Am I Losing Money on My Handmade Products After Fees?

2026-10-15

The Sunday the cash tin felt heavy

It's 15:40 on the last day of the autumn craft fair. Your feet hurt. The hall smells of coffee and pine candles, and the cash tin under the table is heavier than it was this morning.

You should feel good. The small ceramic planters, the ones with the speckled glaze, have nearly sold out. A woman just bought three as gifts and said, "These are so lovely, how do you make them?"

You smiled and said thank you. Then you did a thing you do more and more often. You started counting in your head.

The stall fee. The clay. The glaze you ran out of in September. The little cardboard boxes. The hours at the wheel, which you never count, because counting them feels like a different kind of sad.

The numbers don't come out clean. They never do.

The question you don't ask out loud

Your friends say, "You're so busy, it must be going great!" And you nod, because busy is true.

But there is a smaller question underneath, and you haven't said it to anyone: am I actually earning anything on this, or am I paying to be busy?

On the online shop it's even blurrier. A sale comes in, and you feel the little lift. Then the marketplace takes its cut. The payment provider takes another. Postage is more than the customer paid for, because you said "free shipping" once to compete and never changed it back.

So the money that lands in your account is not the money you thought you'd made. It's close. It's just not the same.

And the market-day cash goes in the tin, while the online orders go in a notebook, and the receipts for materials live in a drawer you try not to open.

The price you chose in a hurry

You remember how you set that planter price. Two years ago, at the kitchen table, you looked at what other people charged and picked a number that felt safe. Not too high. Nobody would complain.

You've never really looked at it again.

It's the bestseller, so it must be fine. That's the story you tell yourself. But a bestseller that loses a little on every piece is just a faster way to lose.

You don't know whether that's true. And not knowing is the heavy part. It sits there while you wrap tissue paper around a mug, while you chat to the next customer, while you smile.

The tidy-up at the end of the day

At 17:00 the hall starts to empty. You stack the crates. A neighbouring stallholder, a woman who makes hand-poured candles, is wrapping her last jars in newspaper.

"Good day?" she asks.

"Busy," you say.

"Same," she says, and laughs. "Ask me tomorrow whether it was good."

You both laugh. It's a real laugh, and also a tired one. Neither of you knows. You just keep making, and keep selling, and keep hoping the hope turns into something you can see.

The moment it shifts

On the tram home, the crates on your knees, you do something small. You open a note on your phone and type one product name: speckled planter.

Under it you write what you can remember. Clay. Glaze. Firing. Box. The fee for the table. The marketplace cut. Postage.

You stop at hours. You don't know what to write.

But something has changed. For the first time in a long while, you are looking at one product, one line at a time, instead of at a fog. It isn't pleasant. But it is clear. And clear is a lot better than the fog.

You realise that the answer was never going to come from selling more. It was going to come from seeing one thing properly: what each piece costs you, what the fees take, and what is really left.

That's all. Not a business degree. Not a new shop. Just one honest line per product, kept somewhere that does the adding up for you.

A different Monday

Picture the next market week.

It's Monday morning, and you have a coffee beside the laptop. You open one workbook. The planter has its own row. Materials, fees, postage, packaging, and your time are all there. Next to it sits a plain number: what you keep.

Maybe it's more than you feared. Maybe it's less. Either way, it's yours, and you know it. You can raise the price by a small, calm amount and not feel like you're apologising. Or you can leave it, because you've checked, and it's fine.

The market-day cash and the online orders sit in the same place now. On Sunday evening you don't count from memory. You enter the day, and the picture fills in.

The tin still feels heavy at the end of a fair. But the knot is gone, because you know what's in it.

If this sounds like your table

If you recognise yourself in the speckled planter, the tin, and the numbers that never quite come out, there is a gentle next step.

Price Your Handmade Work Right – Cost, Fees & Profit Calculator is an Excel workbook for makers. It shows cost, fees and profit per product, suggests a price, and keeps your market and online sales in one place. It helps you organise the numbers; the pricing decisions stay with you, and it does not replace a tax professional.

It comes with a 30-day money-back promise: if it doesn't help, you get a full refund, no questions.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.