Pricing Help!

[srbonner]

I have made a couple of large portfolio covers for some friends as gifts. Now i have some people that want to order some. Im having a hard time figuring out what to charge for them. I have seen them on the internet somewhere between $65 - $125. My work is not top end stuff yet so I dont know what something like that should be worth. Any advice would really help.

[radar67]

There is a long discussion thread on here about pricing. One of the suggestions, that I find works very well, is to charge 5 times the cost of materials used to make the item.

[Sylvia]

Really talk up the "hand crafted" in the USA thing. Then charge the $125 plus shipping if needed.. Then require a 50% non refundable down payment with every order.

S

[Glendon]

Here's the rule of thumb I use for pricing. Check out the Marketing board here for more info. There are long discussions on this as rada67 said.

A: How much did the raw materials for this piece cost?

B: How long did it take you to work on it?

C: What do you consider a fair wage for your time? $8/hour? $10/hour? More?

Plug in the numbers: A + (B x C) = ? The result should probably be the minimum you charge.

I personally go with $20 an hour for craft time, and $25 an hour for design time if someone wants something I can't just sit down and start making. Ask yourself how much would be a fair wadge if you were using this skill to pay your bills. If you don't feel comfortable charging full rate right now, maybe come up with an apprentice rate you can give people for 6 months or a year until you feel your skills are worth more.

[Cyberthrasher]

Personally, I like to take what Glendon posted and then consider the item itself. A close friend of mine does some serious intricate engraving. When we first met he offered to make me a money clip or something and pointed out that he can't usually sell stuff like that because with his craft time it's worth $500 plus based on the above calculations, but nobody's going to pay that because in the end it's still just a money clip. Just a good example that easily translates here too.

That being said, if you have people willing to pay you for it and your work is "good" at a minimum, then the $125 range sounds fine if not a little low. I haven't seen your work and only you know what it's really worth to you. I'm finishing up a Kindle cover for my wife right now and I'm going to give her an average price to tell people when they ask about it - $160 to $200 depending on the complexity of the tooling design and how quickly I can work.