The Get-Paid Pricing Calculator
Are you making sales, but still not making money from your handmade business?
It’s probably your prices.
Even if you think they’re fine, even if you calculated them carefully, the fact that you’re not making money is a big red flag that should make you look again.
So many of the struggles that makers and handmade business owners face come down to pricing.
Sometimes that’s obvious. But often it isn’t.
Because pricing is complex, it’s easy to get it wrong, and pricing problems don’t always look like pricing problems at first.
Do any of these sound like you?
You’re making sales, but there’s never anything left.
You’ve done the work on your prices. You’re getting orders. Things look busy.
And yet at the end of every month, there’s nothing left to pay yourself, or nowhere near enough.
You’re not sure what’s going wrong because by your reckoning, the numbers should be working. But they’re not.
You’re just getting started, and pricing feels too complicated to worry about right now
You’re still figuring out what you’re making and who’s going to buy it.
It feels like there are too many unknown factors and it’s too early to worry about every single cost. Surely you can just take a best guess or look at what other people are charging, can’t you?
But your savings are ticking down and you’re wondering when things will swing towards making a profit.
You’re making money, but you’re completely exhausted.
Things are actually going okay. You’re busy. You’re getting lots of orders. You’re just about keeping up with demand.
But you’re maxed out. You can’t do any more. And you can’t take a break.
There’s no breathing room, no space to think, no version of this that doesn’t involve working every hour you have. You’re not sure how much longer you can keep this pace up, and you’re not sure what the alternative is.
The bad news is that more sales won’t fix this (sorry)
These are three very different situations. But they have the same thing in common. Pricing.
And the solution most people reach for (for all three of them) is the same too.
More sales.
Sell more. Make more money. Surely that will fix it.
When you’re bigger, more established, making more sales, all of this will just sort itself out.
It seems like common sense but in reality, when your prices aren’t where they should be, increasing your sales actually make everything worse.
And the more you sell, the worse it gets.
Because every sale costs you money. So the more you grow, the faster the problem accelerates.
And at the root of it all is a pricing calculation that didn’t account for the true cost of doing business. Because the costs that are missing from your prices will do more and more damage as you grow.
The hidden costs almost everyone misses out
The costs that do the most damage are the ones that don’t obviously belong to any single product.
Overheads
The cost of running your business day to day.
Your equipment Not just what you paid for it, but what it costs to maintain and eventually replace.
Your selling costs
Everything you spend on marketing and selling. Every hour you spend at a fair, doing photography, writing product descriptions, managing social media. Work that has a real cost, whether you account for it or not.
Most makers know roughly what their materials cost. They have a sense of how long something takes to make. But splitting the broader costs of running a business across individual products? That’s where it gets more complicated.
How much of your annual insurance bill belongs in the price of one pair of earrings? How can you include the cost of your labour at fairs and events and still set a reasonable price?
These are the calculations that most people never do. But get this wrong and every cost that isn’t in your price is coming straight out of your own pocket.
That’s what this calculator was built to solve.
The Get-Paid Pricing Calculator will make this simple for you
You put in your numbers.
It will do the calculations and give you back the minimum you need to charge for each product.
You’ve then got the choice as to whether you want to increase your prices even further for some extra cushion, or just to earn more.
You get two prices for each product: a wholesale price and a retail price.
Because making and selling are two separate jobs in your business, and both have a cost.
You need to ensure that selling costs are fully covered by your retail price, whether you sell through shops or not, and this calculator will show you how.
It also shows you where your money is actually going and how much any given cost affects your pricing, because sometimes you can spend more in one area than in another.
Many makers are surprised by what they find. Labour is almost always the biggest factor in your prices. Equipment that gets used across hundreds of products over many years (and may save your body from repetitive strain injuries) has a much smaller impact than you’d expect.
That kind of clarity changes how you think about spending and means you’re making informed decisions about where to invest your money.
The calculator covers up to 10 products at once, so you can see your whole range side by side and quickly spot any problems.
Why not just use a free calculator?
You can find a free pricing calculator online in about thirty seconds. Most include labour and materials – and nothing else.
The number it spits out looks perfectly reasonable, right up until the point you’re two years into your business, wondering why you’re working harder than ever and you’re still not getting paid.
Because where are the more complicated costs? The ones that are easily forgotten or tempting to overlook? They’re awkward and nuanced and they don’t fit into a simple methodology, so they get left out.
A calculator that includes only labour, materials and maybe a markup is going to give you a back-of-the-envelope number and leave you to realise later that those missing costs are bleeding you dry.
Pricing handmade products is never simple, and oversimplifying it is a mistake that costs real money.
Over the course of a few years, that cost is enormous.
This is for you if…
- You’re making sales but not making money, and you don’t understand why
- You’re working flat out and still can’t pay yourself properly
- You’ve always suspected your prices aren’t quite right but haven’t known how to check
- You’ve been told to “just add a markup to your materials” and something about that has never felt right
- You sell through multiple channels – wholesale, direct, craft fairs – and you’re not sure how to price across all of them
- You want to understand your business’s numbers, not just guess at them
This is not for you if…
- You’re looking for a quick back of the envelope formula
- You’re not willing to spend time gathering your business costs and putting real numbers in
- You don’t want your assumptions about your pricing to be challenged
Order the Get-Paid Pricing Calculator now and start making money from your handmade business
A note on price
The Get Paid Pricing Calculator is £67.
If that feels like a lot for a spreadsheet, consider this.
Every cost that isn’t in your prices is a cost you’re already paying – out of your own money
You’re paying it out of what you thought was profit, out of the wage you’re not taking, and out of the equipment you can’t afford to replace.
Just because a cost is hidden doesn’t mean it isn’t real. You’re already spending that money. You just can’t see where it’s going.
Most makers who go through this process discover they’ve been undercharging; sometimes by a significant amount.
The cost of not knowing your numbers is almost always higher than the cost of finding out.
What you get
The Get Paid Pricing Calculator
A comprehensive Google Sheets spreadsheet covering your full cost base across up to 10 products. Just fill in the white boxes and let the calculator do the work.
A full walkthrough video
Taking you through every tab of the spreadsheet so you know exactly what to enter and where. If you’re not comfortable with spreadsheets, I’ve made it really easy for you to follow along and make sure you’ve entered all of your expenses in the right place.
I truly love Nicola’s teaching style. She has an incredible gift.
She really “gets” people, what is holding them back, and has a kind way of helping address what really is going on and guides you to the next step without being overwhelming.
Nicola’s advice is like an MBA at my fingertips. Apart from the sound business advice, her coaching is excellent.
Sometimes I think she’s reading my mind! And then comes the pep talk.
Nicola is so knowledgeable, funny, and engaging. Every single topic she addresses provides so much value and is way beyond the time and money invested.
You can listen over and over and still learn something new.
Not only do I enjoy listening, but I feel like I’ve gained an amazing business mentor.
About Nicola
I'm Nicola and I'm the founder of Maker's Business Toolkit and the creator of the Maker's Yearbook - a planner for artists, makers and handmade business owners.
I've worked with makers for over 10 years and I have seen first hand how many people are getting in their own way when it comes to marketing their work.
Overcomplicating, overthinking, perfectionism, low confidence and fear of rejection can lead us to either retreat from sharing our work, or promote it so apologetically that we're setting ourselves up for failure.
I want to make it as quick and easy as possible for you to get your work seen by the people who would absolutely love what you do ... if only they knew about it.
Because that's how you support yourself with your creative work and build a business that gives you a meaningful career and a comfortable life.
Have a question? Contact us
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