I've been making stuff and have covering living expenses (just) for a while based just on lasering (and on a budget of zero, which makes things somewhat more difficult).

Now lasering is an intrinsically expensive process. There are cheaper bulk alternatives for almost anything you can do with a laser, so the obvious answer is to concentrate on short runs and custom work. BUT. People are used to buying (albeit second-hand) cheap crap from China etc. How do we compete?