How Much Should You Charge for a Creative Workshop?
Pricing your first creative workshop can feel like a complete guessing game.
How much will people actually pay? What are other people charging? Should you charge per person or set a flat fee? And what happens when a venue tells you how much they're willing to pay?
I've run hundreds of creative workshops over the years, and pricing is one of the things I've learned a lot about, sometimes the hard way. The biggest thing I'd tell anyone starting out is this: don't just pick a price because it sounds about right.
You need to know what it actually costs you to run the workshop first.
How do you work out the price of a creative workshop?
Before deciding what to charge, work out exactly what each workshop costs you.
Think about:
Materials
Venue hire
Travel and parking
Refreshments
Booking or payment fees
Insurance
Marketing
Packaging or anything attendees take home
Then think about your time. And I don't just mean the two hours you're standing in front of the group.
How long does it take you to order and prepare materials? Pack the car? Travel to the venue? Set everything up? Clear away afterwards? Answer customer emails?
A two-hour workshop can quite easily take up most of your day. Your time needs to be included in your price.
How much do you actually want to earn?
Once you know your costs, think about what you want to earn from the workshop. This is the bit I think creative business owners sometimes forget. Making your money back isn't the same as making a profit. If your workshop brings in £500 but costs you £350 to run, you've made £150 before you've even considered all the hours you've put into it.
Ask yourself: what would make giving up this day or evening worthwhile for me?
There's no universal answer to that question. Your number might be completely different from mine, and that's okay.
Should you charge per person or a day rate?
I've used both models in my own workshop business. For public workshops where customers book their own places, a per-person price usually makes sense. For private workshops, corporate events or when a venue is booking you directly, you might prefer to charge a set workshop fee or day rate. Whichever model you choose, you still need to do the maths behind it.
If you want to earn £300 from a workshop and your costs are £200, you need to bring in at least £500. If you can accommodate ten people, that's £50 per person just to reach that figure. Suddenly, charging £30 because it "sounds reasonable" doesn't look quite so reasonable.
What if a venue offers you a set fee?
This is something you'll probably come across as your workshop business grows. Some venues will ask you for your price. Others will tell you what they pay workshop facilitators. Personally, I've always preferred to set my own day rate or per-person charge.
In my experience, the fees offered by venues can be surprisingly low and don't always reflect the true cost of delivering a workshop. Remember, you're not simply being paid for the couple of hours you're teaching. You're bringing your expertise, your time, your materials, your preparation and often years of experience. You don't have to accept a fee simply because that's what a venue usually pays.
It's perfectly okay to say:
"Thanks so much for thinking of me. My fee for delivering this workshop is £X."
They might say no. That's okay too. One of the biggest lessons I've learned in business is that not every opportunity is the right opportunity.
What about venues that take commission?
Another common arrangement is for you to set the ticket price while the venue takes a percentage of each booking.
This can work really well, particularly if the venue is providing the space, handling bookings, marketing the workshop or bringing an established audience. But always do the maths first.
Find out exactly what their percentage includes and work backwards from the amount you actually want to receive. A workshop that looks profitable at £50 per ticket might feel very different once you've deducted a venue commission, materials and all your other costs.
Don't automatically copy your competitors
Looking at what similar workshops cost can be useful research but it shouldn't determine your price. You don't know somebody else's costs, experience, business model or financial goals. They might own their venue. Their materials might cost £3 while yours cost £20. They might deliberately be running a workshop at a lower profit because it leads customers towards another product or service.
Use competitor prices as information, not a pricing formula.
What if nobody will pay that much?
This is usually the scary bit.
When I first started running workshops, I worried about putting my prices up too but lowering your price isn't always the answer. If the numbers tell you that you need to charge £65 to make a workshop worthwhile, charging £40 isn't suddenly going to make it a sustainable business.
Sometimes the question isn't:
"How can I make this cheaper?"
It's:
"How can I make this feel worth £65?"
That might mean improving the venue, the materials, the refreshments, the finished product or simply communicating the value of the experience more clearly.
Your workshop needs to work for you too
It's very easy to focus entirely on what your customers will pay but your workshop needs to make sense for your business and your life as well. I spent a long time saying yes to opportunities because I felt I should. I've since learned that a full diary doesn't necessarily mean a successful business.
I'd much rather run fewer workshops at a price that properly values my time than spend every weekend teaching just because my calendar looks impressive.
Work out your costs. Decide what you want to earn. Be realistic about your time. Then set a price that makes the workshop genuinely worthwhile for you. And don't be afraid to say no when the numbers don't work.
Need help pricing your workshops?
If you're staring at a spreadsheet wondering whether anyone will actually pay the number you've come up with, you're definitely not the first. Pricing is something we can look at together during a Workshop Business Strategy Session. We'll work through your costs, your pricing and the kind of business you're actually trying to build.
The first step is a free Virtual Cuppa, where you can tell me a little about your business and we can see if I'm the right person to help.