How to Price Crafts and Things You Make to Sell: Book Review and Giveaway
Happy Tuesday Michigan moms and visiting readers. Is your passion making crafts? Maybe you have a business and you like to set up shop at local craft fairs, etc. I have a book that you may be interested in reading to help your craft business really take off while increasing your profits.
How to Price Crafts and Things you Make to Sell is written by Author James Dillehay. Through this book you will get:
- Formulas
- Examples
- And Strategies
to Sell, Retail, or Wholesale, Online, at Fairs, and Everywhere else!
About the Author
James Dillehay is a professional craft artists, gallery owner, and author of nine books. He has been interviewed in the Wall Street Journal Online, Yahoo Finance, The Chicago Tribune, Bottom Line Personal, Family Circle, the Crafts Report, and many more including Entrepreneur Radio and HGTV.
Price Your Crafts Right-Sell Your Crafts Fast
If you are thinking about selling those crafts you’ve been giving away as gifts or maybe you are just running out of rooms to put them in, sites like Etsy.com are reporting record sales of handmade items. But craft makers taking the initial leap into starting a home business share a burning question: How much should I charge for my handmade products?”
Author James Dillehay wants your focus to be simply on this: “How much will people pay for products like mine?”
Through Dillehay’s book, you will receive a wealth of guidance into the proper pricing of crafts and unique personal creations. Here are some of his best ideas on getting it right quickly:
Know Your Productions Costs
- Identify the material costs-know exactly what it costs you to make an item. Include all materials, even small stuff like thread, paint, accessories, and other items that may have cost you only pennies. Example: A handmade gift contains $4 worth of materials.
- Determine the cost of labor-what your time is worth to you. If your personal minimum wage is $12 an hour, then multiply $12 times the hours it takes you to make one piece. Example: the handcrafted gift takes one hour to make for a labor cost of $12.
- Identify all your overhead costs. Cover overhead expenses like rent, utilities, phone, etc. Look at your monthly costs and divide it by the hours you work or the number of items you produce. Calculate a unit cost for overhead. Let’s say overhead comes to $4 for the gift example.
- Calculate a total cost per unit. Add the material cost, cost of labor and overhead cost together. Example: $4+$12+$4= $20. This is the minimum amount you must recover when you sell the item, but not necessarily your asking price.
Research the Market Price
5. Identify similar products in the market place where you will be selling. Document the retail prices. Research prices for similar items online. Visit local craft fairs or retail stores. Talk to the owners and ask them what items like yours sell for and what they are willing to buy them for. Note: Stores will usually double or triple their cost to arrive at the retail price.
6. Decide if you can make a profit. If the average retail price of similar items is higher than your minimum recovery cost, you stand to make a profit. Go ahead and start selling.
7. Reduce your materials, labor, and overhead costs so you don’t lose money. Stop and reconsider. Can you lower your costs? Can you make the item faster? If not, look at alternative products to make.
8. Improve the perceived value. Increase the perceived value of your item by improving or enhancing any number of its core elements, packaging, or the creator’s reputation. Photography, product samples, packaging, display, location, environmental qualities, media coverage, the creator’s qualifications and unique accomplishments and credentials, every and any known way to add uniqueness and quality to the product for the customer.
Don’t Lower the Price
Resist lowering the price. Don’t think that you’ll sell more because you won’t. Unique handmade products command higher prices everywhere. People associate low prices with cheaply made items. In fact, you may have to raise an item’s price till you find the best selling price.
How to Price Crafts and Things you Make to Sell by James Dillehay
List $ 12.95 (trade soft cover) $4.99 (Kindle edition)
ISBN for paperback edition: 9780971068476
ASIN for Kindle edition: B006LQVR2W
ISBN for e-book edition: 9781466100411
Published by Warm Snow Publishers
Available online and from the publisher. For more information see http://www.howtopricecrafts.com
What People are Saying
“Once I found this book I said “This is exactly what I need!”~ Lene Randol
“Pricing your art is an impossible task that James Dillehay had totally solved. This book covers EVERYTHING you ever needed to know about how to price your hand made crafts.”~CB Burton
“Well put together and very informative, every crafter can benefit from this information.”~Michelle T.
“There’s so much valuable information in here that I highly recommend it to any crafter who’d like to make a profit on her wares.” ~H.Grove, Maryland, USA
“An excellent resource…a well-organized book is nothing without solid information and the book delivers here.” ~The Crafts Report
Ready to enter the giveaway? Just login with your email address or through Facebook, etc., on the Rafflecopter widget below! Good luck crafters! U.S residents only!
I have personally reviewed this book and think it is an amazing resource full of beneficial information for any crafter. All opinions expressed here are my own. I would like to personally thank James Dillehay for providing this book for review and giveaway.
