Is it Time to Increase your Freelance Writing Rates?
The beginning of the year is a great time to increase your freelance writing rates. While the ideal situation is doing so on January 1, you still have time to make this happen right now. Of course, it is your right as a freelance writer to change your rates when you please. You don’t have to do so at the beginning of the year; this is only a suggestion.
Whether or not to increase your freelance writing rates can be a tough question to wrestle with. There are definite benefits of doing so, but at the same time you need to be careful because you don’t want to put off current clients or scare away those that may want to work with you in the near future.
Benefits
The main benefit of increasing your freelance writing rates is that you can earn more money for doing the same amount of work. For example, if you charge $500 for a sales letter right now you could increase this to $750 and earn an extra $250 per project. While this may appear to be a huge jump, this is more than reasonable. Remember, you are a professional and as you gain more knowledge and experience you need to increase your rates.
Additionally, higher rates are not always seen as a bad thing. Some clients will see your high rates and be scared away. But others will see them and realize that high rates mean higher quality work.
Drawbacks
There is no denying that you will scare some potential buyers if your rates are higher than the competition. But as noted above, you can play up the fact that “you get what you pay for.†Charging more can be seen as both good and bad, so you might as well set your rates where you feel comfortable and then find clients who are willing to pay.
Should I attempt to raise my rates on existing clients? This has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. There are times when you can do this, but also times when this will scare away existing clients. Try this: increase your rates with new clients but keep things the same for those that you have been doing business with. This way you don’t risk scaring away good clients, but you can earn more on new ones.
If you are thinking about increasing your freelance writing rates consider both the benefits and drawbacks.
