Maya Reeves

Maya Reeves learned to sell handmade goods the way most people on Etsy do: by losing money quietly for months, then getting stubborn about it. She opened her first craft shop in 2019 with a Cricut Explore Air 2 she bought refurbished and a Sawgrass SG500 she bought after three months of Pinterest research. What she did not buy, in that first year, was a real pricing spreadsheet.

Two busy seasons, a broken heat press, and one embarrassing conversation with her accountant later, she started over. The version of the pricing spreadsheet she built in 2022 eventually became the first Crafter Margin calculator. Since then, she has sold more than 4,000 tumblers, taught pricing workshops at two local craft fairs, and consulted for small Etsy shops trying to stop bleeding on glitter-HTV orders.

On Crafter Margin, Maya writes every sublimation and Etsy calculator, and edits everything. She is the one who decides what ships. Her bias, which she tells everyone about up front, is that labor deserves a line item. You will find this in every calculator she touches.

Professional background

Maya works out of a converted garage studio in a small Arkansas town, the kind of setup where the UPS driver knows the dog by name. She started part time in March 2019 while still working a retail manager shift, and went full time on the shop in January 2022 after her first holiday season that cleared five figures in a single month. She crossed $30k in annual revenue in 2023, and sits in the $55k to $70k range now depending on how hard she pushes the Q4 calendar.

Her equipment has grown in the order most sublimation shops grow: the refurbished Cricut Explore Air 2 in 2019, the Sawgrass SG500 a few months after that, a Cricut Maker 3 in 2021 when she stopped swapping mats between HTV and sticker jobs, and a 15x15 swing-away press that replaced a clamshell in 2022 after she burned through her third polyester shirt in a week. She added a small mug press and convection oven for tumblers in late 2022 and has not changed that core setup since.

Most of Maya’s sales move through Etsy, where she runs two shops, one for sublimation tumblers and one for seasonal decor. She also does two local holiday markets every year, the Ozark Regional Craft Fair in November and a smaller church bazaar in December, plus a steady trickle of repeat custom orders from a few regional softball leagues. She has not opened on Faire yet and says she is not sure she will, because her margins on bulk sublimation are thinner than she wants for a wholesale platform.

Teaching and speaking

Maya does a handful of outside appearances every year, mostly small venues where the audience is other working shop owners rather than aspiring ones.

• Guest on the MakerCast podcast, episode 142, September 2024, on pricing sublimation tumblers without undercharging on labor.
• Taught a two-hour pricing workshop at the Midwest Makers Conference, Branson, October 2025.
• Contributing writer for the Craft Industry Alliance member newsletter, 2024 to 2025, with two essays on Etsy ad budgeting.
• Co-moderator of the Small Craft Shops, Big Dreams Facebook group, roughly 8,400 members, since 2022.
• Featured in a local profile in the Harrison Daily Times, February 2024, on home-based craft businesses that survived the post-2021 Etsy fee changes.
• Panelist at the 2025 Etsy Sellers Roundtable (virtual), March 2025, on pricing during ad-spend cuts.

How she verifies the numbers

Every formula Maya publishes on Crafter Margin gets tested against at least five recent real orders from her own Etsy shop before she ships the calculator. Not made-up numbers, not rough averages. Actual orders with actual supplier invoices, actual shipping labels, and actual Etsy fee lines from the monthly statement. If a formula disagrees with her shop’s real outcomes by more than a couple of percent, she pulls it and rewrites it.

She re-verifies supplier pricing every quarter against the current Sawgrass ink catalog, her usual blank suppliers, and Etsy’s published fee structure. When something changes, the affected calculators get a visible updated-on date and a short changelog line. The full process is documented in our methodology page, and our editorial policy explains how corrections are handled when a reader flags something.

What she covers

• Sublimation pricing for tumblers, mugs, shirts, keychains, and ornaments.
• Etsy fee, shipping, and ad spend math, including offsite ads.
• Cricut Explore and Maker workflow for HTV and sticker jobs.
• Quarterly reviews of Etsy policy and fee changes.
• Pricing workflow for sellers moving from hobby to registered side business.
• Holiday-season capacity planning and pre-order math.
• Sawgrass SG500 ink cost per print, by blank type.
• Heat press time and temperature tuning for polyester blanks.
• Simple bookkeeping templates for solo Etsy sellers.
• When a custom order is actually worth saying no to.

What she does not cover

• Jewelry pricing, because she has never sold a piece of jewelry in her life.
• Laser engraving, because she does not own a laser and will not guess.
• Wholesale contract negotiation at scale, which is a different business from Etsy-first retail and needs a different specialist.
• Legal or tax advice. She has a CPA for a reason, and so should you.

Contact and corrections

If a number in one of Maya’s calculators looks off, or a supplier price you use daily has moved and our guide is stale, write in. Short notes with the calculator URL and the specific line that looks wrong are the fastest way to get a fix. Reach her at maya@craftermargin.com, or use the general form on the contact page. Our editorial policy covers how and when corrections get published.