What to charge for the first small job

Low enough to be said yes to in one reply, high enough that you do not resent it by Wednesday. A fixed price, not an hourly rate.

Quote a fixed price for the piece of work

An hourly rate makes the buyer's decision harder, not easier. It asks them to sign up to an unknown total, and it quietly puts the two of you on opposite sides: every hour you take is worse for them, so a slow week looks like padding and a fast one looks like you overcharged.

A fixed price for a defined piece of work removes all of that. They know the number, you own the risk of it taking longer, and if you get quicker at the work you keep the benefit. For a first job it is also simply easier to say yes to, because it is a single decision rather than an open commitment.

Price the problem, not the hours

Guess how long it will take, be honest with yourself, then double it, because the first one of anything always takes twice as long as you think. Multiply by what you would like to earn an hour. That is your floor, and it is not your price.

Then look at what the problem costs them. A week of an office manager's evenings, a delayed launch, a deadline they will miss, an agency quote for four times as much. If your floor is embarrassingly far below that, come up. A price that is absurdly cheap does not read as good value, it reads as somebody who has not done this before, which is the one thing you are trying not to advertise.

The number that gets said yes to without a meeting

In most small businesses there is a threshold under which the person you are talking to can simply decide, and above which they have to ask somebody, get a quote, compare it, and put it in a process. That threshold is often somewhere around a few hundred euros or dollars, and it matters far more than any calculation of your worth.

For a first piece of work, staying under it is usually right. Not because your time is worth less, but because the goal of the first job is to become somebody they have already paid, which is a completely different relationship from somebody who has sent a quote.

Say what is not included, in one line

Most of the money lost on small jobs is lost to scope, not to price. One line prevents it: what you will deliver, by when, and how many rounds of changes are in the number. "Two rounds of revisions, anything beyond that is billed separately" is not aggressive, it is the sentence that lets you finish.

Half up front is normal for a new client and worth asking for plainly. If a business will not pay half of a few hundred to somebody they have not worked with, that is useful information and it arrived cheaply.

Raise it on the third one, not the first

Your first price is a starting point, not a valuation. Do the job, do it properly, then quote the next one higher, and the one after that higher again, until somebody hesitates. That is how you find the market rate for the specific thing you do, and it is considerably more reliable than any figure in an article, including this one.