Deciding what to charge can be hard, especially when you’re starting out. This is a little reflection on my journey, as well as capturing my process now.

Baseline: Time

My starting point is always time – how long will this take me? Now with events there are two categories of time, the public and the behind-the-scenes, and its easy to fall into the trap of only looking at the public time. Let’s say the event is 10am – 2pm. It’s four hours so you could be tempted to think it’s a half day’s worth of your time. BUT, consider:

  • What prep will you need to do? Scoping meetings, research, designing, co-creating with the commissioner, sending papers in advance, discussing logistics, set up on the day etc
  • What’s your travel time? Is it 10 minutes’ walk away or are you travelling? And if you’re travelling, build a buffer to prevent public transport derailing things.
  • What post event work will you need to do? Are any reports or write-ups required? Are you doing any post-event feedback?
  • Does this leave you any reasonable work time? If your event takes up 9am – 3pm let’s say – is that last slot of the day actually useful for any other work you have, or are you effectively giving over the entire day to this event?
  • The other big consideration is benchmarking – and this comes with time. As you build your network and understanding of what others are doing. But beware, everyone is unique, as is their offering so its better to accept there will be a wide range of prices out there.

Adjustments: Client

One I’m incorporating more and more as I widen my reach to new clients, industries and sectors. Whether a sliding price scale depending on the client – for instance would you charge the same day rate to a small non-profit as you would to a large for-profit multi-national?

Extras: Equipment

It’s essential to be clear who has responsibility for supplying what equipment – do you need pens, flipcharts, post-its, stickers, name labels? Does it require specialist supplies you need to buy in? Ordinarily I find this is wrapped up in my day rate but occasionally I need to consider a significant extra expense (such as scaling up my stocks for my LEGO® Serious Play® work with bigger audiences)

Extras: Travel/Overnights/Subsistence

Again, when you’re quoting, be clear what’s included and what isn’t. Local travel all the way through to London is usually included in my day rate but further afield I would be clear is at an additional cost. Also travel to London can vary in cost by as much as £100 so keeping an eye on travel times and advance bookings is key. Alongside this comes any overnight stays needed and food/drink while you’re away from home.

Extras: Childcare

This used to be a big one for me, because if our daughter needed to do an extra day at nursery, you’re looking at an extra cost of nearly £80 a day. These days afterschool club is a lot more affordable, but still an extra cost you might incur. So check whether you feel your day rate includes that or you need to lift your price.

Optional: Discounts & Premiums

There are a few reasons I’ve quoted discounted rates so far – new clients because I’m keen to build new relationships, undercutting where I’m aware there’s other interest and I’m being strategic in going a bit lower in the hope of being extra-competitive, and occasional passion/favour projects with heavy discounts or pro bono work. With each of these though, I carefully consider what I want to get out of it, what the opportunity costs are, and finally I make the discount clear so that the expectations are set on both sides.

This also works the other way, and occasionally I add a premium, such as for inconvenience. It may sound odd, but it’s come up every now and then – work is needed on a really tight turn around and it means shifting other commitments or working over a weekend. It’s always on a case by case basis.

Summary

Event prices are the result of mixing important facts with some instinctual flex regarding the client and context.

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash