When I peruse Etsy, I’m always saddened to see people selling themselves ridiculously short. I see full-sized baby blankets on sale for $40.00 and owl hats for $12.99 and I cringe. Do you know what I think? That person does not value her time and talent. .
It’s easy to think you need to use low prices to draw people in to your shop. It’s tempting to try to set your prices a little bit lower than your “competition” so you can snatch the sales. DON’T DO IT! There are several problems with underpricing your items. First, you could potentially hurt other shops who are pricing their items correctly. I’ve been asked why I charge “so much” for certain items when similar things are available in such-and-such shop for so much less. I then have to explain to the potential customer that I have to consider how much time I put into making items and price my work based on that. Another issue is this: if you’re pricing your items low, you could burn out. You won’t see a huge profit so you’ll lose interest and not find it worth your time to spend hours upon hours creating beautiful items.
Let’s take a look at six things you should consider when coming up with prices for your Etsy shop.
Calculate all materials and expenses accurately. These things should include prices for things like yarn, buttons, and crochet hooks. Also, be sure to properly add up all Etsy and PayPal fees. Are you using a loom? Did you need to purchase Photoshop for editing product photos? You need to calculate those things, as well.
Pay yourself for your time. Come up with a price that you want to make per hour. Time yourself as you make each item. Then pay yourself for each hour you spend.
Decide on a pricing formula. Etsy has a suggested formula for coming up with a price. You can read all about it here. Their formula is as follows:
materials + labor + expenses + profit = wholesale
wholesale x 2 = retail
To be honest with you, I love this formula. I think it would be wonderful if it worked for everyone, but I simply don’t think it can. If you take this formula and plug in the numbers for a relatively small crocheted blanket, here’s what the price could potentially be: $203. I’m not sure that your customers or mine would be willing to pay that. So, I had to come up with a formula that worked better for me.
materials + labor + expenses = retail
If you plan to sell wholesale, you would need to double the above number for retail (I don’t sell wholesale because I simply don’t have time). Using this formula, the same crocheted blanket would be priced at $76.50. That’s quite a difference and will allow far more blankets to be sold in your shop.
Lower prices do not mean more sales. When I first started selling on Etsy, I sold my owl hats for under $20. After I started making some sales, I decided to up my price to $25. I sold the same number of hats. After reading about pricing, I upped my price to $30. I didn’t think I would sell any. I was shocked to see my sales increase tremendously. Yes, you read that right. I made far more owl hat sales at $30.00 than I did at $20.00.
Be willing to experiment to find a sweet spot. After you’ve figured out a price that you’re comfortable with, be willing to go up or down a couple of dollars. You might be surprised to see that you’ll sell more items just by changing the price from $30.00 to $29.50. Test the waters and do what works best for you.Decide if shipping will be included or separate. I’ve decided to keep all my shipping fees separate. These include packaging materials, postage, labels, and the like. I know some people like to include these in their item fees and offer free shipping, but this isn’t the route I’ve decided to take.
I certainly hope these pricing tips are a help to you. Be sure to read the first to articles in this series if you missed them. The first one was all about titles, tags, and descriptions. The second was about using Etsy teams to your advantage.
Ooo thank you so much for this. Really helpful.
Thank you very much for these tips! I really wasn't sure about pricing, but my gut feeling was about the same as what you shared.
thank you so much for sharing this…very helpful!
Just a quick question, with your formula of you didn't have to buy a new crochet hook do you still charge for expenses? <br />Thank you for posting this and the previous posts I have had these questions rattling around in my head for months! 🙂
I appreciate this, it is helpful to see other people's ideas about how to price things. I have found though that I get more business by pricing my items lower since my customers come back for more and I am being paid to commute to work and watch tv since that is when I usually do most of my crafting for my small business. I will let this percolate for a while and may adjust my prices.
Thank you for this information! I like to work with local photographers and there are a couple who think I should practically give away my items. I've had to remind them that they get paid for their time and talent just as I should also. They actually seemed to respect me more as an artisan after I made that argument.
I love this. I actually left Etsy because I was being underpriced left and right by folks who were "hobby crafting" (which is great!!) and under pricing their work. I would get emails asking me to cut my prices to amounts where I would *lose* money on the pieces. I can't compete with overseas production pieces either, but if more folks start pricing fair, I'd love to come
Thank you so much. I was wondering how to price on etsy. Wanted to drop prices, but after reading this- I almost want to bump them up. Thanks again!
Do you have a formula for shipping? Do divide out the cost of a package of envelopes to find out what to charge for that, etc?
I am a seller on Etsy..I am happy to have read your article as there are many people who undervalue their talent and who will always price to make a sale. And it does hurt us that try to mark our creations fairly. I hope after reading this that many of the shop owners will reevaluate their prices, and raise them just a bit. Thanks for a wonderful article.
I don't think I'd do X 2 that's more for a store that takes a cut of the price.
How do you figure out your labor costs.? Is there a certain formula you use? Thanks
I figure out what I want to make per hour 🙂