This project relies on some images that are licensed under a Creative Commons NonCommercial license. That means it must be noncommercial; we would have made it noncommercial anyway, because it’s the right thing to do for us. However, because it is a physical product, there are costs associated with printing it. Below is a detailed explanation of those costs, broken down by product-type. We use these folks to coordinate printing with these folks and these folks for shipping, storage, and handling.
Here is the cost of a deck.
To the left is how those costs look when build into one deck and below is how that cost moves with larger orders. Not all decks will be the same–an international deck might cost much more to ship or handle. At a certain size, weight starts to become an added cost.
But for the vast majority to buyers, this is where your $10 goes.
Here are those same numbers for a poster:
The orange bar on the top of both stacked-bar graphs is the margin–that’s how we pay for free decks for educators. Here are some of the costs I’m building into that margin, which are easier to detail outside of a graphic:
- Hosting: $14.98 to register the domain and $6/mo for hosting with Laughing Squid.
- Shipping drama: in one extreme case, we have an educator who requested a free deck who lives in West Africa. She has a great track-record and we’re excited to get her decks. We spent over $120 shipping 5 decks to her (the total margin of 60 decks combined) only to have the decks returned to our warehouse. We will have to try again.
- Taxes: This project benefitted from clean air, paved streets, educated printers and public schools that pay teachers to prepare women and men for careers in computer science. Washington state sales tax is about 9.6% in Seattle, so that is 96 cents for each deck. Worth it at twice the price.
- We’re 99% sure we want to start paying ourselves minimum wage for time spent on this project. Jessica did all of the work for the Kickstarter for zero dollars, including designing the decks, business management, social media, customer service, vendor selection and management, media relations, and other stuff. She lives in Seattle, where minimum wage is $15/hour. Though her time is worth more, in the spirit of noncommercial use, she wanted to bill at that rate for ongoing upkeep on this project. She has yet to actually do that.
If anyone is curious about her hours or has any other deeply meaningful financial questions, here is the financial tracking document for the Kickstarter. Reach out to Jessica with any questions or concerns.
