Pricing your work and worth is not easy. How do you figure out how much an hour of your time for the knowledge and experience that you will use to help your client? I think a lot of us undervalue ourselves, not wanting to charge too much and scare people off. But yet when we break down the fee we can see how much we have under cut ourselves.

How we see ourselves as people in so many ways gets hit from a host of places. So when it is time to put a number on what we know we shy from that. It was not until my first client who actually set the standard of how much I charge that I started to feel good about it. In fact she refused to pay me zero. She said what I knew was worth it to her and that my time was valuable. Thanks to her I have progress into making business grow with new ventures.

Let me take a step back. For about three to four years I told people in my writing groups to let me help them. I wanted to show them how I did it. I wanted to teach them what I had learned in what took a few years to figure out on my own and with help from those who were making it.

I didn’t get a nibble. Not one bite. Maybe people feel I am not legit if I don’t charge? Not sure. A lot of people helped me when I first started and when I asked how I could repay them they said always pay it forward. I tried. A few people I was able to. Most of the time no.

Looking at the ratio of pay scales it was in the range of what other charge. So now I charge. Does that give me legitimacy? Perhaps. Will it make the people who said they would want my help and never stepped up be mad when they find out? Probably.

But now part of my business includes more than writing and photography. It includes creating an author’s platform and developmental editing. Who knows it may expand to even more.