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This solo episode by Lorrie is the third in our series of three podcast episodes about money. In episode 23, I talked about how to set your freelance writing rates, and in episode 24 we discussed the practicalities of things like invoicing, chasing clients and setting payment terms. So today, Lorrie talks about under what circumstances you should consider raising your rates, and exactly how to go about it.
Show Notes
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Episode 25 of A Little Bird Told Me: the podcast about the highs, the lows, and the no-nos of successful freelance writing.
You can find us on the web at alittlebirdtoldme.podomatic.com, and there you can subscribe to the podcast in any number of ways, including RSS, iTunes, Stitcher Smart Radio or on the Podomatic page itself. You can also find the link to our Facebook page, where there will be plenty of tips, tricks and topics – that gets easier to say every time! – to enjoy. And you can also find links to my websites and social media feeds, as well as those of my lovely co-host Philippa.
I’m Lorrie Hartshorn and today’s episode is another solo effort. As I speak, the lovely Pip is probably out and about, doing something unimaginably exciting but fear not, she’ll be back with me next week for another dual episode. For now, listeners, it’s just me and thee.
Today’s topic is the third and final of our money-oriented episodes. If you’ve not listened to them in order, I’d definitely recommend you go back and have a listen – we started out with Pip’s solo episode, 23, in which she discussed how to decide what to charge – basically, how to come up with a decent pricing strategy for your work.
Then, in our last episode, we discussed how to go about actually getting paid – things like how to send an invoice, whether to go for pre-payment, how long to give someone to pay – the sorts of things you don’t really know, naturally – and it’s best not to pluck these things out of the air. We tried to take these things in a logical order, you see – deciding what to get paid, learning how to get paid and, now, what to do when you want to get paid more! This is generally the order it’ll happen in in real life as well, so no need to thank us – just realise that we do think about these things in a bid to give you the best advice possible!
When you’re starting out as a freelance copywriter, editor, proof-reader, anything really, it can be baffling when you try and decide what to charge. You see top end copywriters charging, say $500 an hour, then there are those people (I use the term loosely!) who inhabit the slimy bottom layer of freelance sites like Elance, charging ridiculously low prices. If you’ve listened to our previous podcast episode, you’ll know this is a particular bugbear of mine. The lowest I’ve seen – and this was a genuine offer with several very enthusiastic takers – was 15p (that’s 15p UK!) per 500-word article. So when I say that freelancing rates for copywriters vary, I really, really do mean it!
But, because Pip already covered how to devise a pricing strategy in her last solo episode, I’m not going to cover that again. What I want to deal with is just how to go about upping your rates.
So, first of all, why increase your rates?
There might be a number of reasons you might increase your rates.
– You might have been charging too little in the first place (it’s an easy mistake to make, especially when you’re starting out and want to secure any and all work going!)
– You might have more expenses to meet
– You might have too much work coming in, so as I mentioned in my last solo episode, you might want to – for want of a better word – sift out the lower paying clients.
– It might just be time for a pay-rise
Now, the last one sounds a bit arbitrary, but it isn’t. It’s important to remember that, when you’re self-employed, your career path can be a little harder to define. Whereas in a salaried position you might start out as a copy assistant, before moving on to junior copywriter, copywriter, senior copywriter and so on, as a freelancer, you’re just a copywriter. Forever.
But, as I’ve just hinted, that doesn’t mean that you actually stay the same. If you’re serious about your freelance copywriting career, you’ll be engaged in continuous training and development: reading, research, seminars, webinars, online training courses, offline training courses…there’s always something you can be doing to improve and expand the services you offer to clients. And, as you progress, it’s a reasonable thing for you to start commanding a higher fee from your clients. And that’s why I say it might just be time for a pay-rise.
But, the thought of increasing your fees can be a worrying one, particularly if you’re a copywriter who works with a range of regular, long-term clients.
The fear is always there – that the next pound or dollar you add to your fee could be the tipping point for a client, who’ll walk away and find someone else. And yes, if your client is looking for the cheapest deal, there might come a time when they decide that what you’re charging is too much for them. But, if you follow the tips I’m going to give you in this episode, you should be able to avoid that in most circumstances, at least, and start earning the kind of fees you deserve for your work.
