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.