How to Price Crafts for Profit: Craft Pricing Guide
You finish making a product, look at what you spent on materials, and think:
“Okay… but what should I actually charge for this?”
It sounds like a simple question until you start adding everything up.
Maybe you spent $8 on materials and decide that selling the item for $20 gives you a nice profit. But what about the packaging? The payment fee? The time you spent making it? The supplies you use little by little? And the other costs of running your craft business?
This is where pricing can get confusing.
Whether you sell candles, crochet pieces, jewellery, resin products, stickers, sewn items or other crafts, your price needs to do more than cover your main materials.
It needs to support the business behind the product too.
Let's break it down.
Start With Your Material Cost
First, work out how much material you actually use to make one product.
Imagine you're making a handmade candle.
You might use:
- Wax — $3.20
- Fragrance oil — $1.40
- Wick — $0.35
- Jar — $2.10
- Label — $0.45
Your direct material cost is:
$7.50
This part is usually easy to understand, but there's an important detail: don't automatically count the price of an entire pack as the cost of one product.
For example, if you buy a $20 bag of material and can make 10 products from it, the material cost per product is $2, not $20.
Doing this for each ingredient or component gives you a much more realistic product cost.
Don't Forget Packaging
Packaging can look inexpensive when you consider each item separately.
A box here. A thank-you card there. A little tissue paper.
But together, they add to the cost of every order.
Let's say your candle also needs:
| Packaging | Cost |
|---|---|
| Product box | $0.80 |
| Tissue paper | $0.15 |
| Thank-you card | $0.12 |
| Sticker | $0.10 |
| Protective packaging | $0.35 |
| Total | $1.52 |
Now your $7.50 product actually costs $9.02 before you've even considered your time.
That's why packaging should be part of your pricing calculation rather than something you pay for later out of your profit.
Your Time Has a Cost Too
This is one of the easiest costs for a craft seller to underestimate.
Suppose it takes you 30 minutes to make and prepare a product.
If you decide your labour rate is $24 per hour:
$24 × 0.5 hours = $12 labour cost
That $12 needs to be considered when you're deciding whether the product is actually profitable.
And don't only think about the obvious making time.
Depending on your business, your time can include preparing materials, assembling products, finishing, labelling and packing.
You don't necessarily need to time every movement with a stopwatch. The goal is to get a reasonable idea of how much working time each product requires.
What About Overhead?
Materials and labour still aren't the complete picture.
There are costs involved in running a craft business that aren't attached neatly to one individual product.
For example:
- Software subscriptions
- Equipment
- Tools
- Printer supplies
- Workspace expenses
- Website costs
- Business insurance
- Marketing
- Marketplace expenses
These are often called overhead costs.
You need a sensible method of allowing for these expenses when calculating your prices.
Otherwise, a product can appear profitable on paper while the business itself continues absorbing costs in the background.
Remember Selling and Transaction Fees
Where you sell also matters.
An online marketplace, payment processor or ecommerce platform may charge fees associated with your sales.
Those costs can reduce what you actually keep from the selling price.
This is particularly important when you're working with a small profit margin.
A price that works when selling directly at a local market might not leave exactly the same amount when selling through an online platform.
Check the current fees charged by the platform and payment method you use rather than relying on an old percentage you found online.
Now Look at the Full Cost
Let's return to our example.
Suppose we have:
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Materials | $7.50 |
| Packaging | $1.52 |
| Labour | $12.00 |
| Allocated overhead | $2.00 |
| Cost before selling fees | $23.02 |
Suddenly, that original idea of:
“My materials cost $7.50, so $20 sounds like a good selling price”
looks very different.
Selling it for $20 wouldn't even cover the costs we've included in this example.
That's why simply multiplying your material cost by two or three doesn't always tell you whether a craft is profitable.
Your own numbers matter.
Cost and Selling Price Aren't the Same Thing
Knowing that your product costs $23.02 to produce doesn't automatically tell you exactly what its selling price should be.
You still need room for profit.
Profit is what remains after the relevant business costs are accounted for.
For a simplified example, imagine your full cost after applicable expenses is $23 and your selling price is $32.
Your profit would be:
$32 − $23 = $9
That is very different from looking only at the $7.50 of materials and thinking:
$32 − $7.50 = $24.50 profit.
This distinction is important.
Revenue is not the same as profit.
A business can make plenty of sales while keeping surprisingly little from each one.
Should You Copy Competitor Prices?
Competitor research is useful.
Competitor pricing isn't a substitute for knowing your own costs.
Another seller might charge $25 for something that looks similar to yours, but you don't know their material supplier, production method, labour cost, packaging expenses, overhead, product size or profit target.
They could also be underpricing their product themselves.
Use the market to understand what customers are paying and how your product is positioned.
But don't let another shop's price become your entire pricing formula.
Test the Price Before You List the Product
Before settling on a price, try a few scenarios.
Ask yourself:
What happens to my profit if I charge $25?
What happens at $30?
What about $35?
Seeing the numbers side by side can make pricing decisions much easier.
You can also test what happens when material prices increase or packaging changes.
This is particularly useful when you're planning a new craft product. It's better to discover that the numbers don't work before you've bought large quantities of supplies.
A Spreadsheet Can Make This Much Easier
You can calculate everything manually, but once you have several products, materials and different costs, keeping track of the calculations can become messy.
This is why I created the Tabnest Handmade Product Price Calculator.
Instead of trying to remember every cost each time you price something, you can enter your materials, packaging, other costs, labour and overhead information and see the pricing results together.
👉 [Calculate My Product Price]
The goal isn't to let a spreadsheet magically choose the perfect selling price for you.
It's to give you the numbers you need to make that decision with more confidence.
A Simple Craft Pricing Checklist
Before you decide on the final selling price of a craft product, check that you've considered:
✓ Materials used in one product
✓ Packaging
✓ Labour/time
✓ Overhead
✓ Other product-related costs
✓ Applicable selling or payment fees
✓ Desired profit
✓ Your market and competitors
If you've only calculated the first item on that list, you probably don't have the complete picture yet.
Final Thought
Pricing crafts isn't about finding one magical formula that works for every seller.
A crocheted item taking several hours to make has a completely different cost structure from a sticker printed in batches. A candle business doesn't have the same expenses as a jewellery business.
That's why the best place to start is your own numbers.
Know what the product costs you.
Know what you're spending to run the business.
Know how much time you're putting into it.
Then decide whether the selling price leaves enough room for the business to be worthwhile.
Because making sales feels good.
Knowing those sales are actually profitable is even better.
Ready to Calculate Your Craft Prices?
Use the Tabnest Handmade Product Price Calculator to bring your product costs, labour, overhead and pricing calculations together.