I appreciate the distinction you draw between how people share their gifts. I resonate with @phillyc's way of looking at exchange that is voluntary.

Originally I was attuned to Reiki and eventually being a Reiki Master so that I could help one of my sisters who was diagnosed with a chronic disease that was causing her a lot of suffering. But then I decided at one point to go beyond just sharing that rebalancing energy with family and plants to organizing the ability to share it with many strangers. When I made that decision I had to become more formal about what I was doing, setting aside time, transporting myself, etc. But at the same time I still had that initial desire to help those I felt most needed my help regardless of anything else.

My way of resolving it was to reach out to non-profits and offer to do the sessions for free for their clients if they basically did all the heavy lifting and I just had to show up, donating my time and transportation needs. They provided the space, the straight-back chairs I liked to work in, and the scheduled recipients for each 1 hour session. I wound up doing not only hundreds of clients of some non-profits, but also the entire staff, all the way up to the Executive Director at one!

I also did private sessions at my home by donation. But then I had more work to do myself, because I had to run an ad in the local paper, have a phone number other than my home phone to publish in it, let people I met know what I did (complete with business cards so they could get my contact info) and schedule the people. I also had to have a room in my house kept just for those sessions, and buy the right kind of chairs.

So for all that I definitely wasn't going to be working for free. I was happy to work by donation though at first. This never supported me, but it was enough of an exchange that I felt good about doing it for probably 50 private sessions over a couple years, whereas I'd done hundreds at the non-profits when I didn't have to do so much to make it happen and could just focus on the sessions.

After about 50 sessions the entire thing became not worthwhile to me, because I just hated all the part that went with making it happen. I think that may be why some people wind up charging a set fee, and a high one at that. At some point they probably stop wanting to do the organizational part of it, but if they ever set things up so that this is what they need to do to support themselves, they're stuck needing to charge more to make themselves willing to keep doing it. It becomes a job/business, not a calling at that point. That doesn't mean they can't still do it effectively, since really one is simply offering oneself as a channel of something happening through you, not by you. But I wonder if it doesn't take something away from the "lightworker" themselves to turn the gift into a job.