Originally published April 28, 2018. I’ve updated this post with a more practical way to look at craft fair and market income, expenses, time, and profitability—because making a lot of sales doesn’t automatically mean a market was worth doing.
You can have a craft fair where your booth is busy all day, products are flying off the table, and you come home feeling pretty darn good about your sales.
But was the market actually profitable?
That’s a different question.
When I originally wrote this post, I talked about tracking income and expenses by venue. That’s the bookkeeping term I used for keeping the numbers from each place you sold separate.
For a handmade business owner, that “venue” might be Etsy, your website, a consignment shop—or an individual craft fair or market.
And when it comes to craft fairs, tracking each market separately is especially important.
Because if all you know is that you made $1,000 in sales, you really don’t know whether that market was worth your time yet.
Sales Don’t Tell You Whether a Craft Fair Was Profitable
Let’s say you did three markets this year.
One brought in $1,200 in sales.
Another brought in $850.
And the third brought in $700.
It would be awfully tempting to declare that $1,200 market the winner and sign up again next year.
But we haven’t looked at the rest of the numbers yet.
Maybe the booth fee for that market was much higher. Maybe it required a hotel room, two hours of driving each way, expensive parking, extra display supplies, or three very long days away from your worktable.
And, of course, you had money tied up in the products you sold.
That’s why sales alone aren’t enough to evaluate a craft fair or market.
You need to know what came in, what went out, and how much time the whole thing required.
Track Each Craft Fair or Market Separately
This was the main point of my original post, and it still holds true today.
You don’t want all of your craft fair sales lumped together as one number while all of your craft fair expenses disappear into various expense categories.
Your bookkeeping still needs to categorize expenses correctly. A booth fee is still a booth fee, payment processing fees are still payment processing fees, travel costs are still travel costs, and so on.
But you also need some way to identify which market those expenses belonged to.
The same goes for your sales.
Whether you use bookkeeping software or spreadsheets, the exact method isn’t nearly as important as being consistent.
Market A’s income and expenses need to be identifiable as Market A.
Market B gets its own numbers.
Market C gets its own numbers.
That way, six months from now when applications open again, you’re not sitting there thinking:
“I remember that being a pretty good show…wasn’t it?”
You can actually look.
What Should You Track for Each Craft Fair?
At the bare minimum, you want enough information to tell you what the event actually put in your pocket.
For each craft fair or market, keep track of:
- Gross sales before payment processing fees
- Booth and application fees, including tables or electricity if you paid extra for them
- Payment processing fees
- Travel-related costs, such as mileage or other applicable travel expenses, parking, tolls, lodging, and meals
- Display or event-specific supply costs
- Cost of goods sold for the products you sold
- Other event-specific expenses
- The amount of time the market required, including prep, travel, setup, selling, and packing up
You may already have some of these numbers in your regular bookkeeping.
That’s fine.
The goal isn’t to create another bookkeeping system and enter everything twice until you want to throw your laptop into the nearest pond.
The goal is to be able to pull together the numbers associated with one specific market so you can evaluate it.
And if you’re not sure how to keep track of the individual sales you make while you’re actually at an event, my post on Tracking Craft Fair Sales Without Loosing Your Mind walks you through that part.
Now Figure Out What the Market Actually Made
Once you have the numbers, you can get past “I sold $1,200!” and see what really happened.
Start with your gross sales.
Then subtract the costs associated with doing the event and the cost of the products you sold.
What’s left gives you a much better picture of the money the market actually generated for your business.
But I wouldn’t stop there.
I’d also look at your profit margin and your effective hourly rate.
That hourly rate can be a bit of an eye-opener because a six-hour market isn’t necessarily a six-hour job.
You may have spent several hours making extra inventory, tagging products, packing the car, driving to the event, setting up your booth, working the market, breaking everything down, driving home, unpacking—and eventually putting your house back together after it looked like a craft tornado blew through.
All of that time counts.
If a market left you with $400 after expenses but took 25 hours of your time, that’s very different from making the same $400 from an event that required 10 hours.
But the Numbers Aren’t the Only Thing That Matters
Here’s where evaluating craft fairs gets a little less black and white.
A market can look decent on paper and still be one you never want to do again.
