What to Charge When You Have No Idea
Sources last read 2026-07-05.
Short answer
There is no correct price and nobody is going to hand you one. Build the number instead. Take what the job costs you, add what an hour of your time is worth, and round it to something you can say without your voice going up at the end. Then say it before you start, every time. The number matters less than the fact that it was agreed first.
Why this one sentence is so hard to say
Every other part of a first job is doable. You can mow the grass. You can fix the gears.
Then somebody asks what you charge, and there is a pause. Most people your age either pick a number far too low or go quiet and hope the customer names one.
Here is what is going on. Saying a price feels like saying what you are worth, out loud, to a person who might disagree. It is not that. A price is a number about a job. It is not a number about you.
Start with the floor
Your floor is what the job costs you before you have earned a cent.
Count the stuff you use up. Fuel, bags, thread, card, glaze, tape, the ride there. Count the wear on your gear if the job eats it.
There is a full page here on working that out for one item or one job. Do it once. It takes ten minutes and you never have to guess again.
Whatever that number is, you cannot charge less than it. That is not a price. That is you paying somebody to let you work.
Then add your time, because your time is a cost
Pick an hourly number for yourself. Say it is fifteen dollars. Write it down somewhere.
Now guess how long the job takes, honestly, including getting there and cleaning up. Multiply.
Cost of stuff, plus hours times your rate. That is your price. Round it up to something plain. Twenty five, not twenty three fifty.
You will guess the time wrong for the first few jobs. Everyone does. Time yourself and fix the number after.
Charging too little does not get you more work
This is the part people get backwards.
Low prices do not bring you good customers. They bring you the ones who chose you because you were cheap. Those are the people who add jobs at the end, pay late, and drop you the moment somebody cheaper turns up.
The customer you actually want is the one who wanted the problem gone. They are not comparing you against a list. They are comparing you against another Saturday of the thing not being done.
And a very low price does something else. It tells a person that you are not sure this is real work. Some of them will believe you.
Nobody publishes a study on this and I am not going to pretend one exists. What I can tell you is that the price you set first is the price that sticks, because raising it on somebody who already pays you is much harder than starting there.
The people you already know
Your first customers are almost always people who know you. That is normal and it is a good thing. It is also the reason the price is awkward.
Three things help.
Say the number first. Before they ask. "I do it for twenty five." A price they hear early is information. A price they hear at the end feels like a bill.
Do not offer the family discount before they ask for one. If they want one they will say so. Most of them do not want one. They want to not feel like they are taking advantage of a kid.
Never do it free to be polite. Once with a neighbour and that is the price now. It is very hard to charge somebody in month three for a thing you did for nothing in month one.
Agree the number and the way they will pay
Both, at the same time, before you start.
Some apps let a person your age have an account and still will not let money for a job land with you. Venmo's teen accounts, for example, cannot take payments for goods or services. Finding that out while standing in somebody's driveway is a bad time to find it out.
So the sentence is two halves. "Twenty five dollars, and cash on the day is easiest." Ten seconds.
One more thing worth knowing. Once a customer agrees a price with you, they cannot walk away from it just because of your age. Washington's courts say that in plain words in a lesson written for students: the person who made a deal with a minor cannot cancel it simply because the other person is a minor. The deal you make is a real deal. Which is exactly why it is worth saying the number carefully.
An example, to show the shape of it
Trent is 14 and mows lawns. He charges ten dollars, because a friend told him that is what he charges.
One lawn takes him about an hour and a half. Fuel and blade wear run to roughly two dollars. So ten dollars in, two dollars out, leaves eight dollars for ninety minutes of work. That is a bit over five dollars an hour.
He works out that his time is worth more like fifteen. Fifteen dollars an hour for an hour and a half is twenty two fifty, plus the two dollars of fuel, so about twenty five dollars.
He does not go back to his existing customers and change the deal. He uses the new number on the next person who asks, and says it first, before they can offer him ten. Twenty five minus two dollars of fuel is twenty three dollars for ninety minutes, which is about fifteen dollars an hour.
Nobody has said no yet. That is not proof the price is right. It is a hint it was never the thing holding him back.
If you take one thing
Say the number before the work starts, out loud, and do not add sorry to the end of it.
You will get it wrong sometimes. A price you guessed badly and said clearly is still better than a price nobody agreed, because that one always turns into an argument later.
Questions people actually ask
What if they say that is too much?
Then they say it, and nothing bad has happened. You have not been told off. You have found out what one person will pay. If you want to move, cut the job down rather than the price. Half the yard for half the money is fine. The same yard for half the money teaches them what you cost.
How do I charge somebody who has known me since I was six?
Say the number the way you would say a bus fare. Flat, quick, no apology on either side of it. "It is twenty five dollars." If you ask it as a question they will hear a favour, and then you are both stuck. People are far less surprised by this than you expect.
By the hour or by the job?
By the job, for most small work. Charging by the hour punishes you every time you get better at it. Work out your hourly number in private, use it to build the price, then quote the job.
Somebody down the street charges less than me.
At this size you are almost never losing work on price. You lose it by not turning up, not answering, or not finishing. Those are the things people actually complain about. Being the one who shows up when they said is worth more than five dollars off.
Does sales tax go on top of my price?
Sometimes, and it depends on your state and on what you sell. Services and goods get treated differently, and some states have a small seller rule while others leave makers out of it by name. There is a page here on sales tax and who may already be collecting it for you. Read that before you decide whether your price includes it.
Where this came from
Washington Courts, Minors and Contracts lesson plan
courts.wa.gov