I have been mixing my own juice for my own use for quit some time now and just this morning I was told by a roommate that they recommended my juice to a friend.
I have been sharing my mixes with my roommate as he is trying to get off the cigarettes. Last night he went to a party at a friends house and this morning he told me he recommended my juice to a lady he met at the party.
Apparently, she has been using juice she has been purchasing from a local B&M that charges her $25 for two 15ml bottles of juice. He took some of my juice with him to the party and shared it with her and she was very excited with how it taste. He told her I would most likely be willing to sell it to her for a small amount compared to what she is paying.
I have never sold my juice but don't mind sharing it with others if they like it. I figured if I sold it for $5-6 per 15ml of juice I would pay for the cost of the juice and still make a little extra.
I'm not really interested in going into business but I don't mind helping out a vaper if I can.
I wouldnt consider what you were thinking gouging. If she got 30ml for $12, compared to her $25, and the juice is better which it almost certainly is, she's gonna be STOKED! She'll more then likely be recommending you to others as well. Win win for everyone in my book
Thanks for the advice. I need to decide what I'm going to charge as this will be the first time ever and I'm wanting to make sure I give them a fair price for my juice but still make enough to pay for my time and expenses of making it.
At first I was thinking that $10 for 30ml would be a huge savings for her and I would make enough to make it worth my time. But then I saw that other comment and thought about what it is costing me to make it and decided I could afford to lower it and still make money. The last thing I want to do is charge someone a price that is not going to be fair. Also, I think my roommate might have had an interest in this girl and I wouldn't want to step on any toes. Even if I only charged her $5 for a thirty milliliter of juice I'm still making my cost back and then some so it's still a win win.
Youve really gotta look at what youd expect to be selling later and work that into your price. Sure, a few bottles here and there at 5-6 is fair. Takes what? 10 minutes tops to make 15-30ml of juice for one person?
Thats not too bad.
But now youve got 3 new people wanting bottles for the same price and those 3 people have 3 friends each who like it too. Now youre making huge batches, having to bulk order PG/VG and nic, upping your concentrate quanitites etc.
Dont short your price too hard. Undercut the B&M "premium", but dont undercut yourself. Your time is valuable and you need an overhead for unexpected shortages or an accidental spillage of something as well.
i do 3 30mls for $20 and i stay pretty busy and obviously make profit. As to time and effort i enjoy and selling lets me buy an insane amount of concentrates i wouldnt be able to other wise. Once i get a good flavor down i mix in 1000ml batches. I have 2 bottles of everything so it can all steep. Once my first 1000ml bottle is empty i mix a new one up and grab the one behind it thats been steeping. I normally take a random day after work and spend a few hours mixing.
When I sell bottles I do $5 for 15ml and $15 for 50ml. I also give extra bottles to people pretty regularly if they buy juice from me often. When I have a new flavor that I want some feedback on, I'll usually give a 15ml of that to whoever buys juice for a week or 2 until I'm satisfied with the amount of feedback I've gotten.
My only concern is I'm not really interested in going into business selling my juice. I could sell it to her for that price but then I would feel like I was in business. I'd be happy if she likes it enough to ask for more.
Treat it like, but not as. You have to maintain a level of professionalism. If you decide to cut down on making because it's eating too much of your "you" time give out information on how to make it. Give out links to this subreddit, and any videos you used. That way you can still sell to those who value purchasing more than making, but the big time users will be able to possibly co-operate with you.
I charge $1/10ml, available in 10ml or 50ml bottles. I still make a nice profit, my friends use the 50ml bottles for their ADV, and if they want to experiment, they ask for 10ml bottles with whatever recipe they want to try.
Realistically, as long as you're cheaper than the B&M, she'll be happy.
For my friends, I do $10 per 10ml. $25 for 100ml. Covers my expenses and R&D. Also helps to cover the hassle of meeting them across town at 9pm.
I hadn't considered that. I think I will insist they come to my place.
It will happen.
"Hey man, I'm at this party. Can you bring me some juice? ... What, no, I can't come there. Can you come here?"
I do $10/60ml, $20/120ml. My buddies who buy it are happy, and I still make enough to pay for stock and making new stuff. Plus, vaping free myself. When I first started selling it was double that, and I still made plenty of sales, but I felt a little like I was ripping them off.
I do bring juice to you if your close enough, and I don't hold any hours, I have gotten text orders at midnight or so.
Personally I think that is a lot to charge someone. But it's your time and your discretion. I charge my friends and co-workers $15/120ml. Takes about two minutes to mix and my cost, on average (including the bottle) is $4. That's enough profit for me to vape free and collect all the flavors (eventually)
Thanks for the input. I was not sure what to charge as I have never sold my juice to anyone. So maybe $3 per 15ml would be a better price and not make it seem like gouging? I'm not really interested in making money but I do need to recoup my cost. I'm mostly happy someone wanted to recommend my juice.
I'm no expert. Whenever the question comes up, most people tend to charge more than I'm willing to. Obviously you're charging a lot less than they're used to paying, so it saves them money either way.
Personally, my homemade juices cost me about 0.06€ per ml, and I charge 0.10€, which makes it 3€ per 30ml bottle. Everyone seem happy so far.
EDIT: 0.06€ without counting shipping expenses, bottle prices (we reuse them about four times before using new ones) and all the shitty flavors that have gone straight to the dump. Why does everyone seem to love AP and CAP Cinnamon? They're the worst.
