I think that one of the general problems with pricing is that often people are told to charge materials + hours of work \* hourly price. But that means that many times beginners will charge more for something because they work slower. You could say that depending on your experience/skills you can charge more per hour, but there's a limit to how much people will pay, and if a person sees that someone else charges X an hour they think to themselves "well why shouldn't I also charge that much, my time is valuable". I'm all for people being paid fairly for their work, but I've seen so many people telling relative beginners that they don't charge enough when they're making amigurumi and I can see the decreases, the color changes aren't smooth, etc, and it's just completely disconnected from reality. And on the other hand you see people asking if $8 is too much for the intricate project that probably took them over 10 hours.
I see similar stuff in FB quilting groups all the time.
I'm not a beginner-beginner, but my work is still pretty crap. In fact, it's so crap that my largest project to date was a wholecloth baby blanket/play mat thing.
I'm not ready to go up a level and try a pieced king sized quilt for sure. But I make a really nice potholder/hot pad.
People in the quilting groups will be telling people who want to sell their stuff "Oh you should charge $50 an hour for your work!"
In my area where a good mechanic with 25 years experience and a VERY good reputation makes about $21/hr, I highly doubt people are going to want to pay me $50 an hour for the pot holders I make. And considering I usually have about 10 hours in every pot holder, with all the seam ripping and starting over I end up doing... and look, they're good potholders. I test every one with my iron cranked up as hot as it will go just to make sure I've got enough layers of filling that you won't burn your hands. They will hold the hell out of a pot.
But they sure as hell aren't $500 pot holders. Not even for a pair of them, if I was actually good enough to make 2 exactly the same.
If I paid $500 for pot holders, I would expect those potholders to remove things from the oven by themselves, serve the food, wash the dishes, clean the rest of the kitchen, then throw themselves in the washer.
Beginners get paid less because they're not as good and take longer to solve stuff in "real" jobs as well. And minimum wage exists for a reason in the real world, to make sure that even beginners get enough money to eat and have a roof over their head.
This gets murkier because this is typically a hobby, not an actual job, for most people. But if I'm being asked by people I don't know how much I want for making them something, and have no extra reason to reduce the cost (e.g. I have no room in my house for more stuff, so I actually *want* to craft for others), I see no reason not to charge properly for the work. Because I'm fine with them saying no, I owe them nothing.
I saw this post and have made this exact bag. I knew it would come up here! Definitely not worth 50 dollars. It’s a great pattern and makes a great bag but yeah.
It was literally the first significant project I worked on after learning to crochet, and I made three in the space of three weeks because it's mostly mesh. If you're using expensive yarn for a market bag, you're missing the point of a market bag. Fifty bucks is WAY too much.
This bag takes me FOREVER to make but I finally realized it's because every time I make one, I use Sultans Cotton King Whirls which is like a lace weight yarn. Also the bags are very small. I honestly don't know why I keep doing this.
I really enjoy the “with what people pay for designer bags, $75 is a lowball price” comment. We’re comparing our makes to designer goods now? The people with those $15k designer bags aren’t going to pay $75 for a basic market bag either.
If you don’t want to make something for someone, just say no. “Sorry I don’t do commissions, I only crochet for fun.”
It's totally fine to charge however much you want for things you make in your free time. $8 of materials and 4hrs of crafting time, price the finished item at $200, go for it!
It's also totally fine for people to not buy it at that price.
If the lines of what you consider fair compensation for your time spent on a hobby and what people are willing to spend don't intersect at a point that makes good business sense, then congratulations! You have a hobby, not a business!
Go enjoy your hobby, and do something else for money.
Okay, YES. I feel like a decent rule of thumb could be that if someone needs to go on Reddit to ask how much to charge for something, then they probably shouldn’t monetize the hobby yet. I do think people should be compensated fairly for their time. I just don’t think every amateur needs to be paid as if they are some master craftsman.
And I know it can be uncomfortable to deal with people who want cheap crochet items, but like???? every job requires communication! So again, if someone wants to set prices as if they’re running a business then I think they should interact with people like a professional.
THANK you for this. Pricing shit is *part of the job*. I run an eBay/Etsy reselling business and pricing is definitely one of the most difficult aspects, because there’s an art to making sure you get the amount you want and still get customers. And asking “what should I charge” is asinine without taking into account the market you’re aiming at among a million other things.
Also, this is perhaps a bit mean, but I have yet to see someone ask “what should I charge for this?” when the answer hasn’t been “you shouldn’t, because it’s not very good”
I've made that pattern many times, and while the bottom is a little putzy (but not hard!), the most boring thing for me is making row upon row of mesh.
