How to price crochet items for sale and make a profit

To price crochet items, add the cost of your labor, materials, and business expenses, then include a profit margin so each sale covers your costs and contributes to your earnings.

Start by calculating exactly how much an item costs to make, including the time you spend crocheting and finishing it. Then choose a pricing method, account for overhead and selling fees, and adjust the final price based on factors such as the item’s complexity and customer demand.

The goal is to set a price customers are willing to pay while covering the full cost of selling your work and earning a sustainable profit.

Use a crochet pricing formula

The basic formula for pricing a crochet item is:

Price = Labour cost + Material cost + Business expenses + Profit margin

Here’s what to include in each part:

• Labor cost – The time you spend designing, crocheting, assembling, and finishing the item, multiplied by your hourly rate.
• Material cost – The yarn, stuffing, decorations, buttons, labels, packaging, and other supplies used for that specific item.
• Business expenses – A portion of the costs involved in running and selling online, such as marketplace fees, payment processing fees, tools, and marketing.
• Profit margin – The percentage of the selling price you want to keep as profit after covering your costs.

Suppose a crochet bag requires $15 in materials, takes 3 hours to make at $20/hour, and accounts for $10 in business expenses. Your costs total $85:

$15 materials + $60 labour + $10 business expenses = $85

If you add a 20% profit margin, that’s another $17, bringing the final price to $102.

This formula gives you a baseline price that you can then adjust based on the item, market, and where you plan to sell it.

Calculate the cost of materials

List every material used for one item, calculate the amount of each one you used, and add those costs together.

Include the materials used to make the product, as well as those needed to package and prepare it for sale.

Depending on the item, your material costs may include:

• Yarn – Divide the price of the skein by its total weight or length, then multiply by the amount used. If a 200g skein costs $6 and you use 100g, add $3.
• Stuffing – Calculate the cost per gram or ounce and multiply it by the amount used. If a 500g bag costs $10 and your amigurumi uses 50g, add $1.
• Safety eyes – Divide the pack price by the number of pairs it contains. If 10 pairs cost $8 and you use one pair, add $0.80.
• Buttons and decorations – Calculate the cost of each button, bead, ribbon, zipper, appliqué, or other addition used on the item. If a pack of 20 buttons costs $5 and you use four, add $1.
• Tags and labels – Divide the price of a pack by the number of labels or tags it contains. If 50 labels cost $10 and you use one per item, add $0.20.
• Packaging materials – Add the cost of all packaging used for one order, such as boxes, bags, tissue paper, wrapping, and stickers. If a pack of 25 boxes costs $20, each box adds $0.80, plus the cost of any other packaging used.
• Shipping supplies – Calculate the per-order cost of mailers, shipping boxes, protective materials, tape, and printed shipping labels. For supplies bought in bulk, divide the purchase price by the number of shipments they can cover.

Calculate your labor cost

Calculate your labor cost by tracking the time required to complete one crochet item and multiplying that time by your hourly rate.

Start timing when you begin preparing the item and include the time spent crocheting, assembling pieces, adding details, weaving in ends, washing or blocking, and packaging the finished product.

If a scarf takes 3 hours to crochet, 30 minutes to finish, and 15 minutes to package, your total labor time is 3.75 hours.

Next, decide how much you want to earn per hour. Your hourly rate should reflect your skill and experience while also producing a final price that works for your business.

Say your rate is $15 per hour, the labor cost for 3.75 hours of work is:

3.75 hours × $15 = $56.25 labour cost

Track your production time across multiple items, if possible, especially for products you make repeatedly.

If the same hat takes you 2 hours one day and 2.5 hours the next, averaging them gives you a more reliable labor estimate than timing a single item.

Don’t leave labor out to make your prices look more competitive. Crochet requires time and skill, and a product that covers materials but doesn’t compensate you for the work involved isn’t sustainably priced.

You need to earn enough from each sale to pay yourself for the hours you work, or producing and selling more items won’t translate into a sustainable income.