There seems to be more to consider than I was thinking at the start. I'm going to give this some thought and decide what to do from that. I might make a spread sheet with all the costs and see what that does. I figure I need to factor in the cost of my equipment over time and other stuff I have purchased and the cost of discards and other type expenses that might incur. The more I think about it the more I realize I have more invested than that one little bottle of juice and I need to consider that in the cost of my juice.
I'm not really looking to get into business selling juice but I should consider all the costs when setting a price just in case this works. Fortunately, I have a background in accounting and bookkeeping that I got when I went to collage. I worked as a bookkeeper and office manager for part of my life so I have the skills.
Thanks for reminding me about the cost of running a business. Now I'm wondering if this is worth it at all. Haha. Oh well I'll just wait and see what happens.
Don't forget to account for the price of the bottles.
Yes, that's an important expense as well. Thanks for your suggestion.
If you use glass bottles, rather than plastic, you could offer a "if you bring the bottle back I'll reduce the price" bit. Glass can seem more savoury to others than reusing plastic over and over.
25$ for 30ml? What the fuck? That's like.... one sec..
Taking some average fairly large bulk prices here..
1 15ml bottle.. 0.15$
1.5ml of brand concentrate 0.15-25$
13.5ml of PG/VG 0.08$
0.38$ - 0.48$ per 15ml
So lets just say 1$ to make 30ml of juice, seems reasonable. That's a solid 2500% markup right der.
I do $5/15ml, $8/30ml and 2 30s for $15 or a 120ml for $20. I try to encourage the larger bottles because it takes me almost the same amount of time to make a 15, 30 or 120.
Do what I do man, 3 30mls for $25, and 1 for $10. Every other weekend I do 3 for 20m I also sell 159s for $30 and 249s for 40-50 depending of its a friend or not.
Everybody has been great with the advice and ideas and now I need to consider what I'm going to do. I didn't intend to go into business selling e-juice. I like your idea as well and thank you for the information. I will do a followup post when it actually happens and let everyone know what I decided to do. For now I just need to do some thinking about this whole thing and decide if I even want to sell juice.
Dude you won't regret it. For me, it flourished into my job. Word of mouth is my main form of advertising. What I do is, I tell everyone, on allll the Facebook groups, and all my friends that the first 30ml for anyone is free. I'll even deliver it. Secondly, I always throw people free samples of new flavors, random 30mls, free clapton builds, even RDA's and mods to people who resell my juice. Now I am in the process of making my labels. For those who know "fawgmachine" I stupidly deleted my account because someone pissed me off, but now I'm just doing my best to avoid bullshit because I love the fuck out of this sub. Good luck! If you have any questions let me know.
Thanks for the info and welcome back. I intend to just let it grow naturally and see what happens. I don't drive anymore as I'm old and retired so doing deliveries is not going to happen. If they want my juice they will need to come to me. If this works out then great but if not then I still make lots of my own juice for my own use and enjoy it. So its a win win for me all the way around.
This started for me. I was selling to a few people who were renting one of my friend's houses.
Now, I'm making juice for his co-workers, their co-workers, friends, etc...
It's more of a job than a hobby. It's good extra money, I really just say I don't care about the money because I don't but they mainly pay for bulk supplies like PG/VG.
I'm also about to get a juice-line with a local B&M hopefully, so now it's more work than anything. I know my prices will still be low because of how am I but the local business will push them higher. So it's a hard business, man.
I rarely get on here anymore because of that, it annoys me almost to make juice.
I love all you folks though, I just need a break from it sometimes.
One of the things I've figured out about being in business for yourself is it is very easy to get caught up and forget why you liked it in the first place. More now than ever you need to force yourself to take short breaks and this will help keep the excitement fresh as well as enjoy the work much more. I enjoy what I'm doing but if it starts to feel like a job then I'm going to stop because I want to keep it as a hobby.
Remember that as you get into this grey area of favor/business that if you undercharge then you will be overwhelmed unless you just start telling people NO. You are doing them a favor by saving them money, but the time that you spend making this IS taking away from your life (however little) and you should be compensated a little bit of profit for that. Don't feel bad for that.
Yes and thank you for reminding me of that. I was a bookkeeper and office manager when I was working and I understand how difficult it can be for good friends and customers to understand the cost of running a business. It's important to insure I charge enough not only for the cost of supplies but also for my time. I would not work for a company for free and I should not work for my own company for free.
I must be the Robin Hood of vaping. I sell my friends 60ml for $8, 120ml for $12, and 250ml for $20 plus shipping. According to my e-liquid calculator, the one 120ml mix I make costs me $1.49 in ingredients + $0.80 for the bottle. $9.71 minus my time seems like enough profit from a hobby.
Something I've run into selling to my friends is when a flavor becomes popular and I only just recently got small bottles of flavorings for it, I need to buy more flavorings and that's yet another order on top of what new flavorings I'm trying to get day to day. I sell my juice $10 for 50ml and it's been flying, my friends are ecstatic at the fact that they can get quality tasting juice from me for 200% less than the home brew juice at a vape shop near me. I'm making a huge profit, after supply expenses, but I like to think that the price of the juice also includes the R&D for whatever new juices I make next that they'll enjoy. I'm at a different scale and level of complexity from when I started selling it two months ago but it's fun to cover all of my personal research expenses by helping friends out who just want good juice. I also get to make a lot of orders a week for new flavors I want to experiment with which is my real intention for selling right now.