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After 4-5 months of my dad bugging me i finnaly cut this out for him. Skull and spade are on his Semi truck in black now its on his challanger. I made him install it. I do off and on stuff mostly in R/C land hobby field few odd ball stuff for co-workers.

See, what's Trending right now is vinyl that looks 'Hand-did'. Here's the original, vectored, in case any of you n00bs wanna offer something Vogue to your Clients. (of coarse, change the Name and fone to suit) CowboyRescue.eps

I kind of liked the before better. Ok, I couldn't even type that that with a straight face. Nice work, one heck of a before and after.

There are a lot of people here asking for insight on how to price particular jobs, so here is a fool-proof way to gauge what you should be charging for a job. This is going to be long-winded, but there is a lot of information to consider. You could ask 20 different members what they would charge for the same sign, and you will most likely get 20 different answers. The reason: OVERHEAD. Everyone has different needs, and they charge accordingly. You need to calculate what it really costs you to make the sign other than materials & time. I was very guilty of this in the beginning. I knew what it cost to make the sign, so I would find out what comparable shops in the area would charge. I would drop my price to get the job, but I also did it because I felt guilty for charging so much, knowing what the materials cost. What I didn't know, is that I was leaving a lot of things out of consideration. EVERY SHOP IS DIFFERENT. You need to figure out what you need to make, to cover expenses and make a profit on each job. Its nice to do things for free or at cost, but you are in business to make money, right? So here we are. You have a customer that wants a nice, big 4' x 4' window graphic. Single color vinyl, and the old graphics need to be removed. Cake job right? These are my bread and butter jobs. Customer says that he wants a proof and an estimate prior to signing off on the job. The proof, a no brainer. But how much am I going to charge? You need to know your shop rate first. How much is my time worth? What bills do I need to cover? Am I paying myself? Am I paying employees? These are all important things to know before you ever give a number to a customer. First off, find out all of your monthly expenses pertaining to your business, MINUS MATERIAL, this is charged seperate. (spreadsheet attached at the bottom) **Home Businesses** - the best way to figure out how much of your home expenses to include in your business expenses, divide the square footage of area in your home devoted to your business, and divide that by the square footage of your home. that will give you a percentage, i.e: 250 sq ft / 1000 sq ft = .25 or 25%. This is not exact when it comes to things like electric and water, but it will get you in the right ballpark. Monthly Overhead: These items should include Rent, utilities, equipment loans, services (accountant, courier, cleaning etc.) Subcontractors, licenses, association dues, equipment servicing, software purchases/subscriptions, vehicle expenses/gas, taxes, insurance, & payroll. Now this is just a short list of major expenses incurred, that most might forget about that aren’t doing this every day to make a living. As an example, mine comes out to $2,415.00 Monthly Gross Wages: If you’re paying yourself too, (which you should) decide an amount you'd like to make per week, add 30% to cover taxes, and multiply that by 4.34 (the average number of weeks per month: 52 divided by 12) and you have your average monthly salary plus taxes. So, I pay myself (relatively cheaply) $500 per week + 30% = $650 x 4.34 = $2821.00 Add that all up, and that is your monthly "nut" that needs to be covered before you ever make a profitable cent. I know I haven’t covered material, but that comes into play later. So I need to cover $2,415 + $2,821 = $5,236 every month before I am profitable. Calculating Your Shop Rate: So now we have a good idea of what I actually have in the way of expenses, and I really need to make more signs to cover all that! Speaking of making signs, how many hours a week would you say you actually devote to actual sign production? These are your actual Billable Hours. this is a vital piece of information in calculating what your shop rate is. With a little bit of time, you can figure out how much time you are actually spending making signs. This isn’t difficult, it just takes a little discipline to jot down the actual time you start and stop while working on signs for a typical week. its not uncommon for a smaller shop (like myself) to have one person doing everything and only spend 15-20 hours a week actually producing signage. Most of us are not as productive as we would like to think we are, especially if you have a home business, all sorts of distractions get in the way. That’s part of life. But be diligent with your time tracking to find out how much time you actually spend producing products. On any given week, I spend 18-22 hours making signage. So we'll use 20 hours as the benchmark. Now, I don’t know about you, but I like my time off with family and friends. That needs to be accounted for. I take about 3 weeks off combined thorough the year for holidays, birthdays, and vacations. That Gives me 49 production weeks per year. 20 x 49 = 980 Annual Billable Hours. We're almost there! Its all a "simple" math equation now! Monthly overhead: $5,236.00 x 12 months = Annual Overhead $62,832.00 Divide your Annual Overhead: $62,832.00 / by your Annual Billable hours: 980 = Hourly Rate Before Profit $64.11 Add your profit percentage: 25% (you decide what you should add on) to your hourly rate: $64.11 = $80.14 - Hourly Shop Rate Now you know what each hour you are making signs should cost. Don’t sell yourself short, this is a service you are providing, and most of your price is going to be time, not materials. Back to the Customer Sign: Time: So, 4' x 4' single color vinyl sign with removal of existing and new installation. Simple logo and text design, time - 30 min No revisions, customer gives ok Set up cutter & time to complete cut - 20 min Weed & Mask - 20 min Travel to & from worksite - 15 minutes to, 15 minutes from Time to remove existing graphics & clean window - 60 min Set up and install new graphic - 30 min So The total time on this sign is 3 hours and 10 minutes x Shop Rate of $80.14 = $253.78 in labor Materials: ORACAL 951 - $1.27 Per Sq Ft x 16 Sq Ft = $20.32 in vinyl RTape ApliTape 4075 - $0.12 per Sq Ft x 16 = $1.92 in transfer tape Total material cost - $22.24 Just about done! Now you don’t want to just move material through your shop, and break even. You have to account for waste, so you mark up the material. I normally markup higher on small jobs and less on larger jobs. This one I'll do 3x material cost $22.24 x 3 = $66.72 Material cost to customer Add your time and materials $66.72 + $253.78 = $320.50 You now have an accurate price that takes into account all of your expenses, the time it took to make it, and the time it took to install it. When I first started I would look at this and say to myself "How can I justify over $300 when I know that it only cost me $20 in materials?" That was the un-educated, younger version of myself. There's more than just material in the price of the sign. Find your shop rate and don't be afraid to price accordingly. Your time is valuable. If a customer can't appreciate that, move on to the next customer. DON'T SELL YOURSELF SHORT! Dont forget to get the spreadsheet below Shop Rate Calculator.zip

