Some help please

torch2010

Hi, I make some craft items and would like to start selling them. I was wondering how I work out how much I charge for my time

Annisele

You're joining a very crowded marketplace there!

One way to do it is to consider the opportunity cost of spending time making your craft items compared to spending time doing something else. For example, if you're lucky enough that you can get work doing something else at £50 per hour, then you cost your labour at £50 per hour, plus a bit to cover the holiday pay etc that you are losing by not being employed, plus a bit to cover the risk of being self employed. If your normal job pays £20 per hour but you can't get any more hours at that, then you might use the £10 per hour that you'd get if you took a job in your local pub. (That might make your craft items so expensive that nobody would buy them...but it also says that from a pure "money now" perspective, you're better off in the job than making your craft items).

Another way is to look at the labour cost the market will bear, and then decide whether it's worth it to you to work for that amount. So, if I'm making widgets that I can sell for £10, and my materials and other expenses cost me £5 per widget, then I'll get £5 per widget for my labour. If I can make 500 widgets in an hour (and find a buyer for them) then I've got a great deal; if it takes me four hours to make a widget then I'm working for £1.25 per hour and I might as well go and stack shelves in Tesco.

easyhost

torch2010 wrote: »

Hi, I make some craft items and would like to start selling them. I was wondering how I work out how much I charge for my time

a good thing if you can is visit a local craft fair and see what others are charging for the same sort of craft items you are making and see if you could afford to sell them at the prices your competitors are selling them at.

XxXfashionqueenXxX

I think you should be charging around £1.50 per card. That way you meet your hourly minimum wage.

Premier_2

Charge as much as you want.

Charge too little and you may soon give up the trade as you won't think it's worth the effort.

Charge too much and you may find it hard to shift the goods you produce.