What is a Hypnotherapist's Salary in 2024?
Hypnotherapy is an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding occupation, but can you earn enough to support you, those important to you and your lifestyle? It’s an important question, because unless you can make a good living as a hypnotherapist, you won’t be able to replace your current income or make enough money to live on. Moreover, is it worth the initial cost of the Hypnotherapy Course?
When you look up “how much does a hypnotherapist earn” you’ll see the figure of £48,496, but as you are unlikely to find a role as an employed hypnotherapist, it might be more helpful to look at “how much does a self-employed hypnotherapist earn” because you’ll almost certainly be in your own private practice.
The average cost of a hypnotherapy session in the UK is £75 per hour with most charging between £50 and £90 per session. You’ll be setting your own fees and there are factors which may influence the price, which I’ll go into more detail about later on in this article.
Before that, let’s project two different scenarios which are common to many people working as hypnotherapists.
Working part-time
The first is someone who wants to fit their practice around their life, children or other responsibilities.
They charge £75 per session, see 10 paying clients per week and take 12 weeks off per year. This would mean they would turn over £750 per week, equating to £30,000 per year before tax and expenses.
The great thing about hypnotherapy is that you can fit this business around you and it is a business that can change according to your needs. However, most ‘lifestyle’ businesses don’t almost reach the Office for National Statistics mean average salary in the UK (£31,447) despite taking 3 months off each year.
Working full-time
Scenario two, in which someone wants to devote a significant proportion of each week to their business. This time they see 20 clients per week and take 6 weeks off per year. They would turn over £1500 per week, equating to £69,000 per year.
An interview with a CPHT graduate, now a practicing Hypnotherapist
Ali Hollands Hook interviews Richard Harris, a recent graduate of CPHT. Ali has run her hypnotherapy practice, Inspired To Change, for over a decade, transitioning it to be entirely online after Covid and a move from Kent to Shropshire. She runs the podcast ‘Building a Thriving Hypnotherapy Business,’ and online community ‘The Hypnotherapy Business Club,’ Ali also lectures for CPHT in various locations around the UK and is a hypnotherapy supervisor.
Want to learn with Ali?
Ali Hollands Hook lectures in CPHT's Birmingham, Essex, Kent and Watford schools, so if you'd like to train to become a hypnotherapist and train with Ali, get in touch with those schools. Otherwise visit our Contact Us page to see a map with the locations of all of our schools throughout the UK.
Find A School Near MeCPHT's Hypnotherapy DiplomaHow much time does a hypnotherapy business take to run?
In addition to client-facing time, you’ll need to allocate a percentage of your time to marketing, administration and finances. A good average is approximately 20% of client time for each task. The part-time hypnotherapist would allocate a further 6 hours, whereas the full-time hypnotherapist would allocate a further 12 hours.
Many people work far longer in their current jobs, which might be why people enjoy being a hypnotherapist so much! When you can make a significant impact on the well-being of your community, make a good living and have the time and energy to enjoy your life you’ll enjoy your career too.
How much does it cost to run a hypnotherapy business?
There are costs involved in running any business and running a hypnotherapy business is no different. This may affect how much you charge or how many client hours you choose to offer. As it can vary depending on your life, where you live and other commitments or income this can only be a guide. It’s a great idea to think about the following:
- Working from home vs rented room
- Insurance – ~£80 per year
- Professional Association membership – ~£100 each
- Supervision – this is a requirement of professional practice and costs upwards of £20-£40 per month
- Continued Professional Development (CPD) – you’re expected to keep up to date by doing several CPD hours each year. This could include watching a documentary, reading a book, meeting up with peers and attending formal training.
- Subscriptions for magazines, booking software, design software etc – varies and depends on what, if any, services you use.
- Networking costs – this can vary from a casual free meetup where you just pay for coffee, to membership and meeting fees for formal networking.
- Other marketing costs – your website, leaflets and business cards, advertising on/offline
- Bookkeeping/accountancy costs – these vary greatly and you are advised to find an accountant that enjoys working with small, service-based businesses.
This might seem like a long list, but running a hypnotherapy business is, in practice, fairly simple. Like anything, there seems a lot to learn at the start, but once you know what you’re doing, it becomes easier.
How much should you charge for hypnotherapy?
How much you charge for hypnotherapy depends on several factors, such as how much you want to earn, how many sessions you want to offer each week, how much your costs are, your experience and what treatment your client is having. To a lesser extent, it might include your location in the UK and your competitors’ prices but those should not be deciding factors.
The first thing to decide is how much you would like to earn as a hypnotherapist. Start with the end in mind. You may have an aspirational goal or want to replace an employed income.
Bear in mind you’ll need to work out the costs of doing business – a very (very!) rough guide is 50% of the money you make is your ‘salary’ – the rest is for expenses for the business, tax and some business savings. Whilst this is not an exact metric, it at least helps you start thinking about how much you want to turnover.
Estimate the costs associated with doing business and the number of hours you have available each week to devote to running your business. When you decide how much you want to make, how much it costs and how many hours you want to work each week and how many weeks each year, you can work out an hourly rate.
This can be a helpful exercise, as many therapists undercharge, not realising their fees don’t cover everything needed to run a business and survive.
At the start of your hypnotherapy career, you may do some launch discounts, contra deals (to offer services to the value of reciprocal services), special offers and maybe free work, to get your name out into the community.
Your training will have set you up to be a competent hypnotherapist, so you should not discount due to the quality of your therapy, but sometimes you may choose to work at a slightly lower fee whilst you build your confidence. There is no requirement or encouragement to do this; you have many hours of real-world experience even before you qualify and you are worth what you charge.
It used to be that if you lived in the south you would charge significantly more than the same hypnotherapist living in the north; this is less true than it has ever been but may still factor to a lesser degree, particularly if you live in a city where costs are higher or want to work with a particular section of the community where their income is generally lower.
It can be an idea if you do want to do low-cost or charitable work, to have two sets of fees – one for most people and one for your low-cost work. Some hypnotherapists like to offer discounts to blue light services or armed forces personnel – it’s totally up to you. It’s your business and you can choose to help whoever you want, just remember you have a cost of living too.
Some treatments, such as smoking, are a single, longer session and you may choose to charge a slightly higher price for this, as there is no ongoing engagement.
Some people think you should charge less for online versus face-to-face sessions; we believe this is not true because there are costs involved in running a business from anywhere and the service is no less valuable because there is no in-person clinic. You, however, may think differently.
The wonderful thing about running your own business is that you set the rules; if you want to give discounts to teachers in your local area because you were a teacher and know the pressure or create a package for police officers attempting to pass a bleep test you can.
Doing work that gives your life meaning and positively impacts your community, while you make a good living, is what we all aspire to. Following the ideas and guidance above, you can add your own research and work out what is best for you and your hypnotherapy business.