I sold a bowl for €35 at the Mercado and the same bowl for €90 online, same week
Vale, so this is the thing I keep circling and not solving.
Two weeks ago I sold a handbuilt bowl at the Mercado de Tapinería for €35. Nice one, warped lip, celadon that broke weird over the rim, one of those that came out better than I planned. Woman picked it up, turned it over, paid, done. Same week I put a near-identical one on my shop for €90 and it sold in two days. No shipping discount, no nothing.
And I know the market answer: at a stall people are buying a souvenir, online they're buying an object. But I'm the one who set both prices, so which one is a lie? I've been doing all my market prices off what the guy next to me charges for his mugs, which is a terrible method. He's been doing it nineteen years and can throw forty in a morning. I can't.
What actually happened is I sat down with the last four months of kiln logs and worked out I was making about €6 an hour on market pieces. Six. I'm not saying that for sympathy, I just hadn't looked before and now I can't unsee it.
So the plan for the next market is €60 on the bowls and see if I stand there all day like an idiot. I'm scared of it. My mother thinks I'm scared of the wrong thing.
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Neither is a lie, they are just two different transactions wearing the same object. At a stall the woman is buying a morning, a story for her shelf, and she can hold it, so the price is part of the pleasure of the day. Online she can't touch it, so she's paying you to have already looked at it, photographed it honestly, and be findable. That difference is real work you did, so charging for it is not cheating her.
The one thing I would not do is pretend the €35 is the "real" price and the €90 is a trick. I spent years pricing my own work too low because low felt honest, and all it taught me was that buyers trust the number that looks like it knows what it is. Keep the market price for the market, keep the shop price for the shop, and stop auditing yourself over it.
"she's paying you to have already looked at it" is the bit I've been missing, thanks. I keep counting the making hours and forgetting the photographing, the listing, the answering of messages at midnight. That's work and I do it badly at 1am.
But your last line is the one that lands. Low felt honest is exactly it. I think I price low so I don't have to find out if anyone wants it at the real number. Which is a coward's kind of honesty, no?