Market Vendor True Hourly Earnings
After each market, sellers log revenue, expenses, and hidden labor to see their true hourly earnings, break-even sales target, and whether the event is worth doing again.
After packing up, a handmade-goods seller imports that day’s payment records and photographs receipts for booth fees, parking, material restocks, and food. Quick buttons capture time spent on prep, transport, staffing the booth, and at-home wrap-up. The product separates cash revenue from every direct expense first, so a strong sales total does not mask how little remains.
Once the entries are complete, it shows cash profit, true hourly earnings, and the sales needed to break even at the next market. Sellers can compare markets to see whether weak results came from low average order value, excessive travel, or overly time-consuming preparation. After several events fall below a seller-set hourly-rate floor, it suggests reducing inventory, raising prices, or pausing applications.
The first version clarifies revenue, expenses, and labor time, with support for cash, card payments, and common mobile-payment imports. It does not estimate brand exposure or future repeat purchases, and it does not treat a one-off sales spike as long-term performance; sellers can note these unquantifiable gains separately.
Why now
On August 4, one seller reported about $100–$110 in sales at one market and about $100–$150 at another. S1 With an average $50 round-trip Uber cost, a $75 booth fee, and nearly 15 hours of weekly work, whether to stop participating is an immediate decision. S1
Target user
Independent sellers who spend weekends at farmers' markets, craft fairs, and pop-up booths. The key moment is when they get home after packing up, while revenue is still fresh and expense receipts have not yet gone missing. Tired sellers often focus only on sales and overlook time spent preparing, transporting, and recovering. Before the next application deadline, reviewing several event records can determine whether to raise prices, bring less inventory, or leave the circuit.
Minimal entry point
The web app starts with manual entry and Square report CSVs. Square officially supports exporting reports from its Dashboard as CSV files. S2 The importer maps only the date, payment method, gross amount, fees, and refunds; other platforms can use saveable column templates for now. Expense photos serve only as receipt records: sellers must confirm the amount and category, and automatic recognition is not promised yet. Four timers cover prep, transport, booth time, and wrap-up, with the option to add time afterward. The calculation layer consistently outputs cash profit, true hourly earnings, and break-even sales, with formula details retained. The comparison page shows only one seller’s events, with no industry benchmarks or exposure valuation.
Punching above its weight
Acquire the first users through local market-vendor groups, handmade business associations, and relevant Reddit communities, offering a no-signup single-event hourly-earnings calculator. Build searchable templates around “craft fair profit calculator” and “vendor hourly wage,” then prompt users to save their history from the results page. Provide Square CSV examples and a post-market checklist that group administrators can share directly.
Competitors & gaps
- MakerMarginGoogle
- MakerMargin already covers material recipes, labor, booth fees, overhead, event profit and loss, CSV imports, and receipt OCR. Its website also lists Square and Stripe integrations. S3 It can already answer whether a product or market is profitable, so it overlaps heavily with this concept. The opportunity is not more bookkeeping features, but a faster post-market event closeout. Breaking time into fixed blocks for prep, transport, the event itself, and at-home wrap-up makes the sources of lost time easier to see. The results page can also tie together break-even sales, a minimum hourly-rate threshold, and a run of underperforming events. If entry is not fast enough or the basis for opting out is not clear enough, existing users will have little reason to switch. The first version should avoid inventory, tax forms, and general-purpose AI, and validate this narrow workflow instead.
- BoothKeeperGoogle
- BoothKeeper already explicitly tracks sales, expenses, and true hourly earnings. It includes driving, packing, selling, and teardown in labor time, and provides event conclusions, historical comparisons, expense categories, and season planning. S4 So incorporating hidden time into hourly earnings is not itself an open gap. Its public-facing product is a broader market-business system that also includes logistics, weather, taxes, and booth planning. The opening is a lighter post-market reconciliation flow: sellers import that day’s payments, complete each receipt, then determine whether average order value, travel distance, or prep is dragging down the result. Another distinction is tracking a streak of poor performance against a self-set threshold rather than offering only an event-level conclusion. This is a narrow gap that must be delivered through fewer steps and more transparent formulas.
How it makes money
Monthly subscription. The free tier supports a single-event review; the paid tier unlocks long-term history, bulk imports, and comparisons across markets.
The case against
The burden of post-market entry will directly determine retention. Cash sales, last-minute restocks, and shared rides are especially easy to omit, and a single omission can distort true hourly earnings. When materials come from existing inventory, sellers must decide whether to count purchase cost or actual usage. Prep often spans several days and may support multiple markets, making allocation rules contentious. Overly prescriptive advice after a series of below-threshold events could overlook notes on weather, foot traffic, and repeat purchases. The product cannot replace tax bookkeeping, so operating reviews must remain separate from tax reporting.