The Cost of Doing Buisness

 Pricing: How Much Time Are You Really Spending on Your Product?

We all know the formula:

Cost Price (Labor + Materials Cost) x 2 = Wholesale Price 

Wholesale Price x 2 = Retail Price

But what goes into the cost of our labor? 
Time!

A day in the life of an Etsy Item

Aside from what you spend on supplies and incidentals, which is relatively easy to track, what about the time you put in? If you are like me, you do not weigh time heavily into the equation because you are so happy while you are in creative mode, and you forget about all of the other stuff.  Recently I have taken a hard look at my time management for pricing purposes and life in general.

Sad but true, time is money, even when it feels like you should be paying someone for the happiness you get from making jewelry.

Lets look at one little piece of jewelry, and all it has to go through to get into the hands, or onto ears or necks of my customer, (not exactly in order of appearance).

Little Piece of Jewelry

• The research process - this is what I like to call it when I am  daydreaming up new ideas.

• The sketch – you can skip this  part if you do not need to sketch, but I do. Here are your five minutes back if you don't.

• Learning and practicing techniques, or, how the heck do I make this? This can include: time spent in trial and error, in courses, reading books, taking Ecourses, or tutorials.

• Ordering or shopping for Supplies.

• The actual designing proces.

• Actually fabricating your piece

• Modeling it for your significant other or furbaby and telling them they are not excited enough about this new creation.

Not Really Me

• Photographing it.

• The dreaded editing of said photographs.

• Determining pricing which includes more dreaded research and, yikes, math.

• The even more dreaded listing of item.

• Answering stupid and not so stupid convos.

• Tweeting, FB-ing, Stumbling, Deliciousing, Stylehiving, Pinteresting, Kaboodling, Blogging, making the dreaded Treasury (I make them, but I don’t like them), commenting on T's, and more.

•    Doing all of the above for your team members, as they have done for you.

• Messing with Etsy on Sale. Should I, shouldn't I? etc. 

• Promoting your sale if you chose "I should."
• Rearranging your Etsy store obsessively
• Renewing
• Checking Craftopolis
• Checking Google Analytics and wondering if anyone really understands it.

• Worrying about your SEO and asking Bob a lot of questions: 1800-jewelry24Seven

• Creating and promoting coupons, or wondering if you should.

 

Finally,  a sale!

 

Continuing on...

• Ordering or shopping for packing supplies.

• Putting your precious piece into pretty packaging that you ordered or made.

 

• Packing for safe shipping.
•  Printing a label, cursing at printer %&*((%!!  *(__$%^&!!!.
• Fixing the printer or running to Staples for more printer ink.
•  Printing again.
• Going to the post office.
• Swearing I am going to get more organized so I can arrange home pick up, which is FREE.
• Following up emails (yup, you bought it, yeah, its coming etc.).
•  Worst case, tracking a package. uuugghhhhhh.
• Best case, happy customer, brilliant feedback, Yayyy.

Guess what, time to start all over again.

All of this is not even factoring in the very important time spent on the JET Thread!

 

Is your pricing right?

Do not sell yourself short. Much of the cost of doing business is our time!

Thanks for reading,

Norah