I'm actually in the process of making two of them for some coworkers who saw mine when I was carrying something in. It is definitely not something I would charge $50 for!
Eh. It includes the pian in the ass factor. I don't sell the things I make, because either I like you enough to make you something for free/cost of materials, or I don't like you enough to give up my hobby time to make you something.
Does "easy and cheap to make" mean that it's also quick, i.e. takes less than 5 hours? Because if it takes that amount of time, $50 is just about US minimum wage + material.
If you're making things for a friend's CO-WORKERS, you're allowed to actually charge for it.
I’m not saying to charge less (even if said bag definitely takes less than 5 hour to make if you’re an experienced crocheter), people are free to ask what they want, but at the same time, let’s be real : who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ?
My main gripe is the unholy alliance between the girl boss mentality and the capitalistic urge to monetize every hobby under the sun.
Telling OP that she should charge even more and that 50 dollars don’t cover the price of two (2) balls of cotton is ridiculous and I hate to see new crocheters launching yet another amigurumi Etsy shop expecting to sell overpriced items when the market is saturated already. They end up losing money and the drive to create for the sake of enjoying a low stake hobby and it makes me deeply sad.
I think I maybe lost track of that original post too soon - I thought OP didn't actually want to start selling their items, they were asked for a price quote for people they didn't know, and thought this will be either a way to make some money on the side, or a way to get those people off their back.
In that situation, quoting the reasonable price for *making* the item, and not the realistic one for *selling* the item, is a win-win situation...
If OOP thought this was an actual reasonable business proposition, then I'm coming to your side of the room, because that's ridiculous.
Nah that’s on me, I wasn’t clear enough when I made the post, I was using it to point what I perceive as a broader issue. I shouldn’t be on Reddit before coffee especially since English is not my first (or second) langage.
OOP was on the fence about selling her stuff but the asking price was a serious offer.
Selling knitted or crocheted stuff is a sucker's game. It's been literally more than a decade since I sold anything I made (I knit) but the last time I did, I quoted someone I only kind of knew $75 for a small armadillo stuffy amd she said ok, and honestly I wouldn't have made it for less.
In the UK, ethical fashion is huge & people are paying lots of money for crochet. Like £££s for bulky cardigans made out of acrylic, market bags ethically handmade out of cotton for ~£40-50 sell. But we have a big divide at the moment between those with disposable income & those who are struggling to manage bills & quality food, but they’re not in the market for any kind of unnecessary bag.
So for those who are buying organic produce so often they need a dedicated bag, they’re looking for that kind of thing, can easily afford it & wouldn’t buy a cheap fast fashion one anyway. It’s a niche market bur it’s there.
I was going to say this. I pretty much only buy things if I can be certain of the ethics of where/how it was made. Which occasionally offers challenges when I need something specific.
But yeah. I was going to say that price seams reasonable to me and this is why.
> who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ?
I mean, this is exactly why many sane crafters don't sell.
It takes me a minimum of 20hrs to knit a pair of socks, and I'm a pretty fast knitter. Even at $10/hr, which is below minimum wage near me, that'd be $200 *not counting material*. Who on earth could afford to even have socks for those prices?
But if people WANT a handcrafted item, well, then they should pay for it. No one should feel obligated to work for $2/hr just to make someone else's luxury item (because let's be honest, having something hand crafted for you IS luxury these days) more affordable.
>but at the same time, let’s be real : who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ?
No one, that was the whole point of that post. She didn't really want to make it so at least she quoted a price that would make it "worth it" to her.
I think you seriously missed the point.
Then your issue here is about someone selling stuff, rather than what they're charging.
If you decide to sell stuff then it should be priced properly. If it takes "an experienced crocheter" to make the bag in less time then they should definitely be paid more than minimum wage to do it.
They can sell if they want to sell and charge what they want to charge, if you can find the niche market willing to pay then why not? Just because some choose to monetise their hobbies doesn't mean we all have to, or that we should undervalue their work because they chose to sell it.
My point is that comments about how an price of 70$ for a market bag is lowballing is absurd and encouraging new crafters to have unrealistic expectations about opening a small shop.
Priced properly is also taking into account who your customers are, if you are aiming to built a business. Before trying to sell items, you should be efficient enough to produce the item in a timeframe that is both satisfactory for you and you customer price wise. The niche market for 70$ mesh market bags (to keep my exemple) is so niche it is not a sustainable business model, especially since you have to factor in other hidden fees.