So, first of all, make sure you’ve got a pricing strategy in place. As I say, you’ll need to listen to episode 23, which is Pip’s solo episode, if you’re not sure how to go about doing this. It’s one of my favourite episodes, genuinely, and it’s by the lovely Pip, who’s brilliant at breaking things down. She’s had training in delivering training, so she really is very good at breaking down what’s essentially quite a complicated topic. Have a listen: it really will help you if you’re stuck on how to decide what to charge for which services. The key point about a pricing strategy is that it’s not just a set of figures that you pluck out of the air. There are ways to determine how much you should be charging, so have a listen to episode 23 and come back here if you don’t know what they are!
So, the first tip I’d give you when you’re thinking about increasing your rates, be clear with your clients about how the increase will affect them
When you inform your clients that your fees are going up, it’s important to be clear with them. If you normally communicate with your client via telephone, give them a call and then follow up with an email, so it’s there – it’s a permanent record. If you normally email them, send them a message and then follow up with a call if necessary (so, it’s the other way round). Stick to your normal communication method, then follow up.
It’s important at this point to make the transition to a higher fee as easy, clear and justifiable as possible. You also need to let your client know that they’re valued by you, so think carefully about how you word your communications with them.
While I wouldn’t suggest walking your client through exactly why you’ve decided to charge what you’re charging, it’s important for you to outline clearly how it’s going to affect them, and what they’re going to get for their money. But, while you’re doing this – remember two things: one, be honest with them and two, don’t apologise.
As I’ve progressed as a freelance copywriter, my fees have increased. I ask far more from a new client now than I would have done ten years ago. And, while in retrospect I think that my fees from ten years ago were far too low (which is a very common thing!), there’s no way I should have been charging then what I’m charging now. My skills are hugely improved, my knowledge has increased, I have more years of experience and commitment behind me.
So, when it comes to my long-term clients, I value their loyalty and that has to stand for something. I’ve had a number of them on my books for years now, so I’m not about to charge them the same that I’d charge for a new commercial clients. I’m not going to increase the fees I charge them by a huge jump. However, there did come a point where I was charging one client considerably less than any of my other clients, and I had to increase my fees to make it worth my while keeping that client on, and dedicating a large amount of time every week to working for them.
So, I had to come up with a figure that would suit me but not price me out of my client’s reach, for loyalty’s sake. I sat down and considered all of the following:
– my client’s budget and sector
– how long I’d been working for them
– how many pay increases I’d had since working for them
– how many hours work I did (or indeed, do!) for the client each week
– how much more I could be earning if I did the same amount of work for another client each week
– why I deserved the pay increase
In the end, I came up with a logical, ultimately justifiable figure, and I set about emailing the client with a proposal. It’s important to do this in a professional way, even if you chat with the client on a daily basis.
In my email, I explained that, like any other business, I had a pricing strategy that allowed me to keep my business flourishing. There’s no shame in that: I look after my business. I reiterated how important the client was to me, and outlined the fact that I’d not increased my fees for around two years. I detailed some of the training I’d been undertaking and described how the pay increase would allow me to continue to deliver even better results to that client in future. The increase was included in the email as an easily digestible percentage figure, you know – increased by X% – and it wasn’t something overwhelmingly large.
I bullet-pointed all of the information and submitted it, topped and tailed with the same kind of friendly communication that my client’s come to expect from me on an almost daily basis.
The response came back and it was a positive one. No one’s going to cheer about having to pay more for something, but the price was considered fair for the work I deliver and the communication was appreciated. And that’s the result you’re looking for.
So, to sum up, when you decide to raise your fees, you need to be a number of things.
Firstly – clear. Clear with yourself and why you’re doing it. Clear in your own mind about why you’ve gone for that particular figure, or percentage increase. And clear with your clients about how it’ll affect them.
Secondly, be confident. Be confident in your services, and know in yourself that what you’re charging is the right amount. If you’re not sure about it, you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone else. Do your research, position yourself carefully in the market – find a nice middle ground between ridiculously high and ridiculously low! – and that will help you to feel confident that you’ve made the right choice, even if you lose some clients. Be confident when you’re informing clients old and new about your rates – you’ve got nothing to apologise for, and confidence helps you to be professional.