all, What do you all think?

Dis this earlier this week. Just shows you that it doesn't take hours of design to make a massive improvement

Dog tags are cheaper I know it sounds cruel but in the end the only way to know what's happening is to use a sub blank. You can do just a small section of the black each time you test and move to another section for the next test.

There isn't enough give in 651 to wrap a car. Wrap vinyls have a lot of stretch to them that you will not get with 651. Look at Oracal's website for the correct selection. http://www.orafol.com/gp/americas/en/products/digital-inkjet/vehicle-wraps-9785

When I see the dark part at the bottom the 1st thing I think of is your site is haunted. It looks like something out of a horror movie. "The web site has eyes."

looks like 1/4" luster board to me. Layered plywood with .032 aluminium on both sides, we used to use the stuff all the time.

Did he specifically request it be the exact same material? Just get something that will meet the targeted lifespan. He wont care what its mounted to if it lasts as long as he wants it to.

Simple, clean, effective. Plugs right in to your forum / user base... Perfect. Who are you hosting with?

Don't delete it..... Post up the completed pictures.

Thanks I snagged a copy.....Not really but I liked the concept.

Oracal 651. dark red. way he treats the car it will last far longer then 6 years. far as weeding. Not hard at all. less of a challenge then the ones i cut for his semi yet same level of detail.

You would be better served downloading a recent version of ikscape and spend your training time on that instead. You will still need SCALP to cut from but I think there may even be an inkscape plug-in. SCALP is weird and quirky and most of what you learn there will be wasted if you ever eventually upgrade to a pro cutter. The skills with inscape will be much handier to you down the road. (I am an illustrator guy and I kind of clunk around in inkscape but still give it props as the best bang for the buck vector design software out there. FREE)

You can print some paper birthday banners with it. Aqueous phototex. Indoor stuff.

And nobody got killed. Win - win

Something like this... Then layer the gold on top of the red and you're done.

Re Install it you shouldn't lose anything they are on your hard drive

Lost my Dad when I was about 22. My Mom lived quite a bit longer but eventually passed on about 4 years ago. It's a pang that never truly goes away. I believe you have it right though, She is with loved ones in a better place. We lived before this life and will live on after it. "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God, who is our home" -William Wordsworth

No problem Quick Draw, you must have fired back a reply at the same time I was trying to get a good link posted.

You may want to scroll through your 'Add/remove programs" list chronologically and look for the one in there you don't recognize. Often you can pick these things up when you download and install something. When installing sometimes before it starts there is a screen with things p re-checked and people just hit OK without realizing If it's taking you to a specific page Google search "how to remove xyz"

No offense Jay but, it had nowhere to go but up. Kudos for making the sale, though. There are a few around here with similar adverts... Chased a few down and pitched them. Too Cheap or Too Ignorant to realize the Benefits of the Improvement. Way mo' Better!

i use pizza boxes... 50 boxes for about $30.. I'm only using 15 or so. but have plenty for future colors. https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlbr9njxdhs9pmw/Photo%20Jun%2021%2C%205%2014%2046%20AM.jpg