How to Price Screen Printing (Without Guessing)
Most shops that fail printed perfectly well — they charged too little. How to build a screen printing price you can defend, using your own numbers.
Free tutorials · a $29 course · a working shop
Start a screen printing business that actually pays you
Learning to print is the easy half. Pricing it, buying the right equipment and finding customers is where shops quietly fail — and it is the half almost nobody teaches. I still run the press, so everything here was tested on real orders.
4,000+ subscribers · 120+ videos · nothing gated
Why listen to me
I am not a coach who read about screen printing
I am Jesse Poteet. I run Alpine Apparel Co, a water-based shop in Castle Rock, Colorado, printing since 2017 — for years out of my own house. Everything I teach got tested on my own press first, usually by me getting it wrong and paying for it.
I also build the software this trade runs on, through Operator Stack. Print, teach, build — each one keeps the other two honest.
More about me →Why shops fail
The press is rarely the problem
Almost nobody quits because their prints were bad. They quit because the business around the printing never worked, and by the time that was obvious the money was already spent.
You have no idea what to charge
So you guess. You win the job, and somewhere around the third hour you work out you are earning less than the kid who mows your lawn. Underpricing is the most common way a shop that prints beautifully goes under.
You are afraid of buying the wrong gear
Every forum says something different, a press costs thousands, and the wrong one is a mistake you live with for years. So you stall — and the stalling costs more than the press would have.
You do not know where customers come from
Printing you can learn from a video in an afternoon. Getting somebody to hand you money for it is the part nobody put in the tutorial, and it is the part that decides whether this is a business or a hobby.
None of that is a talent problem. People who make good things deserve to make a living from them, and usually the only thing in the way is information nobody bothered to hand them.
The plan
Three steps, in this order
Most people run these backwards — gear first, pricing last. That order is exactly why so many shops own a nice press and no margin.
1
Work out what a job actually costs you
Before equipment, before a logo, before a business name. Know your real cost per print and you can quote with a straight face — and everything downstream gets easier.
Read the pricing guide → 2
Buy only what the next ten orders need
Not the dream setup — the setup that takes the work in front of you. I list every piece of gear I actually use, so you can copy a working shop instead of guessing.
See what I use → 3
Get the business part right once
Audience, pricing, production, systems and marketing in one place, for less than you would lose on a single badly priced job.
The course · $29 →Keep guessing
It stays a hobby that costs money
- Jobs priced from a feeling, and never checked afterwards
- Equipment bought twice because the first one was wrong
- Customers who only ever came back for the cheap price
- A garage full of gear and a year you cannot get back
Get the business part right
It turns into something that pays you
- A price you can say out loud without flinching
- Gear you chose on purpose, in the right order
- Customers who come back for the work, not the discount
- A shop that fits the life you wanted when you started
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