How can I make a successful career out of hand-crafting creations?

The make-or-break moment is deciding how much you can charge for your creations.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it.

The make-or-break moment is deciding how MUCH you can charge for your creations - not how little.

When somebody asks me how much they should charge, I tell them to take the most expensive figure they can think of and then double it - then double it again for good measure.

People will tell you that the task of a price is to tell customers how much the object's worth. This is a lie. The task of a price is to tell the customer how much you're worth.

The object's worth is merely a reflection of your worth.

If we were face to face, I bet this is how a conversation would go:

You: (hand me one of your flowers) "How much should I charge for this, Phil?"

Me: (after looking at it for a little while) "At least £250"

You: "What? How can I charge that for it, it's only paper"

Me: "No, it's not. The medium may be paper but you have transformed it into a piece of art which can never be replicated. If you tried, the second flower would be slightly different because they are hand-made. So this isn't just a piece of art, it's a unique one-of-a-kind piece of art that if destroyed could never, ever be replaced. And a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of art has to be worth at least £250 to be taken seriously, if not more"

Take a Rolex watch. Here's a Rolex submariner currently on sale on Amazon for just under £10,000.

Rolex Submarine

Yet here's an imitation of that watch for just £70.

rolex submariner copy

Now let's stop and think about that for a moment.

The £70 watch obviously cost less than £70 to make because they still need to make a profit. That means that the £10,000 also cost less than £70 to make. Well, Rolex will tell you that their manufacturing standards are high and they're right, so let's say that with the finest quality materials and expertise that it cost ten times that to make it properly. So a watch that cost £700 is being sold for £10,000.

So, why the difference in price? Because it's a Rolex. People don't buy Rolex to tell the time. They buy it to tell themselves that they made it - or to tell others that they made it.

Now, are you selling the cheap Rolex or the real Rolex?

I shall finish by telling you an amazing secret about prices:

It's really easy to drop a price but it's always a disaster to increase it because people know that you were asking money at the lower price and so only increased it because you were greedy.

And here's another secret about prices:

As soon as you drop a price, people think that they're getting a bargain even if the price was artificially inflated to begin with.

So, if you can't sell you "flowers" at £250, drop them to £200 and put a sticker on them saying "Previously sold for £250".

You can do the same in personal interactions:

"You know what. Because I like you, let's say £200 for cash"

Of course, you do realise the irony of this:

You going to reply back

"But Phil, I already sell my flower creations for £2,500 each"

In which case, I will say "You learn quickly, my padewan"

Credit: The header image is available as wallpaper from wall.alphacoders.com