Running it
Build the rate card from your numbers, not the market's
The point of a rate card is not to publish a price. It is to make every individual pricing conversation already settled.
Most earners set a price by looking at three other profiles and picking something in the middle. That produces a number you cannot defend, because you do not know why it is that number, and a number you cannot defend is a number you will discount.
A rate card built from your own inputs solves the negotiation before it happens.
Start from time, not from the market
Work out how long each format actually takes you, including the parts you do not bill: reading the brief, clarifying it, delivering, and the admin afterwards. Measure it for two weeks rather than estimating it, because everybody underestimates and the error is not small.
Then decide what an hour of your attention is worth to you. Not what the market pays - what you would need for this to be a sensible use of the hour compared to the alternatives.
Multiply, then check the result against the market band. If your number is far above the band, your time per job is the problem, not your ambition. If it is far below, you have been undercharging and can stop.
Structure beats a single price
A rate card with one number is a rate card with one answer. Three tiers gives a buyer a decision to make about scope rather than a decision about whether to buy at all.
| Tier | What it is | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | The shortest complete version of the work | Catches buyers who want to try you |
| Standard | The format you actually want to sell | Where most bookings should land |
| Extended | Longer, deeper, or a different medium | Anchors the others and catches serious buyers |
The extended tier earns its place even if nobody buys it, because it makes the standard tier read as reasonable. The entry tier must still be profitable after fees - flat costs hit small jobs hardest, which the post on effective rates works through.
Price the things that are currently free
Look at what you routinely do that is not in any tier. Rush turnaround, a second look at new material, a revision, a longer conversation, a different format on request.
Each of these should either be in a tier or have a price. Left unnamed, they become the default, and the default is free.
This is the largest single recovery available to most earners, and it requires no price rise at all.
Defending it
A published rate card is defended by pointing at it. That sounds trivial and it is the entire technique.
When a buyer asks for a discount, the answer is a smaller scope at a lower tier, never the same scope at a lower price. The first keeps the card intact; the second retires it, because word travels and because you will not be able to explain to yourself why the next person pays full price.
Hold the line on scope more firmly than on price. Scope creep is a bigger drain than any discount you are likely to give.
When to raise it
Two conditions, both required: a completion record with reviews that describe specifics, and a queue.
With both, raise it and say nothing. Announcements invite negotiation about a change nobody had asked about.
With only a record and no queue, your problem is demand, and a price rise makes it worse. What buyers scan for is a better place to spend the effort.
Raise in steps small enough that you do not need to be right. A rise you can reverse quietly is a much easier decision than one you have to justify.
What the card says about you
A structured, published, unapologetic rate card reads as someone who has done this before, which is the impression you are trying to create anyway.
It also makes the rest of the trade easier. Records become simpler when every job maps to a tier, and disputes are shorter when the scope was written down before the work started.
Two outside references are worth having in hand while you build one. Rate Penis's material on what buyers think they are commissioning tells you which tier names actually mean something to them. And if a tier of yours promises rigour, the rubric behind it needs to be real: Penis Rater covers how scored assessments are constructed, and Measure My Cock covers the measurement conventions an assessment leans on when it claims to be more than an impression.
Platform-set fees and minimums will constrain the bottom of your card; the current ones for the service this site is published by are on Rate Cock's rewards page.