People often ask how much they should charge for leading a workshop or concert.
They usually focus on the professional fee for the contact hours, but forget any travel time involved.
Whether it’s a gig half an hour down the road, or an overnight stay and a six-hour journey, your travel time is valuable.
Whenever I lead workshops over two hours from my home, I ask for overnight accommodation the night before, and travel costs to and from the venue.
Sitting on the train recently travelling to one such workshop, I realised how much time I spend travelling compared to actually teaching!
If I travel on the same day, I sometimes clock up a 12-hour day. And if it involves an overnight stay, that can mean well over 24 hours. Whereas my actual teaching time can be just five hours.
Although I might be able to catch up with some admin, or write a few blog posts whilst travelling, it’s basically lost time. It’s time that I’m not available to do any other face-to-face work. Which means that I need to charge for it.
There’s no simple equation for how much you should charge, but it’s important that you factor it into your fee.
Chris Rowbury
Get more posts like this delivered straight to your inbox!
Click to subscribe by email.
… found this helpful?
I provide this content free of charge, because I like to be helpful. If you have found it useful, you may like to ...
... to say thank you.