Not to flog a dead horse here, but I can concur without a doubt that there is no money to be made in selling kit guitars.
Even selling them for the cost of parts and materials, you'll be hard-pressed to get your money back.
Unfortunately most consumers are extremely brand focused. Even if it's just Squier and Epiphone, the quality of "budget guitars" has become ridiculously good in the last decade.
My personal experience with this is I had 4 extremely great looking, great playing guitars I built (2 kit, 2 partscaster) and had them listed on FB Marketplace, Reverb and Gumtree for 12 months. I had a fair number of inquiries which was usually followed by a number of stupidly low-ball offers.
It's worth mentioning that I wasn't asking outrageous prices. They were all within Squier/Epi prices (roughly 20-25% above my costs). In the end, I pulled them down and decided they're just my guitars now. The real sad part is if I parted them out, could probably recoup a majority of my investment - certainly more than selling them as complete instruments.
I'm amazed at the number of independent luthiers out there making absolutely beautiful and stunning all hand-made instruments with price tags anywhere between $2000-4000. I would guess this is a very niche market, and probably not your average gigging musician or weekend warrior. I'd be interested to know how many guitars they sell per year.
FTR, I'm specifically talking about electric guitars. Acoustic guitars are a whole other world.
The only way I would contemplate selling a guitar I build now, would be one that was for a specific buyer. (clarification: someone paid me to build them a guitar for an agreed price)
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