And thirdly, be consistent. Offer your clients consistently good value for what they’re paying. Offer them consistently good work. If a client can rely on you, that’s one more reason to pay you what you’re asking.
Also, be consistent in what you charge a particular client, and how and when you increase your fees with them. It might be that you charge different clients different amounts based on their spending capacity – I charge charities less than commercial clients, for example, and I know that Pip charges charities and students less – but be discreet about this (not secretive, just discreet!) and always keep a record of what you charged who, and when. Clients will know, realistically, that your rates might vary, but if you end up mixing clients up and getting your rates wrong, or trying to implement another fee increase after just six months because you’re mistaking one client for another, it will make you seem sneaky and underhand. So keep close tabs on your finances and on what you charge different people.
So, I hope this has been a helpful guide on how to go about increasing the fees you charge for your freelance writing services. We all want to make as much money for our time as possible – there’s no crime in that – but it’s good to really assess your actions so you can be sure that both you and your clients are getting the best deal possible.
As I mentioned in my previous episode, increasing your rates can actually be an effective way to cut down the number of low-paying clients you have – it might sound mercenary but it’s the nature of the beast. As your career progresses, you can’t afford to fill your working day with work for a client who pays you just a third or a quarter of what someone else could. It doesn’t make any sense. You need to let your clients find someone more affordable if you’re getting too expensive to them – the solution isn’t to keep your rates low forever. It’s not sustainable.
Increasing your rates will leaving your clients free to find someone more affordable – and to manage your time better. By freeing up some time and spend more of your working day focusing on the clients who can afford you, you can ultimately improve your offerings, cut out any rushed pieces of work, halve the stress, and spend more time on the training and development you’ll need to progress, in time, to a point where you’re able to attract and cater to even more highly paying clients. It’s a cyclic thing.
Before I go, it’s time for this week’s Little Bird Recommendation. I’ve been thoroughly told off by the ever-reliable Pip for repeatedly forgetting to include one in my solo episodes. So, this week, I’m being good – I’m making a concerted effort!
When introducing Little Bird Recommendations, Pip and I have said that we might share tools, videos, blog posts, or tweets. I realised I hadn’t yet featured a tweet. So, I noticed a tweet recently that was being retweeted a lot, and I really liked it. It was a tweet by someone called Michael Scott Monje Junior, and he wrote, “Look, I might be the odd man out here, but I think calling yourself a social media guru is the opposite of effective…” and it’s been retweeted and favourited left, right and centre.
I think it’s an interesting insight to effective and non-effective communications on social media. If you’re calling yourself a guru, for some people, that’s pretty obnoxious. Someone contacted me on Twitter and said, “Do you know what an anagram of social media guru is? A ludicrous image. Go figure!” And it’s true, we all know the types who frame themselves as social media experts – and they might well be, but when someone blows their own trumpet so hard, it’s hard to believe in them and to actually like them.
I think it’s really important – especially on social media, where the clue’s in the name – to be likeable. And it got me thinking about an article I saw on Copyblogger recently, called The Key To Creating More Remarkable Connections. Put aside the cheesy title, it’s actually a decent blog post – as most on Copyblogger are. The post talks about authenticity and goes through how to create a professional, authentic online persona. It has some great tips on balancing personal and professional stuff, how often to promote yourself and be salesy, and it basically outlines the content mix for you. I find it a really good guide actually, when I’m wondering whether to be more jokey, more professional, and how often to link people to my website.
So I hope that that recommendation is useful to you, and enough to appease the wonderful Pip, who quite rightly reminded me that I’d forgotten the Little Bird Recommendations over the last few solo episodes.
So, for more of our podcast episodes, including the two previous episodes on money matters, please do go and subscribe to the podcast. You can get regular updates via iTunes, Stitcher Smart Radio, RSS feed, or Facebook – or you can sign up on the podomatic page itself, at alittlebirdtoldme.podomatic.com.
I’ve been Lorrie Hartshorn – thanks so much for listening, as always, and Pip and I will catch you next time.