Eric H. Roberge is a young financial planner and investment advisor representative who wants to work with other young people, but the first investment firms he worked for told him young clients were not profitable.

Like many advisors, he ended up working with older clients who had large portfolios, charging fees based on assets under management. But the desire to help younger clients stuck with him.

In 2013, he launched Beyond Your Hammock in Salem, Mass., to do just that.

One of the ways he hopes to appeal to these clients is to offer them a different fee structure, since younger clients have good earning potential and little savings when they are starting out. Roberge, who is 35, charges an initial fee of $799 and then charges a $125-per-month subscription fee for ongoing financial planning services.

More advisors are starting to charge on an hourly, monthly or subscription basis to attract younger clients and to help them compete with inexpensive robo-advisors.

“I had not seen this type of fee structure before, but I found others who were considering it, and four of us set up a network of advisors to support each other,” Roberge says. “We talk once a week about any issues we are having. All four of us have been successful connecting with young clients.”

The clients, he says, appreciate the fee structure because they do not have to pay several thousand dollars up front and they can receive financial advice even though they do not have large portfolios to manage.

The fee structure takes the emphasis off such things as money management and estate planning, he says, and puts it on day-to-day financial activity, which is sometimes overlooked by planners since they are not being paid for it.

Roberge could take on a young doctor with $350,000 in education debts, for example, and help him or her pay down the debts and start to build savings. Or he can take on a young family that has earnings potential and is saving for a new house.

Roberge isn’t the only one. Other advisors are also looking at different fee structures.

Carlos P. Sava, a portfolio manager for Clarendon Capital Management LLC in Arlington, Va., says his firm has two pricing structures: the more traditional AUM fee for clients with equity managed accounts and an annual fee of $1,000 billed quarterly for other clients.

For the flat fee, clients get a risk assessment, a financial plan with savings rates, an action plan and a quarterly performance review, among other services.

“For clients with $100,000 in investments, this represents an equivalent of 1 percent, which is in line with the fees of many other national advisory firms and below many,” Sava says. “For larger clients, since the fee is fixed, it becomes a much lower percentage of their assets.”

The rise of robo-advisors that offer low-cost, do-it-yourself investment management has prompted the use of different fee structures, says William F. Davis, executive vice president of Apex Financial Advisors Inc. in Yardley, Pa.

“These robo-advisor platforms make it easier for the average investor to feel like he or she is getting good advice, [but] robo-advisors should not be relied upon to be the only source of financial planning expertise,” Davis says.

Apex has recently been asked by some clients and potential clients to develop a financial plan with action steps to implement the firm’s recommendations, yet these people have no interest in the firm doing investment management. The firm has a onetime retainer starting at about $8,000, depending on the amount of time the planning is estimated to take. The clients can then continue with a yearly retainer or switch to an AUM fee and let the firm manage their portfolios.

Another approach might be to charge a smaller fee on total wealth rather than just assets under management, since the advisor may be dealing with more than just the investments, suggested Wayne Badorf, president of Wells Fargo Funds Distributor LLC in San Francisco, in a recent blog.

The Garrett Planning Network, based in Eureka Springs, Ark., is an organization that has used an hourly fee structure since its inception 15 years ago; the price for its 300 advisors averages $190 an hour.

“Our fee structure has been successful in attracting young clients to our advisors,” says Justin Nichols, director of operations for Garrett. “Instead of doing a broad-based plan that costs $3,000, we can do it in, maybe, $750 increments over two years. That makes it more affordable.”

“Our engagements have to be done without any minimum and based on a project fee for that client,” he says. “We may deal with how to allocate a 401(k) plan at first, and then deal with other issues later. The advantage is that we make our services more accessible.”

P.J. Wallin, the founder of Atlas Financial in Richmond, Va., used to work for a firm that had a minimum requirement of $1 million in investable assets for its clients. Atlas, on the other hand, charges $500 for an initial “financial road map,” and then $125 a month going forward.

“This fee structure allows us to work with people from the start of their careers and to serve an underserved population,” Wallin says. “The other firm I worked for would not have dealt with these clients. I’m sure fees will continue to evolve.”

Wallin is a member of XY Planning Network, a group of financial advisors who, to attract Gen X and Gen Y, charge on an hourly basis with no asset minimums. Other services are paid for monthly and financial planning should be, too, says the group.