Pricing your time as a 1:1 creator

The single most common question creators ask us in the first week is not "how does the booking flow work" or "when do I get paid." It's "what should I charge?" This post is the long answer.

There's no universal pricing formula, but there is a useful framework. We'll walk through it.

Step 1: figure out your annual revenue target

Before you price the session, price the year. How much, in your local currency, do you want to earn from 1:1 work in the next twelve months? Be specific. "Enough" is not specific. "$60,000 in net deposits" is specific.

Now back into the math:

• Working hours per year. A reasonable 1:1 creator working full time on this dedicates 4–6 client-facing hours per workday (the rest goes to prep, follow-up, marketing, admin). That's roughly 1,000–1,400 billable hours per year if you're full time, half that if you're part time.
• Realistic utilization. Most working 1:1 creators book at 50–70% of capacity in steady state. New creators often book at 10–20% in the first six months. Plan for the steady state.
• Effective billable hours. Multiply working hours by utilization. A part-time creator at 60% utilization gets roughly 400 billable hours. A full-time creator at 60% utilization gets roughly 800.

Divide your target by effective billable hours. That's your target hourly rate. For $60K at 800 billable hours, that's $75 per hour, gross. After Avatok's platform fee and your local income tax, net is meaningfully lower. We'll come back to this.

Step 2: anchor against the market

Now compare your target rate to what existing creators in your category actually charge. Open the 1:1 marketplace and sort by your category. Look at the prices. You'll usually find a wide range with a clear distribution.

Three useful reference points:

• The bottom 10%. These creators are competing on price. If you're new, this is a tempting bracket. It's also where you'll get the most demanding clients and the weakest conversion-to-second-session. Avoid the bottom 10% unless you have a very specific reason.
• The median. This is where most experienced creators in the category end up. If your work is genuinely comparable in quality, the median is a defensible starting price.
• The top 10%. These are creators with proven outcomes and waitlists. Pricing here without the outcomes to justify it is a self-inflicted wound.

Anchor at the median unless you have a strong reason to be higher or lower. The instinct to price below median to be "safe" is the most common mistake we see. Lower prices do not produce more bookings in proportion to the discount; they produce a different (usually worse) customer profile.

Step 3: choose your pricing model

Avatok supports three pricing models on 1:1 sessions:

• Per-minute. The session is billed by the minute, subject to a minimum. Best for coaching-style work where conversations naturally run different lengths.
• Per-hour. A flat hourly rate, often packaged as a 60-minute slot. The most common model for general consulting.
• Fixed-price. A flat price for a specific scoped deliverable ("30-minute portfolio review," " 60-minute strategy session"). Best when you can describe the outcome precisely.

Fixed-price tends to convert at the highest rate because the buyer knows exactly what they're getting. Per-minute is the most flexible but harder to anchor on. Per-hour is a safe default.

Step 4: net it against the platform fee and tax

Whichever number you arrive at, work out the net before you commit. Avatok's platform fee is capped at 10%. Income tax depends on where you live (call it 25–40% for most jurisdictions). Your net deposit from a $100 booking is roughly:

$100 gross − $10 platform fee = $90 wallet credit. Then minus your income tax (roughly $22.50–$36 depending on bracket) = $54–$67.50 in actual take-home.

If your annual target requires $75/hour net, you need to price closer to $110–$135/hour gross. Most creators we see under-price by exactly this margin: they hit their gross target, then are surprised when the net falls short.

Step 5: raise prices on a schedule

The most reliable way to grow income is not to find more clients; it's to raise prices for the clients you have. We recommend a scheduled price review every six months. The cadence matters more than the percentage. Even a 10% increase per cycle compounds to roughly +21% per year, which dwarfs almost any volume strategy.

Two practical rules for raising prices:

• Give existing repeat clients notice. Email them before the new rate goes live. Offer to honor the old rate on one more session if they book by a date. Most appreciate the warning and a meaningful fraction book a final session at the old rate, which gives you an immediate revenue lift on the way to the higher steady state.
• Update the listing on a Sunday. New listings get better surface area on the marketplace on Monday morning. If you're raising prices, treat the change like a relaunch: updated photo, refreshed bio, clear "what's new" line. The traffic that lands the first week of the new price is higher quality, on average, than the steady-state baseline.

The trap of pricing by feel

The biggest single pricing mistake we see is pricing entirely by gut. The gut is reliably calibrated to the price the creator paid for the same service when they were a buyer, often many years ago. That price is no longer in market. If your category sits at $80 per hour today and your gut says $25 because that was your price as a graduate student, the gut is wrong. Look at the marketplace. Look at your peers. Pick a number you can defend.

Pricing is not a moral question. It's an exchange. The right price is the one that pays for your time at the rate your time is actually worth in your market, today, given your experience. Get there as quickly as you can.