Stop asking “what should I charge?”
That question has no answer because it’s three questions wearing a coat. Price has a floor, a band, and a ceiling — and you need all three numbers before you quote anything.
1. Your cost floor
The floor is the rate below which working is losing money. Take the yearly income you need, add self-employment costs most people forget (taxes, health insurance, software, equipment, unpaid admin time), then divide by your billable hours — not your working hours. If you work 40 hours a week, you’ll bill maybe 25; the rest is marketing, admin, and finding the next client.
Run your real numbers in the freelance rate calculator — most first-time freelancers discover their floor is 40–60% higher than what they’ve been charging.
2. The market band
The floor tells you what you need; the market tells you what buyers expect. Study published rates for your service and experience level (our cost guides compile these per service). You don’t have to price inside the band — but you need to know where it is, because pricing far below it doesn’t read as “great deal.” It reads as “something’s wrong.”
3. The value ceiling
For some projects, the work is worth far more than the hours. A landing page that books $10k/month of appointments is not a “6 hours × rate” purchase. When your work has measurable business outcomes, anchor the price to the outcome. This is where experienced sellers separate from beginners — and it requires asking clients about their numbers before quoting.
The three mistakes
- Hourly billing forever. Hourly punishes you for getting faster. Move repeat work to fixed project prices or retainers as soon as you can predict effort.
- Absorbing scope. Every un-billed “quick thing” resets the client’s expectations. Name scope creep early, kindly, with a change-order price.
- Forgetting the platform tax. If you sell through a marketplace taking 20%, your real rate is 80% of what you think it is. Do that math with the commission savings calculator — it’s the reason Mindhyv is commission-free.