Planner Price Calculator
How to Calculate The Price For Your Planning Services
Our calculator is designed to be simple and easy to use. It covers:
- your base costs of time
- salary
- materials
It also allows you to input a desired profit margin on top.
We hope this calculator helps you make more money for your planner brand.
Please input below:
Learn more about starting a planner brand:
Where to start?
-> How to start a planner brand?
-> How much does it cost to start a planner brand?
-> Pros and cons of a planner brand
Need inspiration?
-> Other planner brand success stories
-> Examples of established planner brand
-> Marketing ideas for a planner brand
-> Planner brand slogans
-> Planner brand names
Other resources
More Tips On Pricing Your Planning Services
How To Price Your Planning Services
One of the most challenging aspects to starting a planner brand is determining how much to charge for your planning services.
When businesses under-price their product, this can be extremely detrimental to their bottom line and reputation.
Often times, businesses under-price their products to drive demand and volume, but that last thing you want is for customers to view your product/service as "cheap." Additionally, this can have a big impact on the type of customer you attract, which can be difficult to recover from.
On the other hand, when businesses over-price, this tends to be just as damaging to the business.
When customers buy, it's likely that they will explore the internet and look at other competitors to ensure they're getting the best value + deal. This is why it's so important that you research your competition and understand where you land in the marketplace.
Here are some factors to consider when pricing your product:
Understand your customer
It's important that out of the gates, you identify the type of customer you want to attract and how much they're willing to pay for your service. One great way to do this is by surveying your customers. Here are some important items you'll want to takeaway:
- Customer demographic: Age, gender, location, etc.
- Buying habits of your customer: What they buy + when they buy
- Level of price sensitivity with your customer
All of these segments will help you identify the type of customer you're attracting and how to price your product accordingly.
Understand your costs
When pricing your planning services, it's critical that you first identify all of your costs and consequently mark up your planning services so you can factor in a profit.
The actual cost of your planning services may include things like:
- The actual cost to make the product (ie. raw materials, supplies, manufacturer).
- Shipping + overhead fees
- Rent
- Operating costs to run your business
You may want to consider creating a spreadsheet with every single expense involved in operating/owning your business. This will give you an idea as to what you need to generate in order to at the very least, break-even and will help you price your products to factor in a profit.
Create revenue goals
When determining the price of your planning services, you'll want to create goals for revenue + how much profit you want your planner brand to make.
This process is simpler than you may think:
- Think about your breakeven cost (by completing the above step).
- Create a revenue goal based on your break-even cost
- Evaluate the # of items you plan to sell in a given period (make sure this is a realistic number)
- Divide your revenue goal by the number of items you plan to sell
This figure will help determine your estimated price per product in order to meet your revenue goals.
Evaluate your competition
The last piece in determining how to price your planning services is by simply looking at your competition.
The best way to do this is by finding like-minded businesses that offer product(s) with similar perceived value. Then, you can compare prices of the different businesses and determine where your planning services fits best in the marketplace.
All of these factors play an equal part in pricing your planning services, so it's important you evaluate each one individually to come up with an accurate price that will help optimize your business from the start.
Lauren Costanza, founder of Bluminary provides us with a detailed spreadsheet of all of her costs associated with running her business:
I knew this would be a self-funded adventure, and I set aside $3,000. During the first three months, I had a detailed spreadsheet where I tracked where the money was going and what was going toward products versus researching and developing new products.
The spreadsheets involved columns and rows of numbers to craft a budget and gain an understanding of how much would need to be invested at each stage of the process - from gathering supplies to building a website, and shipping materials.
Examples of a successful planner brand:
. Getting Married in Denmark ($600K/year)
Rasmus Clarck Sørensen (from Frederiksberg, Danmark) started Getting Married in Denmark over 7 years ago.
The Complete Service is the opposite of The Essential Service, it costs more but we handle the entire process for the couple!
We have gone from doing 5 to 10 weddings a month to 80 to 100 weddings a month in 4 years.
. Planner Peace ($270K/year)
Jess Yasuda (from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) started Planner Peace almost 8 years ago.
Hi, I’m Jess. I’m 34 years old from Tasmania, Australia. I started Chasing Planner Peace back in 2015 when I was pregnant with my third child. Originally we were based on Etsy and only sold planner inserts, however, we’ve now turned into a one-stop planner shop that caters to seasoned “planner addicts” who want to add to their planners, and also planner newbies who love the fact our shop is the only store in Australia you can custom build your own ring planner style planner.
Over the past few years, we’ve really expanded our range to not only offer planners and inserts, but also planner dashboards (beautiful cover pages), dividers, notepads, stationery items and more. We also recently started our subscription box service where every two months customers can receive a “Planner Peace Box” which is full of planner and self-care goodies. We have so many more plans for new products in 2020.
. Daily Orders ($240K/year)
Kelly Walter (from Victoria, Australia) started Daily Orders almost 8 years ago.
Hiya! My name is Kelly and I am the founder of Daily Orders, a Veteran-Owned business based in Victoria, Australia.
Daily Orders is a gloss acrylic planning board (aka sexy looking calendars). The board allows people to never miss an appointment, bill payment or sporting event ever again.
. Saint Belford ($162K/year)
Tom and Alex (from Victoria, Australia) started Saint Belford over 5 years ago.
Much to everyone’s surprise, we turned a profit in our first year achieving a revenue of 43k. In our second year, we almost quadrupled this amount, turning over 160k in less than six months.
. Paper Saver ($72K/year)
Michelle Lee (from Melbourne VIC, Australia) started Paper Saver about 8 years ago.
The Paper Saver started in Melbourne, Australia, in 2015 with the simple goal to reduce paper waste. Designed by my co-founder and partner Jon Yong, he and I are now also parents with the desire for our two young children to grow up in a sustainable world. Driven by this, the Paper Saver aims to promote environmental awareness and sustainable living.
Since launching in 2015, we have grown YOY on an average of 20%, and are now on a mission to spread the word further with a project on Kickstarter, aimed at creating awareness that anyone from kids to adults can reduce waste and live more sustainably with the Sparkle Paper Saver.
. Dreamfruit ($12K/year)
Elizabeth Russell (from Eugene) started Dreamfruit ago.
Hi there! My name is Elizabeth Russell. I’m the creator of the Dreamfruit Almanac for Earthlings, which is a moon-based planner and guided journal that I self-publish each year.
Dreamfruit is a unique project that feels more like a “sacred assignment” than a business. That said, we are in year four and have just completed our first crowdfunding campaign with over 100% community support!
Hey! 👋 I'm Pat Walls, the founder of Starter Story.
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