Thank you everyone for your kind, thoughtful replies and all of your words of wisdom! I am thrilled to have found you all and to be able to bounce my ideas off of so many truly talented bakers and decorators!
To June: I love all of your bullet points and I have written them down in my notebook so I can use your valuable notes as I move forward with my little business! Thank you so very much! I 100% agree with you about deposits! They let you know who is actually serious and keeps a lot of other issues from even cropping up in the first place!
To Sweet Sugar: THANK YOU for those super amazing links! I am definitely going to get my cup of coffee, get into my cake business zone and listen to them! I am so happy to hear that they cover the whole “friends and family” category. For many people who get thier “start” making things for family friends or friends-of-friends…this can become a really dicy area when you make the change from doing hobby/fun projects to actually attempting to make a profit! Especially if you generally want to do things like this because you love it and want to go the extra mile for people that you appreciate! So easy to get burned or burned out!
To MsGF: Thank you so much for your response! It was extremely comforting! Basically, your estimate was exactly what I had been thinking that this cake is worth (of course depending on details/changes/etc) It is BEAUTIFUL (again my humble and heartfelt compliments to the artist who created it) and it would take time and talent to create. It deserves to be priced accordingly. The irony or extreme frustration was that I had trouble getting a friend to understand that this is not a cake that I could recreate for $40.00…even if I was simply able to “do a favor” or “be nice”. I quite simply cannot afford to.
Jayden348
