How to price a solo service with capacity math

A price is sustainable only when it supports the time required to sell, deliver, revise, administer, and recover. Capacity math makes those hidden demands visible before the promise is made.

1. Separate a target from a forecast

A target is a planning input. It is not proof that the market will buy at the assumed price or close rate. Start with the amount the work needs to contribute in a month, then expose the operating assumptions beneath it.

If the target is $3,000 and the offer is $300, the plan needs ten completed sales. If each delivery requires eight hours, delivery alone consumes eighty hours before prospecting, calls, revisions, support, bookkeeping, or time between projects.

2. Count the whole delivery

Estimate discovery, preparation, execution, meetings, review, handoff, and support. Add a small uncertainty allowance for the first several deliveries. An offer that looks profitable only when every customer responds instantly is not yet priced for reality.

• Pre-sale calls and proposal time
• Core production or service work
• Client review and one bounded revision
• Handoff, documentation, and support
• Payment, scheduling, and administration

3. Make the pipeline assumption explicit

A close rate is not universal. A warm referral, a relevant inbound request, and an unsolicited message are different situations. Use a conservative estimate until your own records replace it. At a 20% qualified close rate, ten sales require roughly fifty qualified conversations. At 10%, the same plan requires one hundred.

“Qualified” matters. A conversation counts when the person fits the situation, has the problem, and can realistically decide—not when a random account received a message.

4. Change scope before inventing confidence

If the math is impossible, one of the inputs must change. Narrow the deliverable, increase the price with a clearer result, reduce the monthly target, improve qualification, or create a reusable step that lowers delivery time without lowering quality.

5. Review actuals every week

Track conversations, proposals, wins, delivery time, revision time, and support. After several real deliveries, replace assumptions with medians. Keep private customer information out of the tracker unless it is required, and protect any notes that contain sensitive business details.

The free revenue calculator on Aeltryn Nexus exposes the first layer of this math. It is a planning tool, not financial advice or an income guarantee.