Pricing your work

The price on your profile is a starting rate, shown as “from”. Planners who have not subscribed see it as a band rather than an exact figure, so they can judge whether you are in budget without you having to publish a precise number to the open internet.

The point is that nobody wastes anybody's time. A planner with a $300 budget can see immediately that a $1,200 act is not for this event, and neither of you spends a message finding that out.

The most common underpricing mistake is quoting for the hours you are performing. The actual cost of a booking includes everything around it:

• Travel, and what it costs to get equipment there and back.
• Setup and teardown, which for anything with a PA is often longer than the set.
• Rehearsal or preparation specific to that event.
• Equipment — what you own, what you hire, what wears out.
• Anyone else you pay: a second player, a driver, a technician.
• The dates you turned down because you held this one.

A two-hour set is rarely two hours of work. Pricing as though it is means the busiest month of your year can still lose money.

A wedding, a corporate evening and a bar slot are not the same job and generally should not carry the same rate. Weddings run long, move to their own schedule and carry the highest expectations. Corporate bookings usually have the most defined brief and the most reliable payment. Venue slots pay less per night and are worth more over a year, because they repeat.

Your listed price is a starting point for the cheapest of these. Quote the specific event when you reply to an enquiry.

Both are fields on your profile and both are visible to everyone, subscribed or not. A deposit is what makes a booking real; without one, a held date is only an intention, and you find out it was only an intention at the point when the date can no longer be resold.

Set a cancellation policy you will apply. Performers routinely write a firm one and then waive it, which teaches planners the terms are decorative. A modest policy you enforce protects you more than a strict one you do not.

Fann does not collect or hold either. Deposits are arranged directly between you and the planner, which is also why writing the terms down in your messages matters — see trust & safety.

The signal to raise is being booked for nearly everything you are asked about. A performer accepting every enquiry at the current number is, by definition, priced below what the market will pay.

Raise it on new enquiries rather than on people you already have a relationship with, and let the profile catch up once the higher number is being accepted.

Nothing. There is no commission on bookings and no fee for listing — the fee you agree with a planner is the fee you receive, paid directly to you. So the number you set is not a number to inflate to cover a platform cut.