Include business expenses and fees

Add the costs of running and selling through your crochet business to the price of each item.

These expenses go beyond the materials and labor required to make the product and can include:

• Marketplace fees – Include any listing, transaction, or other seller fees charged when an item sells through a marketplace.
• Payment processing fees – Account for the percentage and fixed fee your payment provider deducts from each transaction.
• Website costs – Divide recurring expenses such as your website plan and domain across the products you expect to sell during the same period.
• Marketing – Include what you spend on advertising and other paid promotion. If you budget $60 per month for marketing and expect to sell 30 items, you can allocate $2 per item toward marketing costs.
• Tools and equipment – Spread the cost of reusable items such as crochet hooks, scissors, blocking mats, photography equipment, and printers across the products you expect to use them for.

Some expenses apply directly to one sale, while others need to be distributed across multiple products.

If it costs $2 in payment and marketplace fees to sell an item, add the full $2 to that item’s costs. If you spend $30 per month on your website and expect to sell 30 items that month, allocate $1 per item.

Tracking these expenses is an important part of running a crochet business profitably. If a $50 item costs $20 in materials and $20 in labor, it may appear to generate $10 in profit.

But if selling, marketing, and other business expenses add another $12, you’re actually losing $2 on the sale.

Choose a crochet pricing method

Choose a pricing method based on how you sell your crochet items and how accurately you need to account for their production costs.

Cost-based pricing works well when labor makes up a significant part of the cost, while a material multiplier offers a quicker calculation for simpler items.

If you sell through retailers, you’ll also need separate wholesale and retail prices.

Cost-based pricing

Add your materials, labor, allocated business expenses, and selling fees, then set a price that gives you your desired profit.

For example, suppose a crochet bag has the following costs:

• Materials – $15
• Labor – $45
• Business expenses and selling fees – $10
• Total cost – $70

If you want a 20% profit margin, divide the total cost by 0.80:

$70 ÷ 0.80 = $87.50

At a selling price of $87.50, the $17.50 remaining after covering $70 in costs represents a 20% profit margin.

Cost-based pricing is a useful starting point for handmade products because it accounts for both the money you spend and the time you put into making each item.

Material multiplier pricing

Material multiplier pricing sets the selling price by multiplying the cost of your materials by a fixed factor, such as 2 or 3.

For example, if the materials for a crochet hat cost $10 and you use a multiplier of three:

$10 × 3 = $30 selling price

This method is quick, but it doesn’t directly account for how long an item takes to make. Two products might each use $10 worth of materials, for example, while one takes two hours to crochet and the other takes eight hours.

Applying the same multiplier would give both a $30 price, even though their labor costs are very different.

For that reason, material multiplier pricing is better suited to simple, relatively quick-to-make items where labor costs are low and predictable.

Wholesale and retail pricing

The wholesale price is what the retailer pays you, while the retail price is what the customer pays.

Your wholesale price still needs to cover your materials, labor, business expenses, and profit.

The retailer then adds its own markup to cover its costs and make a profit when selling the item to customers.

For example, if a crochet bag costs you $35 to make and you set a wholesale price of $50, you earn $15 before any additional selling costs. If the retailer applies a 100% markup, the retail price would be $100.

Before agreeing to a wholesale price, work backward from your costs to check that the amount you receive leaves enough profit.

If the wholesale price a retailer requires doesn’t cover your costs and target profit, selling through that channel may not be viable for that product.

For direct sales, set your retail price to cover the full cost of producing and selling the item, including payment or marketplace fees, plus your desired profit.

Adjust crochet prices based on complexity and demand

Two crochet items that use similar amounts of materials can still justify different prices based on the skill, work, and demand involved.

