Tomaz Zaman had an inspiring talk today on why you should charge more. A lot of freelancers and small business owners undervalue themselves. This is especially true in WordPress business because the barrier of entry is very low. Almost anybody can start calling themselves WordPress developers. This leads to race to the bottom with prices because there are a lot of newcomers that don’t have much else to compete with.
When I started H1, I had agency level pricing from the beginning, even though it was just me then. That allowed me to hire others.
Even if you enjoy working alone and don’t want to hire other people, more money per hour will make you able to pursue other interests, educate yourself on new technologies and thus keep yourself competitive and charge more. If you have no such margin, you are stuck working long hours just to get by. Even if you love what you do (and you should), that does not carry you very far in the end.