Maybe the organizer was a nightmare.
Maybe there was plenty of foot traffic, but absolutely none of it was your crowd.
Maybe your booth was stuck in a dark back corner next to the bathrooms.
Maybe the weather was miserable.
Or perhaps sales were only okay, but you met a bunch of ideal customers, added people to your email list, received a wholesale inquiry, or discovered that one new product was a surprise hit.
That information matters too.
After an event, make a few notes while it’s still fresh in your mind. Think about the traffic, your booth location, the organizer, weather if it was outdoors, what sold well, what didn’t move at all, products people asked for, and anything else you’d want Future You to know before handing over another booth fee.
Because Future You will not remember all this next year.
Future You has other shit to remember.
Pay Attention to What Sold—and What Didn’t
Craft fairs can give you information that’s harder to get from an online sale.
You’re standing right there while people pick things up, put them back down, ask questions, compare colors, comment on prices, and tell you what they wish you carried.
Use that information.
Which products were your best sellers?
Which ones barely got touched?
Did a new product sell better than expected?
Did several people ask for the same size, color, style, or product you didn’t have?
Those observations can help you make better inventory and product decisions before the next market instead of simply making more of everything and hoping for the best.
And yes, sometimes the lesson really is:
“Apparently nobody wanted the thing I was convinced everybody would want.”
That’s useful information too.
Compare Your Markets Instead of Relying on Your Memory
Evaluating one market is helpful.
Evaluating several markets the same way is where this gets really useful.
Imagine being able to compare your events and see the gross sales, total expenses, net profit, profit margin, hourly rate, and overall event experience side by side.
Now your decision about next year’s markets isn’t based on which one felt busiest.
You might discover that the little two-day market you almost skipped was considerably more profitable than the huge event everyone tells you that you simply have to do.
Or that your highest-sales market also cost the most money and required so much time that another event actually gave you a much better return.
That’s the difference between making sales at a market and making money at a market.
And that’s really what we’re trying to figure out.
So…Would You Do That Market Again?
That’s the question all this tracking should eventually help you answer.
Not simply:
Did I make sales?
But:
Did I make enough profit for the money, time, and energy I put into this event—and does it make sense for my business to do it again?
Sometimes the answer will be an easy yes.
Sometimes it’ll be a big fat nope.
And sometimes the numbers will say one thing while the other benefits of the event give you a reason to try it again.
That’s okay too.
The point isn’t to make every decision based on one magic number.
The point is to stop guessing.
Want an Easier Way to Evaluate Your Craft Fairs and Markets?
This is exactly why I created the Craft Fair/Market Evaluation Workbook.
Instead of trying to remember what you should look at after every show, the workbook gives you one place to record the whole story of the event.
You can track the event details and organizer information, income and expenses, net profit and profit margin, the hours you invested and your effective hourly rate, what sold and what didn’t, new-product performance, customer requests, traffic and overall event notes.
It also gives you an Event Snapshot with your important numbers, an Event Score and repeat recommendation, and an automatic profitability grade.
And once you’ve done several markets, the Multi-Event Summary lets you compare them side by side so you can start spotting which events really deserve a place on next year’s calendar.
I’ve also included a Craft Fair Checklist and Inventory List because apparently getting ready for a market doesn’t already involve enough moving parts. 😆
Because the goal isn’t just to come home from a craft fair with fewer products than you left with.
It’s to know whether all those sales actually made your business money.
If you'd rather be working with yarn, fabric, paint or clay than deal with a pile of receipts or bookkeeping spreadsheets, you're in the right place.
I help you get a handle on your numbers, make sense of what's coming in and going out, and actually feel confident running your business -- without accountant-speak or guilt.
👉 Want help figuring out your bookkeeping (without overcomplicating it)? Join the Free Handmade Business Bookkeeping community.
I am a coach/educator, not your bookkeeper or CPA. This information is for educational purposes, NOT financial or tax advice.
Full Disclosure - How I use AI
I use AI to create blog post images, because it produces better maker specific images than I can find after spending hours searching through Canva and other places.
I write ALL of my own blog posts (sales pages, etc.), but I do run the draft through AI to make sure it's clear (and so I don't get too wordy or go off on a tangent!).
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