How to Price Custom Work Without Undervaluing Your Time

Price custom work by calculating a floor from your target hourly rate and the total minutes each request consumes, including preparation, delivery, revisions, and administration. Use (total minutes ÷ 60) × target hourly rate, then raise the listed price enough to cover payment fees and request-specific complexity without reducing your intended take-home pay. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

This guide recommends pricing from measured time rather than guessing what feels fair or copying another creator's rate, because a documented minute count gives you the same floor every time, while intuition and competitor prices shift with mood and market noise. If you need starting ranges for a particular service, see pricing a mini audit or feedback review. For multiple price points, see designing a $10/$25/$50 offer ladder. To explore possible offers, start with services content creators can sell.

How do you calculate your effective hourly rate?

Your effective hourly rate is what you actually earn per hour of work a paid request consumes — reading the brief, reviewing attachments, producing, formatting, delivering once, and handling administration — not only the minutes spent on the visible deliverable. Measure the complete request in minutes, then divide your after-fee revenue by that time: net revenue ÷ (total minutes ÷ 60).

Calculate a price floor in four steps:

1. Choose a target hourly rate. Use the amount an hour of your creator time needs to earn, considering the other work or opportunities that hour replaces.
2. Measure a complete request. Time several real requests and include reading the buyer's brief, reviewing attachments, preparation, production, formatting, one delivery, and administration.
3. Record the actual minutes. A request that takes 23 minutes should be priced from 23 minutes, not rounded down to an optimistic estimate.
4. Apply the formula. (total minutes ÷ 60) × target hourly rate = price floor.

A $60 hourly target multiplied by a 25-minute request produces a $25 price floor: (25 ÷ 60) × $60 = $25. Charging below $25 would put the creator's effective rate below the stated $60-per-hour target before fees.

A price floor set from an hourly target is a pre-tax, pre-fee number. The IRS states that "the self-employment tax rate is 15.3%," consisting of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare (IRS: Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare taxes)), and IRS Topic no. 554 states that "generally, the amount subject to self-employment tax is 92.35% of your net earnings from self-employment" (IRS Topic no. 554).

How do you gross up a price to keep your target take-home after fees?

To keep the price floor as actual take-home pay, list a higher price that absorbs the platform and applicable processing fees rather than subtracting them from the floor itself. Brillay's pricing page lays out the fee structure this way (https://brillay.com/pricing): No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. Stripe's published pricing lists "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards" (https://stripe.com/pricing). If that domestic-card rate applies, those two published rates combine to a 10.9% variable rate plus $0.30 per transaction, so the example gross-up formula is:

listed price = (target take-home + $0.30) ÷ (1 − 0.109)

On a $26 price floor, the listed price would be about ($26 + $0.30) ÷ 0.891 ≈ $29.52 to net approximately $26 after Brillay's published 8% platform fee on a Custom Work order and Stripe's published 2.9% + 30¢ domestic-card rate, if that processing rate applies (Brillay and Stripe pricing pages).

Which costs should you include in a creator-service price?

Include every minute a request consumes and every published fee or tax it triggers, not only production time. A Custom Work price should cover reading the request, reviewing files, production, formatting, one delivery, and queue administration, plus Brillay's platform fee (8% when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals), the applicable payment-processing fee, and any taxes that apply to you.

Time costs to fold into the measured minute count:

• Reading and re-reading. Understanding a follower's goals, files, and instructions takes time before production begins.
• Buyer inputs. Custom Work is the offer where a follower can attach files, so include the time required to review any materials they send before you produce the deliverable.
• Scope boundaries. The Custom Work setup states what the follower gets, what you need from them, and what is not included before they order; price the single delivery accordingly.
• Formatting and delivery. Uploading files, checking links, formatting feedback, or recording a clean response belongs in the calculation.
• Queue administration. Tracking what is owed, to whom, and by when is part of fulfilling paid requests.
• Context-switching (heuristic, not a sourced figure). Moving into review or production mode and then returning to other work takes setup time; batching several requests into one block is a common way creators reduce it. Track it if it applies to your workflow.
• Emotional effort (heuristic, not a sourced figure). Personal, vulnerable, or detailed feedback can be more draining to deliver well than the timer suggests. If a service type consistently leaves you depleted, that is a signal to price it, not just time it.