Consider these factors when adjusting your base price:

• Advanced patterns – Track how much longer complex stitchwork takes compared with a standard version of the product and price those additional hours at your normal labor rate.
• Custom designs – Include the time spent before crocheting begins, such as discussing requirements, sketching the design, selecting materials, making samples, or creating and adjusting a pattern.
• Larger sizes – Recalculate both materials and labor for each size. If a larger blanket requires 30% more yarn and four additional hours of work, add those actual costs to its base price.
• Detailed finishing – Time finishing separately when it adds substantial work. Embroidery, joining numerous pieces, shaping, lining, attaching embellishments, or blocking can add hours after the main crocheting is complete, and those hours should be included in labor costs.
• Limited editions – A higher price is easier to justify when the item uses a unique design, special materials, or has proven demand that exceeds the number you can produce.
• Personalized requests – Calculate the additional materials and labor required for the specific modification. For frequently requested options, such as adding an embroidered name, you can create a fixed add-on price based on the average cost of providing that customization.

Strong demand can support a higher price. If a design regularly sells out or attracts more orders than you can fulfill, gradually increase the price and track how customers respond.

Review and update your crochet prices

Compare your current selling price with the latest cost of making and selling each item, then adjust it if your costs, demand, or business have changed.

Recalculate your prices when:

• Supply costs increase – Update the cost of yarn, stuffing, packaging, and other materials using the prices you currently pay. A product priced using last year’s yarn costs may no longer cover its materials.
• Your skills and experience improve – Becoming faster doesn’t mean you need to lower your prices. Greater experience may allow you to produce higher-quality or more complex work, while improved efficiency can increase the profit you earn per item.
• Demand increases – If an item regularly sells out, attracts more orders than you can fulfill, or develops a waiting list, test a higher price and see whether demand remains strong.
• Platform fees change – Recalculate marketplace, transaction, and payment processing costs when the platforms you use change their fee structures.
• Business expenses increase – Update the amount allocated to each product when costs such as your website, marketing, equipment, or other operating expenses rise.

Price crochet items for different selling channels

Calculate the costs specific to each channel and add them to the item’s production costs before setting the final price.

Here’s what to account for when pricing items for each selling channel:

• Online marketplaces – Add marketplace-specific costs such as listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing, promoted listings, and shipping-related charges. A product that is profitable on your own website may need a higher price on a marketplace if the platform takes a larger share of each sale.
• Personal websites – Include payment processing, website costs, and any marketing expenses you use to bring customers to the store. Selling through your own site gives you more control over pricing, but you still need to allocate those operating costs across your products.
• Craft fairs – Include stall fees, travel, display materials, card-processing fees, packaging, and other event costs. Divide shared event expenses across the number of items you realistically expect to sell so you can estimate how much each sale needs to contribute.

If you want to sell crochet products online, Hostinger Ecommerce gives you several ways to start and expand without managing separate ecommerce systems.

You don’t need to build a full website before taking orders. You can create quick links for individual products and share them through social posts, DMs, emails, or messaging apps.

This can be useful if you already promote your crochet work on social media and want to give interested customers a direct way to buy.

When you’re ready for a dedicated storefront, you can build a branded online store with Hostinger AI Builder.

Hostinger charges 0% transaction fees, so it doesn’t take a percentage of each sale. Your customers can pay using 100+ supported payment methods, including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

Payment providers may still charge their own processing fees, so include those when calculating your selling costs.

Hostinger Ecommerce also works well for made-to-order crochet products. You can add up to 10 custom input fields to a product to collect details such as names, color preferences, sizing information, or special instructions when the customer places an order.

As you add more products or ways to sell, you can manage products, orders, customers, discounts, taxes, and analytics from one dashboard. This keeps the operational side of your crochet business in one place while allowing you to add new sales channels as the business grows.

The author

Ksenija Drobac Ristovic

Add Hostinger as a preferred source on Google

Ksenija is a digital marketing enthusiast with extensive expertise in content creation and website optimization. Specializing in WordPress, she enjoys writing about the platform’s nuances, from design to functionality, and sharing her insights with others. When she’s not perfecting her trade, you’ll find her on the local basketball court or at home enjoying a crime story. Follow her on LinkedIn.

More from Ksenija Drobac Ristovic