Mediators, are you charging what you should be? Are your fees paying your bills and leaving you with money for the piggybank? And are your fees representative of your skill and experience while also taking into account your market and competition?
One of the most frequent questions I get from my mediation grad students and consulting clients is “how much should I charge?” Rates are generally based on two sets of factors: What you want and need to earn, and market factors like competition, industry standards, demand for services, and geography.
Your business research should help you identify a rate based on the latter factors. For the first set of factors, try Freelance Switch’s free online Hourly Rate Calculator. You can use without registering or telling them anything about yourself. It asks you to fill in figures associated with your business costs, your personal costs, your billable hours, and desired profit, after which you can click on the calculator to identify the rate you can charge based on those variables.
It’s a good little calculator, capturing the data you want to be sure to consider. If you’re just getting started in the mediation business, you can use it to play with several scenarios and see how those changes affect your fee.
Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.
Photo credit: Irum Shahid
Hi Tammy, thanks again for this great article and for taking time to speak with me yesterday. I really enjoyed it and i look forward to connecting with you again very soon.
I would love to see a discussion of how mediators determine whether to use an hourly or day rate.
Have a great weekend!
Leigh Ann, it was a real treat to chat with you on Friday! The ‘net and this blog have done amazing things for connecting me with good folks like you.
If you’re willing, I’d love to see you post your excellent question on the MediatorTech discussion forum…I’d enjoy getting some conversation going there and this question could really benefit from several perspectives and minds put to it.