Last week I quoted two wood engraving jobs.
One for a local supermarket chain to engrave a 15" by 1.5" logo on 100 bread boards. I should have quoted $13 or thereabouts but I quoted 11.50.
The other job was quite substantial involving 3500 pieces of wood to be engraved on 4 sides. Two of the sides would be about 3"x3" and the other two about 1"x3" vertical text. Since I do wood in the 3x3 size fairly often I knew what I should be charging. It should have been in the area of $12. Since there were so many I discounted my quote to $9.50.
I called the supermarket chain this morning and was told they had two bids under $2.00 each.
The other guy won't return my calls so I must assume that he found somebody close to his $4.00 target. I guarantee that this job will take 14 minutes to run. Even with building two jigs it will take 12 minutes.
My guess is that here are examples of people who will soon have their machines up for sale because they don't know or care how much it takes to be in business. They will not have my sympathy.