When I first started I found it very hard to put a price on my work, one reason is because I just started then and didn’t have any proof to show the client that I’m worth X amount of money.

Another reason is a bit more simple and maybe lot of people in creative field can relate is that I find joy in my creative process, in solving problems, designing interface, creating website and seeing it coming to life to help people. The process is rewarding enough for me and to put a price tag on it feels guilty somehow. And even when I decide to charge, I find it hard to raise my prices.

Before answering the question of “Should you work for free?”, I want to start by affirming that it’s okay that you don’t know how to price your work in the beginning. Here are some of the reasons why you should charge for your work and your work should never be free:

1. Free work is unappreciated: Respect for your work, respect for yourself. Imaging how you take care of a phone you got for free vs the phone you paid with your hard-earned cash.
2. Financial gain: by start charging what you are worth, the profit can go into your business, self-improvement, open room for collaboration, buy more tools, courses, books, hire more people, allow you to help more businesses.
3. Open your network: Even when your work doesn’t return you with financial gain, you can opt to work for referrals, trade specialties, learning, charity. Even if you aren’t paid with money doesn’t mean it cannot be traded for something else, but I must warned you to approach this with cautions as many new designers got taken advantage for using this approach.

Question you should ask yourself:

• What’s the value of your work?
• How can your work help to improve your client’s business? Can it be translate into money/profit for the business?

By start charging for your work, you can start to improve your process, able to help more people and have a scale/metric to measure the value of your service/product.