall bar stool type chess table.
"I started out charging $5000 but then I found out I could charge those same people $20000" Ah yeah I just love free market capitalism like this. So he thought the value was at 5k and then decided to just go crazy with the price since there’s people who would be willing to pay that. . This also explains why our healthcare system is jacked up. A procedure that would have been $100 is now $1000 because they found that out too. Nickle and dime as much as you can, get as much money extracted as you can. I know this is just a table but this same mentality is why our country has so many homeless, so many uninsured, unemployed, going hungry, not having access to dental, medical vision. It’s all about the mighty dollar. P.S It’s ironic that he says dentists and doctors are buying these tables, two of the professions where they are stealing everyones money.
What finishes do you use over your wood/epoxy tables?
I’m currently going through the process of starting my unique furniture business made my first coffee table so great to make stuff out of wood. Can wait to make a proper sale. Love the vid. The guy has made some awesome tables 👍 respect from England
"Can you make a full time living doing woodworking?"
with 15k a month?!
Grrrrreat vid, thanks 👍
He succeeded because of his wife I can tell you that much.
Forget making guitars. Your making money easy.
this video is entirely misleading. The OG title i saw was "how to turn $800 into 15k/month" and i was curious to see what tools could be purchased for $800. Which is not a single one in the entire video. Maybe if you’re lucky u can get a table saw or band saw, and he point blank talks about his "trade secrets" which he developed. These types of videos really annoy me because this dude has probably spent like 200k on his shop and tools. And likely set up shop well before the economic recession and at the beginning of social media height which gives a problematic view on his business model. Even making videos is a nightmare scenario, not even selling the items. Ive had people complain that my bench wasn’t spotless and how my setup doesn’t reflect other professional business models. The reality is that to upkeep this type of setup costs a ton of time in maintenance and money. Not to mention the startup costs of buying the materials. Just to start a small shop on etsy and be competitive we had to drop over $2000 on just inventory and crafting supplies. That’s not even large scale woodwork. Sorry but if your gunna have a title of an "$800 start" than at least make it sortof viable for an average citizen.