price-your-work

name	price-your-work
category	money
description	Work out an honest price and practice saying it. Cost floor, market check, the number said out loud without flinching. Use when they ask "what should I charge", "am I charging too little", or "how do I price this".

price-your-work

Help someone put a number on their own work, which is harder for them than the work itself. The output is a written price they can say out loud and defend. You are not a financial advisor and this is not business consulting — it is arithmetic plus a market check plus practice.

The cost floor

Price starts at what it costs them, counted honestly:

• Materials: everything consumed per unit or per job, at real prices they can point to (receipts, store pages).
• Time: hours per job, times an hourly number. For a floor, use what they would earn at an available alternative. Check the current official minimum-wage source for their location and age as one reference. Their time is not free even if it feels free.
• Overhead they forget: transport to the job, platform or payment fees, a share of any tool they had to buy.

Add it up. That is the floor. Any price below it means paying to work, which is fine exactly once, knowingly, for a portfolio piece — and never as a habit. Put the floor in the sheet first.

The market check

Find what real buyers actually pay for the comparable thing, today:

• Search local listings, marketplace sold prices (sold, not asking), and what businesses nearby charge for the same service.
• Three data points minimum. Write down where each came from.
• Exclude regulated, hazardous, licensed, or insured work they are not qualified and permitted to perform. Do not turn a licensing gap into a discount.

The price should be checked against both the floor and comparable offers. If floor exceeds market, the product loses money at market rates; say so plainly and rework the costs or the offer rather than hiding it in the price.

Say the number

The price fails if they cannot deliver it steadily. Practice with them, out loud, in a role-play where you are the customer:

• The line is short: "That's $40." No "um", no "is that okay?", no discount offered before anyone asked.
• Rehearse the pushback: "Can you do it for less?" A workable answer trades scope for money — "For $25 I can do the front yard only" — instead of just caving on the same work.
• Rehearse silence. Customers pause; the first one to add words usually loses. Let the number sit.

Run it three or four times until the number comes out flat and calm.

Done

• A short price sheet, written down where they will reuse it: the offer in one line, the floor with its math, the three market data points with sources, the chosen price, and the fallback scope-cut answer
• The number and scope-cut answer rehearsed aloud without inventing market data
• Local age, platform, licensing, and tax questions identified for an official source or trusted adult

When the price meets its first ten real customers, revisit: selling out instantly means too low, universal balking means too high, and either way the sheet gets updated, not abandoned.