pricing

Last week I finally had a sale from my Etsy shop. To tell the truth, I wasn't expecting it.  The appearance of my shop isn't what I want it to be yet. I've been avoiding photographing more items for Etsy because it is such a time consuming process which just takes away from much needed studio time. And I wasn't  really happy with the results of the last pictures I put on the site.  I think I'll be trying a different way to shoot pictures of pottery soon.- Keep you posted.
Here's the jar that sold-

  You know, when I was trying to figure out shipping costs I took a look at what other potters were pricing things for shipping.  It seemed to me that they were a little low on shipping costs but were probably increasing the item's price a little to absorb the difference.  And I thought, yeah that might make sense.  If I liked something that cost $17.00 and it shipped for $10.00 I'd think it was ridiculous to pay that much shipping on a $17.00 item.  But if that item were priced at $22.00 and shipped for $7.00
that seems much more reasonable.  So I tweaked my item and shipping prices a little.  Basically, I averaged shipping to a San Diego zip code with my home town zip code (New Castle, PA) to get near and far prices and threw out Hawaii and Alaska. Guess where this jar got shipped to?  That's right, Hawaii.  So right away the cost went over the shipping price I quoted and dug into the item price. Then I realized I forgot Pay pal takes a small percentage, and I'm sure I read this when I was setting up in Etsy and just forgot- Etsy charges a buck for each sale. Ended up going two or three bucks under my lowest acceptable price on this one. Oh well.