Things We Wish We’d Known as Beginners | How Much You Should Charge for Lashes and What Will You Need in Your Lash Extensions Kit?
Becoming a Lash Tech is kind of a no-brainer – you get to set your own hours, work for yourself, and earn a basically infinite amount of money! As a beginner though, how much should you be charging for a set of lashes, and how much can you really make? Let’s go through it…
How Much Should a Beginner Lash Tech Charge?
Before we go much further, it’s worth noting that – like with so many lash extensions related questions – the answer will depend a lot on different factors. With regards to beginner lash tech prices, you will need to be slightly more competitive and build up a client base as opposed to just going straight in at $150 for a classic lash set.
It’s more than likely that your first few sets will be on friends and family and may be free as a result. It’s really important to set a boundary though and ensure that you start charging them sooner rather than later. There’s only so much you can trick yourself into thinking that doing their lashes for free is fine because you get practice and some pictures for your instagram – the fact of the matter is that while they are helping you to boost your portfolio, you need to at least cover your product costs.
When you first start offering sets to clients, it’s worth having some kind of welcome offer to entice clients. Bear in mind that it needs to be clear in your messaging that these are introductory prices which are set to increase, and ensure that you do increase them as your skills develop!
How Much Does A Beginner Lash Tech Make?
This will depend a lot on your location – if you’re in a small town you’re likely to have lower prices than someone in a bigger, more populated city. Firstly because things like salon rent will be a little cheaper, and also because the clientele you’re likely to be attracting won’t be expecting quite such high prices for their beauty treatments. If you’re working from home this is maybe even more the case.
Let’s say you’re charging $75 for a full classic set, and you have three clients per day, five days per week – you’re going to be making around $4,500 per month. Of course, you’ll need to deduct your product cost and any salon rent etc. you might be paying to get your net takings, but just from those appointments, you’ll be making around $54,000 per year – not too shabby!
As you become more experienced and more sought after, make sure you are increasing your prices. Remember that what you are charging as a lash tech is about your time as much as it is the treatment itself, so don’t sell yourself short!
Beginner Lash Tech Kit
If you want to take the guesswork out of which products to buy as a beginner, it’s worth looking into a kit which has a selection of products in it to get you started. If nothing else, this will save you precious time, but can also save you money whilst helping you to find new products that you love.
If you’re only offering Classic lash extensions this kit will be a good starting point, but we also have a kit for those of you offering Volume lash extensions sets. If you’re looking to try an even wider range of products, or if you’re offering both classic and volume lash extensions (and/or hybrid lashes) then this kit will save you a ton of time, a lot of leg work, and even a little money!
Beginner Lash Tech Tips
Okay, here are three things we wish we’d known when we first started out.
Simplify Your Menu. Just like when you start shopping for your lash supplies, having lots of options can feel a little overwhelming. While it’s easy to get excited about showing that you have all of these skills and can do all sorts of lash sets, having a simpler menu will be so much easier for your clients.
Break it down into Classic, Hybrid, Light Volume and Mega Volume by all means, and then you can work with your clients when it comes to the specific kind of look they want; light volume can mean different things to different people, and there’s a bunch of ways you can do hybrid lashes, so having a simplified menu is the key to getting clients in!
Charge What You’re Worth. We touched on this earlier but you want to always be making sure you’re charging what you’re actually worth, not what you think people are willing to pay. Once you’ve established your client base and a good reputation you should be increasing your prices. Each time you take a new course, any time you’re thinking about adding yet more appointment slots, whenever you have to purchase more specialised products, etc. you should think about increasing your prices.
Have Policies in Place and Stick to Them. It’s so easy to put off putting a cancellation policy in place, but it will save you from losing out on so much money. We know, it can feel like you’re telling your clients off and it might even make some people dubious about booking with you, but at the end of the day are those really clients you want to be dealing with? Having a cancellation policy – and we’re talking the kind where you take a decent sized deposit that a client doesn’t get back if they don’t give you reasonable notice that they can’t make their appointment – will be the difference between you being able to put food on the table or not. It means that you might make half of what you normally would for that time (and yes, we do recommend a 50% deposit!) that you can now spend on marketing or on getting ahead with stocking up, as opposed to making nothing and worrying that your next client might do the same.
So there you have it, all the things we wish we’d known right at the beginning. The long and short of it is to always make sure you’re covering your materials at the very least and go from there – there’s no need to put yourself in debt just to boost your portfolio!
