Are you making these common handmade jewelry pricing mistakes? The biggest pricing mistake of all (and the most widespread) is undervaluing your jewelry. The saddest jewelry businesses of all are the ones that undervalue their work. Why? Because the more sales they get, the more they lose.

Pricing jewelry for the handmade market can be a tough process. You don’t want to sell yourself short, but you don’t want to scare people away either, right?

The sad fact of the matter in the handmade jewelry industry is that most people are losing money on every sale. Often they don’t even realize it. $12 for a bracelet here, $4.50 for a ring there… If this is your strategy you are losing money. Time is money. It takes time to source supplies, and time to make the jewelry, and time to sell it. You have to buy tools and do your books. By selling so low, you aren’t making money, you are losing it in each and ever sale.

Here are some points to consider when deciding how to price your handmade jewelry, AND some of the pricing models other successful jewelry designers use.

Keep in mind that you do much more than make jewelry as a business owner. In order to cover costs and overhead it is essential to charge more than your hourly rate + material costs, or keep your hourly rate on the high side (i.e. $18/ hour is much more realistic than $10/ hour) if you want your business to be profitable.

One mistake that new jewelry designers often make in pricing jewelry is to price their work too low. If that sounds like you, here is some advice and some points to consider:

* Do not compete with imports on pricing! Your quality is better, and you can never compete with those that make $2 a day. Instead, position yourself as the high quality artisan that you are, and command reasonable prices.

* As a newcomer, you can start lower if you would like, and move your pricing up as you become more well-known.

* Lower pricing also can work against you because it cheapens the perceived value of your work. People tend to think that you get what you pay for, so if you charge too low, people tend to think you make garbage.

* If you charge too low, you are not only cheapening the perceived value of your own work, you are also cheapening the work of others because the public learns to think that some artisans who charge what they are worth, are charging too much. Those artisans that charge what they are worth then have to work so much harder to convince customers that their work is worth the cost.

Wholesale and Retail Pricing Models

Common wholesale jewelry pricing models used by jewelry designers:

* 3 x the material cost
* 3.5 x the material cost
* $18/hour-labor plus 1x materials plus 50% (or whatever you want your hourly wage to be)
* Eyeballing – guessing at what it should be worth (not recommended, but common)
* $35/hour-labor plus 1x materials
* $26/hour-labor plus 1x materials plus 50%
* $20/hr.labor + mat. + 5%overhead + 20%profit

Common retail jewelry pricing models used by jewelry designers:

* 1.4 x wholesale
* 1.5 x wholesale
* 1.6 x wholesale
* 1.7 x wholesale
* 1.8 x wholesale
* 1.9 x wholesale
* 2.0 x wholesale
* The ever common but not recommended “eyeballing” method

As you can see, there are lots of different ways to price your jewelry but they are not all that complicated at all. Just pick a pricing model and start calculating.

The key in the end is to turn a profit remember, so never sell yourself short. If your jewelry pricing still seems high, try reducing costs, labor time or increase your perceived value.

The biggest tip of all? Instead of thinking, why aren’t people buying at xxx number of dollars, ask yourself why would they buy at xxx dollars? The answer might be higher end packaging, or it might be doing some publicity to get your name out in the right places. It might be adding extra value or an extra detail that no one else is offering but is highly sought after by buyers. Whatever the answer is, find a way to give them that value and increase the perceived value of your handmade jewelry.

Author Bio: Christine Gierer is a self-taught jewelry designer, crafter, and Work-at-Home-Mom who enjoys reading, writing, and making handmade jewelry. She also teaches courses on handmade jewelry marketing for online business. Get Christine’s free handmade business success lessons and read more articles about how to sell handmade jewelry online

Category: Arts and Crafts
Keywords: handmade, handmade jewelry, pricing models, jewelry, jewelry business, handmade business success