Rates for family?

Heya everyone! *reaches out into empty Internet space* *loses balance and falls on face*
Well I have a question. My most adorable little second cousin is having a birthday and her mom, my cousin, wants me there for an hour. I gave her a special rate of $20.00/hr.
Now I have no qualms about this rate. Not at least until I walked by my face art kit and heard some little voices say they want more friends...and thought that maybe it's more businesslike to charge full price... Or maybe give a smaller discount...

In short, what do you guys do?

Keep your word, (tell her not to breathe it to anyone).Let her know your normal rate for party referrals, take lots of cards. Pray she decides to tip you so you can add colorful friends. (Oh, and because you did her a favor, you can use it as a photo-op!)

Thanks Anniel, I like the photo-op idea. Will definitely do that!!

Depending on your family, you have to be careful, and swear them to secrecy or everyone will want your "best price". I did made cotton candy and shipped it to BC for my sisters granddaughters party, and pretty soon everyone was asking me to do it. I finally had to tell them that shipping wasn't free and the floss was going to be a discounted rate, but not free.

With me it is either full rate or I make it my gift. I don't discount friends or family.

It's getting to the point for me where I will offer them a discounted rate IF that day comes up and I have no full paying bookings, or if it is on a weekday.

Like Shannon said, I have also offered to paint as my gift to the birthday child. However, that friend and I are no longer talking because she had been giving me the serious run around for awhile so I decided to not paint at her son's birthday. I offered to find her a painter who charged less than I do, but she got huffy and puffy and claimed she was too broke for a painter at all.

There was another time when I offered to charge $30 for 15 kids (equal to about &30/hour) for a friend. Well, 40 kids later and I'm basically picking my glitter out of the carpet and frantically packing my things so I could get the hell out of there! So, logically, she should have paid me $65. She hands me 2 twenty dollar bills and asks for change!

Seriously, stick to your word on this one but be very careful about offering more discounts..

I'm doing a family/friend birthday party tomorrow, and I made sure to tell the mom that I can only paint X number of kids in the time allotted. I'm going to grab the birthday boy first off and then put stamps on the rest of the kiddos (it's at a park). When I've gotten to X number, that's it, everyone else gets lick n stick tattoos.

That's my plan, at least.