A sticker business is a great option for artists, designers, and creatives. Starting a sticker shop on Etsy has never been easier. If you are considering starting your own business or adding stickers to your existing business, this is the guide for you. We will cover how to price stickers so you can gain customers and grow your profit margins.
In addition to running our own Etsy shop, we are the preferred sticker provider to a ton of small businesses and Etsy sellers. Many of our customers have told us they make 4-5 figures a month on their sticker products alone.
Pricing stickers can be trickier than pricing other products. This is because the design element on the sticker or sticker packs will greatly influence their perceived value.
Today we'll give you some guidelines to follow to make sure you are maximizing the profit of your decal business.
Calculate the Total Cost to Operate
There are a couple of things to consider here. First, keep in mind that there are both fixed and variable costs to contend with.
Fixed costs are costs that don't change based on the number of sales you achieve. Included in this would be rent costs if you have an office, and equipment costs if you are printing your own stickers.
Variable costs are those that change based on your sales. These would be material costs, wages, shipping costs and supplies, and marketing expenses.
The most important thing to do when managing costs, is to slowly invest in fixed costs, only as necessary. For example, run your business from home, and outsource your sticker printing service.
Stickers Costs
Calculating your sticker costs is simple if you are outsourcing the printing. If you purchase your stickers from Custom Stickers, we offer a low price guarantee, so you know you will get the lowest price per sticker in the market.
For the purposes of our analysis, let's assume you buy stickers in quantities of 100 stickers per design. At CustomStickers we offer 100 vinyl stickers at 3 inches for $37. This means your stickers cost $0.37 each.
Shipping Costs
The simplest way to cover your shipping costs is to simply charge your customers for the shipping fees. Etsy will automatically calculate shipping for you, and charge your customers accordingly if you set it up that way.
Alternatively, you can offer free shipping, and then cover the cost to ship stickers in your pricing. If you are selling single stickers, this may make sense, since your shipping costs will typically be the cost of an envelope and stamp.
Shipping materials are another expense that we can group here. If you buy bubble mailers and envelopes in bulk from Amazon or something similar, you can expect them to cost a few cents each for envelopes and $0.15-0.20 for bubble mailers.
Advertising Costs
If you are selling on Etsy, you can turn on Etsy ads. Etsy ads let you decide how much you want to budget per day to get priority ranking in Etsy search.
We recommend starting with a few dollars a day so you can test what products respond well to ads. As you scale up and gain loyal customers, you can increase your advertising and marketing budget.
When you add up all of the above costs, you can determine how much you need to charge at a minimum to break even. Anything that you charge over your costs is net profit, which means it's more money in your pocket.
Fulfillment Costs
Fulfillment costs are the costs associated with the time it takes you to fulfill an order, or pay someone to do so.
Now once you have an idea of how much it will cost to operate your business, and the average order cost, you can get a sense of how much you want to add on top for a profit margin.
But first, let's take a look at our competition.
Competitive Pricing
Next, you want to take a look at how much other sticker shops are charging for similar products. If you are selling individual stickers, look at what the other sticker businesses are charging for a single sticker (in my experience it's typically $2.50-$5). You can, and should, also look at sticker pack pricing. What kind of discount does a typical sticker business give when a customer buys a pack?
With your costs in mind and a sense of the competition, you can be a bit strategic.
If your art and designs are totally unique and in a niche market, you can probably charge more. People won't be able to get die-cut stickers like yours elsewhere.
On the other hand, if your stickers are spin-offs of other popular stickers, you could consider undercutting the other sticker shops on Etsy with lower prices to entice potential customers.
No matter what direction you go here, you want to make sure you are in the sweet spot that covers your sticker business costs, while not being too high that you price yourself out.
Test and Tweak Your Pricing Over Time
You're ready to launch your sticker business, and know where you want to price your stickers. Great! But don't lock yourself into that price. You should constantly be reviewing your sales data and the ad metrics that Etsy provides
As a small business, you want to make sure you are experimenting. If dropping your price on a given sticker by 10% boosts sales by 30%, it's totally worth it, right?
If you run a sale, note how much of a boost in sales you get. What if you drop prices to the point that you have the best value on Etsy, does that give you a bump?
Advertising can be a cost-effective method to boost sales. On the other hand, you'll find that some of your sticker designs just don't respond to advertising.
Over time, you'll have your sticker shop well optimized so you can start maximizing your profit.
Running your own business is hard work. But it can also give you flexibility and financial freedom that you can't get in a normal 9 to 5 job.
What Else?
We have an obligatory pitch here to consider purchasing your stickers from us at Custom Stickers. We love working with small businesses and folks who sell on Etsy Marketplace.
Our goal is to provide the best quality, price, and customer service in the world.
If you have a lot of different designs, reach out to us. We'll give you the best price.
For reorders we let you order any quantity you need at our bulk prices.
For example, our 100x sticker deal for $37 is typically for a single design. If you have 10 designs that you need to reorder, you can order 5x of one sticker, 20x of another, up to 100 total for the $37.
This is excellent for helping you simplify your inventory and save time. We're happy to print and ship your stickers every week in the exact quantities you need to replenish your inventory. We always offer free shipping, so there is no downside.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this gives you an idea of how to price stickers and improve your business in some small way.
For more, read our guide on how to get your first 100 Sales on Etsy.
