ashkore21

My first Bulk job - How much did i short myself?

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So this is my 1st post here so glad to be here. also to start i realize after the fact that i definitely shorted myself. i am just curious on what others would have priced for this sort of job.  

Background: i just purchased my 1st plotter about a month ago and after feeling confident i  went to facebook to test for smaller decal sort of jobs for friends. A person asked i could do 2 decals for their son who passed away. long story short it  end up being 30 decals total.  

So here are the details.

The Customer wanted 2 In memory decals for their son. 1 was a 3 color 10x7 and the other is 5x4 2 color. 

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for the 10 inch i charged each. for the 5 i charged 5 each. i gave a small discount and ended up coming out to 150 total

Now like i stated i know i short changed myself because i had to design the image which took a good 4 hours because the image they gave me was shotty. and learning the color transfer was a process.  Also now that its designed any time they want something its just a cut and weed process in the future :).7

So my 3 questions are here

1. What would you have charged for the job?

2. How do you guys price multi-color decals?

3. What sort of discounts do you guys give on bulks orders? or do you do it all? 

 

thank you guys in advance and i look forward to posting alot and learning lots more

 

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It doesn't sound like you under priced that bad for MY area. If you priced at $150 overall that's an average of $5 per decal. The 10" design looks like a mother to weed though so there was probably a lot of time spent with that. I usually add a decent amount of it's going to be that kind of weeding. OR better yet I outsource it to someone who prints and then just add a little mark-up to the job. 

You messed around for 4 hours on the design but that was mostly due to you being new. I would have had a half hour tops into those even starting from scratch so you can't look at that part as something the customer should be paying for your inexperience. You'll get better and that will not hurt as much. If you want you can add a design charge to the job for future projects if they don't have a good file. Maybe 1 in a 100 will have a file that will be what you need. Even a decent vector file usually had all sorts of layers and gradients and clipping paths you'll have to learn to deal with to be "Cut Ready". I am savvy enough that I use the design aspect as a selling point and basically don't charge for any design time on any decent sized order or for repeat customers that do regular work with me. They love it because most of the other shops stick it to them in that regard. That being said it's not unreasonable to ask for design fee's so it's a personal choice. 

 

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Thanks for the reply. ya the 10 inch was a pain. my goal is to get a printer/cutter but that to come in time. and your right designing times will cut tremendous with experience. Doing this job particularly has let me learn the cut program itself a ton.  Thanks for input 100% definitely will take into consideration about the fee. i mean i dout i will charge it unless its insane. Do you charge extra for multi color? like a percentage?

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For almost any 10x10 or close design im usually charging about 8-10 bucks depending on how difficult the weeding is tho. For that one of yours maybe 12 bucks ,but since they bought a few ,drop it down to maybe $9 each. For extra colors i usually bump it up about 1-2 bucks per decal as well.  I dont charge for design time either as it brings in more business and  like @wildgoose stated, A lot of the shops really stick it to people for a ridiculous amount ,So thats my biggest selling point i always mention to people.....   I know one place that charged anywhere from $45-$85 an hour to design something for you plus the cost of the decal and they wanted you to buy 2 min..   lol.. thats nuts...   the best way to see where your costs are is go to a couple local shops with a design idea( nothing on paper) and see what the cost would be from them and go down from there on what you would charge...    I ended up moving 8 hours away from my main source of customers and they still come to me even tho i hit them with a small shipping fee. Once you get your prices where YOU are happy with and your customers are happy as well, you will be busy in no time.....

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