It’s Time To Increase Your Freelance Writing Rates — Part 1

By Dan Smith

For most new freelance writers, writing rates are arguably the most complicated and frustrating part of their new career, for a variety of reasons.

Thinking back to when I first started freelancing, the primary reasons why it was such a headache topic for me were firstly because I had absolutely no idea what a ‘good’ per word / article rate was and secondly because I was, without sounding a little melodramatic, petrified that if I ever increased my rates, all of my existing clients would leave and I’d have to completely rebuild by client base.

Over the following years, I received some great advice on various aspects of freelance writing rates and now, at the start of every year, I take the time to sit down, review what my rates currently are, whether there is justification to increase them and how exactly to increase them if need be.

And in this two part blog post, I’m going to explain exactly what I do, step-by-step, to hopefully give other freelance writers who are in the position most freelance writers were in once, a helping hand when it comes to increasing your freelance writing rates.

Step 1: Review my existing rates

When I’m looking at increasing my freelance writing rates, the very first thing I do is review my existing rates and question whether I actually need to increase them.

In all honesty, I haven’t ever said to myself ‘No, I don’t need to raise my freelance writing rates this year’, but I always ask myself the question.

The main reason behind this is an increase in my rates could lead to a drop in business, whether that’s because I’ve continued to raise my rates year-on-year and I’ve priced myself out of the market or the economy has had such a detrimental impact on my target audience that I need to remain as competitive as possible to continue a steady stream of work.

Step 2: Can I justify increasing my rates?

There is often a belief amongst many new freelance writers that because they’ve been writing at a certain rate for 12 months, the absolutely must increase their rates, irrelevant of any other impacting factor.

The problem is, not all freelance writers can justify increasing their freelance rates, particularly with regards to existing clients.

With new clients, it isn’t such an issue — you’re offering a price for a project and if they can afford it, great, if not, they’ll move on — but with existing clients, you need to be able to justify increasing your rates if you want to remain working with them, as you’re essentially asking for more money for exactly the same output.

One of my favourite methods of justification is being able to prove that the writing I’ve provided over the last year has been particularly beneficial to the client — being able to show actual proof, such as an increased conversion rate or better search engine ranking is fantastic — and without the work, there would be a noticeable drop in certain aspects of their business.

Considering, as freelance writers, we often promote other people’s products and services, I’ve found that a lot of writers struggle with justifying an increase in their rates — the equivalent of basically telling people how good you are.

You don’t need to blow your own trumpet to the customer and make them think you’re the world’s best writer, but you do need to be able to impress them enough for them to see how beneficial the service you provide is.

The information here details two of the three steps I carry out at the start of each year and next week, I’m going to explain how I exactly increase my freelance writing rates after I’ve reviewed my existing rates and justified an increase.

Image: damozelijane (Flickr)