Gliden, my only advice is to avoid falling into trap of being the one-off knife guy. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing one-off customs, but there is no way to make any money doing one-offs unless you are making museum pieces and charging accordingly. Any time you make 1 of something, it takes a long time and sometimes lots of trial and error. Great designs evolve over time through countless little tweaks.
It is thrilling to have people come to you to make them a knife and wanting to pay for your work. Believe me when I say that those people will buy YOUR design, and they will pay for it. So, in my honest opinion, try to design something that the customer will like but will have broad appeal so that you can make 50 of them over the years. That's how you recoup all the design time, failures, fixes, etc that come with a new design. You can sell one knife at a reasonable price if you can spread all that upfront time and effort across a whole bunch of knives of that design as time goes on.
And I know you didn't ask, but don't be the cheapest guy in town just because you are new. You aren't a stamping plant in China, so you aren't competing with Walmart. I don't care how rough and ugly it is, it's handmade and people pay for handmade. You are selling your creation, which just happens to be a knife. You aren't selling raw materials plus markup.
