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Personally I'm around the $4 or $5 range but that doesn't cover smaller stuff. It's a graded curve and I use the wet thumb in the wind method to determine what exact pricing point I want to charge.

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5 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

Personally I'm around the $4 or $5 range but that doesn't cover smaller stuff. It's a graded curve and I use the wet thumb in the wind method to determine what exact pricing point I want to charge.

The small the decal the higher you go per sq foot? i heard some others are around $7-12 in my area, but im not a professional sign shop. i was using a vinyl calcutor to see about prices and stuff but was a little confused at how they have it set up. http://vinylcalculator.com/ is the site and it gives a little info about how much it cost you but how much you would charge for a decal at that $7 sq ft charge. im not very good in math but trying to get there with it. 

 

here is what im looking at 

vinyl cost 10 yards by 24 inches $19.79

shipping    $9.99 

total  $29.78

is .003 sq in or .50 sq foot

app tape 12 inches by 100 yards  $38.98

shipping $9.99

total $48.97

it is .001  sq inch or .16 sq ft

 

DECALS 

25 white decals at $7 sq foot 2 inches by 3.5 inches are  $8.51 (there cost?)

 

and i believe my cost with app tape is $0.80 correct?

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I just do this as a hobby, but anything I sell I just price at what I would be willing to pay for it. A little more professional way to do it would be to simply figure up the cost of the material you are using and then add in your time at a reasonable hourly rate and you have your price.

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1 minute ago, darcshadow said:

I just do this as a hobby, but anything I sell I just price at what I would be willing to pay for it. A little more professional way to do it would be to simply figure up the cost of the material you are using and then add in your time at a reasonable hourly rate and you have your price.

me too i updated the comment above with a little more math i wanna see if im may be correct or not. 

 

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To keep it simple, just figure the cost of vinyl per inch. For example a 24"x10yard roll of vinyl is say $20. That works out to 5.5 cents per inch. Now lets say you make a decal that is 10"x5". take your 5.5 and multiple by 5 and you're at 27.5 cents double that to cover cost of app tape and you've got 55 cents of material wrapped up in the decal. In reality there is actually much less so as you can see unless you are making huge decals, the material cost is pretty irrelevant and the price really comes down to how much time do you spend to make the decal and what do you want to pay yourself per hour. If you're doing the install that is additional time, and you want to account for travel.

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so is the information that i stated correct with the pricing and all? i understand how you are doing it but i want to get a actual cost of everything that way i can show profit at the end of the year to myself. i guess im just dumbfounded on throwing out a price cause sometimes my customers say im really cheap and im really thinking of going full time because some of the shops in my area wont touch little decals or want a arm leg and first born for bigger ones. i know they have more overhead than i do. but customer say he was quoted $125 and i quoted $75 for the same thing

 

Is there a actually software or place where its just like the site but it calculates everything?

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I usually just figure if it fits in a square foot (counted as per where my rollers are so actual size up to about 10") then I charge about $8-$10 unless it's ridiculous easy weeding or ridiculous complicated the price then might slide up or down. Same with volume, more often means a little cost savings. You can set up and cut 5 in about the same time as one. The actual cost of the vinyl is relatively little compared to the equipment use and time spent. My cutter cost $3500 so I try to recoup that as I go along. I use up tons of scraps when doing little odd jobs so that's all been paid for by someone on another job.

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Yeah, your math is good. If you're just wanting to know the profit at the end of the year just look at expenses vs income. :) Basing cost of decals off of size alone is foolish as often times larger decals can actually be easier and faster to produce than small ones so in reality you could sell a large decal cheaper than a small one. But people don't think that way and are willing to pay a higher price for a larger decal even though it cost you less time and time is money. As I said, most of what I sell I charge what I would be willing to pay. 

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Thanks very much i got the job and will be working on it asap. He told me i was under priced at what others told him they would do it at. so i got more business in the process!!!

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The old saying is still true. "You can shear a sheep many times but you can only skin him once." As long as you are making money you're headed in the right direction. Return customers are awesome and they tell others about you. You may find you have to raise your prices at some point but in the meantime you can chalk up the difference to the cost of getting an education in vinyl. In a year to two when you become really good at this and truly know your prices and your competition you can raise your prices up bit and not upset too many apple carts. I did it. Basically when I raised mine if anyone commented (not many did) I just said I had been running too close to the margins and had to adjust a little. No one expects you to do it for free. Well, that may not be totally true but the people you WANT as clients don't. The rest you can live without because as you get busy your time becomes more valuable since it's a limited resource.  

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I am WAY new to this, but what i have figured out so far, and it works for me, is i have a standard rule of $1.00 per inch on a 24" roll.

So a 5" x 8" graphic would be $5.00 AND if its something you might be able to sell another of, ie a basic window sticker, cut 2 out of the same 5" vinyl and now thats just free money. Might not be the best way to figure stuff but has worked for me in my limited experience.

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As much as possible + 10% lol

I use mostly 751 or other high performance vinyl except for short term signage and signs, banners auto signage and back lighted signage

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I use another online calculator to give me an idea. but on smaller things it seems too cheap to me. I also mainly use 651 for most decals. I see 1 post saying a $1 an inch. so are u saying 1x24 decal is still $1? the calculator I use quotes $1.78 for that size for a reg design, moderate is $2.23, intricate $3.12

now ive seen other calculators that you can put in all of your overhead cost and time spent on the design to calculate cost. even calculated cost of equipment for time used.  that's a little too much for me at this time. but  if I go into this full time I will prob use it to set  a base price from it .

the good thing for me is the guy closest to me is the highest in town, he has a ton of business because of location. I just did a few sm 2" decals for a cust/friend , he was quoted $65 from that guy. I did them for $20 and felt was making plenty.

just had someone ask for me to quote doing 25  1"x5"  and 15  3"x3"  the 25 1" is just txt . I pick font and color. the 3" is tem logos. I get to pick color. I feel I struggle more pricing these sm decals than larger 1s.

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On 11/30/2016 at 4:01 PM, livinloudgraphics said:

so is the information that i stated correct with the pricing and all? i understand how you are doing it but i want to get a actual cost of everything that way i can show profit at the end of the year to myself. i guess im just dumbfounded on throwing out a price cause sometimes my customers say im really cheap and im really thinking of going full time because some of the shops in my area wont touch little decals or want a arm leg and first born for bigger ones. i know they have more overhead than i do. but customer say he was quoted $125 and i quoted $75 for the same thing

 

Is there a actually software or place where its just like the site but it calculates everything?

As I recall from a previous post of yours , you have Flexsignpro,, This feature of figuring exact costs is built right into it.. So why not use it? 

FLEXI ESTIMATE.jpg

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On 1/18/2017 at 5:33 PM, MZ SKEETER said:

As I recall from a previous post of yours , you have Flexsignpro,, This feature of figuring exact costs is built right into it.. So why not use it? 

FLEXI ESTIMATE.jpg

hey thanks i totally forgot about this

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