Raise Your Price in Stages

Marci Curtis is a wedding photographer in Michigan who has shot more than 1,300 weddings. For eight years, she did not change her prices.

Over those years, each wedding took more of her time. In July 2026, she wrote on her blog that an eight-hour wedding used to take her about 30 hours of work. Now it takes about 40.

Her time behind the camera stayed the same. What grew was the guidance couples needed. A wedding used to involve about 10 back-and-forth conversations from start to finish, and now it is closer to 70 to 80.

Last year, a few trusted clients told Curtis that her prices seemed “too good to be true.” She wrote that she knew two years earlier that her prices needed to change. She held off because she was still getting clients who were a great match. In the end, she raised the prices of her longer wedding packages. She was not happy about it, she wrote.

By then, each couple was getting at least 10 more hours of her work for the same price. Holding the price felt safe, but the same price was paying for more and more of her time.

If what holds you back is the fear that current clients will leave, raise the price in two stages. New clients start paying the new price first. Current clients move later, on a date you tell them months ahead. Here is why new clients come first, what 81 gym price increases showed, and how a piano teacher chose her date.

The first stage is for new clients, because they have no old price in mind

A client who has hired you before compares your new price with the old one. So the first thing they see is the increase. A new client has never heard your old price. To them, the new price is simply your price, and there is no increase to explain.

So from a date you choose, anyone who hires you for the first time pays the new price.

Gym owners who charged new members first covered the members they lost

In 2024, Chris Cooper of Two-Brain Business wrote about Greg Strauch, one of the company’s mentors for gym owners. Strauch has worked on 81 price increases with the gyms he advises.

In most cases, the gyms charged new members the higher rate first and moved current members later. In Cooper’s words, “it wasn’t an increase for newbies; it was just ‘the rate.’” Charging new members first gave the owners “more income right away and the confidence to address rates for existing members.”

Some of the gyms lost no members at all. Cooper wrote that “all owners more than covered the cost of departures with the increases.”

So start with the people who have never seen your old price. Your current clients come next, on a date of their own.

The second stage moves current clients on a date you announce months ahead

In 2009, a teacher on the Piano World forum asked how to tell a family about her higher prices. She had started teaching them a few years before, when her prices were low. Betty Patnude, another teacher on the forum, wrote back the same day.

Patnude wrote that she would start a new fee schedule for new students in 2010. She would keep the family at the rate they had been paying until June, when school was out. She suggested telling them in writing right away, on December 1.

She called it giving the family “the courtesy of completing the school year” at the old rate. She added that the family would have “enough time for them to adjust their budget to the new expenditure.” Here is the course’s view of what a date that far ahead does for you. It gives you months to fill any spot a client leaves.

Choose a date that ends a season your clients already know, such as the school year or the end of a project. Patnude chose June because it ended the year of lessons.

If you sell one project at a time, such as a wedding or a room design, the second stage works differently. The clients already booked keep the price they agreed to. For you, the second stage is the returning client. Anyone who books you again after the date you set pays the new price.

Two dates keep every one of Maria’s evenings paid

Imagine a private chef named Maria Delgado who cooks one evening a week for each of six households, at $400 an evening. She wants to charge $460.

On March 1, the new price goes on her website and into her quotes. Any household that hires her from that day pays $460. The same week, Maria writes to her six current households. “From September 1, my rate is $460 an evening,” she writes. “Until then, nothing changes.”

In June, one of the six tells her that they will not continue in September. Maria has three months to fill that evening. By September, a new family has taken it at $460.

On September 1, five households move to the new rate, and the sixth is already paying it. Maria now earns more than she did in March, and she has not lost a single evening’s pay along the way.

A gym owner’s delayed increase turned into one jump of 37%

Magnus Bjorsvik owns CrossFit Uvær, a gym in Tromsø, Norway. At the end of 2019, he planned to raise his current members’ rate in three steps of about 15%. The first was set for April 2020. He had already raised the price for new members.

Then COVID lockdowns closed the gym, and he put off the steps again and again. Meanwhile, newer members heard that people who joined before them paid less, and they asked which price was right. In the spring of 2021, Bjorsvik decided that a single 15% step would no longer do. He moved every member to the new price at once. For some, that meant an increase of about 37%.

He told a Two-Brain podcast that the members who came in five or six times a week had the strongest reaction. Members, he said, “aren’t doing the same calculations for their private economy that we were doing for the business.”

Looking back, he said that raising the price over several steps would probably have been wiser. A local newspaper wrote about the increase, and 55 people booked an introductory talk at the gym within two weeks. Because of that attention, he said, the large increase was “worth it.” A newspaper story cannot be planned, though, so plan the steps.

A large increase works better as steps of about 15%

In the same post about Strauch, Cooper counts raising rates “more than 15 percent” among the “very bad mistakes.” So raise your price by about 15% at a time. When the price you want is more than about 15% above your current price, get there in steps.

Each step goes through both stages, new clients first and current clients later. The next step starts after the last one has reached every current client.

Why moving everyone at once, or letting the date slip, goes wrong

Imagine a math tutor named Colin Ashby who teaches 14 students a week at $70 an hour. Over the summer, he decides that his rate should be $80. In late August, between two sessions, he emails every family. From September 1, his rate is $80 an hour.

Two families write back that they will stop at the end of August. No new student is paying $80 yet, so their hours sit empty. Colin earns less in September than he did in August.

Then Mrs. Lyle asks to stay at $70 until Christmas, because her son has worked with Colin for three years. Colin agrees. In October, Mrs. Lyle mentions it to another mother at the school gate, and that mother asks Colin for the same. Colin agrees again, and his September date stops meaning anything.

In the version that works, Colin’s new rate starts on June 1 for new students. His email to current families goes out the same week and gives September 1 as their date. When Mrs. Lyle asks for more time, Colin tells her that September 1 is the date for every family. By September, two new students at $80 have taken the hours that the two departing families leave.

How to set your stage dates

1. Write down the new price. If it is more than about 15% above your current price, raise it in steps of about 15%. For example, a family photographer who charges $400 a session and wants $530 might charge $460 first, then $530.
2. Choose the date new clients start paying the new price. Change the price on your website and in your quotes that day.
3. Choose the date current clients move. Make it at least three months after the first date, so you have time to fill any spot a client leaves. If you can, make it the end of a season your clients already know, such as the school year.
4. On the first date, send current clients a short message with the new price and the date it applies to them. For example, a business coach can write, “From July 1, a month of coaching is $1,200. Until then, nothing changes for you.”
5. Put both dates in your calendar, and keep the second date for every client. For a raise in steps, also add the start of each next step, after the last one has reached every current client.

Next: You will see what to say when a current client asks why your price is going up. The answer does not apologize, explain too much, or lose the client.