Time constraints equals higher prices

I think I know why so many things are becoming more expensive these days.

It is the old problem of supply and demand, but the supply in this case is time.

Basically imagine you are running a business that most people use on weekends - only two days per week. And those two days are really hot in demand so that you end up booked up for months in advance on weekends, but comparatively less on weekdays.

In theory the thing to do would be to raise your prices on the weekends so you are charging two prices, one for weekdays and another price for weekends.

Case in point:

CardioTrek.ca is a personal training company and most of their clients want weekend or evening time slots. So much that their weekend slots are prebooked 5 months in advance - but the owner won't raise prices because he believes that would be unfair to new clients - and he thinks prices are already pretty high.

Another possibility would be if you have too many clients and not enough time to serve them all - that would be a good time to raise your prices for any new clients.

Case in point:

Toronto website design company designSEO.ca recently raised their hourly rates for website design work to $30 per hour. The reason? Too many clients. (They could hire more junior website designers but maybe that would be more of a nuisance. I don't know.)

Another possibility is lets says you are semi retired and do consulting work. You enjoy your free time and you don't want to work very often. So you jack your consulting fee up to $100 per hour or $200 per hour. Some ridiculous rate that makes it clear you only work for people willing to pay big bucks.

And there you go, three examples of why prices for services can skyrocket in a hurry due to time constraints.

And the more specialized and skilled the desired service is the higher the prices can go. That is why plumbers charge so much.