487: Student Story – Making 6 Figures Selling Card Games And Board Games With Jesse Funk

Podcast: Download (Duration: 52:04 — 59.9MB)

Selling card games and board games online is a real six-figure business, but only if you build for demand capture (games buyers are already searching for) instead of demand generation (games you have to convince the world exists). Jesse Funk runs two ecommerce businesses full time: DaVinci’s Room, an education-focused card and board game brand, and Solpre, a hydration and body-care brand for athletes. He hit six figures the first year he launched his adult party game Awkward Turtle by exploiting the Cards Against Humanity search-traffic vacuum, and he now scales an education-game catalog by finding underserved corners of already-hot categories like math games and social-emotional learning.

In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, Jesse walks through the entire model: how he picks a category (demand capture only), how he play-tests, how he prices with the Print Ninja calculator, when to print in the US versus China, and the personal-risk formula he uses to decide how many units to order.

Here is the playbook, straight from an eight-year student of my Create A Profitable Online Store course.

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Key takeaways

• Jesse’s model is demand capture, not demand generation. He only builds games in categories where buyers are already searching (math games, social-emotional games, hydration products), then differentiates on angle.
• His first hit, Awkward Turtle, went from about $15,000 in profit the year before launch to over $100,000 in profit the year of launch. Concept to shipping was three months.
• His best-selling game today is Don’t Go Bananas, a cognitive behavioral therapy game for kids. Launched into a gap where the main competitor was a $60 board game, priced at roughly one-quarter of that.
• Card printing has huge setup labor, so 1,000 units is roughly the practical minimum. Going from 500 to 1,000 units is often only 10 percent more dollars.
• Card games print cheaper in China; board games under 10,000 units usually print cheaper in the US because of shipping volume. Jesse uses Print Ninja (a US broker for a Chinese printer) for cards.
• Personal risk rule: Jesse never risks more on a first order than he believes the product can earn in profit in one month.
• The 300-units-per-month threshold (from old Jungle Scout guidance) is Jesse’s mental bar for a “real” winner in games.

Is selling card games and board games online profitable in 2026?

Selling card games and board games online is still profitable in 2026, but the barrier is higher than it was five years ago and the winning approach is demand capture, not demand generation. Jesse Funk supports his family full time on two ecommerce businesses (DaVinci’s Room and Solpre), both in the mid-six-figure revenue range. Gross margins on card games can be very healthy (Cards Against Humanity retails around $29 with roughly $9 landed cost at 1,000 units), but the failure rate is high because so many people launch games and only a few resonate.

The rule that determines who lives and who dies is whether you launch into an existing search stream. Jesse only builds products people are already looking for.

Demand capture vs demand generation: Jesse’s core distinction

Jesse divides ecommerce businesses into two camps: demand capture (selling into an existing search stream) and demand generation (creating desire for something no one is looking for yet). He operates almost entirely in demand capture and openly admits he has not cracked demand generation.

That is why he turns down most game pitches from friends and strangers. A creative game with no existing search category means he would have to spend heavily on off-Amazon content to build demand from scratch, and that is a completely different business than the one he runs.

How Jesse finds gaps inside crowded search categories

The trick inside demand capture is to skip the fully saturated me-too niche and find underserved corners of already-hot categories. Jesse gives two examples on the podcast.

Parents are frustrated with Common Core math, so a math game specifically built around Common Core instruction is a gap inside the crowded “math games” category. Cognitive behavioral therapy for kids is a demand pocket inside “therapy games” where the main competitor sold a $60 board game and left the sub-$20 slot wide open.

Find the search stream first, then find the specific angle inside it nobody has served well.

How Awkward Turtle worked (and why it would not work today)

Awkward Turtle was Jesse’s first hit game, launched during the Cards Against Humanity boom when almost no other adult party games existed. Because there was no competition, Amazon put his listing in the top 10 results for the query “cards against humanity,” and the sheer volume of that search stream drove his year-one profit from about $15,000 to over $100,000.

The problem was replay value: once a player memorized the deck, the game was done, and Jesse did not have a large enough card count to compete once other adult party games flooded in. He is honest that if he tried to launch Awkward Turtle today, it would fail because the category is now saturated and his card count is too thin.

Awkward Turtle now earns roughly $10 per month, and Jesse still has about 5,000 unsold copies in inventory. That is the risk on the long end of a hit-driven category.

How Jesse picks a new game to launch

Jesse picks a new game by finding an existing demand pocket, identifying five or so differentiators, and then debugging the ruleset himself before ordering samples. His research stack is deliberately lean: an old lifetime Jungle Scout account, Ubersuggest for keyword and trend data, Google Trends, and a fair amount of manual rabbit-holing through competing listings to build what he calls a “product cloud” of features, audiences, and sales volumes.

Play-testing is informal. He tests with family and friends because most of his games are simple enough that a formal test group is not worth the coordination cost.

Jesse’s process shift: from designer to creative director

For the first eight years Jesse capped out at one or two SKU launches per year because he did all the design himself. In 2026 he made a deliberate role shift from “game designer” to “creative director,” and he now has eight SKUs in development for a single year.

The shift meant hiring freelance game designers to build ruleset drafts he can tweak, moving artwork to specialists, and using a VA for product research. He is now capital-constrained rather than time-constrained.

Print in the US or China? Card games vs board games

For card games under about 10,000 units, China prints cheaper because cards are small and light and shipping does not eat the savings. For board games under 10,000 units, US printing is usually cheaper because board-game boxes take up so much volume that ocean freight closes the gap.

Jesse uses Print Ninja for card games. It is a US-based broker that routes to a Chinese printer, and the workflow (real-time cost calculator, English CSR, US billing) is far friendlier than dealing with a Chinese factory directly.

