craftgrrl | a word on art and craft marketing

Hey everyone! :) Today's

craftgrrl zeitgeist seems to be all about "site X sells this for $______ but you can make it for $______!" Which is cool, but -

Remember Art Marketing 101 (and for heaven's sake, if you are at least a relatively serious crafter, read How to Survive and Prosper As An Artist or something similar) - when pricing things for sale, people have to consider the time & resources spent.

The reason making it yourself, if you can, may be cheaper, is that you aren't paying yourself an hourly wage, worrying about overhead on things like packaging, paying for your domain and hosting, etc. But sometimes it isn't cheaper.

I'm going to use myself as an example here. The jewelry that I sell - people couldn't make a single item cheaper than I sell it, because of the cost of materials. I use an unbreakable cord and a special jeweler's cement, and while over time and multiple items the cost is lower, for just one item you could not make the same thing at the same strength for less money than I'd charge (you'd have to buy way more cord than you need, and a whole tube of cement to hold your knots - yeah, you CAN use nailpolish, but in my experience it does not hold as well). I use mostly sterling silver findings. It also takes me at least an hour to make any given single-strand bracelet, longer for a lariat or something more complicated, so there is the question of how much I am paying myself per hour to make these things - usually minimum wage, because I don't think the market will bear much more. I also spend time and money in transit to bead and craft stores or on catalogue orders and shipping or whatever. I never use less than two pairs of pliers and one file on an item, but that's a one-time cost for a nonconsumable material - still, if you didn't have them and wanted to duplicate what I do for just one or two items, it would still be more expensive for you. I also spend time and money on promotion. If you bought the items to duplicate what I do, and then offered them for sale on your own, it would be unethical - I've designed all my pieces myself, and you'd need to spend time designing your own. (I think it would be OK to duplicate designs you've seen for sale online if you were just going to make a lot of them as gifts, though, and not selling any.) When you buy a craft item from someone else, you're paying for all these things.

So, I dunno... don't rag too hard on someone who is charging x-y-z for something. it's fair for an independent artist or crafter to make at least a small profit. If you're selling crafts and not considering all these things in your prices, please read up on art/craft business models! you're undercutting yourself. If you're just making a one-off item similar to something you've seen online that costs, say, four times as much as the materials, consider how long it will take you to gather the materials and make the item. The results can be really surprising. :)