If you finished your last convention unsure whether you made money, your pricing is probably the reason.
You sold a lot. The table stayed busy. Someone even came back a second time. But at the end of the weekend, when you counted your cash and thought about what you spent to be there, you could not tell if you had actually made money.
This is the most common experience for artists at their first few conventions. And it almost always traces back to the same place: pricing based on a gut feeling instead of math.
The good news is that the math is simple. Here is how to figure out what you should actually charge, what the market supports, and how to tell whether your pricing is working.
Most artists only count the obvious cost: the print run, the sticker sheet, the keychain blank. But your real cost per unit includes several things you are probably ignoring.
What you paid to have the item made. Printing, manufacturing, materials. This is the number most artists start with, but it is only part of the picture.
Bags, backing boards, tissue paper, stickers, tape. These add up to $0.05 to $0.30 per item depending on how you package. Small per unit, but across hundreds of items it matters.
This is the one almost everyone skips. Your table fee is a real cost that needs to be spread across everything you sell. If you paid $200 for a table and brought 300 units, that is $0.67 of table cost baked into every single item.
Square, Stripe, and most payment processors charge around 2.6% to 2.9% per card transaction. If half your sales are on card, this quietly eats into your margin.
Here is what this looks like on a real product. Take a standard 5x7 print:
If you priced that print at $8, your gross margin is about 69%. That is healthy. If you priced it at $5 because you thought your production cost was $1.50, your real margin is 51%. Still okay, but much lower than you realized.
There are two ways to think about pricing. Both work. Use whichever makes more sense to you.
Multiply your real cost by a multiplier. A 3x markup is a common starting point for convention products.
Real cost: $2.45
3x markup: $2.45 × 3 = $7.35
Round to $7 or $8
Decide the percentage of revenue you want to keep as gross profit. Most convention products should target 55 to 70% gross margin. Below 50% and you are working very hard for very little.
Real cost: $2.45
Target margin: 65%
Price = $2.45 ÷ (1 − 0.65) = $7.00
Sell at $7
Both methods get you to roughly the same place. The margin method is more precise if you want to hit a specific profit target. The markup method is faster to apply when you are pricing a new product quickly.
Your math might say $9 for a sticker. The market might say $5. Both signals matter. Here is what convention artists typically charge across common product types:
The impulse buy. Customers often grab several at once. Bundle pricing works well here.
Bread and butter for most artists. High enough margin, low enough price point that customers do not hesitate.
Fewer units sold but higher margin per sale. Good for fans who already know your work.
Popular with anime convention audiences. Higher production cost than prints, but customers perceive higher value.
High production cost but strong demand. Lower unit quantities are normal. Do not underprice to move volume.
If your math says you should charge $12 for a print and the market bears $12, great. If your math says $5 and you are surrounded by artists charging $10, you have a cost problem, not a pricing problem. Check your production costs or your supplier.
Artists underprice for two reasons: they feel their work is not worth the higher number, or they are afraid people will not buy it. Both are understandable. Both cost you money.
Consider what underpricing by just $2 does across a convention weekend. If you sell 150 units, the difference between $8 and $10 is $300. That is your hotel covered. Or your next print run. Or actual profit instead of breaking even.
There is also a perception issue. Customers at conventions expect to pay market rates. A $3 print in a sea of $10 prints does not read as a deal. It reads as lower quality. Pricing at market or slightly above signals confidence in your work, and that confidence is visible from across the aisle.
The fix is not to force yourself to feel more confident. The fix is to run the math, know your actual cost, set a price that hits your target margin, and trust the number.
Bundle pricing is one of the most effective tools at a convention table. It increases average transaction size without requiring you to lower your individual prices.
"Any 5 stickers for $20" instead of $5 each. The customer saves a few dollars, you move 5x the units in one transaction. As long as the bundle price still hits your margin target, this is a straight win.
"Any 2 prints for $20" when prints are $12 each. The customer picks what they want, you move more product, and the perceived value is high. Works especially well when you have a large variety.
Before offering a bundle, calculate the margin on it the same way you would a single item. If 5 stickers cost you $1.20 each to make and you sell the bundle for $20, your margin is ($20 − $6) / $20 = 70%. That is great. If you sell the same bundle for $12, your margin is 50%. Still acceptable. If the bundle drops you below 40%, restructure it.
Setting prices is step one. Knowing whether they are right is step two, and it requires data from actual conventions.
Track sell-through rate by product. If you brought 50 of something and sold 45, your pricing was right or possibly too low. If you sold 5, the product, display, or price needs attention.
Compare across conventions. The same product might sell through at one convention and sit at another. That is often an audience fit issue, not a pricing issue. You need multiple data points to tell the difference.
Calculate margin per product, not just total revenue. You might have a great revenue weekend but realize that most of it came from your lowest-margin products. Knowing margin by product tells you where to focus.
Adjust, then track again. Raise the price on your best sellers by $1 or $2 at your next convention. If sell-through holds steady, you were underpriced. If it drops sharply, you found the ceiling. This is how you dial it in over time.
The artists who consistently improve their earnings are not guessing. They are running a small feedback loop at every convention: set prices, track what sold, adjust, repeat. It does not require a spreadsheet. It requires showing up with the same products, the same prices, and a way to record what happened.
Once your prices are set, Conventory tracks every sale at your booth in real time, shows you sell-through by product, and calculates your actual profit per convention after expenses. It is how you go from guessing to knowing.
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