For things to work out well, the day rate has to have a fair amount of slop in it to account for dead time. On the one hand, it may seem unfair to effectively charge people for the time you’re sitting around waiting for work, but on the other hand there’s a certain price they pay for the fact that your enterprise exists to serve you. (And marketing and research and testing and maintenance and all the other things that don’t hyper-directly lead to product for sale.) One freelance guide I saw suggests setting rates assuming you’ll be billing about 50% of your working day.
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I am a Contractor in a niche sector (Marketing in the main but I also Code-on-Call). I pretty much work with @jbmanning5 's method.
I work out what i am ‘worth’ yearly and then break that down into Monthly, Weekly and thence Hourly slots.
I modify those costs based on the complexity of the job and especially the time-frame (since i am most-often called in to ‘fight fires’).
Over the past 7 years my actual earnings have matched the projected earning with less than 10% variance
Were i to apply this to Glowforge or physical production then my ‘yearly worth’ would be modified by Maintenance and Material Costs.
Ha! Like one of my favorite quotes: “Most SME (Small to Medium Enterprises) undervalue their time and expertise”
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The rule of thumb presented was $50/hr when you’re starting off and if you’re good or have been doing it for a bit and artistry (vs simply making) is required, then you ought to be figuring $100/hr or $1,000/day’s production.
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In my cake shop we go by complexity and serving for our over the top cakes for the higher end clients. We also have set prices for budget clients. Mark up in custom cake industry is pretty high. I need to do some research on laser crafts.
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When I was being taught screen printing, the professional that was teaching was asked this by the students, and his reply was " if you have no other idea, try multiplying your total materials costs by ten ".
This was about 30 years ago, and every so often since then, I’ve remembered his advice, and checked it against my current quotes, and was surprised how often it was pretty close.
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To me a lot of it will have to do with anticipation of sales. A one off needs to cost more than something I’ll sell 100 of.
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You can also look up the good discussion found here:
There was a LOT of information in that thread that I found quite useful
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I totally agree with @markevans36301, it sounds silly but is so true. Trying to figure a bare minimum price will always burn you.
@lairdknox, I owned an art gallery and the most common question from artists was always “what should I charge” and they would always be trying to figure time and materials. I would tell them that its art, if someone doesn’t like it they won’t pay a $1 for it. If they love it they will pay almost anything.
And of course there was always the people who woulds say, “I could make that for a fraction of that price” I would politely tell them “yes, but you didn’t” 
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I just smile and say “OK”. 
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I would just add to what you said to say there is a certain amount of setup time/effort that needs to be spread out over the expected number of units sold.
If someone asks me if I’ll print one decal for them I say “Sure. That will be $10.” By the time I load the appropriate type of vinyl, set up the artwork they send me (assuming it’s usable artwork), print and weed the job, I’m in for at least $10. The total price for 2, 3, or 4 decals is probably also $10 depending on the size. To print 5 decals might be $10.50. The total price to print 50 decals might be $50.
This is a hypothetical example. The point is, it takes a certain amount of effort to print anything. Each additional item printed takes a certain amount of time and material. I could either charge an $8 setup fee and then charge per piece or I can spread the setup cost across the total job.
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Yes. Absolutely. That’s kinda what I was saying… You distribute the up-front cost among the total number of units to be sold. That can include design as well as setup. Basically, any efforts.
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I put in some time as a hand-set printer in college, and pricing was very close to constant for the range of runs we could do. Once the type was set and the makeready was done, each piece took the same four seconds to print. And cleaning the press took the same 15 minutes…
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Now if only there was some way to automatically tie a print job’s data to a Kill-A-Watt meter, and bill by the gigajoule… 
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