Pricing your work

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Burchtree
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Location: Upper Michigan

Pricing your work

Post by Burchtree »

Hi all
I find myself laid off again. ( 3 times in 4 years ) This last layoff was only going to be for 2 weeks. I’m on my 6th. week now. It’s becoming apparent now that I’m going to have to step up my plans for using the ShopBot for more income. I have both VCW and PVC
What I need to know from people that are selling their work is. What are you selling? What sells best? How much do you get for your work? How do you go about pricing your work?
Thank you
Dan

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Wemme
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Re: Pricing your work

Post by Wemme »

Burchtree wrote:Hi all
I find myself laid off again. ( 3 times in 4 years ) This last layoff was only going to be for 2 weeks. I’m on my 6th. week now. It’s becoming apparent now that I’m going to have to step up my plans for using the ShopBot for more income. I have both VCW and PVC
What I need to know from people that are selling their work is. What are you selling? What sells best? How much do you get for your work? How do you go about pricing your work?
Thank you
Dan
Hello Dan,
Bugger about loosing your job, I am interested in what people have to say on these topics too.

I am 100% self employed and running my cnc Part time amoung other activities as i'm still setting up my cnc etc.
I have been making alot of table reserved signs and Table numbers which have been selling well however I have had to do alot of street walking to markit them. If you just started up shop you will need to get out there and see what you can sell.

I worked out i would need $X per minute to cover machine, power, shop, rent and labour, etc, etc.
If you find/design a product check to see what the precieved value is for it vs manufacturing cost & time etc.
I had a product which i could make and happily sell for $10 and make good money on how ever the precieved value was $25-$30.
your better of selling them for $25 then $10.

Also v carving your details / branding them permantly on the bottom is a good advertising practise you will be amazed at how well this can work to generate new sales.

Here we have alot of sign writers that only have vynal cutters and do brush work etc, if you have such people in your area talk to them about cnc options for custom backing boards for their work, vcarving and letter cutting, etc, they normaly use .ai and .eps which can be imported into VCW so this can reduce cad work.

Shopbot forum has a bit of pricing info and other items which may help in the business thread.

Best of luck.
Regards
Bart

CRFultz
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Post by CRFultz »

I just charge a flat rate per hour of machine time..round up on the quarters...min...1 hour
The flat rate pays for the material and tooling and sometimes they make out sometimes I make out.
This is just a hobby for me and not my income so things are going to be alot different on your end.
Good Luck......Check out the Litho's they sell quick.
Chuck

BILL J
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Post by BILL J »

I would go with Bart's advice. I am a professional salesperson fulltime and this has helped me with my shopbot projects greatly. You will really have to get the word out. This means making up some samples and hitting the streets. You'll want to cherry pick your target market a bit so get out some phone books and make a list of all the sign shops /cabinet shops/ solid surface fabrication shops/ schools/ building contractors/ and even manufacturing plants in your area. I would go about 50+ mile radious. Hitting all of these existing businesses will start your cashflow quicker as you will get subcontracted for small projects at first while these folks feel you out and you decide on a specific product to market or just decide what it is you like to fabricate. Give it some time as it is rare to get a good hit on the firs go around and keep at it. These folks require 2,3,4 ,10 20 calls before you begin to stick with them. I called on an account for over a year and a half in my fulltime job before I began to do business with them. Once I got my shot I proved my muster and ended up writing over 1million with them in the last year. Moral ... don't give up if you think the business is there.

A couple of customers may surprise you. Manufacturing plants for example. Their maintenence departments have their own tooling shops and not all of them are state of the art. These guys are always looking for solutions to fix their production equipment etc. Or make their workflow faster. One plant wanted me to mill the flashing off of a manufactured part via my cnc. They were routing them off by hand. At a good price I would have been given over 1000 parts a month to mill. I considered it but truth be told it wasn't the kind of work I wanted to do with my machine so I turned it down. If I relied on my cnc for my primary income then things may have been different but it was nice to be given the opportunity.

Schools, Rotary Clubs, etc etc are always looking for fundraisers. This is where you can be creative. Develop a product that can be made quickly and fairly inexpensively and propose it as a fundraiser. This can be profitable. You will have to give the club a percentage of the profit but they end up doing all the selling. I always thought small address and name signs milled in 1/4" polycarve material would be good for this. A 12x18" polycarve sign could sell for $25-$30 easily. cost about $6 to make take 10minutes to set up and mill. No paint or finish work. sell a few hundred of these at a $12-15+profit ea.

The business is out there for anyone who is creative and puts the effort forth to go get it. I ,like many other 'botters, have made things that were never part of my original intention for the machine and that was only because I didn't dream big enough for the potential market. The customer has surprised me many times.

I tend to run on and could talk longer on this subject but hopefully you get the idea and I hope this helps. Best of luck

Bill

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Burchtree
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Post by Burchtree »

Thank you all for your in depth response’s.
Information on this subject I’m sure will help many people wanting to start a part or full time business. Marketing may prove to be the hardest part of the whole process.
Dan

Peter Stenabaugh
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Location: Calgary, Alberta Canada

Post by Peter Stenabaugh »

Hey guys, can anyone give me an idea where I might purchase some polycarve in Canada?

Thanks,

Peter

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