How to Raise Your Freelancing Rates – 6 Things to Consider
Freelancing has become a full-time career for many individuals. Well, that indicates that being a freelancer grants people a stable income. So if you’re a full-fledged freelancer, chances are you’re making a good living out of it. Despite the steady inflow of income that you earn from your projects, you have to think about increasing your rate at a certain point. In this blog, we’ll show you the six things you must look into in rasing your freelancing rates.
How to Raise Your Freelancing Rates – 6 Things to Consider
Why Raise Your Freelancing Rates?
Before we plunge to the topic, let’s talk about why you should raise your rates. To begin with, you’ll earn a much higher income. But remember, as you gain experience and hone your skills further as a freelancer, your market value increases, and you might not even know it.
So, if you don’t raise your rate as your time in freelancing runs its course, you end up being an underpaid self-employed worker. The money you’ll receive from your clients isn’t equal to the value of your output. You might feel content at your current rate, but if you come to know a freelancer who’s getting the worth of his or her high market value, that should encourage you to raise your rate.
According to an analysis stated in a CNBC news report, skilled freelancers in the United States earn more than 70% of traditional employees on an hourly basis. Well, among the many benefits of freelancer careers is that a person can maximize his or her rate based on market value. Those skilled freelancers that the report mentioned made the most of their market value, most of them at least.
Assess the Progress of Your Competency
In increasing your rate, the first thing you need to check is your competency. Have your skills improved? Did you gain enough professional experience? Those are the questions you must answer yourself in assessing the progress of your competency. The level of your competency is a vital formula to measure how much you should raise your rates. If you see that it’s on a high level, you have the right to increase your rate even further. It’s just like balancing two things using a traditional weight balance.
Determine the Market Value of Your Work
We’ve mentioned market value many times already. Well, that’s because it plays an essential role in the increase of your freelance rates. So, we’re going to talk about it once again. To do determine the market value, you can research the general freelance market and find out how much money freelancers in your field earn from projects. Once you’ve calculated the estimate, use it as part of the equation on how much you must increase your rates. It’s that simple if you look at it. You’ll just be exercising your basic math skills and common sense.
Inform Existing Clients Beforehand
If you plan to embark on a freelance rate negotiation, your trusted clients should know about it beforehand. They deserve to know of your decision to increase your rate because of the loyalty and trust they placed on you ever since. If you increase your rate abruptly without notice, that would be rude. In that case, you could lose some of your clients, and you don’t want that to happen. It’s a challenge to find more clients and more work in freelance websites, especially nowadays that the freelance economy is growing.
Increase Your Rates By Period
Increasing your rate to a certain large amount doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process that you have to take slowly. That said, you must increase your rate by period, rather than by immediate means. You can do it quarterly, every six months, or yearly until it reaches your desired amount. Set a schedule that will guide you regarding your rate increase for a specific period. Over such a course, you have to make sure your work performance is improving continuously. In this manner, your loyal clients can slowly adapt and keep up with the changes in your service fees.
Avoid Raising Your Rates Too Steeply
You should refrain from raising your rates too steeply. Your clients will not like it for sure. Plus, doing that is not practical. If your rates are too high, you might struggle to receive even a single proposal from new clients. As mentioned earlier, increasing your freelancing rate is a process. You need to invest time and exercise your patience.
We know that raising your rate too steeply will increase your income significantly. But, there’s another way to make your income bigger as of the moment, and that’s executing standard marketing techniques to obtain more clients. You don’t need a big budget to promote yourself in the freelance market.
Choose a Good Time to Raise Your Rate
Everything that we do requires proper timing to be effective and successful. That principle applies when it comes to raising your freelancing rates. A good time to increase your rate is when you’re receiving positive feedback from your clients regarding your outputs. In such a time, your clients are in a good mood, which implies that they might want to give you some sign of gratitude. That gratitude could be that they’ll agree with your decision to increase your freelancing rate.
Another perfect period to start increasing your rate is when there’s a shortage of freelancers. At such a time, clients have fewer options on which freelancer they should hire. It’s basic economics; when supply is low, demand is high. That said, in a time when freelancers in your field are scarce, your market value is high in that period. However, this will rarely happen due to the rapid growth of freelancers in the world. But, at least you know.
Increasing your freelancing rate is undoubtedly a risky step, but it’s one that pays off if you do it right. In general, you need to assess the current situation of your freelance career and the freelance economy as a whole. By playing your cards right, you’ll end up on the fortunate side of things for sure. So grab your checklist of strategies and remember what you’ve learned here about raising your rate.
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