You know what kills more craft show dreams than bad products? Not making any money from them. If you’re not using a real pricing formula for your craft show, you are literally paying people to buy your stuff.
That was me for many years, but now I’m going to show you my exact formula to make sure you come across like a serious business, while making some real money. And, I promise this will more fun than a 9th grade math class –
Here’s how it usually goes. You make something beautiful. You roughly know what your materials cost is, maybe $4 in wood, $2 in supplies. So, you double it, you charge something like $12, somebody buys it, you feel great… and then three hours later you realize: wait.
How long did that actually take me to make? How much was the booth cost again? The gas to get here? The file I bought? The shipping for the materials? My laser’s wear and tear? My TIME?
And suddenly $12 doesn’t feel so great anymore.
This is the Undercharging Trap, and it gets almost everyone at the beginning. But today, I want to pull you out of it with what I call the Laser Lady Pricing Formula. It is not fancy. It’s just math — delicious, money math, the best kind — and once you know it, you will never guess a price again.
The FOUR-mula
There are four things you need to add up to find your real cost. Four. That’s it. Let’s go one at a time. And I’ll even make a product alongside this, so you see what I mean. Let’s GO!
Step 1: Material Cost.
This one everyone knows. What did your board cost? What supplies did you use — tape, varnish, whatever it took? Write down every single thing. Even if it’s a few cents. Those cents are sneaky. They add up FAST.
For our example today — let’s use this book looking box thingy! I got it on sale for $6.74 Easy. I will be using a stain, varnish and a little bit of felt.
For things like stain or paint, I like to estimate (and round up) how many projects you can make from a whole bottle.
This bottle cost me $11.95, free shipping. I estimate I can get AT LEAST 40 projects out of this bottle. That puts us at $.30.
The varnish spray is $6.98 and I can get maybe 25 projects out of it, so that is $.28.
The felt has sticky stuff on the back and costs $.50 a piece.
This makes the total materials $7.82.
Side Note: Here’s where most people stop and think charging $15-16 for this. But, when you just double the cost of materials, you are paying for the materials of what sold and made juuuuusstt enough money to buy materials to make one more. So where is the profit in that? How does that grow a business?
I bet you haven’t factored this next one into your prices before –
Step 2: Machine Time Cost.
THIS is the sneaky one. The one most people skip. Your laser machine costs real money to run. Electricity. Wear and tear on the machine. Replacement parts over time.
I estimate roughly $5 per hour for the laser run time — depending on your machine you may want to adjust this. So, if this wood box takes 10 minutes to engrave — that’s about $.83 in machine time. Write it down. It counts.
Step 3: YOUR TIME.
This is where laser crafters go wrong the most. They don’t pay themselves. And listen — if you wouldn’t work for free at a job, so don’t work for free in your business. Period.
Decide your hourly rate. Minimum $20 an hour. And I want you to think about the FULL process — not just laser time. The setup. Loading the machine. Cleaning the piece. Staining it, etc.
For this box, realistically? I’ll say 20 minutes of my actual time. I know we are usually doing other things while something is lasering, but it all adds up.
Those nights you are coming up with new design ideas. Shopping around for blanks. Trying to find new craft shows to do. We need to cover this time in the cost of our products.
So, at $20/hour, that’s about $6.75.
Add. It. In.
Step 4: Overhead.
Your booth fee. Table. Display. Transportation. Bags. Tissue paper. All the stuff that makes the show actually happen.
Here’s the simple way to handle it: divide your total show costs by the number of items you expect to sell. Booth fee was $50? Expecting/Hoping to sell 50 items? That’s $1 per item. Add it to everything.
If the event was $100 and you only expect to sell maybe 20 things, that’s an added $5 you’ll want to add to your prices.
Side note: here’s a helpful tip to determine if a craft show, or whatever kind of selling event, is even worth doing again. I go with a 10% rule.
If I pay $40 for a table, I want to make at least $400. That way, the booth cost is only 10%. When I do a really big event, like a comic con, a table might be $500 and – Yes. I will strive to make $5000.
If I don’t hit that, or a number I am minimally comfortable with, then the event is not for me. If you paid $100 for an event and made $200, you might skip that one next year.
But remember, every time we have a failure, it’s a lesson in disguise. Take time to assess and learn from it.
Total:
For the Materials, machine time, MY time and overhead we land at about $16.40. So, is this what we charge? No sir!
I recommend a minimum of 2x your real cost for craft shows. 2.5x is preferable. Why? Two reasons. One – because you are worth it. And Two – this is a treasure. A one of a kind, a rarity, something you literally can’t find anywhere else. Products should make people go WOW. Not, “what a bargain.”
So, $16.40 times 2.5 equals $41 Which is a great number because I was planning on putting this at $40. Spoiler alert, I’ve made this before and sold it super-fast at $38, so let’s give $40 a try! Or, I we really want to go full pricing psychology, $39.99.
