Should I Raise My Prices?

A price increase has three effects, and most makers only think about one of them. You're charging more per unit, your fees are scaling with that higher price (Etsy and Stripe both take a percentage, so they take more dollars too), and your volume probably drops a little because some buyers walk away. The tool above runs all three at once.

For each scenario the math is: new price × (1 − fee%) − fixed fee − material cost − labor cost = new profit per unit. Multiply by post-hike volume = new monthly profit. Compare against your current monthly profit to get the delta. The verdict thresholds are simple: if the new monthly profit beats current by more than 5%, raise it. Within ±5%, it's worth a test. Below that, hold.

The "volume sensitivity" slider is where the model earns its keep. Economists call this price elasticity. The pricing-research literature (Nagle & Müller, The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing (opens in new tab)) characterizes differentiated consumer goods sold to brand-loyal buyers as relatively inelastic — a useful starting anchor is roughly a 5% volume drop per +10% price increase, not the 30%+ that makers fear. Loyal customers don't notice $26 vs. $24 nearly as much as the seller worrying about the change does. Commodity-style listings (basic bath bombs, generic candles, drop-shipped goods) behave very differently — closer to elastic, with 15–25% volume drops common, and a price hike there really can collapse volume. The slider lets you tune the model to match your category; the default is the inelastic / repeat-buyer heuristic and is intentionally conservative — your real elasticity is best measured by a small live test rather than estimated up front.

Three reasons keep makers stuck at prices that don't clear margin:

1. Forgetting labor. A candle that takes 12 minutes of hands-on time at $20/hour carries $4.00 of labor cost — frequently more than the wax. Pricing at "2× materials" ignores it entirely. Recipe costing in Ardent Seller rolls labor into every unit's true cost so it can never get forgotten again.
2. Underestimating fees. On a typical $20 Etsy order, the 6.5% transaction fee plus 3% + $0.25 payment processing plus the $0.20 listing fee comes to roughly $1.90 — about 9.5% of revenue, the figure baked into the "Etsy" channel preset above. That's not the 6.5% most sellers quote when asked. Always check Etsy's published fee schedule for current rates.
3. Anchoring to old prices. The price you set when you started selling reflected your costs at the time. Material, packaging, and shipping costs have moved meaningfully since most makers last priced their catalog. The price often hasn't.

The tool exists to make all three visible in one screen. If your current profit-per-unit is under 30% of the price, you're in one of those three traps. Run the +20% scenario, then look at your margin across the catalog for the products that need attention first.

1. Raise everything at once, not one SKU at a time. Splitting it across months prolongs the discomfort.
2. Tell repeat buyers in advance. A "prices going up Friday" email both warns regulars and creates a 7-day demand spike that funds the transition.
3. Don't apologize. "Material costs are up across the industry, and I want to keep making this for years to come" is the whole script.
4. Watch volume for 60 days, not 7. The first weekend looks scary; week 4 looks like the new normal.
5. Drop one SKU instead of cutting prices. If a product can't clear margin at the new price, it shouldn't be in the catalog.