How Creatives Should Price Their Work
If you've ever quoted a price and immediately wanted to take it back, you already know the problem isn't your spreadsheet. It's your nervous system. Most creative business owners I work with don't undercharge because they've done the maths wrong. They undercharge because some part of them still isn't sure the work is worth what they're asking for. That's worth sitting with for a moment, because it changes where you start fixing this.
Ask creatives why their prices are low and you'll get a market explanation. "That's just what people pay around here." "My clients can't afford more." "There's loads of competition." Your worth is not about the market, what people can afford, nor a flooded market. That’s all factual data you can work with later on. Sometimes this is true but often it's a story standing in for something harder to say out loud: I don't fully believe I'm worth that yet.
You can tell the difference by noticing what happens in your body when you imagine doubling your price. If it's purely a logistics question, you'll feel curious. If it's a confidence question, you'll feel a flinch. When I coach people about pricing I often see them look slightly uncomfortable when we start to talk about pricing, the imposter syndrome kicks in. Pricing one’s own creations is probably the most common subject in my coaching sessions
Confidence follows evidence, not the other way round. Nobody wakes up one day feeling completely confident and then raises their prices as a result. It tends to go the other way. You raise the price of something you made and a customer buys it, great you tested the market and you quietly recalibrate what's possible.
This is why it's nearly always easier to raise prices for your next client than to renegotiate with an existing one. The next client has no idea what you used to charge. They're meeting the version of you that already believes the new price and has believed in what you make.
If you're just starting out, or rebuilding after a quiet patch, your job isn't to find your "real" price on day one. It's to find a price that's easy enough to say yes to that you can start collecting evidence, then let the evidence do the work of building your confidence from there.
Price the outcome, not the hours. A lot of underpricing comes from doing the maths backwards. You start with what feels like a reasonable hourly rate, multiply it by how long the work takes, and arrive at a number that feels logical but undersells what the client is actually paying for.
Clients aren't buying your hours. They're buying a result: the piece that solves a problem, the brand that finally feels right, the reputation, the product that gets them noticed. The more clearly you can name that outcome, the easier it becomes to price around its value rather than your time.
This is also why "what should I charge per hour" is often the wrong question to start with. The more useful one is: what is it worth to this client if this goes well? What price will a person pay. Think of it like an artists, they spend a day painting a picture and they decide to pay themselves £30 an hour plus materials and overheads, the current reality is that there is a high demand for their work and each painting is selling for £8000, here the hourly rate model has gone out the window, reputation kicks in and the pricing structure is not about covering costs its about making money and good profit.
Notice what a low price is actually costing you. Underpricing doesn't just affect your bank balance. It tends to fill your diary with the wrong clients, the ones most drawn to a bargain rather than to the work itself. It leaves you with no slack to do your best thinking, because you're always rushing to the next job to make the numbers work. And it quietly teaches you that your work isn't worth much, which becomes a belief you then have to unlearn later, at a much higher cost than just sitting with the discomfort of a new price now.
If you've been wondering why you feel resentful, depleted, or strangely unseen even when you're busy, your pricing might be part of the answer.
A simple way to think about your next price
You don't need a perfect formula. You need a number you can say without flinching, and a way of checking whether it's still too low.
Try this: pick your next quote, then add a meaningful amount to it, more than feels comfortable. Notice the flinch. If the flinch is about whether you'll get the work, that's useful information about your market. If the flinch is about whether you deserve to ask, that's useful information about you. Both are worth exploring, but they call for different conversations.. You don't have to solve this alone.
Pricing rarely changes through willpower. It tends to shift through a combination of clearer thinking, a bit of evidence, and someone outside the situation who can ask the question you've been avoiding asking yourself.
If pricing has been quietly running your business rather than the other way round, that's exactly the kind of thing coaching is built for. Book a free call today.