How much to charge...,

[George B]

For my local work it is whatever the market will bear, the more experience I get the better my work. That said, if it something I will not make any money on, I pass.

Internet business I charge more. My prices have slowly been going up since I started my ETSY store and I have seen an increase in orders and existing item sales. Someday I hope to make my $25 an hour but for now it pays the bills and gives me a meager income.

If it is an item I already have a pattern for and it requires no additional time to engineer, I charge a little less.

I did learn this Christmas season not to take on anything that took up to much of my time. A couple items became time consuming and put me behind. Next year that will not happen.

[DHauser]

Hmmm, good stuff. Looks like everybody's trying to figure it out. I also double the price of materials up front. I also have a minimum of $100.00 for anything that goes out of my shop. A complex design adds more (no real rule, just a rule of thumb as it were). I also add a bit for the complexity of manufacture. Unfortunately I am probably luckyto get $15.00/hour for labor. I do keep patterns for everything I make so at the worst I only have to modify the original pattern for a bit of a different piece. The better I get the more the price is going to rise. I've just got to figure out how much the market will bear.

[Leela Valley Leather]

Does anyone else here have a PITA Factor adjustment to the price?

[Cyberthrasher]

Does anyone else here have a PITA Factor adjustment to the price?

It's tempting sometimes, but no. What would you do if the customer who got that adjustment ended up meeting up with another customer of yours and found out that they got charged differently? Chances are that wouldn't happen for the most part, but I know that's not the kind of moral issue I want to introduce to my business. Keep it fair across the board and everything will work out right. Besides, I find that most of the time the PITA factor comes in because they really care about what they're getting, so once they're assured of that with the first order, hopefully it won't be that way again.

[George B]

Have to agree with Cyberthrasher, some customers are just easier to deal with than others. A couple of my worst have turned into my best advertisement tool.

I have decided not to take some projects due to extremely bad attitudes and some I just felt I would never have been able please.

And yes, a couple I took on that still haunt me today.

I have no PITA charge, just a yes or no.

[Cyberthrasher]

A couple of my worst have turned into my best advertisement tool.

I hadn't thought about it, but that's exactly what happened with some of mine too. They help advertise me more than my own wife does

[Havamal]

I figured I would throw in my 2 cents on this one. My wife is an artist with a unique canvas, she paints on the surface of feathers. Needless to say, when she started doing these 20 years ago there was not similar artwork to compare it to for pricing. She is constantly told she needs to charge more for her work, but we have found that in order to keep sales flowing, the price has to be adjusted to what the market you are selling in will bare. Her art work is sold globally so this makes things a little trickier!

When the economy was good she had pieces sell for $2,000 + with the condition of the economy now they sell for $300 - $500 depending on what it is. I see a lot of artists that refuse to adjust their pricing to the economy and the current market… their sales drop because people are not willing to spend the $. We found that it is better to sell 10 pieces of art for $300 rather than 1 for $2,000. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that there is no better marketing than word of mouth, if you sell 10 pieces that is 10 people showing off what they got for a great deal and generates more interest and in turn more sales. When the economy improves the price will go up, people will be willing to pay more and the product is still in demand due to the 10 pieces sold. If there were only 1 sold at $2,000 then the market value & demand would drop due to lack of product awareness.

Keeping a presence in the market is key; now there are people out there painting feathers all over the place and if she did not keep her product relevant in the market there would not be orders and her reputation & demand would diminish.

I guess what I am trying to say is that price is relevant to the market… using the calculation of materials + value of time + enough markup to make it worth your while; should be your starting point that you do not go below. Then adjust upward based on the economy & demand.

This is my wife’s website if you want to see her work www.featherlady.net

[Leela Valley Leather]

I do custom work, so what they want they get, that's it.

The PITA Factor arrives when they start trying to re-negotiate the price DOWN from the original quote AFTER you've made all their requested/desired changes to the original request...