This is one of my more contested opinions, and I want to make the case clearly because I think it gets misunderstood.
When engineers ask me whether they should put their rates on their website, my default answer is no. Not because I think pricing should be hidden. Because I think publishing a rate, for most engineers, sets a ceiling rather than a signal.
What I think published rates actually do
A published rate is a public commitment. Once it's on the website, it becomes the number you have to honor or explain away. The flexibility you had before, the ability to price a $2,500 mix and a $500 mix in the same week because the situations are different, all of that goes away. You're now the engineer whose rate is on the page.
For most engineers, that flexibility was the leverage. Different projects justify different prices. Different relationships unlock different terms. Different leverage in the conversation supports different numbers. A published rate flattens all of that into a single line.
It also tells clients you're priced by formula. The conversation about your work becomes a conversation about whether their budget matches your published number. The interesting conversations, about the actual project, the artist, the goals, what could be different, never happen. The price has already filtered the inquiry.
The "saves time" argument doesn't usually pencil out
The most common defense of published rates is that it saves time. People who can't afford you don't reach out, so you don't waste calls on tire-kickers.
I've watched this assumption tested in real businesses. What usually happens isn't fewer time-wasters. It's fewer high-value clients reaching out because they assumed your rate didn't reflect their project. The clients who would have engaged in a conversation about a $4,000 mix saw your published $1,500 and never wrote.
You filtered out the wrong people.
When I'm wrong
I'm not absolute about this. There are real cases where publishing a rate makes sense.
You're at a high enough volume that conversation cost matters. If you're getting eighty inquiries a month and you're closing six, publishing a rate at the low end of where you'd take work might actually be a useful filter. Most engineers reading this aren't there.
Your positioning is so specific that price is part of the identity. Some engineers are deliberately the premium option, and the price is part of what tells clients that. Publishing the number reinforces the positioning. This is rare and it requires the positioning to actually be there.
You have a product, not a service. If you sell a clearly bounded thing, like a mastering pass or a specific stems delivery or a templated mix package, publishing the price for that bounded thing makes sense. It's a product. Products have prices. The trouble starts when an engineer publishes one bounded product and then implicitly applies the price to all their work.
You're using it as a signal in one specific direction. Some engineers publish a deliberately high rate to filter inbound and ensure the only people who write are those at the price point. That works if the positioning supports the number. It does not work if the positioning doesn't.
In every other case, I think the cost of publishing usually outweighs the benefit.
What I think people are really chasing
Underneath the "should I publish my rate" question is usually a different question. People want a way to talk about money without having to actually talk about it. They want the website to do the awkward part so they don't have to.
That impulse is understandable. It's also a sign that the awkward conversation is what needs work, not the website. Publishing the rate doesn't make you better at money conversations. It just hides them.
The engineers who handle pricing well are not the ones who've outsourced it to a published number. They're the ones who can have the conversation. Which is a skill, and one that's built one call at a time.
If your website pricing decision is downstream of a deeper question about how you talk to clients about money, the Strategy Call is where we look at the actual question, not just the visible one.