For board games he uses a US printer that doubles as a fulfillment warehouse. They palletize orders, store inventory for roughly $10 per pallet per month (below typical 3PL rates because it is subsidized by their print revenue), and ship anywhere from one unit to a full pallet on demand.

Why 1,000 units is the practical minimum for card games

Card printing has fixed setup labor (presses, files, plates) that gets amortized across whatever run size you order. Setup is the same whether you print one deck or 100,000, so a 500-unit run typically costs roughly 90 percent of what a 1,000-unit run costs. The per-unit cost at 500 is nearly double.

You can print 100 test copies (Jesse did this with Awkward Turtle for about $10 per copy on a $1,000 credit-card float), but you will lose money on that batch by design. The point of the test is to prove sell-through, not to earn.

Card game unit economics (with a real Cards Against Humanity example)

Jesse walked through the numbers live using Print Ninja’s calculator. A Cards Against Humanity-sized deck (roughly 250 cards, two-piece box) at 1,000 units through Print Ninja lands at about $9 per deck (roughly $6.50 unit cost plus about $2,200 in boat freight).

At the $25 original retail price, that leaves about $5.81 in net profit per unit, or a 23 percent net margin. Bumping the order to 3,000 units drops unit cost meaningfully because the setup labor spreads further, and total order value moves into the $15,000 to $20,000 range.

Two-piece boxes cost several dollars; tuck boxes cost cents

Packaging matters more than most beginners expect. A two-piece box adds several dollars per unit on a short run, while a tuck box adds 20 to 50 cents.

Jesse uses tuck boxes almost exclusively because the packaging savings are enormous relative to the perceived-value difference.

How much inventory should you order? Jesse’s personal risk formula

Jesse never risks more money on a first order than he believes the product can earn in profit in a single month. If a game looks like it can clear $3,000 in monthly profit, he is comfortable putting $3,000 on the first run.

This is not a corporate finance formula; it is a personal-tolerance heuristic he built after years of bootstrapping every dollar back into the business. The rule prevents catastrophic exposure on a single dud while giving successful launches enough runway to prove themselves.

The follow-on order is the one that actually makes money. First runs at 1,000 units rarely clear a real profit; the goal is to validate sell-through. Reorder at 3,000 to 6,000 units to hit the cost-per-unit tier where the model works.

What is a “winner” in the card and board game category?

Jesse’s mental threshold for a real winner is roughly 300 units per month, the number the old Jungle Scout guidance used as a bar for a solid Amazon product. At 300 units per month he can justify a 3,000-unit reorder that hits the cost-per-unit tier where margins get healthy.

Anything below that and reorder economics start to fail: sales too slow to justify a big run, unit cost too high on a small run to make real margin. That is the death zone Jesse’s Awkward Turtle is now in.

Should you copyright and trademark your game?

Yes. Copyright is automatic on creation, but registering with the US Copyright Office (Library of Congress) is inexpensive (around $50) and unlocks real enforcement. Trademark the brand name and any distinctive game mark.

Register the copyright pre-launch so you can submit digital art files. Post-launch registrations require you to mail physical copies (Jesse literally has printed copies of Awkward Turtle sitting in the Library of Congress).

Advice for anyone thinking about launching a game

Jesse’s blunt advice: if you are asking whether you should build a game because you want to be an entrepreneur, pick a different niche. If you are asking because you are actually a game designer at heart, then go build.

His mentor’s phrase for it: do not push a rope uphill. There are easier categories to make money in than games, and games are a hit-driven business with a high failure rate. Jesse admits he probably would not start again today given how crowded the space has become; he is here because he already has established brands, catalog, and capital.

The one advantage games do have: real intellectual property. Once you own the ruleset, artwork, and brand, competitors cannot literally copy your product the way they can with a generic Amazon private-label item.

Frequently asked questions

Can you actually make a living selling card games and board games online?

Yes. Jesse Funk supports his family full time on two ecommerce brands (DaVinci’s Room games and Solpre body care), both in the mid-six-figure revenue range. The winning approach is demand capture inside existing search categories like educational games, therapy games, or math games, not demand generation for a brand new concept.

How much does it cost to print a card game?

For a Cards Against Humanity-sized deck (about 250 cards, two-piece box) at 1,000 units through Print Ninja, landed cost runs about $9 per deck. Total first-run outlay is roughly $9,000 for the batch, and per-unit cost drops meaningfully at 3,000 units and again at 5,000.

Should I print my card game in China or the US?

Print card games in China for runs under 10,000 units because cards are small and light and freight does not eat the savings. Print board games in the US at similar volumes because board-game boxes are bulky and shipping from China closes the cost gap.

What is the minimum quantity to print a card game?

The practical minimum for a card game is 1,000 units, because printing setup labor (presses, plates, file prep) is the same at 500 as at 1,000 and only adds about 10 percent more dollars to double the units. You can print 100 test copies, but you will lose money on that run by design; the point is to prove sell-through.

How do you get your first sales for a brand new game?

You get your first sales by launching into an existing search stream where buyers are already looking for a game like yours (math games, therapy games, party games) and providing a real differentiator, not by inventing a demand pocket from scratch. Jesse ranked Awkward Turtle in the top 10 for “cards against humanity” because there was almost no competition in adult party games at the time.

Is the game business a good ecommerce niche for beginners?

The game business has healthy gross margins and defensible IP, but it is hit-driven with a high failure rate and requires enough capital to weather flops. Jesse’s blunt take: if you want to be an entrepreneur more than you want to design games, pick an easier category.

How much profit do you make per card game sold on Amazon?

On a Cards Against Humanity-comparable deck at $25 retail and $9 landed cost, Jesse showed roughly $5.81 in net profit per unit, or a 23 percent net margin. Larger reorders (3,000 to 6,000 units) drop unit cost and push net margin higher.

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