Pricing Your Craft, Guest Post with Martiel Beatty

Pricing Your Craft

By Martiel Beatty

Pricing your art or crafts is part math and part observation. In the years I’ve been selling I can tell you that both math and the market have played an equal part in pricing what I make.

As many of you have probably found, there is a lot of chatter on this subject, but very little on how EXACTLY to do it. When I discovered this (as you are right now), I decided that pricing shouldn’t be that hard; which is why I am in the final testing stages of a complete pricing calculator for artists. I am sharing this with you not for bragging rights but so you know that I’ve done the research and I’m not just winging it. I am very passionate about pricing and I feel strongly that if done correctly, you can sell your work and make a living doing it.

Below I cover what you should consider, things to include in your market research, information on product and pattern testers and of course a little math to help you price your work accurately.

What to Consider

When you are pricing what you make that are several factors that must be considered before you even start calculating numbers. It’s important that you consider the manufacturing time associated with any product. If it is something that is highly time intensive, you should weigh this against similar products on the market (more in the next section). Other factors to consider before you put too much work into a product are the materials costs and marketability. If your product requires a material that is extremely rare, this can work for you or against you – it all depends on your ability to market the product. Thinking about these three things: manufacturing time, materials costs and marketability before you create an entire product line. If all the pieces don’t fall into place, move on. You don’t want to waste your time on a product that is too expensive to produce or in unmarketable.

Market Research

The words market research are a bit intimidating I realize – and for many artist’s it seems like an unnecessary step. However, as an artist myself, I can assure you that market research is incredibly helpful and effective at showing you what is out there, how much it is, and if your product is marketable. When you are conducting market research, you need to compare and review several bits of information:

·         Collect information from several sellers

·         Review sellers average sales per month

·         Compare the average price of products similar to yours

·         Consider how many products out there are similar to yours

·         Examine the range of prices

·         Consider where your product’s price would fall in the range of other similar products.

Recruit Testers

Nothing will test your product’s durability; createability, and marketability than testers. I am a big fan of testers and for a good reason – they work!

When you are considering a new product or trying to price a product that hasn’t sold well, one of the best ways to find out how people like it is to ask people to test it out. When you do this, make sure you ask your testers to give you feedback. Feedback can be as informal as an email or short note to let you know what they thought about the product or it can be well organized and statistical if you use a survey or form. It’s totally up to you. But no matter how you get information about your product you should ask your testers the following questions:

·         What do you like about it?

·         What don’t you like about it?

·         Where can it be improved?

·         What colors/materials/textures/etc. do you think are best for this product?

·         How much would you pay for this product?
How does this product make you feel?

·         …and so on.

Arriving at Your Final Price

Finally, you have checked out your competition, gotten your seal of approval from your testers, your product passes the things to consider test; now what? Time to price it!

When you price your products it’s important that you consider what your market can bear while also doing a little math. Here is what I suggest.

1.       Find the average price of similar products in the market. Add all the product prices together and then divide by the number of products. For example if I had three products and their prices were $4.00, $9.50 and $7.25 I would calculate the average of these products like this:

4.00 + 9.50 + 7.25 = 20.75 / 3 = 6.92

$6.92 is the average market price for this example.

2.      Next use the following formula to calculate your price. It should be near or close to the average price you calculated using the formula above.

Labor per Hour + Materials Cost = Wholesale Price

Wholesale Price x 2 = Retail Price

My final thought on prices… if the price isn’t making you uncomfortable, then it’s not high enough. Handmade is about quality not quantity – treat it respectively.

Author Info/Bio:

Martiel Beatty

Martiel specializes in helping artist’s build online businesses and blogs. Find out how I can help you build yours today; Read this Now!