AHi there. I'm reading the posts and wondering if my pricing is okay... I charge 87$ for a 2 kg (4 pounds) cake (homemade chocolate, vanilla, banana or carrot) with an average of 750 g (1.5 pounds) homemade buttercream, 500g (1 pound) homemade fondant and (average 500g/ 1 pound) homemade 3D gum paste cake toppers (figures, animals, cars...). Sometimes I made cakes in the shape of the object itself, like a car, snake, cow... I need an average of 10-20hrs from start to finish to make a cake. Delivery costs are not included and I don't use a cake box since they are not available here at all. I'm doing all from home and get good business from mouth to mouth. Of course people also tell others my price and it's the first thing people ask. There is no bakery doing custom cakes at all here, but a few others do cakes (rather basic designs) who are charging less than me. In all the time of doing cakes, I only lost one customer due to the price. But I always read that most people undercharge for their cakes, so pleeease, any tips are welcome!

AHi Julia, how do you feel about your pricing? do you think it covers your costs and are you earning an acceptable wage from your 10-20 hours work? consider summing the minimum wage in your area for 20 hours work and see how that compares with what you are paying yourself.

You can only charge what people will pay and as the only bespoke baker in your area, should you find you aren't happy with your earnings, you might want to limit your hours rather than increasing your price; so if you charge $90 and $20 is your cost of ingredients/utilities etc, if you were happy with $7 an hour pay you can spend 10 hours on your cake, if you wouldn't get out of bed for less than $20 an hour you should only spend about 3 hours on this cake.

have fun baking!

AI am going to be totally honest, I am in the US and the weight of cake means nothing to me. I know some countries charge by weight so maybe that is what you are doing - don't know. But I don't know how to convert the weight of something into $ I would charge.

Anyway... You mentioned it takes you 10 - 20 hours to complete a cake. If you charged $87 for a cake that took you 10 hours to complete that is only $8.70 / hour - and that is before the cost of ingredients and supplies is taken out. That seems very low to me, but each area is different and without seeing the decorations it is tought to get an accurate idea of time and expense involved.

Do you know how much your recipes cost to make? Do you know how much you want to make per hour? If so, then start crunching numbers. If not, then start crunching numbers.

AThanks for the reply! My cost are about 20$ per cake. I live currently in East Africa and the average salaries for locals are extremely low compared to the US or Europe (where I'm from), so that's why I find it difficult to price my working hours. My customers are 90% expatriates and they make very good money working here and can afford to pay for a custom cake. I'm not working currently because of my young kids (but have a permit!). I used to earn 55$ per hour before, but that was not by making cakes though... But often I feel it's not worth all the work making only 4.5 $ an hour on average. Am new to this forum and had a look at other posts but couldn't find a guideline for pricing and as you can see I'm struggling. Maybe Crazy-Grey is right and I have think about if it's worth getting out of bed for it. Tips still appreciated!

AIf you do a search in the forums with the keywork pricing - thousands of threads will pop up. Probably all the info you need can be found there.

AOk, I'm confused. Who are your customers? The expats with money to burn, or the low wage earners? You say the expats have plenty of money to spend on a custom cake, soooooo...what's the problem? :D I would work on your marketing strategies, be attractive to people who have money to spend on "fancy stuff", don't focus on the locals at all if you can get away with it. I know that's pretty vague, but if I'm on the right track, I'd be happy to clarify further.

AAZCouture, yes, the expats are my main customers. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to rip anyone off! The problem is, people don't tell you when you undercharge them, they only complain when the price is too high! I just wanted to find out what the average per hour is, people charge making cakes to compare. Cai0311, thanks, will search the forum again...

I use to charge $10/hour - I'm not sure If it's too much or too little, but it works well for me and the customers are happy as well. 

There a numerous of articles about cake pricing - you should read at least some of them. Here is one that helped me: http://cakesdecor.com/entries/1717-basic-principles-of-pricing-your-cakes

Yes, I joined both sites at around the same date and CakesDecor members were very supportive and helped me a lot at the beginning. Since I spend most of the time there, I proudly share some of articles and cakes that can help other CakeCentral members as well. If it's a problem, I can stop helping here.  

A

Touchy touchy...When someone posts links to a specific website in almost every single post they've put up, it becomes pretty obvious that they have an agenda regarding that site. It's just a little shady and there should be some type of disclosure if you're associated with them. Other people have posted answering questions and have mentioned their own companies or whatever, but they do so by using their company name in their usename,or by saying that they are who they are. At least that way the people reading the posts know what biases they're dealing with.