Tell me – would you have originally charged $15? Maybe double the cost of the blank? It can be hard to think that someone would even be willing to pay more, but what that is actually indicative of is your confidence.
Your confidence in your craft and your confidence that you could possibly deserve more. You do.
But I agree that sometimes the math doesn’t always work. There are some things that just has no chance to be able to sell at the cost you come to through this formula, so let’s talk about it.
What are Loss Leaders?
I made a video the other week about things that always sell at craft shows, like these keychains made from scraps.
Since they are made of scraps, the cost is technically free. The laser time, 3-4 minutes, $0.50. Your total time sanding and putting on a key ring, about 5 minutes — $1.50. Overhead: $2.00. Real cost: $4.00. At 2.5x that’s $10.
But wait — I’ve been telling you to price those low at $3-5. What’s going on?
Here’s the thing. These are what we call Loss Leaders. You price them below your 2x or 2.5x because they are the bait. They get people INTO your booth. That pet owner interested in the $5 keychain? She just spotted your $45 wall hanging. THAT’s where you make the real money. The keychain paid for itself in a completely different way.
This tactic plays into one of my favorite things…
Craft Show Pricing Psychology
Knowing your formula is one thing. Displaying your prices to actually SELL is a whole other skill. Let’s go over a couple quick tactics that will help you lay out your display.
Anchor Pricing.
Put your most expensive item front and center of your display. This should be a showstopper. Your masterpiece. When someone sees your $75 cutting board first, or $150 multilayer giant wall-hanging, your $25 keyholder feels like an absolute steal.
If I lay this box next to a $20 box, there’s a good chance that $20 box is going to fly off the table, and so will the other 4 I made just like it.
Justification Pricing.
I named this one myself, but it’s something we’ve all done. When you’re using the high-price item to make everything else feel reasonable, the real cheap stuff is prime for bundling.
You might as well pick up a few of those $5 keychains… oh, buy 2 get one free, you say? Challenge accepted.
Here’s where you can try to hack their momentum. If you sell keychains, sell a keyholder and say this, “Since you are getting so many keychains, I’ll knock $5 off that keyholder.”
Well, what’s another $20? Now I’m saving money. That $10 order turned into a $30 order, and they FEEL like they got a deal. And they did.
Thanks to your pricing strategy, you are still in the green. Your costs to run a business are covered, not just the materials of the item itself.
But here’s the biggest psychological advice I can ever give you.
Take Pride in Your Work
Don’t apologize for your prices. This one is personal.
I have watched crafters discount themselves on the spot because someone picked up an item, looked at the price, and put it back down. Stop.
Your work has value. This is not a yard sale. Don’t price like one.
Not every browser is your customer, and that is completely fine. The right customer will pay what your work is worth.
I find these people everywhere I sell and this is what I say to them when they find something they love so much they literally stop in their tracks.
I say, “Well I made it for you, we just didn’t know it yet.”
That’s making a connection, I tell you what. That’s the sort of thing that makes those people go find their friends to bring over to your table or even seek you out at next year’s event!
Now, it can be hard to have confidence, especially when you are just starting out. You just want the stuff to sell, so you second guess yourself and discount everything.
Here’s a real-life story for ya. My friend makes embroidered stuffed animals. They are fancy and difficult to make. She sells them for $40, $75, even over $100 for some designs. You know what snot covered little kids say to her all the time?
Yep. They say, “that’s expensive.”
You know what her customers say?
“This is beautiful.” “I know exactly where I’m going to put it.” “This will be perfect for my collection.”
She doesn’t make stuffed animals for kids who are going to chew up the tail and puke on it. She makes little masterpieces for a niche some of you might not be aware of. Plush collectors.
But she also sells little embroidered keychains for $10. Loss leader. And Smaller more simple stuffed animals for $25 that sit next to her $100 fancy dragon. Anchor pricing. And just wait til you ask her about bundling options. Justification pricing.
So, maybe you’ll use this pricing four-mula we’ve gone over today or maybe you’ll stick to pricing things the way you always have, I just need you to know this –
Your products have value. You have value. You can win at this. I believe in you.
And I’m not the only one! I will be hosting a Laser Summit this May called the Ignite and Scale Summit! The theme this time is all about finding your perfect product.
I’m bringing in a bunch of familiar faces from the laser-sphere to teach you everything you need to know to ignite your laser knowledge and scale your business no matter what stage it’s in! Tickets go on sale soon, so sign up to the email list to be the first to know when they go live!
If you haven’t seen my other recent video on products that always sell at craft shows, check out this post next! I go over 5 surprising laser projects (plus a little psychology) that any niche should be making.
Thank you so much for watching and happy crafting!
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