I have kept a spreadsheet of all my costs since I decided to go full on diy in August.
My outlay has been pretty substantial, but that isn't required. I was exclusively buying liquid around the $20/30ml range. Now I'm making juice around the $1/30ml range. I conservatively counted each mix I liked as a $15 savings. I'm at almost 50% of break even, and I'm enjoying the hobby a lot.
/u/enyawreklaw has a good post on diyordie. I've spent nearly what I would have in a year of buying brand name liquid. The flavours I bought were all 4oz, and I invested in glass to store them all in.
Thanks to /u/daath and his ELR site my mixing station has more top recipes than any B&M I've been in so far. The savings are nice, but the freedom means even more to me.
EDIT: Fixed break even percentage. DiY is doing even more better in terms of RoE than I thought at first glance.
I was spending about $150-200 a month on juice.
Went back to making my own, now I'm spending $100 about every 6 months and giving 120ml bottles to my buddies.
There is something to be said about going from a $6 pack a day, cheap I know, to buying $25 of juice every 4 days to making $100 of juice in 20 minutes.
wow, if cigs were still $6 a pack in Australia, I probably would still be smoking. $28.87 a pack when I quit, could only guess that's gone up to around $32 by now. (pack of 40, el cheapo brand)
What does a six pack cost, for reference?
I know right. It almost triggers my too good to be true radar.
Ikr! Never again to I have to buy shit tasting juice that costs me $.73/ml to just choke it down. If I REALLY don't like a mix, I can easily toss $.07/ml. Of course, I still won't toss it and I will choke it down BUT, I won't be broke if I do toss it. I still haven't had anyone close to me really express interest in my juice. I've had one person express interest in DIY, but didn't want to do the work to get to the point where I am. Mixing 10 bottles a month.
> I'm at a little over 10% towards break even, but I'm also enjoying the hobby a lot.
Can you explain this? I don't understand how you are still 90% in the hole if you're saving $15/30ml. Or maybe I misunderstand what you're trying to say here.
Wow. How are you getting your cost that low? Right now, I'm running about $3 per 30ml.
Then again, I only just got my wholesale accounts setup yesterday, and previously dealt with 18mg concentrate rather than 100mg as most do.
Wholesale sizes was the key. The cost difference per ml is worth buying more in my opinion. I figured 4 oz to be the sweet spot.
The only downside was the added cost of conversion to glass amber boston rounds for storage.
I have been using 100mg/ml nic. I bought 1 litre from vaperstek, filled 4oz bottles with minimal headspace and put them in the freezer. So far I haven't even finished the initial "working bottle" of nicotine. I'm mixing at 6mg.
I never understood the reason for moving the flavor chemicals themselves to boston brown bottles for storage. Nicotine - Absolutely requires it for long term storage but I haven't noticed much difference between the tastes of fresh flavor and one that's been sitting for a while..
Yeah. I have, historically, purchased in 10ml and 30ml bottles to get a large variety of things to work with, and my more common or more requested flavors (I have a bunch of friends that vape, and appreciate cheap juice that actually tastes good) after surpassing the 15ml/week usage instantly get upgraded to 4oz bottles. In fact, I'm going to have to go to 16oz bottles of VBIC soon because of how many people want me to use that as a base for their fruit/cream mix juices. I can't complain, they're essentially paying for me to vape lol.
Order your flavors in 4oz sizes (or larger if you know you will use a lot for friends), a liter of nic and your PG and VG in quarts or larger. If the flavoring doesn't work, you are only out a few extra dollars, but if it does you usually saved 3-4x the cost of buying several 15ml samples.
I just knocked out a 48ml bottle for $0.97.
> Wow. How are you getting your cost that low?
