personal question for full timers

For those comfortable with sharing I was wondering how much y'all make as full time engravers per year. It is my goal to eventually become a full-time engraver and I'm working fields to help expand my skills and knowledge but I don't know what a realistic annual income should be or at the very least what's out there at the different skill levels

I have wondered this too. I'm a full time CPA and intend to be for at least another 10 years, but I'd like engraving to be a profitable sideline until then and a reliable source of non-retirement income after (i.e., money I don't have to have--I've planned for all of that-- but that would minimize future withdrawals). Numbers would be useful for my calculations, but not essential.

If it's anything like knifemaking, the best way to do it full time is to have a spouse with a good job. Or to inherit a bunch of money. Or to be really poor, all the time. Or get famous, if you can manage it.

As a CPA you should have all the tools you need to figure this out. I think it is just like CPAs, there are partners in big firms who make millions and worker bees that make a good living at less than 100K.

There is the old saying that the best way to make a small fortune in an art/craft, is to start out with a large fortune. A couple of years ago one of the famous recognized engravers was having to sell off some equipment to finance a home remodeling project.

If your current job pays enough to work 1 day less a week and still pay the bills. Then you can have 1 day a week to do engraving. And still have your weekends to do errands and relax. Then if the engraving starts to make money. There will be a point were you can engrave 2 days a week. And it goes well there will come a time when you can quit your job and become a fulltime engraver. Try to start part-time. That way you still have the safety of your job. And dont have to risk all by quiting your job and then engraving really has to work and take of. Which will give more stress than growing in to it.

that you are a cpa doesn't always mean you're a good businessman. you must approach engraving as a full-fledged business. how good are you at marketing yerself? what markets will you serve? how good will you become? to simply jump ship and dive into engraving-- you'll likely starve. nobody will likely give you a direct or numerical answer. nothing short of dogged determination will get you into making a "living" doing engraving.

The OP asked a very reasonable question from the beginner's perspective.

If I were looking at a career (with the variables regarding skill, tenacity, marketing, etm., taken as a given; this is not what the OP asked about), I'd want to know what the best, worst, and most likely financial scenarios would be before I committed. This is why I'm not a game warden, no longer a minister, and currently an accountant. Becoming expert at anything takes a long time, and if you're intending to do it for a living it would be helpful to know if that's even possible. I understand the reluctance that folks have to throwing out numbers, but those numbers are an important criterion for assessing potential economic viability. Maybe others are willing to dive in without knowing how deep the water is, trusting in grit and dogged determination, but if there's not enough water in the pool all the grit in the world won't keep you from breaking your neck at the bottom.

I'm interested in the same data but for different reasons. I seem to have accidentally hijacked the OP's post--my intent was to piggyback and hopefully add some incentive for useful replies (i.e., this is information that many folks would like to have). I understand the hustle and skill variables involved intimately--I've been profitably making knives as a sideline for 14 years, and see engraving as both an add-on to that work, and as a standalone source of moderate future income. I know about how much I could make if I focused on knives at a half-time retirement pace. Being new to the engraving market (but not to the craft hustle), I was looking for some ballpark figures to measure against the knife world.

For the sake of the OP, I'll throw out knife numbers. Similar to engraving, startup costs don't have to be high. But the "buy once, cry once" mantra applies. You'll likely spend at least $10k on either to get started WELL, and very likely more as you progress and upgrade tools. After that, operating costs consist largely of time, rent (if required), and materials. Revenue is mostly influenced by pricing, which is a different discussion. The important thing to know about it in craft, however, is that price is less a function of quality (though that should be a given) as it is of reputation, name recognition and, more generally, advertising in all it's contextually appropriate forms. There a great many knife makers who sell knives inferior to mine for more money than I can get, simply because they work the market more effectively. I'm ok with that. All that said, if you're skilled, if you're personable, if you make what the market is after, if you show up at the right places and talk to the right people, after a few years of all that you can pretty easily make $40-60k a year in revenue (not profit) as a knifemaker. Many make a lot less. A few make a lot more (like $40k per knife!), but you have to be REALLY, REALLY GOOD for that to be even a possibility--just solid, or competent, or better than average won't get you there. $60k doesn't really go all that far if you have to pay for urban or suburban housing, or have kids, or like to do anything but work, which is why I'd never advise making a career out of it until you're already making a lot from it as a sideline. The very successful are in the dozens, the barely scraping by are in the hundreds or thousands.

