[oddlyaromatic]

"It's your time, and if people are willing to pay, you can charge whatever you like."

Yep! It also helps, for those of us who feel bad charging "high" prices for work we like to do, to not think of ourselves as being paid for "the work". I know a lot of artists who are lovely people and could sometimes be persuaded to do an event for a low fee because they are doing something they love. Then one of them got the advice to think of what they are being paid for - it's not that you get paid to spend an hour on stage in Utah one Saturday. It's all the BS around doing that - traveling their, committing in advance no matter what comes up you will be there and do a good job, having to ignore your family and other responsibilities to get good at your craft. The general disruption and unevenness that it brings to your life to be a freelance anything. If people value your work enough to pay you what you will accept for ALL THAT BS just to have you there, great, you have a career now. But, as they say, the performance is free. It's all the other stuff they have to pay you for.

[SyneRyder]

That's very similar to something Derek Sivers wrote last week. His post was very short, so I hope he'll forgive me posting it here (but his entire blog is worth the read, and his book Anything You Want is one of my all-time favorites):

One time a college far away in Ohio, about a 12-hour drive, asked what I would charge to do a two-hour show.

I said, “$1500”.

She said, “Oh, that’s a bit too much. What would you charge to do just a one-hour show?”

I said, “$2000”.

She said, “No, wait, you’ll be performing less, not more!”

I said, “Yeah! Exactly! What you’re paying me for is to get there! Once I’m there, playing music is the fun part! If you tell me I have to get back in the van after only an hour, and drive home, then I’m going to charge you more than if you let me play for a couple hours first.”

She liked that so much she came up with the $1500.

https://sivers.org/pp

[fenomas]

The guitarist Tommy Emmanuel has a line like this: "I'll play anywhere for free, but you've gotta pay me to travel!"

[chatmasta]

Similar to the story of “how do we build this?”

“I push this button.”

How much does it cost?

“$10,000”

What?!

“$1 for my time, $9,999 for knowing which button to press.”

[dasil003]

The problem with this story for software developers is how it feeds into very common mental models of how software development works. Certain people who think configuring a mail client is the same as coding a large-scale distributed system just because their eyes glaze over the first sentence of an explanation of how to do either, and their 12-year-old nephew can do the former, therefore they must be equivalent and just a matter of salesmanship/credentialism.