How your hourly fee works (and how to set it)

Almost every new expert asks the same first question: what should I charge? It feels awkward to put a number on something you've spent twenty-five years learning to do, and most people's instinct is to pick a number low enough that nobody could object to it. This guide covers how fees work on blue lemons, and then a sensible way to arrive at your number.

The mechanics

You set one price: what a client pays for a first conversation with you. You can change it whenever you like. First conversations are always a full hour, because twenty minutes with a stranger is small talk and an hour is a working session.

On the money side:

• Clients pay the price you set, with no fee added on top.
• blue lemons takes 15% commission. You keep 85%.
• Clients get a full refund if they cancel more than 48 hours before the call. Inside 48 hours, the booking stands.

If your rate comes to £200 for an hour, the client pays £200 and you receive £170. The editing screen shows the "you keep" figure next to your rate, so you always know what a booking is worth to you.

What the client is paying for

It helps to be clear about what's being bought. It isn't an hour of your attention. It's the shortcut. A client facing their first big supplier negotiation can spend six weeks reading about it, or they can spend an hour with someone who has sat through forty of them and knows which three things matter in their case. The years behind your answer are the product; the hour is just the container.

Keep that in mind when your brain suggests you'd happily discuss this in the pub for free. You would, but nobody in the pub is about to sign a contract based on what you say.

Choosing your number

Three reference points are worth writing down before you pick.

Your day rate, if you have one. Divide it by a working day's hours and you get a floor, not a fee. Advisory calls carry none of the overhead of project work (no ramp-up, no status meetings, no report), so an advisory hour is usually priced well above the pro-rata figure. One and a half to two times is common.

The decisions your callers face. Think about who books you and what's at stake for them. If your typical caller is weighing a decision worth tens of thousands of pounds, a few hundred pounds to get it right stops looking expensive.

Your own discomfort. Experienced people nearly always start too low. If the number you've written down feels safe, it probably needs to go up. A slightly high rate signals confidence and can always come down; a low one is hard to raise later and tells clients you're unsure of yourself.

Changing it later

Rates are edited from your account (Account → Edit profile & fees). A change applies to new bookings straight away; anything already booked keeps the agreed price.

Reasonable triggers for a raise: consistent bookings, calls that keep running long because there's more to say, repeat clients. Some founding experts also start with a lower introductory rate on purpose and raise it as reviews accumulate, which is a perfectly good strategy as long as it's a decision rather than a habit.

A note on being visible

Your rate is public. Some experts find this uncomfortable at first, but it works in your favour: clients on blue lemons are looking for the person who has already faced their problem, and the rate is part of how they read seniority. Price yourself as the person they're hoping to find.