Why Hourly Billing Sucks (and Why I’ll Never Go Back)

Hourly billing is one of those things that feels “normal” in marketing, consulting, and freelance work.

Until you stop and actually think about it.

Because once you do, it completely falls apart.

Charging by the hour isn’t neutral. It isn’t fair. And it definitely isn’t aligned with the value most senior marketers, consultants, or strategists actually deliver.

Here’s why hourly billing sucks, and why it quietly holds back both you and your clients 👇

Hourly billing prices labour, not value ⏱️

When you charge hourly, you’re selling time.

Not outcomes.
Not insight.
Not judgement.

Just hours.

That immediately frames your work as execution rather than expertise. It tells the client the most valuable thing about you is how long you sit at your desk, not what’s happening inside your head.

That’s a terrible signal to send if your real value comes from knowing what to do, when to do it, and just as importantly, what not to touch at all.

You don’t get paid for the years it took to get good 🎓

Clients don’t hire you because of the next six hours you’re going to work.

They hire you because of the last five, ten, or fifteen years.

The mistakes you’ve already made.
The patterns you recognise instantly.
The instincts you trust because they’ve been stress-tested in the real world.

Hourly billing ignores all of that.

It prices you the same whether it took you a decade to learn something or five minutes to Google it. That’s absurd, especially in strategy-led work where speed is often a by-product of experience.

Thinking time is invisible, but it’s where the value lives 🧠

Some of the most valuable work I do doesn’t happen at my laptop.

It happens on walks.
In the shower.
While staring at a Notion doc and doing absolutely nothing.

Hourly billing struggles with this because thinking doesn’t look like work. There’s no keyboard noise, no Slack messages, no neat paper trail.

But good marketing decisions are rarely made in a flurry of activity. They come from space, synthesis, and restraint.

Try itemising that on an invoice.

Efficiency is punished, not rewarded ⚡

Here’s the real kicker.

The better you get, the worse hourly billing becomes for you.

As your experience compounds, you work faster. You spot problems earlier. You avoid dead ends that juniors fall straight into.

And what happens?

You earn less.

Hourly billing actively disincentivises improvement. It rewards slowness, over-analysis, and unnecessary complexity. It encourages people to drag work out instead of landing the plane.

That’s bad for clients and it’s bad for the industry.

Your network has value, but it’s never billed 🤝

Marketing doesn’t happen in isolation.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you bring to a project is an introduction, a recommendation, or a quiet DM to the right person at the right time.

Hourly billing can’t capture that.

There’s no line item for “saved you three weeks by knowing who to ask” or “amplified your work because I have an audience that trusts me”.

And yet, those moments often have more impact than hours of execution.

Clients don’t want time. They want confidence 🎯

Here’s the part that often gets missed.

Clients aren’t buying hours. They’re buying certainty.

They want to feel confident that:

• they’re focusing on the right things
• they’re not wasting budget
• someone experienced is steering the ship

Hourly billing doesn’t align with that desire. It turns the relationship into a transactional exchange rather than a partnership.

The conversation becomes about utilisation instead of outcomes.

So what’s the alternative?

Value-based pricing isn’t about “charging more”.

It’s about charging correctly.

It means pricing based on:

• impact, not effort
• outcomes, not activity
• responsibility, not time spent

It forces better scoping. Better conversations. Better alignment on what success actually looks like.

And yes, it requires confidence. But if you don’t believe your expertise has value beyond hours, why should anyone else?

Final thought 💡

Hourly billing turns experts into commodities.

If your pricing model only values time, don’t be surprised when your work is treated as interchangeable.

Charge for judgement.
Charge for experience.
Charge for impact.

Your clients aren’t paying for the clock.
They’re paying because you know what you’re doing.

And that’s worth a lot more than an hour.