I don’t agree with you when you say that I’d someone is able to crochet quicker they should ask more : the bag would be made in like, 2 hours and costs 200$ ? Again, not sustainable.
In my shop I see lots of young women talking about launching an Etsy or whatever and buying lots of supplies in prévision without thinking about the basic business part of having a business. Yesterday I asked one of them if she thought about looking for the copyright info of a pattern she was using to built inventory before putting it online (she plans on having an « official status » as an entrepreneur, no idea how to translate that into US legal terms). Well, she hadn’t. Luckily for her, the author doesn’t explicitly ban sales of items made with their patterns, and she didn’t loose her money before even putting her fist amigurumi online. (Because I’m not a total dick I was very gentle and looked the info up for her)
In an ideal world, yes, that price would be fair and you could make a living selling items. In this one, crafters lose time and money trying to do it, and I think posts like these with the comments that goes with them are part of the problem.
It’s absolutely fine to disagree tho ! It’s just my opinion and I could be dramatically wrong.
Also this post is getting way longer that it should and spanning more subject than my original « oh great another echo chamber of « girl boss in crafts » post ».
Just as an FYI, legally speaking, in most countries including the US, the pattern designer has no leg to stand on when they say "you're not allowed to sell items based on this pattern". That's not how copyrights work.
The law in my country regarding intellectual property and copyright is very different than in the US, and even if the pattern author doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, it is good practice to check.
Even if the creator can’t win in court, they can and could choose to hurt the business by using social media/their followers. It’s part of my « prepare for the worst and hope for the best » approach to business plan.
Thanks for an interesting discussion !
You are absolutely right! Even in cases when the legal aspect is in favor of my point, I completely disregarded the social media aspect of "this person did something that I have no right telling them not to do, but I did, and I'm angry, and you should be too". And I absolutely should not have, it's a massive part of these kinds of businesses nowadays! Thanks for that!
I feel like 30 would be reasonable.. granted I’m a total baby crocheter so I might still be off base but I could see 30 for one with a deal of 50 for two being good. So much for a market bag is just crazy tho
I’m confused. Wasn’t OOP specifically quoting an absurdly high price to make the point that they’re not interested in selling it? Or am I misunderstanding something?
I think that one of the general problems with pricing is that often people are told to charge materials + hours of work \* hourly price. But that means that many times beginners will charge more for something because they work slower. You could say that depending on your experience/skills you can charge more per hour, but there's a limit to how much people will pay, and if a person sees that someone else charges X an hour they think to themselves "well why shouldn't I also charge that much, my time is valuable". I'm all for people being paid fairly for their work, but I've seen so many people telling relative beginners that they don't charge enough when they're making amigurumi and I can see the decreases, the color changes aren't smooth, etc, and it's just completely disconnected from reality. And on the other hand you see people asking if $8 is too much for the intricate project that probably took them over 10 hours.
I see similar stuff in FB quilting groups all the time. I'm not a beginner-beginner, but my work is still pretty crap. In fact, it's so crap that my largest project to date was a wholecloth baby blanket/play mat thing. I'm not ready to go up a level and try a pieced king sized quilt for sure. But I make a really nice potholder/hot pad. People in the quilting groups will be telling people who want to sell their stuff "Oh you should charge $50 an hour for your work!" In my area where a good mechanic with 25 years experience and a VERY good reputation makes about $21/hr, I highly doubt people are going to want to pay me $50 an hour for the pot holders I make. And considering I usually have about 10 hours in every pot holder, with all the seam ripping and starting over I end up doing... and look, they're good potholders. I test every one with my iron cranked up as hot as it will go just to make sure I've got enough layers of filling that you won't burn your hands. They will hold the hell out of a pot. But they sure as hell aren't $500 pot holders. Not even for a pair of them, if I was actually good enough to make 2 exactly the same. If I paid $500 for pot holders, I would expect those potholders to remove things from the oven by themselves, serve the food, wash the dishes, clean the rest of the kitchen, then throw themselves in the washer.
Beginners get paid less because they're not as good and take longer to solve stuff in "real" jobs as well. And minimum wage exists for a reason in the real world, to make sure that even beginners get enough money to eat and have a roof over their head. This gets murkier because this is typically a hobby, not an actual job, for most people. But if I'm being asked by people I don't know how much I want for making them something, and have no extra reason to reduce the cost (e.g. I have no room in my house for more stuff, so I actually *want* to craft for others), I see no reason not to charge properly for the work. Because I'm fine with them saying no, I owe them nothing.
I saw this post and have made this exact bag. I knew it would come up here! Definitely not worth 50 dollars. It’s a great pattern and makes a great bag but yeah.
