How to Price Your Handmade Goods Without Losing Your Mind

Oh no, not another pricing guide?!  

Don’t worry, I'm not going to throw algebra at your face.  

There won't be any spreadsheets, no sun's-perimeter-to-hourly-wage formulas.  

Just some real talk.

Are you a new Etsy seller, a kitchen-table dreamer, or a night owl crafting after your kids fall asleep? (been there, done that!)

This is for you.

1. First, Let’s Talk About the Psychological War 🤯

Before numbers, there’s a battle happening inside:  

“Am I charging too much?”

"Is it good enough to sell it?

“Will anyone buy this?”  

“But this only cost me just a little to make…”  

“Maybe I should price it low to be competitive.”

Let me say this clearly:

You are not competing with Temu. Or Shein. Or the €5 dopamine scrollers.

Those buyers have a limited budget and a different mindset entirely: "How many items can I grab for €10?" Their joy is in the volume, not the meaning. And that’s okay.  

But: they are not your customers.

You are not making for people who want fast and cheap.  

You’re making for people who want connection, purpose, and lasting meaning.

2. Handmade Isn’t Just a Thing, It’s a Relationship

Handmade buyers are different.

They might not always have the words, but what they’re really searching for is:

“This feels like me.”  

“This would be perfect for them.”  

“I want something with a soul.”  

“I want to feel seen.”

"I need something special, something that no one else has!"

 

They’re looking for intimacy, story, and truth, not just another thing.  

And that kind of exchange is non-priceable.

3. Why Handmade's Price Is More Than Materials + Crafting Time 💎

My current amulet for this summer was a rubber band bracelet. Yes, that braided one made of tiny rubber loop bands.  

My youngest son made it for me before he and his brother left for their grandmother’s place to spend the summer holidays.  

Cost in money? Absolute zero.  Would I sell it for a €10K bill? Not even close.  

If someone tried to steal it from me (who would steal a rubber band bracelet anyway?), I’d punch them in the face.  

This bracelet is priceless to me.  

It's not the materials. It's the "why".

Now, if a maker was pricing that bracelet purely by materials + packaging + time, they’d lose the game.  

This is not how handmade pricing works. This cold, by-the-numbers method belongs to factories and machines, where even 1 cent matters.  

For handmade it's the why that matters most. That same "why" is the reason people want to make sure what they buy is truly handmade (and here is How to Spot Truly Handmade Items)

Because:  

A rubber band bracelet can be a gift from a little brother to his big sister moving away for college. 

A handmade brooch might be for a grandmother celebrating her 55th wedding anniversary.  

A ceramic mug with a secret message might be for a coffee-fueled boyfriend working 16-hour shifts.

A quirky keychain might be a gift for a co-worker that survived another endless project while sick. 

The material cost is not what matters.

What matters is the why. The intention. The purpose. The story that will be shared with you - and you, the maker, are going to witness a lot of stories and you will have to honor each one of them.

This is what makes your work sacred - and this is why you shouldn't price it according to mass-produced factory goods and competition.

That’s what your buyer truly pays for. The language of things that can’t be put into words - and it's YOUR job to do it (just differently).

4. How to Price Your Work (The Simple Way) 🧮

This is not a formula but a checklist.  Make sure every part of you is covered: financially and emotionally. Make sure you got your buyer's back when/if things go wrong. 

Speaking of Wrong:

Yes, things can go wrong and more often than not, it won't be exactly your fault - but still you will be the only one that can fix it:

Arrived damaged, arrived too late, it never made it.

Not so cute hiccups, totally out of your control - unless you tossed a ceramic set of mugs in a plastic bag and expected to arrive intact in the other side of the world.

Or you marked an order as "shipped", while you hadn't even started gathering the materials. 

But you don't do that, do you?

Or, things that can be your fault - and it's okay when you are just starting - but still it's your responsibility to make it right: 

A not so clear product description that gave your customer a different idea for your product from what you intended to.

A miscalculated size.

A minor misunderstanding during communication with your customer, a lack of clarification that turned out things entirely different from what expected.

A faulty material.

A misbehaving button (I get these all the time).

A totally unexplained mistake: customer ordered blue, you made pink - yes, I have done that too and I still have no excuse and no explanation on how I could possibly have misread BLUE as PINK.

Even when things go wrong and it's you to blame, it's still okay: As long as you take responsibility and fix it.

Yesterday.

Of course, you will eat the loss and say thank you for the opportunity - not everyone gets the chance to fix their mistakes.

Oh yes, The Checklist: How to Price for Profit, Purpose, and Peace of Mind 🧮

 

A. Start with Materials  

Include every part you use up: leathers, fabrics, beads, stones, thread, charms, buttons, colors, chains, closures, glues, anything.

B. Add Your Average Time+Skill Fee 

This is not “minimum wage,” it is your sacred time and it's sacred because it includes all the years of studying your craft, practicing, failing, learning, improving, the last-minute adjustment your customer asked at 3 am that basically got you starting over, the rushed shipping request to meet a birthday and all the extra miles you marathoned in between.

You designed, refined, practiced. You made things just to test their behavior. And then you tossed them into hot water, cold water, into the sea and a pool full of chlorine and chemicals. To see how they react.