If engraving is similar, hopefully that helps. I'd be shocked if the process and reality is different, though the numbers might be. Which is what we were both asking about in the first place.

The best information I've found on pricing has been this video here, start it at 59:53

Some of the best information I've found has been the above video and scouring this forum, someplace in the vast threads you'll find some stuff that basically states that as a beginner you'll lose money, no way around it until your efficiency and skill level can match your income requirements.

As was mentioned earlier, due to the competitive nature of this art you'll be hard pressed to get a straight forward answer on pricing alone.

Here awhile back I posted a project for a plaque for a dog named Harley, with the conventional wisdom of the board I put a price per letter plus the added fancies, funny thing is an engraver took up the project presumably to prove a point which was he had the plaque finished in the time it took me to do the fancies, the point is even at the price I set for the whole job I was loosing money while he could have undercut my numbers by a third and still made good money.

T.G.III said:

The best information I've found on pricing has been this video here, start it at 59:53

Some of the best information I've found has been the above video and scouring this forum, someplace in the vast threads you'll find some stuff that basically states that as a beginner you'll lose money, no way around it until your efficiency and skill level can match your income requirements.

As was mentioned earlier, due to the competitive nature of this art you'll be hard pressed to get a straight forward answer on pricing alone.

Here awhile back I posted a project for a plaque for a dog named Harley, with the conventional wisdom of the board I put a price per letter plus the added fancies, funny thing is an engraver took up the project presumably to prove a point which was he had the plaque finished in the time it took me to do the fancies, the point is even at the price I set for the whole job I was loosing money while he could have undercut my numbers by a third and still made good money.

Click to expand...

I'm very familiar with the idea of it being a losing battle starting out and I kind of figured I wouldnt get straight forward answers because it is a very competitive field but much like Travis had mentioned my idea was to find out what different engravers would typically make based on their own marketing and skill level and types of jobs they did. I am already familiar with a few people on here and a quick Google search helps me find anyone I'm not. I am still aware that there will always be some who are more skilled who make less than someone unskilled simply due to their popularity or marketing style and I'm also aware that there will more than likely always be someone who could undercut me on price simply because they have the skills to knock it out in a fraction of the time and/or have better equipment but that's just how the world works

Sounds as though you have all of the information you need then, if you watched the video then you know to figure the numbers backwards, set the $$ amount that you need to have to live the way you want, then break it down from there, his process really is very well thought out.
Enjoy.

On the topic of pricing,... Do any of my fellow engravers adjust pricing based on the value of the object being engraved? I looked for a thread on this topic but cannot find one.... For example, would you charge more to engrave a monogram on the back of a Patek Philippe (for example) than you would to engrave the same monogram on the back of a Seiko? I am at a point where this is now a business concern for me. Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question.... I am interested in your feedback. thank you.

Personally I charge more for very expensive pieces. High risk requires high skill, and high skill requires high pay.
If we're talking Patek we're talking even higher risk, therefore even higher prices.
I can't name prices because it's against my contract but something like a 5k watch is almost double per letter over a ring, and with a much higher minimum charge too.
On really high end stuff, especially with particular finishes, I like to sharpen and polish all the gravers I'll be using before hand and do a full clean and tidy of my bench/vice so there's no chance of stray bits scratching anything up (it's happened before). All that prep takes time, and therefore costs more.

The current edition of The Engraver magazine from the Firearms Engravers Guild of America has a detailed article with calculation sheets authored by Andrew Biggs to show how to calculate your prices without missing items and undercutting the necessary level of prices to meet your income goals.