Absolutely.
This topic, “what should I charge” is everywhere, from cake baking, to photography or what ever. What most fail to do is removing themselves from the buyer perspective, and stay stuckin “how much would I pay”-world.
It doesnt matter what “you” want to pay - the question is “what is my time worth per hr and what do this cost me (tooling/setup)”
I would rather produce 1 item at $50 profit than 10 items of the same at $5/piece profit 
I value my spare time.
I ended up selling those signs for 75$ each to a good friend of mine within a week I had a guy that owns the oldest sign company in my city calling my cellphone to see who I was and how long I’ve been in “business” quite frankly he was scared after seeing my sign that I would be taking business from him. It made my day to be honest, his exact words were that sign is amazing in 50 years I’ve never been able to get the paint lines so clean. He went on to ask if I needed a job I told him this is just a hobby which frightened him even more it seems. This is the first commercial sign I have ever made. I am in the process of building a small shop to move my x-carve out of the house and to allow me to add a few other wood working tools to my arsenal. I actually ran into the owner of that sign company in person he was sad to hear that I am building a shop and getting more equipment.
Now be ready for a visit from the city’s tax auditor. I’m sure the old sign guy is going to go cause a stink with the city to assure you have cut through all the bureaucratic BS. At least that’s what would happen here.
Should open a business and get a DBA, FIN. It cost nothing to do and all cash transactions never happened (I didn’t say that). Also, all your tools you buy will be tax deductible. 
Most of the stuff I’m gonna make and sell will be on Etsy if I had more time I would like to get a Dba and tax I.D. set up, if things take off I probably will !
After reading the post it seems that I’m not alone in the struggle to go above and beyond. I started out with just a few small projects for a part time business and took the plunge to do something big. After a little ok a lot of frustration with making sure everything fit as I wanted it to here is the next to the final product. I’m still working on some of the spacing but if I can give any advise it would be to NOT GIVE UP. I sold this one today and the customer was extremely happy.
Looks fantastic!
VERY NICE!
I would hazard a guess that you sold it to the sheriffs office?
This one is going to it’s new home this very afternoon. It measures out at approx. 14 x 22 inches I only charged 50.00 for it as it is my first attempt at importing an stl into vectric, Guy and Cindy are friends of ours and he is a navy vet.
Otherwise a price of 125 or so keeps jumping out at me
Very nice.
I have done similar things and they dont even want to pay $60. And Im like it should be over $100. Im finding that most people just hop on amizon and get something. Perhaps I just have the wong customers. Need to talk to people willing to spend $
Hi there - not sure if this is the wrong forum to post in, but I’m looking to pay someone to help me make a relatively simple sign. Basically a logo that is made out of simple text letters on 5/8 in birch plus 1/8in acrylic. Can anyone here help?
Sorry about that - will do!
I get what you mean,. I call it the Walmart effect. The Amazon effect would work too. Folks are too accustomed to the cheap,low quality, crap and don’t understand what it takes to produce unique quality stuff or what it’s actually worth.
50$?!? It would cost me 80$ for an oak board lol
My favorite saying when discussing hand made items is “fast, good, cheap - you can only pick two”…
http://www.sixside.com/fast_good_cheap.asp
The Walmart /Amazon effect kills a lot of prospective sales, but there are people who definitely appreciate quality. Don’t get discouraged or sell yourself short.
I can’t a 1.5" strip of oak that is 8 foot long costs me 20$ lol
Ontario
I’m a good 4 hours away unfortunately! I’ve tried kijiji with no results other than people selling used lumber. However I called a specialty place that you apparently need to be a “business” to buy from, I explained that I technically run a business out of my house making these signs and was able to convince them to set me up an account. I asked about wallnut and it is apparently 13.62 per board foot but it is rough lumber and random width? Not sure how that works? Do I show up and get some random piece of wood?
