Charging for services - how to do it/how much

Charging for services - how to do it/how much - Please help

Hi All!

I made an app for my mom, didn't charge her obviously, and my dad slipped me R1000 ($61) anyway. I got paid, whoop whoop! Sweet gesture - but now I've got a friend asking for a quote for actual paid work, and I genuinely don't know what to tell her. It's not a super simple bit of work either, it's actually got some real layers to it, but SUPER cool and SUPER interesting to build.

The credits/hosting/sundries side I can work out, that's just cost. What I'm stuck on is pricing my work: the actual skill, the time, the layers that go into a build. So much of it is my data skills and understanding how to structure the data and put it all together, technically a lot of this is just pure data in a nice wrapper.

So the question: when you price a build, once-off or subscription, are you working from hours × a rate, pricing against what a comparable service/tool would cost the client, or something else? How do you put a price on labour if you have nothing to compare it to?

I'm a teacher with a few cool skills in data and making things look nice, and I like systems, which maybe makes it feel easier to me than it actually is, so I know that's not the most reliable measure of what it's worth.

But she's not the only one asking, people keep reaching out, so I'm trying to build an actual system here, not just take any offer and hope for the best next time. (this is all going towards my Lyceum seat - not even sure if it is available anymore but I am working to get that seat so please help me figure this out.)

Thank you in advance!!

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Charging for services - how to do it/how much - Please help