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Originally published in The Village Square - Sept. 2009 Your walls are covered and your shelves are overflowing with your scroll saw projects. Then it finally dawns on you; maybe you should start selling your work. But what should you charge? This is a tough question to answer. After all, you want to make it affordable so people would actually buy your products. But at the same time, you don't want to short change yourself. While pricing structures can range from picking a number out of the air to complex formulas, here's a good way to come up with a price for your scroll sawn art. First, you must decide what your time is worth to you. Are you happy making $15/hr? $30/hr? Be sure to keep this figure realistic. While it would be nice to make $150/hr, chances are that my work isn't worth more than $15/hr. Once you come up with a number, this becomes your target income goal. Next, figure out what it would cost to make your product. Figure in your time and material cost. Material costs not only includes the materials used to make your product, but it also includes expendables like scroll saw blades, masking tape, paper, and printer ink. Figuring out the costs of your expendables might be a bit of a guessing game, but try to put a ballpark figure on it. While you're at it mark up the material costs by about 20%. After all, you still have to hoof it over to the lumber store, pick your stock, haul it back home and organize it. Don't overlook expenses that occur in the sales process. Are you going to craft shows? Chances are, you'll be spending all day trying to sell your wares. Be sure to compensate yourself for your time. Plus there are booth fees and travel expenses to figure in too. Online markets charge listing fees and take a sales commission. Plus any time that you spend listing your products. See where I'm going with this? Now it's time to figure out what price to charge for your product. So take your time multiplied by your target income goal plus material costs. This is your price. But wait. We're not quite done yet. Now that we have a price, we have to figure out if the market can bare that price. When you come up with a number, compare it to what others sell similar items for locally. If others are selling it for more, raise your prices. If they're selling it for less, decide if you'd be willing to take less. If not, see if you can reduce your time or cost to get the widget price closer to the market price. There are many times where it just isn't worth your time to make that particular product. But there are many other items that you can make that has a nice profit margin. You may also consider the law of averages. Perhaps one product has to sell below what you'd be willing to take, but another product is selling for more. These two products may balance each other out in the long run. Naturally, custom work will cost more than items that can be "mass-produced." Making several of one item is usually more time efficient than making them one at a time. If you do portrait style cuttings, be sure to stack cut your items so you get 3 or 4 copies. Other items, make jigs where possible to speed up production. Also, keep an eye out on how to reduce material costs and any expendables. Often little compromises result in huge savings, thereby increasing your profit margin. And lastly, know who your customer is. Flea market folks won't pay $35 for a free-standing puzzle, but a patron of an art museum would. Be sure to research your customers and what others are doing. Find someone who is doing well and copy them (their method, not their patterns). No need to re-invent the wheel. Hopefully, these tips will get you on your way to selling your wares. It's nice to earn a little extra money to keep yourself in sawblades and buy a new tool on occasion. But if you don't sell anything, don't worry. After all, it's the journey, not the destination that counts.

The following is an excerpt written by @kmmcrafts from Info on Websites forum thread. I've been in on this online selling since 2010.. that said though.. up until just 3 years ago I only tinkered around with selling and never really took it to a business level.. so in the first several years I did maybe 10 orders a year.. when I started trying I did about 50ish orders the first year.. second year was around 170 ish.. last year I had over 300 orders.. and so far this year is doubling + some.. All that said though.. my first year was hardly anything until Mid - Late October before the sales started trickling in. and even last year I think I only had about 40 orders though the year until October hit.. then it was crazy busy.. If this years trend keeps up and the busy holiday season hits harder than last year I'm in trouble.. I turned a lot of work away starting from about mid November on out.. I sell on Artfire Etsy,Zibbet, and a stand alone web site with indiemade.. was just invited to sell on amazon handmade site.. amazon is sort of supposedly Juried.. I applied there when they first opened up.. but they took forever to accept me and when they did I was slammed with work during the holidays.. I lost my pass code to the site.. they kept sending me messages asking why I am not setting up shop I kept telling them but they never sent me another code until a couple days ago.. On Artfire I had a locked in rate of $5.95 a month.. but they done a lot of changes and now it's $20 plus a % of sales.. They have some awesome selling tools but it's like having your own site so you need to bring in your own traffic.. I still have an account but I am not selling there anymore.. due to a lot of issues with the site working correctly etc after they had some employees leave and they just didn't know how to run the site.. (poor management ) Etsy is a listing fee and a % of sale.. get a fair amount of traffic.. but to start over knowing what I know now.. I'd probably have not got so involved with working the shop there.. Lot's of other scroll sawers there and most don't charge a rate to make money.. and the way etsy is set up.. they will show your competitions items on your page etc.. so if I work my butt of to bring in shoppers.. they could leave by seeing a cheaper similar item from another shop.. That said I do get a fair amount of business.. but to do over I would put more focus on my own site.. Zibbet.. basic accounts are cheap.. but traffic is quite limited so you have to bring in your own.. much like a site of your own... I get enough sales to pay the yearly bill.. however I been thinking of closing up that shop just because I want to put my focus on my own indiemade web site as it is a better system.. Indiemade has different tiered plans.. depending upon how many items you have.. I have the $19.95 one.. I do well on indiemade for only being there a year.. First thing to do if you decide to sell online is to get a domain name and get business cards with that domain on it send a card or two in every package you send out.. Most people start on a venue as I did and then branch off to their own site.. Keeping up with SEO is a full time job+... LOL There is a lot to know about do's and don'ts of SEO and if you don't have a lot of time to invest.. your best off on etsy, artfire, or zibbet.. in my opinion.. Or.. spend big money advertising... to be found in searches.. Pictures of your products are very important for online selling.. if you have noise (clutter) in the background that distracts from your product or dark photos then it could mean the difference between a sale or a scroll on past.. I spent a lot of time with my camera and built a special photo booth light box to take my photos.. especially if your selling on a site like etsy where they show others items.. if someone lands on a page other than mine and they see my bright eye catching image they may say.. ooh that one looks awesome.. while the other item may be just as good of quality... my picture caught the attention.. Online selling can be a full time job if you want to make the effort and put in lots of hours.. I put in more than 40 hours a week between answering emails to tweaking SEO to working in the shop, packing orders, taking photos, working on web sites.. etc etc etc.. and I am only getting part time pay.. BUT.. it's nice to work my own hours.. and I am here at home for my family... I think too many people think they can just throw some pictures up on a site and the customers will just come rolling in.. to buy them.. and that is definitely not the case.. Also I think people think that lower prices will attract people.. It might to some extent.. but the more important thing is SEO and pictures.. because if nobody's finding your low price then nobody's going to buy it.. if pictures are bad many times you can't even give it away.. LOL.. That all said.. they say is takes a good 5 years for a business to get to a point of starting to make money.. I am three years in.. it's grown tremendously.. but if in 3-4 more years I'm not doing good I may throw in the towel and get a day job somewhere.. if it wasn't fun.. I'd have done that my first year.. Sorry, didn't mean to write a book, LOL Kevin