Common Pricing Mistakes Laser Engravers Make (And What They Cost You)
Eight pricing mistakes that quietly drain margin from a laser business — from charging only for cut time to confusing markup with margin — and how to fix each one.
None of these are dramatic. That’s the problem — each one costs a few dollars a job, every job, until a year later you’re busy and broke. Here are the eight we see most often.
1. Charging only for cut time
The beam is on for six minutes, so the job is “six minutes.” But you spent fifteen minutes prepping the file, jigging the blank and test-firing. Bill the whole time the job took you, not the fraction the laser was lasing.
2. Not charging for design and file prep
Redrawing a customer’s blurry logo, converting a raster to clean vectors, laying out a name list — that’s skilled work and it’s often the longest part of a small order. Put a design/setup fee on the quote, even a modest one, so it’s visible and expected.
3. Using a markup when you mean a margin
“I add 30%” usually means a markup on cost. A 30% markup is only a ~23% margin — and on cheap, labour-heavy work the gap is bigger. Decide what share of each sale you want to keep (that’s margin) and price to that. We explain the maths in How to Price Laser Engraving Jobs.
4. Pricing per item and losing on small batches
If your per-item price assumes a batch of 50, someone ordering 3 is buying your setup time for almost nothing. Use a minimum charge, and let per-item pricing fall out of the total job cost rather than being a fixed sticker price.
5. Never updating your rates
Plywood is up, power is up, the tube you budgeted at $1,200 now costs $1,600. If your prices haven’t moved in two years, your margin has — downward. Diarise a rates review every six months.
6. Matching a competitor’s price blind
You don’t know their machine, their power deal, their rent, or whether they’re also quietly losing money. Their price is data, not a target. Know your own cost floor first, then decide where you sit relative to the market.
7. Giving away revisions and proofs
One proof and one revision is reasonable to include. The fourth “can you just try it in a different font” is billable, and saying so upfront on the quote prevents the awkward conversation later.
8. Burying GST
If you’re registered, the price the customer pays includes GST — so quote the GST-inclusive figure clearly and know your ex-GST number underneath it, because that’s the one your margin is actually measured against. (A dedicated post on GST and laser quoting is coming.)
Fixing all eight at once
Every one of these is really the same fix: price from real costs, with your time counted, to a margin you chose. The calculator below builds a quote that way — try it with a job you think you priced well and see whether the mistakes above were hiding in it.