The honest money

No income promises in this course, which means this lesson is built on ranges from live sources, not on a guru's best month. Read the numbers as market information, not as a forecast. Your book, your radius, and your follow-through decide your number. Read them against your own household math, too: if this book is meant to replace a salary, the runway math comes before the price sheet.

What mobile services actually sell for

Mobile hair work prices above the salon, not below it, because the client is buying back an hour of their life. A published mobile-hair pricing guide puts a woman's cut with a wash at 70 to 100 dollars and single-process color, finish included, at 75 to 150, with men's cuts lower and big-market prices running a fifth or so above smaller metros. Travel is billed on top of all of it: a flat 20 to 40 dollars for clients at the far end of a typical 10-to-25-mile radius, or per-mile billing that lands near a dollar a mile once you are past the free zone.

Senior and homebound cuts run lower and steadier. Mobile senior haircuts typically price around 30 to 50 dollars per visit, with a Seattle-area operator charging 45 dollars for a house-call cut. Where you serve several residents in one assisted living stop, operators report per-resident rates dropping to 15 to 25 dollars because the travel is shared across a full morning. That discount buys you density, and density buys you a real hourly rate.

Event work prices highest. Wedding hair and makeup each average about 150 dollars per person, trials run 100 to 300 dollars, and travel fees for weddings typically run 50 to 200 dollars flat, or 25 to 75 dollars per hour of drive time. One good Saturday morning of bridal work can outearn a whole week of single house calls. It also books months ahead and vanishes in November, which is a seasonality problem that comes back later in the course.

| Service | Typical client-facing price | Source type | |---|---|---| | Women's cut and finish | 70 to 100 dollars | Industry pricing guide | | Single-process color with finish | 75 to 150 dollars | Industry pricing guide | | Travel fee | 20 to 40 dollars flat, or about a dollar a mile past the free zone | Industry pricing guides | | Senior house-call cut | 30 to 50 dollars | Operator listings | | Bridal hair or makeup, per person | about 150 dollars average | The Knot | | Bridal trial | 100 to 300 dollars | Zola | | Wedding travel fee | 50 to 200 dollars, or 25 to 75 dollars per hour | Zola |

What it costs you to deliver

Insurance first, because it is non-optional. Combined general and professional liability for an independent runs roughly 199 dollars a year, what the dedicated stylist policies charge, with many policies running upward of 370; Insureon's medians for full salon contexts, general liability at 38 dollars a month and professional liability at 50, show what the ceiling looks like. A solo mobile pro should budget at the dedicated-policy end of that band, not the salon end.

Driving second, because it is the cost beginners ignore. The IRS business mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents a mile through June 30, and 76 cents a mile from July 1 through the end of the year. That figure exists for tax deduction purposes, but use it for something better: it is a close estimate of what a mile actually costs you in gas, tires, oil, insurance, and depreciation. A 20-mile round trip burns about 15 dollars of true vehicle cost, whether you bill a travel fee or not.

Product third. Color, developer, backbar, disposables. A working rule across beauty trades is that product and disposables eat roughly 10 to 15 percent of a service price. Your lane may run lower; track it for a month and replace the rule with your number.

Taxes fourth. Self-employment tax is 15.3 percent on net earnings, on top of income tax, because you now pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare. Set aside a quarter of everything you collect and you will not be surprised in April.

The arithmetic you must do before you book anyone

Here is a worked example. All the inputs come from the ranges above.

A client books a cut and blowout at 90 dollars, 12 miles away. Service time on site is 75 minutes. Drive is 25 minutes each way, 50 total. Loading the kit, unloading, and sanitizing between clients adds another 25 minutes across the day. Total time invested: about 150 minutes, or 2.5 hours.

Now the money. Ninety dollars in. Product and disposables, call it 10 dollars out. Mileage, 24 miles round trip at the IRS rate of 76 cents, about 18 dollars of vehicle cost out. That leaves roughly 62 dollars before insurance, software, and taxes. Divide by 2.5 hours and you made about 25 dollars an hour, and you have not yet paid the 15.3 percent self-employment tax or your annual insurance.

Run the same math for a cluster: three clients in the same assisted living building at 30 dollars each, 15 miles away. Ninety dollars in, maybe 6 dollars of product, 23 miles round trip or about 17 dollars of vehicle cost. Time is about 150 minutes including drive and setup, because you unpack once. That is roughly 67 dollars net across 2.5 hours, close to 27 dollars an hour, from three of the cheapest appointments on your menu. Density, not ticket size, is the mobile operator's profit lever. Every pricing and scheduling decision in the rest of this course traces back to that one paragraph. One line item that never appears in this arithmetic is a machine doing the service: this course carries a three out of ten on AI exposure, per how this catalog rates AI exposure, because color is applied by licensed hands to a specific head in a specific kitchen, and the automatable slice, booking and reminders, is overhead relief rather than competition.

Your menu and your cost floor are now on paper. The next decision is what to carry it all in: what to buy to deliver the work, and just as important, what not to buy before the book exists.