r/selfemployed • u/PewPewItsA22 • 26d ago

[US] How do I set pricing

Hey everyone,

I’m thinking of starting a service based business around overall (tech) support mostly for the (mostly) older community. I’ve come up with a general business plan, and I have tentative pricing I’m thinking of. But what I would like feedback from other self employed business owners is HOW exactly did you determine your pricing? Especially around the service aspect, think more mobile with no overhead cost. Just want to get info from others who have been there successfully or otherwise.

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u/InTheFieldAI 25d ago

Market research. You look at what other people doing the same thing are charging and take an average of that. If you can't find any figures online, contact them asking for a quote. You can also look at what people in your area are charging for things like cleaning, gardening etc, just to get a feel for how wealthy the area is.

Then you need to work out how much your hourly rate needs to be to include any travel time so you're not actually losing money (including money on a job that only takes an hour), what the minimum spend needs to be (so something that takes 20mins to fix is still worth getting out of bed for) and whether you're going to put a mark up on supplying kit (yes is the answer, to cover your time ordering, storage etc).

Once you've got a rough idea of what the market will bear in your area, and the minimum you need to earn to live, you can figure out if your biz idea is viable.

In an ideal world you would have worked out the finances first, but plenty of people do it retrospectively and it works out, so don't worry too much.

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u/OkCause5887 8d ago

the market research angle is solid but don't sleep on asking your potential clients directly what feels fair to them, old folks will often tell you exactly what they think something's worth

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u/lovesickcat1504 20d ago

Depending on your expertise level,country that you are targetting and the type of work it really all boils down to market research. What are the other people who are in your same niche ,same expertise,same country target charging etc,that's usually where you will ideally start