Published money costs that reduce what the same price leaves you:

• Platform fee. Brillay takes its platform fee only on orders a follower actually pays for, at the published rates quoted in the gross-up section above.
• Card processing. Stripe's published pricing is "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards" (https://stripe.com/pricing), which is $1.03 on a $25 charge if that rate applies.
• Self-employment tax. The IRS requires self-employment tax once net earnings from self-employment reach $400, applied to 92.35% of those net earnings at a combined 15.3% rate (IRS Topic no. 554).
• Quarterly estimated tax. IRS Form 1040-ES directs a taxpayer to make estimated tax payments if they "expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2026, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits" (IRS Form 1040-ES), so a custom request price should leave room to set cash aside each quarter.
• Refunds. Stripe retains the original transaction's processing fees when a payment is refunded (Stripe: Understanding fees for refunded payments).
• Disputes. Stripe's published pricing lists a "Dispute received fee $15.00 for each dispute you receive" plus a "Dispute countered fee $15.00 for each dispute you respond to manually" (https://stripe.com/pricing).

These costs do not need to appear as separate customer-facing charges. A practical method is to fold the time costs into the total minute estimate before applying the hourly-rate formula, then gross the result up for the published fees above. Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request.

Why does undercharging happen?

Undercharging happens when a price is set from a feeling, a competitor's visible number, or production time alone instead of a measured minute count. The five patterns below each substitute a guess for the total time a request actually consumes, which is why they push a listed price under its real cost.

SCORE, the nonprofit resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration, warns that "many startup business owners make a common mistake: giving away their products or services for free (or almost free) to get their first clients," and that doing so "devalues what you're selling and makes it difficult to raise prices later" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).

• Pricing from what feels fair. A free comment reply and a structured, requested deliverable are different products, even when they draw on the same expertise.
• Copying the lowest visible competitor price. Another creator may have different costs, demand, experience, scope, or delivery standards.
• Using a low price as a growth tactic. SCORE states that giving a service away free or almost free to win first clients "devalues what you're selling and makes it difficult to raise prices later" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).
• Counting only production time. SCORE notes that a purely cost-plus approach "doesn't take into account what the competition may be charging or what the customer is willing to pay" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services), and a production-only estimate is narrower still because it omits reading the brief, reviewing files, administration, and delivery.
• Ignoring transaction fees. Brillay's pricing page lays out creator earnings as the follower's payment minus the platform fee minus the processing fee, so a listed price has to support the target rate after those deductions, not before them.

If asking followers to pay feels awkward, frame the offer as a clear one-time purchase with a defined outcome rather than as a favor, donation, or open-ended obligation. A small audience also does not make the math irrelevant: the price still needs to cover your actual time whenever even one follower buys.

How much do you keep after Brillay and Stripe fees?

On a listed creator-service price, Brillay's platform fee is 8% (tips and goals are charged 5%), and the applicable Stripe processing fee is separate. Brillay's pricing page lays out that arithmetic directly: creator earnings equal the follower's payment minus the platform fee minus the processing fee. Estimated net revenue is therefore:

listed price − 8% Brillay fee on paid work − estimated Stripe processing fee = estimated net revenue

The following examples use Brillay's published 8% platform fee on paid work and Stripe's published "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards" (https://stripe.com/pricing). The rightmost column applies net revenue ÷ (minutes ÷ 60) to show the effective hourly rate if that specific request takes 25 minutes to fulfill:

On a $25 listed service, Brillay's published 8% platform fee on a Custom Work order is $2.00 and Stripe's published 2.9% + 30¢ domestic-card rate is $1.03, leaving approximately $21.97 in net revenue before tax if that processing rate applies (Brillay pricing and Stripe pricing). If that $25 service takes 25 minutes to fulfill, $21.97 ÷ (25 ÷ 60) works out to roughly $52.73 per hour of actual creator time — the number that tells you whether the listed price is really covering your target rate.

