How should you price your services when you work alone?

1. Work back from what you want to take home

Not what you’d like to earn someday. What you need this year — rent, food, the shoes your kid just outgrew, the boring retirement account, the four days off in August you promised yourself. That’s a number. Write it down.

Now work backward, because take-home isn’t a wage. It’s a wage plus all the parts nobody sees: taxes, insurance, software, the slow weeks, the proposals that go nowhere, the afternoons lost to invoicing. Bill $134 an hour and you keep about $33 for every hour you work. That gap is where a practice of one quietly goes broke — not from bad clients, but from never noticing the gap existed.

Find the rate. That’s your floor, and floors are for standing on, not for apologizing about. The hours you can sell move it most: the same year needs $201 an hour at 10 billed hours a week and $80 at 25. How many hours a week can you bill? is the honest count.

2. Sell that hour in the shape that suits the work

An hour isn’t a product. It’s a slice of your life. So package it the way the buyer thinks:

• A single session, for the person who needs one good conversation.
• A package, for the person who wants a result, not a clock.
• A project, for the thing with a beginning, a middle and an invoice.
• A monthly retainer, for the person who wants you in their corner.

Same hour. Four different stories. Price the story.

Most practices need two or three of these, not all four. How do you price a package of sessions? works through the one people add first.

3. Put at least a starting price on your page

“From $X.” That’s it. A page with no number asks the visitor to do your homework, and many won’t. The few who do will pay you less for the privilege. A starting price isn’t a promise. It’s a door. It tells the right people to knock and the wrong ones to keep walking, which is the most profitable thing a price can do.

Should you publish your prices? compares a full price, a starting price and a price on request. Don’t know what to charge yet? Start from your own floor.

4. Raise it when you’re booked a month ahead

Simple, mechanical, no feelings required: booked a month out means your price is too low. Not your confidence. Your price. Raise it, tell no one you’re nervous, and watch who stays. Existing clients hear it first, in writing, with a date a month out. On that date it goes on your page for everybody. The ones who stay were always going to. The month before a price rise has the four steps and the messages.

Price isn’t a verdict on your worth. It’s a design decision — and most people never design it at all. They inherit it, guess at it, or quietly resent it for years. Start with the first decision a new client meets: should a discovery call be free?

The market isn’t judging you. It’s answering a question you haven’t asked yet.

Everything on pricing

• How many hours a week can you bill?

  Fewer than you think. Count the hours a client paid for last month, not the hours you were busy. Price for those, never for forty, because the hours you sell have to pay for every hour you don’t.

• How do you price a package of sessions?

  Start from your single-session price, take a little off for buying ahead, and give the package an end date. The discount rewards the commitment. The end date keeps the sessions from drifting into next year.

• Should you publish your prices?

  Yes. Put at least a starting price on your page. It answers the first question every client has before they ask it, turns away the people who could never pay it, and lets everyone else arrive already decided.

• How do you price when you don’t know what others charge?

  Forget the market rate and find your floor: the least an hour has to earn to cover your life, your costs and your tax. Then test it this week against what clients paid before, what the alternatives cost, and how people react when they hear it.

• Should a discovery call be free?

  Yes, if it’s short and has an end: twenty minutes to find out whether you can help. Start charging the day the call starts doing the work, when people leave it with the advice they’d otherwise pay you for.

• What should you charge per hour?

  Enough to keep what you need after tax, costs and card fees, across only the hours a client pays for. Taking home $60,000 over 46 weeks of 15 billed hours needs $134 an hour. That figure is your floor. Charge it or more.

• Should you charge different clients different prices?

  Only when anybody could choose the lower price. A concessionary rate for students or people on a low income, open to whoever asks, is fair. A price set by how much a client seems to have isn’t. The therapy setup starts with $70 and a concessionary $45, no questions asked.

• Hourly, package, project or retainer: which should you offer?

  Decide by the result you sell. An hour suits one good conversation. A package suits a change that takes several sessions. A project suits a thing with an end, priced as a whole. A retainer suits a client who wants you on hand every month. Most practices need two of the four.

• What is a day rate, and when should you use one?

  A day rate is a price for a full working day, for work billed by time rather than by result. Use it when the work is already under way and the scope keeps moving. To set one, multiply your hourly floor by the hours a day really holds for client work. Six hours at $134 rounds to $850.

• How do you price a project you’ve never done before?

  Estimate the days it takes, add a share for what you can’t see yet, quote one number, and take half up front. Write down what’s out of scope, so the unknowns you didn’t price stay outside the quote. The first one teaches you what the second should cost.

• What should a monthly retainer include?

  A retainer says four things: a fixed amount of work each month, how quickly you answer, what isn’t included, and how a pause works. Without the first, a retainer turns into unlimited work for a fixed fee. Without the last, a client who needs a month off stops instead.

• Should you offer a free first session?

  No, offer a short free call instead. A free session gives away the work and teaches the client what it’s worth: nothing. A twenty-minute call to decide whether you’re the right person gives away nothing but the decision, and it ends with a paid booking or a polite no.

• How do you stop free calls from filling your week?

  Make them short, ask one question before booking, hold them to a few slots a week, and end each with one link. A 20-minute call with the 30-minute gap after it is 50 minutes. Five a week is more than 4 hours nobody pays for.

• When should you raise your prices?

  When any one of three things is true: you’re booked a month ahead, you’re saying yes to everybody who asks, or it’s been a year since the last rise. Each means the price is lower than the work is worth. None of them means you should wait for permission.

• How much should you raise your prices by?

  By enough that you’d be glad if a few clients left. Going from $180 to $200 is 11%. You could lose 9% of your clients and earn the same for fewer hours. Tell existing clients first, with a date a month out, and change your page on that date.

• How do you tell existing clients about a price rise?

  One at a time, in writing, at least a month before it applies to them. Say the new price, the date and that anything already booked stays as it was. Give a reason only if it’s about the work. Don’t apologize, because a price rise isn’t a mistake.

• Should you discount for a client who asks?

  No, but you can change what they get. A smaller scope at the same rate keeps the price true and gives them something they can afford. “I can’t do it for less, but I can do the first part for that” is a better answer than a discount, and it’s still a yes.

Sources: Stripe’s US pricing, for card fees. Checked 2026-10-10.