I am just starting out in cake decorating, and I am wondering how you all decide what to charge for a cake. Keep in mind that I am not an amazing miracle worker like a lot of you here are. I just had a friend of a friend ask me what my styles and prices are. She has 3 children and 2 with upcoming birthdays. I don't want to charge too little, because I would most likely be doing 3 cakes for her over the next year, but I don't want to charge too much, because I am still a beginner. Any suggestions?

What I do is figure out my cost of ingredients and the I muliply it by three. I found some people on this site that does this. I'm just starting also, so I looked around alot.
Good luck

Okay, I have been sitting here trying to multiply, add, and divide ingredients and measurements. (And I now have a headache) I have come up with the price of $35.00 for a cake like this cake that I made the other week. Will everyone please look at it and see if this is a fair price, both for me and the customer. Please take into account how well (or un-well?) the cake is decorated. I'm a newbie at this and don't want to charge too much for a less than perfect cake. Oh, and if you don't think the cake is good enough to sell at all, please let me know...I can take it!

$35 is way too low for a pretty two-tiered cake. You must be using very inexpensive ingredients if you have multiplied by 3 for this one. Please let me in on your shopping secrets.

I don't know...maybe I'm doing the math wrong? It's hard to figure out how much a tbs of one thing and a cup of another is. I do shop at ALDI though for a lot of the regular ingredients, and what I can't find there, I buy in bulk at Costco.

I am not a big fan of the multiply by 3 theory. Look at how pretty your cake is!! You can safely charge twice that amount you gave. Have you tried the pricing matrix? There is a thread floating around that I can find for you.

Your time is important, too. You have to include that in your price!

Angie

Well, thank you for the compliment! I guess I am just afraid to charge too much. The more I charge, the more pressure I feel to make it perfect. Not that I wouldn't try to make it perfect anyway, but a higher price ups my stress level.

I don't pretend to be a pricing expert, but you also need to consider how many servings you are making, Most ladies (of the professional leagues anyway) charge per serving. Consensus is that simple buttercream starts at no less than $1.75 per serving. The cake you pictured looks as if it would serve way more than 20 people, so if you go per serving, rethink your price.

As for me, I charge by the size and detail. Just a simple BC 9 x 13 with filling and minimal design will be $35.00 (by minimal, I mean FBCT)

This is a lovely cake! Considering it is two layers and very artful, I think $35 is low. I would charge at least another $5.

Use either colomn paper or Excel and make a list of all your ingredients in one column. The next column should include your price for the item. The next column should show how many servings are in that ingredient. Then figure out how much a serving of that ingredient cost. Here's just a quick example: Sugar, $2.00 per bag, 10 cups per bag, that makes $ .20 per cup. If you use 1.5 cups of sugar for icing, that's .30 for sugar. This gives you a basic $$ figure that you can tweak to find out the prices of other measurements.

If you want to get really crafty, create this on an excel spreadsheet or accounting column paper and then list all of your receipes on it. List how much ingredients you use for each receipe and that way you can determine how much each cake cost. You'll have all the information in one location and can see at any given time how much a particular cake will cost you to make. Be sure to adjust the pricing as grocery items go on sale or become more expensive.

I do this and it gives me a very accurate way of tracking my costs. Hope this helps!

Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions! You've all helped to boost my confidence! My time and efforts are worth money!! I appreciate all the input!