One disputed payment can erase most of that: Stripe's published pricing lists a "Dispute received fee $15.00 for each dispute you receive" (https://stripe.com/pricing), which is more than two-thirds of the $21.97 net on a $25 service. Stripe processing can also vary by payment method and transaction circumstances, so use the applicable Stripe rate from Stripe's pricing page when calculating your own final price.

How do you price above the floor for value?

Price above the time-based floor when the deliverable is worth more to the buyer than it costs you to produce. SCORE, the nonprofit resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration, defines value-based pricing as a method that "bases the price on the perceived value of what you sell" and notes that this "often has no relation to the product's actual value" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).

SCORE's stated method for finding that price is to ask buyers: "You can get ideas for value-based pricing by conducting surveys of your target market and asking how much they would be willing to pay for your product or service" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services). SCORE also cautions that value-based pricing "tends to work better for niche businesses" and that "you need to ensure that you deliver on your value promise in order to keep charging these high prices" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).

The hourly-rate floor stays the minimum you never go below. The five factors below are this guide's own heuristics rather than sourced findings, and the dollar figures are worked examples from the floor math above, not industry benchmarks — treat each one as a hypothesis to test with SCORE's survey method or a small, reversible price change:

• Buyer outcome (heuristic). If the 25-minute floor from the table above prices a resume review at $25, a follower applying for a role in the next 48 hours may reasonably be offered the same review at a higher listed price, on the hypothesis that a fast, well-timed review is worth more to that buyer than to a follower browsing with no deadline.
• Demand relative to your capacity (heuristic). If a listed price sells out every weekly slot within the first hour it goes live, treat that as a hypothesis — not proof — that the price sits below willingness to pay, and test it either with a small, reversible increase while watching whether the sell-out time changes, or by asking buyers directly, which is the method SCORE recommends for value-based pricing (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).
• Scarcity of your available slots (heuristic). Capping a service at a fixed number of slots per week, instead of running an open queue, makes each accepted slot displace a specific other buyer; whether a capped offer sustains a higher price than an identical uncapped one is a hypothesis to test on your own audience, and this guide has no sourced premium figure for it.
• Expertise and track record (heuristic). A creator with a longer history of completed requests and saved testimonials is selling lower risk of a disappointing result alongside the deliverable, which is a defensible reason to price above a newer creator's otherwise-identical offer; the size of that gap is a judgment call, not a published rate.
• Outcome quality versus effort (heuristic). Two reviews that take the same measured time can differ in how specific and actionable the feedback is, and the time-based floor measures effort rather than outcome quality, so the more useful review can carry a higher price on an identical floor.

The time-based floor keeps you from underpricing your labor; layering in these value factors keeps you from underpricing your expertise and the buyer's outcome. Re-check the resulting price against your effective hourly rate periodically so a value premium does not silently erode into an unsustainable rate if demand or scope shifts.

When should you raise your price?

Raise your price when measured time, published fees, or tax push your effective hourly rate below target, when every slot sells out repeatedly, or when the deliverable itself has improved. Recalculate the floor from current measured minutes, subtract Brillay's 8% platform fee on paid work (tips and goals carry 5% instead) and the applicable Stripe processing fee, then compare the result with your target rate.

Use these prompts to review your time and pricing math:

• Your after-fee, after-tax rate misses the target. On a $25 listed service, Brillay's published 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work is $2.00 and Stripe's published 2.9% + 30¢ domestic-card rate is $1.03 if that rate applies, leaving about $21.97 (Brillay pricing and Stripe pricing); self-employment tax then applies at a combined 15.3% to 92.35% of net earnings (IRS Topic no. 554), so the pre-tax $52.73/hour in the table above is not what lands in your account.
• Refunds or disputes are eating the margin. Stripe's support documentation states that processing fees from the original transaction are not returned on a refund (Stripe: Understanding fees for refunded payments), and Stripe's published pricing lists a "Dispute received fee $15.00 for each dispute you receive" (https://stripe.com/pricing) — a single $15.00 dispute exceeds two-thirds of the $21.97 net on a $25 service.
• The service repeatedly takes longer than estimated. Replace the original estimate with measured completion time and recalculate the floor with (total minutes ÷ 60) × target hourly rate.
• Requests arrive faster than you can sustainably complete them. A recurring backlog can indicate that demand exceeds the amount of work you want to supply at the current price; review capacity and price together rather than assuming price is the only cause.
• Your service has become more valuable. Improved expertise, clearer deliverables, or stronger outcomes may justify a higher price even when production becomes faster.
• You consistently resent new requests. Treat that reaction as a reason to examine scope, workload, boundaries, and compensation.

