Toni spends more time than I do, every step of the way, it appears. Speaking strictly about 5k courses, I take about an hour going over the course with the race director, and prepping. But, I make the Race Director map their course on MapMyRun. If I have to map it, I do charge more.
For most of my 5k courses, I travel less than an hour, mostly half an hour or less. It takes about 90 minutes to ride a 5k both directions, and make any spur adjustments. I use a GPS with the course pre-loaded, and mile splits as waypoints, so I am not spending any time looking at maps. I just follow my track. Saves lots of time.
I do my maps electronically, also, and make a color version of the map for my client's Cert. Even doing both color and B&W, a 5k can be mapped in under 3 hours. Final paperwork, etc., posting the maps, GPS track, photos of each split location, etc. to my Webpage for the race, and I am done.
All of that combined adds up to about 7-8 hours, maximum, for a 5k. For that I charge $275 (with the spur), complete. Take out the $30 cert fee, and it still comes to $30 per hour. Many maps take only an hour or two, so that helps.
Tom, maybe we should charge more! I have always felt that getting paid to ride my bike is a pretty good gig, but if the market will support it, a price increase may be in the future.
I use a co-measurer for Half-marathon or longer. Shorter than that doesn't seem worth the coordinating effort. I pay them half of the measuring fee (1/3 of the total price). Even so, I feel I get a pretty decent compensation for my time.
I'm with Tom on the measurement-only observation. I think I have done 2 measurement-only rides in 6 years. Not worth it to save $100 or $125 (for a 10k, since my minimum $250 fee covers a 5k cert), if you can get more runners with a cert.