GetlyA holiday market looks like easy money. A table, a weekend crowd, a stack of your best work — what could go wrong?
The booth fee. That's what.
Say you pay $150 for a Saturday booth, drive 40 minutes each way, and spend 10 hours at the table. You sell $1,104 worth of stock. Sounds like a great day — until you subtract what it actually cost. The goods you sold cost $320 to make. The booth, travel, and table supplies ran $215. Your net profit is $569. Over 10 hours, that's $56.90 an hour. Still a good day — but only because the numbers were checked before the market, not after it.
The three numbers to run before you book any market
1. Break-even units. Your fixed costs divided by the profit on one item. With $215 in fixed costs and a $20 item that costs $6 to make, you need to sell 16 units before the day pays anything at all. If the market usually moves 12 of that item, the booth loses money before you unload the car.
2. Sell-through. Making 100 units and selling 67 is a 67% sell-through — and the 33 unsold units still cost you money to make. Every unsold unit is profit you already spent. Plan the make quantity from the break-even number, not from optimism.
3. Real $/hour for the whole day. Not just table hours — setup, teardown, and the drive both count. A market that nets $569 over 10 hours pays $56.90 an hour. The same market with a $250 booth fee and a longer drive can drop under $30 an hour fast. Compare that to your target rate before you pay the fee, not after.
Run the demo numbers (example data)
One maker day, checked in advance: $1,104 revenue, $320 cost of goods sold, $215 fixed costs → $569 net profit, $56.90/hr over 10 hours, 67% sell-through, break-even 16 units at a $20 price and $6 cost. Change one input — a $250 booth fee instead of $150 — and the same day nets $469, or $46.90 an hour. The market didn't change. The fee did. That's why the math comes first.
The December trap: discounting your profit away
Holiday markets love a "20% off" sign. On a $25 item that costs $11.50 to make, full price leaves $13.50 profit. At 20% off you sell it for $20 and keep $8.50 — a third of your profit gone for a sale that may not even bring a third more buyers. Discounts are fine when they move dead stock. They're a loss when they cut the margin on stock that would have sold anyway. Run the discount through the same check: new price, same cost, new profit, same hours. If the $/hour drops below your target, the sale isn't a deal — for you, anyway.
The one-minute check before you book
For every market or fair, answer three questions before you pay the fee:
1. How many units break even? Fixed costs divided by profit per item. If the answer is higher than what this market usually moves, skip it.
2. What's my real $/hour? Net profit divided by every hour the day takes, drive included. Compare it to your target rate, not to zero.
3. Am I setting money aside? A $569 profit day still owes tax. A simple rule — set aside a fixed share of every profit month into a separate pot — keeps a good December from turning into a nasty April.
We built free tools that do these checks for you: the Tax Pot Estimator (free, in this store) turns monthly profit into a set-aside target — for example, $24,000 a year at a 20% band means $400 a month into the pot. And the Real $/Hour Calculator (free, in this store) turns any sale into your real hourly rate in seconds.
And if you want the full market plan — booth fee, travel, inventory made vs sold, sell-through, break-even units, and $/hour for the whole day — the Craft Fair Profit Planner ($9, in this store) runs all of it from your numbers before you book.
For the full picture across every hustle — not just market days — the Worth It — Side Hustle Profit Tracker ($19, in this store) tracks sales, expenses, and hours for Etsy, eBay, Poshmark, Mercari and more, and leads with the number that matters: your real $/hour. One payment, no subscription.
A market day is a job, not a lottery ticket. Run the numbers before you pay the booth fee, and let the real $/hour decide.