OMG, someone wants to BUY something from me!! Help!

[VaughnT]

Spanky, one of the "easier" ways I've come across to help with pricing is to establish your shop rate.  If you look around at any of your local metal fabrication or car repair shops, they all have a basic price per hour that they charge.  This covers labor, electricity, common consumables, etc.  Generally, the shop rate is always north of $50 per hour.

 

Being new/small/inexperienced/etc, you obviously can't charge people $75 an hour, but $40 is a very reasonable sum.  And if anyone complains about the cost, simply point them to the fabrication shop down the road that charges $120/hr for the same basic thing.

 

With the shop rate determined, all you have to do is figure out how long the snails take to make.  If it takes you 20 minutes, that's 1/3 of your hourly shop rate.

 

Having said that, it's not a hard-n-fast rule because you also have to factor in the time lost due to your lack of tools and/or experience.  You can't sell the snails for $40 in the local market even though they took you the better part of an hour to make because that long time was a result of your personal situation.  So, you take a little hit and price them to be competitive with what you can find online.  

 

Then you set up jigs and patterns so you can churn them out in less than ten minutes.  As your reputation grows, you continue to sell the snails at the same price, but your increased speed and efficiency generates a larger and larger profit margin.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

Look for the thread on "pricing your work" it has lots of good insight on this.

Shop rate doesn't always get you there with arty projects due to the "perceived value" in the area. This value will change with location. What may be a tough sell for $5 in Moapa Valley NV may easily bring $500 in Manhattan NY. I see this a lot with my potter friends, and I term it the Wal-Mart effect. Essentially someone will look at a $30 hand thrown coffee cup, and try to compare it to a mass produced $2 cup at the Evil Empire. Yet, at the right show/location (more affluent) that same cup may be seen as undervalued due to the perceived value for the area being vastly different. Tough to offer hauling services in rural areas due to the proliferation of pickups, but in a city like NY where vehicle ownership is low you could make a killing.

With industrial work, shop rates can do, but when it comes to arty items it is just the start.