Hello all you wonderful people!.. I hope that you are doing great and that life is divine.
I thought I would take a moment to dive into my mail bag and answer a question I get rather often.
Dear Maddie, I have an embroidery machine and people are asking me to monogram things and I don't know what to charge! Signed, All knoted up
Dear Knoted, This can be a good thing, but your first decision is if you really want to be embroidering for others. While it can be nice for a bit of extra change in your pocket it can also be stressful to worry about messing up something that is not your own. ( yes at some point this will happen.. so you need to learn to prepare for it) But just for kicks let's say you are the plucky sort and have decide that you do want to do it... you are still stuck with how much to charge.
There are a lot of formulas out there as to how to figure this out...go ahead, Google them.. I can wait............. ah.. ok... more confused than ever? Yep.. dollars per 1000 stitches, thread changes, stabilizer cost.. yikes!
SO here is my highly unscientific method for figuring what to charge..
How much do you want to make per hour... (yes of course you want to make $100 per hour..but realllly) Let's say $20, for example. So now.. how long will it take you to do a design set up, hoop and stitch out the given name or design.. lets say 5 mins to set the lettering, 5 mins. to hoop and 12 minutes to stitch out the monogram. Total of 22 minutes. At $20 per hour 22 minutes would make you about $7.26 ( round that up to 7.50) ( for the math impaired... $20 and hour is about 33 cents per minute.. take 33 cents times 22 to get your number)
For me it works out this way.. I know that some things are hard to hoop ( flap on a very popular gym bag that I wish would fall off the earth!) so I say they need 10 mins of hooping, some are easy, pillow fronts ( 5 mins), the minutes to stitch comes from the data I get from my machine or my software. In my case if there are over 6 colors I charge a color change charge but that is up to each person. All of these numbers get thrown together and from there I get my total.
Now after a while you will know certain amounts.. like how much a 3 letter monogram on a towel will cost, but until you do, do the math each time, keep track and check back here for a little sheet I am going to post up for just this very purpose. Oh.. and feel free to ask any other questions you have!
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