Raising later is harder than starting correctly: SCORE states that giving a service away free or almost free to win first clients "devalues what you're selling and makes it difficult to raise prices later" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services). A price increase can be communicated with a brief explanation such as "I'm updating this price to reflect the time and demand involved." If you are unsure whether followers will buy at a new price, use a small test before restructuring your whole offer; see testing whether followers will pay.

How do you set a creator-service price on Brillay?

On Brillay, you publish the service price upfront, and followers pay before you start. They pay by card as guests, with no follower account needed and no app to install (https://brillay.com/how-it-works). That removes negotiating the listed price after a request arrives.

Set the offer using this sequence:

1. Measure the total time required for a typical request.
2. Calculate the hourly-rate floor with (total minutes ÷ 60) × target hourly rate.
3. Gross the price up for Brillay's platform fee and the applicable Stripe processing fee.
4. Define the included scope, required buyer inputs, exclusions, delivery time, and exactly what the one delivery contains.
5. Recheck the effective rate after completing several paid requests.
6. Adjust the price or scope if the actual rate falls below your target.

You do the work on your own time within the delivery time you set. The follower pays upfront, you deliver later, and you do not have to chase payment. You set the price and delivery time for each offer in Custom Work on Brillay, and clear scope and delivery time expectations help followers understand what they are buying. Custom Work is a one-time purchase rather than a membership, so the follower buys the defined deliverable without committing to a recurring monthly plan.

Brillay has no minimum audience and nothing to apply for; followers can pay with their name, email, and card as guests with no account needed. One Brillay link can hold all enabled offers at once, so a creator can keep Custom Work alongside other Brillay options without sending followers to separate storefronts. Creators in 41 countries can connect their bank through Stripe and receive their money through Brillay.

Frequently asked questions

How do I decide what to charge for a custom request?

Choose a target hourly rate, measure every minute required to complete a typical request, and use (total minutes ÷ 60) × target hourly rate to find the price floor. Then increase the listed price enough to cover fees, administration, unusual complexity, and every task included in the single defined delivery.

How do I stop undervaluing my time?

Replace intuition with measured inputs. Track complete fulfillment time, include invisible tasks, calculate your after-fee revenue, and compare the resulting effective hourly rate with your target. SCORE warns that giving a service away free or almost free to win first clients "devalues what you're selling and makes it difficult to raise prices later" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).

How can I raise prices without alienating followers?

Use a concise explanation, keep the service scope clear, and review whether the new price still represents reasonable value for the deliverable. SCORE's recommended way to check that is direct: conduct surveys of your target market "asking how much they would be willing to pay for your product or service" (SCORE: Determining the Right Price for Your Products or Services).

What fees come out before I receive the money?

Brillay's pricing page confirms there's no monthly fee for creators, and that the platform fee is 8% on paid work and 5% on tips and goals, with card processing separate. Stripe's published pricing for the processing side is "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards," plus a "Dispute received fee $15.00 for each dispute you receive" (https://stripe.com/pricing); your actual processing fee can vary by payment method and transaction circumstances.

Do I need to price in taxes as well as fees?

Yes, if you are self-employed in the US. The IRS requires self-employment tax once net earnings from self-employment reach $400, at a combined 15.3% rate (12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare) applied to 92.35% of net earnings (IRS Topic no. 554). IRS Form 1040-ES also directs taxpayers to pay estimated tax if they "expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2026, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits".

Ready to put a real number on your time? Create your free Brillay page — 8% when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals.