Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Pricing your work

I am beginning to get a lot of emails about how much one should price their work. To be honest, this is a question I am never that good at answering. I decided to write this post in the hopes that it will help you.

First, all the Plush You shows I have had in the past have work ranging from $15 to $300. For the most part, the pieces that have been $100 or less have sold the best. If that helps you at all. But pieces that are more have had no time finding good homes as well so if your work is worth it, the people will pay.

This is how I think about pricing my own work:

1) How much goes into supplies

2) How much time did it take you to make it (how much do you want to get paid for your work?) calculate that by the time it took you

3) Think about the fact that you might run into retail owners. They will want to have a discount on your work...if you give them that discount, would it be worth it? Or just be prepared to turn down wholesale orders.

Once I have all that in my head I also have to be realistic about how much one will pay for something. There are items that I do not make available for wholesale, simply because it takes too much time but won't be something I could charge much more for. Then there are some items, like my fortune cookies (retail for $8) that I really should charge more for if I thought about the time it takes to embroidery each message but this one I just see as a fun thing to make, I can make them while I watch a movie so I am cool with a bit of a loss.

I also suggest looking at your friends. Some people sell their work for way too cheap sometimes (ahhem...Heidi). It's good to see what things are selling for and by simply going to etsy you can find a good range of work and prices.

Here are a few sites to also help you figure out what to price your work for:

for jewelry

Some simple mathematics

Get the most for your craft. Learn how here

I hope that helps y'all!

1 comment:

Leeanna Butcher said...

Thanks for the info! Very helpful. :D