I just ordered a couple bottles from nicotine river premix, they are 11.80 a litre of 6mg. (they only have 100% Vg or PG and 50/50 so I ordered Vg and 50/50 to make 75/25). Shipping is 10dollars but it was for two, so 11.80+5=16.80 a litre 33 30mls a litre. So, about 50cents a 30ml unflavored (1.6 cents or so a ml)
If you ordered only flavor west flavors and 10mls they are liek $1.75 each from BCV. If you mix the liter at 10% flavoring you need 10 bottles (100ml). I usually use less than that, too much flavoring is worse than less imo. 10x175=17.50+5dollars shipping
so, if you mix 10% at 22.50 plus 16.80 for the litre its about $1.19 a 30ml, assuming you already have empty bottles laying around. So 4 cents a ml. Shipping prices are the killer, if you order everything form one place it significantly drops the prices.
It's probably even cheaper to buy 100mg juice and mix it down but honestly for me, its just easier to buy premixed nic/pg/vg and have it in one bottle. Ive done it the other way before, using 100mg and mixing down. If you plan to make lots of varied % for friends or something but for me, I mix my % and if friends want some they get what I mix lol.
So, even just doing a basic one person setup like i mentioned up there^ is pretty easy to get the cost low. I don't really need to have more than a litre or two around at a time lol. I do a lot of tobacco and tobacco base type mixes, those are like 2%-2.5% flavor max tobacco and then maybe another 2% or so of something to change the profile, so thats even cheaper than my estimate since the flavor is only 4-5% instead of 10%. I only mix 30mls at a time, usually make like 5 or 6 bottles at a time of various flavors for myself. I reuse the bottles, a lot of them were "free" since they were previous premium bottles... well, either free or $18.99 each depending on how you look at it lol
I have some concentrates coming in today so I can mix one of Wayne's recipes, can't wait
I do too! I needed FA torrone for Rhodonite.
where can I find some of these recipes by Wayne?
The biggest problem with diy ejuice which kept me away from it for so long and probably other people, is that it seems wayyyyy too complicated and difficult to a regular person to understand what everyone is writing 1% of this and 3% of that add a pinch of that and they think that people are chemists or mad scientists figuring this shit out. But it's not difficult at all and I was surprised at how super easy it is to get started and look online for a recipe or get tips to make your own. It's the easiest thing to do and it saves sooooo much money, I calculated that I'm making myself 120 ml of "PREMIUM" (haha) ejuice for 10.63$CAD with everything I've bought, all supplies and bottles I can make about 1.5 litre of juice, any time I want any flavour I have. Although it is easy to go to a store and buy a bottle of juice like u would a pack of smokes, but u can also make a batch of juice in 15 mins without leaving ur house if u have all the supplies. Shit I wish someone pushed me into diy sooner and made me see the ways!
I never really bought "premium" juice, mostly MBV during the vape pen days. I did here and there when I first upgraded to sub ohm vaping. But, as soon as I found out you could make your own, I started researching. It's been over two years since I've purchased vendor juice.
I don't have data on exactly how much my per mL cost is, but I do have a spreadsheet on my vaping expenses vs. cigs. I didn't buy any juice all of 2015, so my vape expenses were just DIY supplies and a hell of a lot of mods, batteries, tanks and RDAs.
So buying everything I wanted in vapeland, I still ended up saving $700 last year versus how much I would have spent on cigs.
It should be noted that I don't have any high end mods/tanks, because I have real hobbies and so I don't need to blow $800 on a fucking RDA or any of the over-price jingoistic shit.
"Real hobbies" this shits fake!? Lmfao. I like Ur style.
I should have been more clear. DIY is definitely a real hobby. The high-end mod snobs justify wasting money on shit by calling vaping itself a hobby.
Is Lenola Cream very popular? I'm asking cause it's mentioned on Wayne's article you linked to. I made a clone that to me is really good, I guess I'll share it in next month's thread.
Lenola Cream is very popular. I've been working on a clone for about 4 months, and I'm getting really, really close.
We should trade notes...
Oh it's not my thing to work for a long time on a recipe and keep extensive notes. I was bored at work and whipped up a recipe real quick, mixed it when I got home and felt like I'd nailed it right on the head. Curious to hear what others think, to me it's very similar and tastes equally good, just less sweet which makes it better for me.
I'll pm you the recipe, there's just one thing I still need to figure out before I share it with everyone.