Pricing questions

[doradoo]

Those of you who 'cake' professionally - or even on the side.... how do you price up your cakes?

Hourly rate?
Ingredients multiple?
Random number?

Just starting out for friends who are asking me to do things for them, but wondering how to sell myself - don't want to underrate but also wary of things being -what I'd term too expensive.

Been debating with DH (who's an accountant and not sure if that helps or not) but not really sure where to start - as I seem to either undervalue my skill or end up with a ridiculous amount which I wouldn't pay myself - but then as I would do it myself am not prepared to pay a premium IYSWIM.

Am I overthinking this?

Cost of ingredients, board etc plus an hourly rate, plus a percentage of equipment costs.

Thanks Midori! Kind of adds up to what I was thinking in terms of numbers - but still seems way more than I'd pay for a cake......

However friend was happy, paid more than what I asked and friend's daughter over the moon. Will need to try and have more confidence in what I do and what I charge!

Pricing is sooooo hard. I've been doing it as a business for 18 months or so. You can buy a good app called cakeulator which lets you put in ingredients, tasks (for time) a and your profit margin and it will work out the price for you.
Confidence is a big thing though, I don't think anyone starts out charging enough! Happy to discuss more about setting up and what you need to do etc if you want to pm me.

Ingredients +
Board, box, tissue paper etc +
Bills (electricity, insurance etc. obviously not the whole bill amount! But a small peoportion towards them) +
Hourly rate (your pay) +
Profit

People get what they pay for! Don't undersell yourself, if they don't want to pay how much you charge then they are not the customer for you :)