I wanted to take the time to share with you the hard work that goes into selling handmade items. It is becoming more and more common to run into customers who want to pay mass-produced prices for handmade items. There are many people out there who are willing to sell their handmade items at cost. Maybe they are retired and just want to keep busy. Maybe they just want a way to pay for their hobby. The rest of us are just trying to make an honest living. The following incident happened just this week.
A customer bought a $17 item with “free shipping” on Etsy and came back and said that it was priced too high for what they got. I have the sizes of my bags written in TWO places on ALL of my listings, and also include a picture demonstrating its size. The size should be no surprise. Now let me explain where that price came from.
Total price customer paid: $17 + 7.5% sales tax = $18.28
Costs:
- Material: $1.50
- Fee to list an item on Etsy: $0.20 for 4 months. Let’s say that it sold within that 4 month time period without renewal (it didn’t).
- Etsy’s cut is 5% of the sale: $17 x 5% = $0.85
- Transaction fee (this is the fee that is paid to the credit card companies every time you charge something): 3% + $0.25 of the total: $18.28 x 3% + $0.25 = $0.80
- Shipping: Did you know that shipping is NEVER free? Shipping is included in the price of your item. If a vendor on Etsy charges you for shipping, Etsy takes 5% of that amount, too. But shipping was included in the price of this item, so I only had to pay for the cost of mailing a first class package weighing 3 ounces to Zone 8: $4.45.
- Don’t forget about the package and shipping materials I needed to mail that bag: $0.30
So, what do we have now?
$17 – $1.50 – $0.20 – $0.85 – $0.80 – $4.45 – $0.30 = $9.70
Nine dollars and seventy cents, that’s pretty good, right? Sure, but I didn’t get paid for my labor yet. I spent quite a bit of time on this one little bag. Here’s the breakdown:
- Acquire fabric and supplies: A few minutes if I shopped online, or over an hour if I had to drive to the store.
- Cut the fabric: 10 minutes (it was a small bag)
- Sew the bag: 20 minutes (again, it was a small bag)
- Take pictures of the bag and edit them so that they look presentable: 15 minutes
- Write a listing on Etsy: 5 minutes
- Write a listing on my website: 5 minutes
- Pack your bag, print your packing list, print shipping label: 5 minutes
- Inventory and accounting management: 5 minutes
We’re already over one hour and five minutes. I haven’t even counted other overhead like blog posts, social media posts, and driving to the post office if necessary. And don’t forget all those custom orders I get, where I have to spend hours on the computer writing emails to answer your questions to get your order just right.
Forget about all that. $9.70 for one hour of work. Minimum wage in North Carolina is $7.25, so I guess you could say that I made $2.45 profit. I try to pay myself $10 per hour, which I didn’t get in this case. I don’t think that’s so unreasonable. If I had to hire someone to do the work that I do, I would have to pay them at least $15 an hour, and probably closer to $20.
Just because I’m doing something fun and I don’t need to feed my family off of this income, it doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to be paid for my time. If you want to shop for unique and handmade items, please remember that someone put real time into their craft and deserves that recognition. I won’t apologize for charging you for my time.
