Last reviewed on 29 September 2026.
NNWA publishes the name and qualifications of everyone who writes and checks its material. You can see the full teaching team on the faculty page.
This is general commercial guidance rather than advice about your specific market, and no figures are quoted here deliberately: a rate that makes sense in one city and one specialisation makes no sense in another, and any number printed on a page would be wrong for most readers.
Why free is worse than cheap
Free work has a place: a handful of cases to build a portfolio, as set out in building a nutrition portfolio with no clients. Beyond that it causes three problems.
People do not follow plans they did not pay for, which means your early cases show poor outcomes for reasons that have nothing to do with your competence. You learn nothing about whether anybody will actually buy. And converting a free client to a paying one is harder than acquiring a paying one, because you are asking them to accept a price increase from zero.
Why very cheap is its own trap
A rate set well below the market attracts people choosing on price, who are the most demanding clients and the least likely to persist with a plan. It also signals inexperience more loudly than any disclaimer.
Then it sets. Raising a published rate substantially is awkward, and practitioners who start very low commonly spend two years stuck there, serving more clients for less money than a practitioner who started sensibly.
How to arrive at a number
Three inputs, in this order.
What the work actually costs you. Not just the hour in the room. The preparation, the plan, the follow up, the admin, the unpaid time that keeps a practice running. Practitioners who price the consultation hour alone are pricing about half of what they do.
What the market around you does. Look at what comparable practitioners in your city and specialisation publish. Not to match it, but to know where you sit. A rate wildly outside the range in either direction needs a reason you can articulate.
What you need it to produce. How many consultations a week are realistic alongside everything else, and what that has to add up to. This converts an abstract rate into a plan.
Starting slightly below, not far below
The workable approach is to set a rate a little under where you intend to settle, and to say plainly that it is an introductory rate that will rise. That does three things: it gives early clients a genuine reason to commit now, it gives you an honest route to the real rate, and it avoids signalling inexperience through a price that is obviously too low.
What matters is that the increase is real and happens. An introductory rate that never ends is just your rate.
The first ten, in order
Treat the first ten paid consultations as a deliberate experiment rather than the start of a permanent arrangement.
Publish one rate, not a negotiable one
A single stated price for a stated service. Practitioners who quote case by case end up charging the person who argues least, and they cannot analyse anything afterwards.
Record what each consultation actually took
Preparation, session, plan, follow up. Most people discover the real time is roughly double what they priced for.
Notice who says yes and who does not
If everybody accepts immediately, the rate is too low. If nobody does, it is either too high or the offer is unclear, and those need different fixes.
Ask the ones who declined, once
A single polite question about whether it was price or fit. The answers are more useful than any amount of speculation.
Review at ten, and act
Raise it, hold it, or change what is included. What you should not do is reach ten, feel uncertain, and simply continue.
Packages, and why they usually help
A single consultation rarely changes anything, because the work is in the following weeks. A package of several sessions over a period reflects how the outcome is actually produced, and it means a client commits to the process rather than to one conversation.
It is also better for you: fewer sales conversations, more predictable income, and clients who stay long enough for the work to show results, which is where your case studies and testimonials come from.
If you do sell packages, settle expiry, transfer and part-refund rules in advance. Those are covered in setting cancellation and no-show terms.
Raising the rate without losing everybody
Give notice, apply it to new clients first, and honour existing arrangements to the end of what was agreed. Say it once, plainly, without justification or apology. Practitioners who write long explanations of a price rise invite a negotiation; those who state it as a fact rarely get one.
Expect to lose a small number of the most price sensitive clients. That is the mechanism working rather than failing.
The mistake that outlasts all the others
Discounting quietly and individually. One client gets a lower rate because they asked, another because their situation was difficult, a third because you were nervous.
Within a year you have no rate, no way to raise one, and clients who discover the inconsistency. If you want to make room for people who cannot pay, do it deliberately: a stated number of reduced-fee places, on the same terms for everybody who takes one.
What to do if you genuinely cannot charge yet
Some practitioners are still completing a qualification, or are not yet insured, or are working in a setting where charging is not appropriate. That is a legitimate position, and the answer is to be explicit about it rather than to charge a token amount that satisfies nobody.
Say plainly that you are building experience and the work is unpaid, take a small number of cases, and set an end date for the arrangement. An open ended offer of free work tends to continue indefinitely, because nothing forces the transition.
The confidence question underneath
Most underpricing is not a commercial judgement. It is a practitioner who does not yet believe the work is worth the money, setting a price that reflects the doubt rather than the value.
That resolves with evidence rather than encouragement, which is the argument for writing up your cases. A practitioner who can see three pieces of work they did well finds the price conversation considerably easier than one relying on how they feel that morning.
The honest summary
Charge from the first paid client. Price the whole job rather than the hour in the room. Start slightly below where you intend to settle and say so. Publish one rate rather than negotiating. Track what the work really takes, ask the people who said no, and review at ten consultations rather than drifting. And keep discounts deliberate and visible rather than quiet and individual.