How to Charge More as a Freelancer

The question of how to charge more money (and how to make more money) as a freelancer is one that continually plagues us here at Freelance Parent. A little while back, I mentioned that we are just learning to walk that fine line between making good money and having enough work to keep us busy. When all is said and done, perfecting these navigation skills is really all it takes to charge more and make more as a freelancer.

The “Charge More, Make More” Idea

One recurring theme in the “how to make more money” game is to just charge more. However, the concept of charging higher fees in order to raise your income level is a deceptively simple one. The idea is that by selling yourself as a professional worthy of commanding higher prices, you will find the clients willing to pay that much. Period. However, I recently ran a little experiment wherein all my bids for jobs for a month were placed at the rate I really want to make rather than my usual, slightly-lower rate.

You know what the response was? Not a single bite. In fact, I placed a bid yesterday at my lower rates and already have a job lined up. Go figure.

I wasn’t catastrophically upset by this experiment, since it fits in with my theories about charging more and making more (and I made sure I had enough work lined up to keep me busy in the interim).

How “Charge More, Make More” Really Works

Making more money and getting higher rates of pay is actually a really complicated balance that most of us are still working out. If you want to make more money, you have to charge more money – but not to everyone, and not all at once.

When I break down my income into averages and include all my own administrative work, I make a decent hourly rate. However, it is hardly achieved with any measure of consistency. Here’s how it works: I have one client who pays very, very well. I love them, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I’ve built a solid relationship up with them over time, and they continually send more work my way. Understandably, my income has risen with these changes.

The rest of the time, I fill in the “gaps” with lower paying work. While I’m not making the kind of figures I want with these clients, it is still income. Some pay better than others, and some are simply a great way for me to expand my experience and make more connections. I have enough work to fill my 15 to 20 desired hours per week, but not all of it is blow-me-away fantastic.

The next step in the “Charge More, Make More” game has been said all over the blogosphere: a freelancer should fire his or her lower-paying clients and slowly ease his or her way into the upper echelons of clientele. Although I rely heavily on my good-paying client right now, I know that sticking to just one client is not a feasible long-term plan. Securing several high-paying sources will (over time) replace all the lower paying ones I currently rely on to make up my income differences and fill my time. Eventually, I should be sitting exactly where I want to be financially.

When “Charge More, Make More” Doesn’t Work

There are several scenarios in which this process might not work:

You don’t have any high-paying clients yet. Although I’m willing to take on what amount to $15/hour jobs as a secondary measure, it would not be a happy situation if that is all I could ever get. Remember, freelancers have quite a bit of communication to do and administrative work to attend to. If you’re only billing $15/hour (or making the equivalent with flat-fee or per-word writing), you’re probably making half that by the time you clock all your hours. That’s minimum wage. You have to have some better-paying gigs to balance out the lower-paying ones, or you’ll just get burnt out and frustrated.

You really aren’t worth the amount you’re charging. Whether it’s a lack of experience, a lack of skills, or a lack of effective marketing, you may simply find that people aren’t willing to pay more for your services because they can get better for less somewhere else. That’s the nature of competition. Sometimes, you may have to beef up your skills/education/experience, create a stellar marketing platform, discover a new approach to writing queries, network better, or simply charge less in order to get the jobs.

You aren’t being patient. When a potential client posts a bid on an online site or a job board, we freelancers typically scramble to get a query in ASAP. However, your client may not get back to you with the same hustle and bustle. I’ve had clients hire me as much as four months after I made initial contact, without a word in the meantime. The moral of this story is that even though you might feel like you are climbing ladders to nowhere, things can turn around very quickly. Stick with it, try a few different techniques, and be patient. Old clients may return or new ones may discover the other guy they hired isn’t working out. You never know.