What to charge when you have no idea what to charge

Rate conversations in this trade happen almost entirely in private. Nobody publishes, most people deflect when asked directly, and the numbers that do circulate are either from a different market, a different decade, or somebody rounding up. The result is that people entering the field price themselves against an invisible benchmark, and almost always price low.

There is a way to arrive at a number that does not require any of that information. It is not clever and it will not feel satisfying, but it produces a figure you can defend, which is more than most people have.

Start from the year

Decide what you need to earn in a year. Not what you would like — what the year actually costs. Rent, food, transport, insurance, tax, gear replacement, software, the thing that breaks. Add it up honestly and do not flinch at the total.

Then work out how many days you can actually bill. This is the number people get wrong, and they get it wrong in the same direction every time.

A year has around two hundred and fifty working days. From those, subtract holiday, illness, and the days you will lose to things outside your control. Then subtract the admin — quoting, invoicing, chasing payment, email, tax, updating your site, maintaining gear. For most independent engineers that is at least a day a week. Then subtract the weeks where nothing is booked, because there will be some, and pretending otherwise is how people end up in trouble in February.

The honest number for most people working independently is between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty billable days. If you are just starting, it is lower.

Divide the year by the days you will actually bill, not the days in the calendar.

Your annual requirement divided by that number is your day rate. It will be higher than you expected. That is not the calculation being wrong. That is the first time you have seen the real number.

Converting to the units clients actually buy

Nobody books a mix engineer by the day, so the day rate is an internal figure. It exists to tell you whether the prices you quote are survivable.

To convert, work out honestly how long things take. Not how long they take when everything goes well — how long they take on average, including the revisions, the recall, the email, and the one where the client disappears for three weeks and then wants changes.

If a mix takes you a day and a half door to door, your song rate is one and a half times your day rate. If a podcast episode takes three hours including the delivery admin, your episode rate is three-eighths of it.

Two things people leave out of the time estimate, both significant. Revisions: budget for the full number you include, every time, because you will use them often enough that averaging matters. And administration: the quote, the invoice, the file delivery, the follow-up. On a small job that can be twenty percent of the total time and it is completely invisible until you measure it.

Why the low quote costs more than the job

The instinct when starting out is to price low to win work, then raise prices once established. This works less often than people expect, for a reason that is structural rather than psychological.

Low prices select for a particular kind of client. Not bad people — but people for whom price is the primary consideration, which usually means they are also the people with the least clear brief, the most revisions, the slowest payment, and the least ability to refer you to anyone paying more. You are not building a ladder. You are building a reputation in a specific price bracket, among people who talk to each other.

The second problem is that raising prices on existing clients is genuinely hard, and every one you take on at the low rate is a future conversation you will not want to have.

Discount the scope, never the rate.

If someone cannot afford you, the answer is a smaller job at your rate, not the same job at a smaller rate. Mix three songs instead of eight. Master without the alternate versions. Do a written review instead of a full mix. The rate is what you are worth per hour, and it should be the same regardless of who is asking. What varies is how many hours they buy.

The three-number system

Once you have a rate, quote with three numbers rather than one. This changes the conversation from whether to how much.

A small version — the minimum useful piece of work. A standard version — what you actually recommend. A full version — everything, including the parts most people skip. Put the standard one in the middle and describe it as the one you would pick.

Most people choose the middle option, which is the one you designed to be correct. The small option gives price-sensitive clients somewhere to land that is not a discount. The large option makes the middle look reasonable and occasionally gets taken by someone who was always going to want everything.

None of this is manipulation. All three are real options you would happily deliver. You are just presenting the range instead of making the client guess at it.

Getting paid

A rate you do not collect is not a rate. Three clauses prevent most payment problems, and all three belong on the quote rather than in a conversation.

• Fifty percent before work starts. Not a deposit — a payment. It is standard everywhere and only feels awkward the first time you ask.
• Balance due before final files are delivered. Not after. Watermarked or reduced-quality previews for approval; the masters follow the payment.
• A stated number of revision rounds, with a stated rate for further ones.

The third one prevents more disputes than the other two combined, because almost every difficult client relationship traces back to nobody having agreed what finished means. Two rounds, each one a single consolidated set of notes delivered together, further rounds charged. Write it down. Unlimited revisions is not generosity, it is unpriced work, and the person who suffers is you at two in the morning.

When to raise your rate

The signal is not a length of time and it is not a feeling. It is your calendar. If you are consistently booked more than about eighty percent of your available days, and turning work away, you are priced below the market and the market is telling you so.

Raise it on new enquiries first, not on existing clients. Keep existing clients at the old rate for an agreed period — six months is normal — and tell them in advance. Most people are fine with it. The ones who are not were going to leave anyway, and they will be replaced by people paying the new rate.

A full calendar at the wrong price is not success. It is a lot of work with no way out of it.

The number will still feel too high when you say it out loud. That feeling does not go away and it is not evidence. The calendar is evidence.