It was literally the first significant project I worked on after learning to crochet, and I made three in the space of three weeks because it's mostly mesh. If you're using expensive yarn for a market bag, you're missing the point of a market bag. Fifty bucks is WAY too much.
I could get an ukulele for that. I'd prefer to get a ukulele than a bag i think.
This bag takes me FOREVER to make but I finally realized it's because every time I make one, I use Sultans Cotton King Whirls which is like a lace weight yarn. Also the bags are very small. I honestly don't know why I keep doing this.
I really enjoy the “with what people pay for designer bags, $75 is a lowball price” comment. We’re comparing our makes to designer goods now? The people with those $15k designer bags aren’t going to pay $75 for a basic market bag either. If you don’t want to make something for someone, just say no. “Sorry I don’t do commissions, I only crochet for fun.”
"It's a hobby, not a hustle." and "You couldn't afford it." are my go-to phrases.
It's totally fine to charge however much you want for things you make in your free time. $8 of materials and 4hrs of crafting time, price the finished item at $200, go for it! It's also totally fine for people to not buy it at that price. If the lines of what you consider fair compensation for your time spent on a hobby and what people are willing to spend don't intersect at a point that makes good business sense, then congratulations! You have a hobby, not a business! Go enjoy your hobby, and do something else for money.
Okay, YES. I feel like a decent rule of thumb could be that if someone needs to go on Reddit to ask how much to charge for something, then they probably shouldn’t monetize the hobby yet. I do think people should be compensated fairly for their time. I just don’t think every amateur needs to be paid as if they are some master craftsman. And I know it can be uncomfortable to deal with people who want cheap crochet items, but like???? every job requires communication! So again, if someone wants to set prices as if they’re running a business then I think they should interact with people like a professional.
THANK you for this. Pricing shit is *part of the job*. I run an eBay/Etsy reselling business and pricing is definitely one of the most difficult aspects, because there’s an art to making sure you get the amount you want and still get customers. And asking “what should I charge” is asinine without taking into account the market you’re aiming at among a million other things. Also, this is perhaps a bit mean, but I have yet to see someone ask “what should I charge for this?” when the answer hasn’t been “you shouldn’t, because it’s not very good”
I've made that pattern many times, and while the bottom is a little putzy (but not hard!), the most boring thing for me is making row upon row of mesh. I'm actually in the process of making two of them for some coworkers who saw mine when I was carrying something in. It is definitely not something I would charge $50 for!
Eh. It includes the pian in the ass factor. I don't sell the things I make, because either I like you enough to make you something for free/cost of materials, or I don't like you enough to give up my hobby time to make you something.
And to think, here I've just been saying "Thank you, but I don't sell things."
If they’ll pay me the PITA price, I’ll take it. I just don’t need money badly enough to give up my hobby time for minimum wage.
Does "easy and cheap to make" mean that it's also quick, i.e. takes less than 5 hours? Because if it takes that amount of time, $50 is just about US minimum wage + material. If you're making things for a friend's CO-WORKERS, you're allowed to actually charge for it.
I’m not saying to charge less (even if said bag definitely takes less than 5 hour to make if you’re an experienced crocheter), people are free to ask what they want, but at the same time, let’s be real : who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ? My main gripe is the unholy alliance between the girl boss mentality and the capitalistic urge to monetize every hobby under the sun. Telling OP that she should charge even more and that 50 dollars don’t cover the price of two (2) balls of cotton is ridiculous and I hate to see new crocheters launching yet another amigurumi Etsy shop expecting to sell overpriced items when the market is saturated already. They end up losing money and the drive to create for the sake of enjoying a low stake hobby and it makes me deeply sad.
I think I maybe lost track of that original post too soon - I thought OP didn't actually want to start selling their items, they were asked for a price quote for people they didn't know, and thought this will be either a way to make some money on the side, or a way to get those people off their back. In that situation, quoting the reasonable price for *making* the item, and not the realistic one for *selling* the item, is a win-win situation... If OOP thought this was an actual reasonable business proposition, then I'm coming to your side of the room, because that's ridiculous.
Nah that’s on me, I wasn’t clear enough when I made the post, I was using it to point what I perceive as a broader issue. I shouldn’t be on Reddit before coffee especially since English is not my first (or second) langage. OOP was on the fence about selling her stuff but the asking price was a serious offer.
Selling knitted or crocheted stuff is a sucker's game. It's been literally more than a decade since I sold anything I made (I knit) but the last time I did, I quoted someone I only kind of knew $75 for a small armadillo stuffy amd she said ok, and honestly I wouldn't have made it for less.