You made things just to let them out and exposed into a full year's weather to see what will happen, so you can have all the answers - or at least most of them.

Every time someone reaches out and asks you:

Can I wear this when showering? Can I go swimming with it? Can I wash it? Can I leave it on my porch? Will the color fade if exposed too much to sunlight? Will the clasp rust? Will the cord cut off after swimming daily while wearing it? Will it shrink? Will it stretch? Can I dry it? How can I polish it? How can I store it? Will my dog chew it? 

You have the answers.

Give yourself a skill honorarium. It matters.

Choose a flat amount that feels good for you, respect your own presence, keep room for flexibility: some times it might be a bit less, some others it might be a bit more. 

Sometimes, the materials outnumber the crafting hours, some other times the crafting hours outnumber materials. Your work's elements and factors are not symmetrical. 

You might have 5$ materials and spend 8 hours to make it. You might have 35$ materials and spend 30 minutes to make it.

Be genuine and fair for both sides: Yours and your buyer's.

C. Add Shipping & Packaging Costs Separately

This can be baked into the price (we all know there is no such thing as "free shipping", don't we?) or shown clearly at checkout, but don't forget it.

Then round up everything to a clean, sustainable number.

That's it!

Every price must honor four truths: Time, Materials, Maintenance, and Mission.

Your non-algebra formula for pricing (the boring math):

Materials + Labor + Overhead + Profit = Price

🎯 5. Quick Tip: Build a Tier System

To avoid pricing chaos for every single item until you get too familiar with everything, try making small internal tiers, they can save you a lot of headaches.

Tier 1 → Minimalist, low-material crafts = X price
Tier 2 → Mid-level difficulty and/or custom touches: Y price
Tier 3 → High-end, personalized, rare-material pieces, the great crafting hour eaters: Z price

You’re just creating structure and rhythm and a trail to follow.

🌀 6. Ask the One True Question

“Would I make this again with joy, if someone ordered three more tomorrow?”

If you’d sigh and dread it, then your price is too low.  

If you’d feel energized and honored, you found the sweet spot.

This one question will save you months of burnout. 

DON'T FALL INTO THE "BE COMPETETIVE" TRAP. Please.

Please.

👶 7. For New Etsy Sellers & Makers Starting Small

Most of us begin small. Maybe you’re a full-time parent, a student, or someone rediscovering joy after burnout. Maybe you’re squeezing this between lunchboxes and laundry. That doesn’t make your work any less valuable.

When I started my own journey, it was during a lockdown, with 2 little kids hanging 24/7 from my sleeve, a divorce on its way, 500km distance from any familiar person, zero leather crafting skills/experience or relevant studies and barely enough money to cover that month's food. 

I knew nothing about anything, but I knew that I had to make it work. Somehow.

Even if you can only work in fragments of time during a day, you’re allowed to:

Replace your materials  

Cover your packaging + shipping  

Save for new, better tools

Buy ice cream for your kids and take them to the movies

Put aside even €1 as savings - YES, THAT LITTLE!

If your pricing doesn’t cover that, it’s not serving either you or your buyer, so please adjust it.

Remember that handmade doesn’t compete but connects.

You are not a factory. You don’t compete with fast-made goods. You don’t need to compare or undercut.

You’re offering something personal and alive.

You’re pricing not just for the product, but for the trust it carries:

For all the answers you have to all questions.

For all quirks and humble custom requests.

For all the extra miles you're willing to walk for them.

For all the words that can't be spoken, but can be perfectly shown through your hands.

 8. A Final Story to Leave You With 💖

One tiny necklace I made as a gift for a customer in the other side of the world. We communicated awkardly with google translator all the way along.

She mentioned that she “could use some confidence” while we discussed her custom engraving on a phone strap along with some light-hearted genuine conversation.

I surprised her with a little charm that I slipped in her package as a gift, made with all my heart: two tiny leather leaves from upholstery remnants, a few clear quartz chips - basically scraps that had no other use.  

I put them together into a flower-shaped pendant, with a simple cord.  

The cost in materials was maybe 30 cents.  

It took me less than 15 minutes to make it.

  
The real cost was her tears when she saw it and a 2 pages long thank you message full of smiling and crying emojis, colorful hearts, some words that were left untranslated forever (google gave up)  and many, many exclamation points!

That necklace became her “guardian mermaid”, even when I had a lotus flower in my mind while making it. 

It was her talisman for confidence. I saw a truth in it and I felt it. She saw her own truth in it and felt it.

How do you put a price on that?  

You can’t.  

The joy this little pendant gave me by the sentimental value it carried for her, was and still is something that can't be compared with even her ordering 10 or 100 of those phone straps.

I have many, many similar stories about tiny surprises I have sneaked into packages, inspired by a single word, the message's tone, or a slight detail I captured, made with outmost care and joy, and I swear to you, this is what makes me love my work the most, way more than my monthly revenue.

We, makers, creators, handcrafters: we connect people with purpose and meaning.  

Pricing isn’t about numbers alone, but about honoring that bridge. You are on a great mission, my fellow maker!

 

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Let’s keep lifting each other up, one handmade piece at a time.