Leaderboard

I think it needs another watermark

There's nothing wrong with being a newbie. I was once too. You will have some investment in time in the early stages but it's worth it. Many of the new cutter owners give up on the graphics side of it and eventually lose interest altogether. If you hang tough and really work at it you will one day realize you are pretty much past the learning stage and into another phase of cutter life. I kid you not you will look back and wonder what seemed so hard. (assuming you actually work through the learning stages)

I just do this as a hobby, but for the most part I don't think in terms of cost per quantity of vinyl used. I think in terms of time. If something takes me an hour to do vs something that takes 15 min. I'm going to charge more for the hour one even though it maybe smaller than the one that takes 15min. I will admit though, customers don't think this way. They think the bigger something is, the more it will cost, when in reality, bigger items are often times cheaper to produce in terms of time, and time is the real cost of vinyl decals.

Something else, The graphics programs are handy for a myriad of other things too. I am actually more versed in Adobe Illustrator and use it the most but all the full level design programs can do all sorts of other tasks. I make awesome calendars and printed projects for my kids at school, I have imported PDF construction drawings and red-lined changes that needed made, drawn on screenshots of google earth to create wicked cool maps, build great looking t-shirt order forms, etc... the possibilities are limited only by your own creativity.

I'll charge more or less depending on the difficulty of the weeding as well. If someone wants something supersmall, I add a surcharge. I'll charge less if the thing is huge and super easy to weed.