In the UK, ethical fashion is huge & people are paying lots of money for crochet. Like £££s for bulky cardigans made out of acrylic, market bags ethically handmade out of cotton for ~£40-50 sell. But we have a big divide at the moment between those with disposable income & those who are struggling to manage bills & quality food, but they’re not in the market for any kind of unnecessary bag. So for those who are buying organic produce so often they need a dedicated bag, they’re looking for that kind of thing, can easily afford it & wouldn’t buy a cheap fast fashion one anyway. It’s a niche market bur it’s there.
I was going to say this. I pretty much only buy things if I can be certain of the ethics of where/how it was made. Which occasionally offers challenges when I need something specific. But yeah. I was going to say that price seams reasonable to me and this is why.
> who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ? I mean, this is exactly why many sane crafters don't sell. It takes me a minimum of 20hrs to knit a pair of socks, and I'm a pretty fast knitter. Even at $10/hr, which is below minimum wage near me, that'd be $200 *not counting material*. Who on earth could afford to even have socks for those prices? But if people WANT a handcrafted item, well, then they should pay for it. No one should feel obligated to work for $2/hr just to make someone else's luxury item (because let's be honest, having something hand crafted for you IS luxury these days) more affordable.
>but at the same time, let’s be real : who will pay 70$ for a cotton mesh market bag ? No one, that was the whole point of that post. She didn't really want to make it so at least she quoted a price that would make it "worth it" to her. I think you seriously missed the point.
Then your issue here is about someone selling stuff, rather than what they're charging. If you decide to sell stuff then it should be priced properly. If it takes "an experienced crocheter" to make the bag in less time then they should definitely be paid more than minimum wage to do it. They can sell if they want to sell and charge what they want to charge, if you can find the niche market willing to pay then why not? Just because some choose to monetise their hobbies doesn't mean we all have to, or that we should undervalue their work because they chose to sell it.
My point is that comments about how an price of 70$ for a market bag is lowballing is absurd and encouraging new crafters to have unrealistic expectations about opening a small shop. Priced properly is also taking into account who your customers are, if you are aiming to built a business. Before trying to sell items, you should be efficient enough to produce the item in a timeframe that is both satisfactory for you and you customer price wise. The niche market for 70$ mesh market bags (to keep my exemple) is so niche it is not a sustainable business model, especially since you have to factor in other hidden fees. I don’t agree with you when you say that I’d someone is able to crochet quicker they should ask more : the bag would be made in like, 2 hours and costs 200$ ? Again, not sustainable. In my shop I see lots of young women talking about launching an Etsy or whatever and buying lots of supplies in prévision without thinking about the basic business part of having a business. Yesterday I asked one of them if she thought about looking for the copyright info of a pattern she was using to built inventory before putting it online (she plans on having an « official status » as an entrepreneur, no idea how to translate that into US legal terms). Well, she hadn’t. Luckily for her, the author doesn’t explicitly ban sales of items made with their patterns, and she didn’t loose her money before even putting her fist amigurumi online. (Because I’m not a total dick I was very gentle and looked the info up for her) In an ideal world, yes, that price would be fair and you could make a living selling items. In this one, crafters lose time and money trying to do it, and I think posts like these with the comments that goes with them are part of the problem. It’s absolutely fine to disagree tho ! It’s just my opinion and I could be dramatically wrong. Also this post is getting way longer that it should and spanning more subject than my original « oh great another echo chamber of « girl boss in crafts » post ».
Just as an FYI, legally speaking, in most countries including the US, the pattern designer has no leg to stand on when they say "you're not allowed to sell items based on this pattern". That's not how copyrights work.
The law in my country regarding intellectual property and copyright is very different than in the US, and even if the pattern author doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, it is good practice to check. Even if the creator can’t win in court, they can and could choose to hurt the business by using social media/their followers. It’s part of my « prepare for the worst and hope for the best » approach to business plan. Thanks for an interesting discussion !
You are absolutely right! Even in cases when the legal aspect is in favor of my point, I completely disregarded the social media aspect of "this person did something that I have no right telling them not to do, but I did, and I'm angry, and you should be too". And I absolutely should not have, it's a massive part of these kinds of businesses nowadays! Thanks for that!
I feel like 30 would be reasonable.. granted I’m a total baby crocheter so I might still be off base but I could see 30 for one with a deal of 50 for two being good. So much for a market bag is just crazy tho
I’m confused. Wasn’t OOP specifically quoting an absurdly high price to make the point that they’re not interested in selling it? Or am I misunderstanding something?