re: Becoming a professional woodworking or not

Selling! I have always said that you have to know your bottom line before figuring any price. Of course you need to know your material and labor costs along with your overhead to figure out the bottom line. After that, you have to charge market value plus whatever you think you can get for a project, regardless of the bottom line. Figuring your bottom line is how you know if you can do a job or not.
If that price doesn’t meet the bottom line, then you have to pass on it.

Never use material x ?? to figure a price. Material will always be different then the labor that goes into a project. Some projects will pay way more than 3 or 4 times material.

Here is one method (of many) that I used in the past to figure out how much to charge. (Keep in mind this was as a guide for just another check point)
I would factor in how much profit I thought I should make in a year. Then I would add that into my overhead to come up with a hourly or weekly amount. (Keep in mind that amount would be if you sold every (sellable) hour in the year. I would estimate that only about 75% of the year is sellable so I would factor that into my calculations.) After plugging those numbers in for a job and comparing them to how much your actually selling the job for, you can get a good idea if your on tract to meet your projected profit.

One more thing to consider in your bidding is job location. Mileage, gas, do you have to take everything up stairs, rent a lift? Rent a truck? Getting your project to the job site can have many obstacles that will cost you. Be sure to add for these things.

In my years of experience there is no solid method of what to charge. Your going to make more money on some jobs and less on others. You have to weigh that out considering on your situation at the time. My advise is to charge more when you can and sacrifice when you have to.

I also agree with Lanwater about keeping business hours. Not only from the customers perspective, but it forces you to put in your time and you learn how to seperate your business time from your private time.

Another IMPORTANT subject is Time Organization. You have to learn how to organize your time to be able to commit a certain amount of time to each and all of the different tasks you will be required to perform.