Ditch the Hourly Rate: 5 Pricing Strategies That Actually Work for Freelancers
/If you dream of scaling your freelancing work and boosting your income as much as possible, it’s a great time to rethink your pricing strategy. Here are five alternatives to hourly pricing that actually work:
1. Boost The Perceived Value Of Your Business
Where you choose to base your business will influence clients and how much they think you are worth. Sad, but true. If you’ve been meeting clients at coffee shops, or on Zoom calls with your kitchen in the background, a change of scenery might be what you need to command higher rates.
There are plenty of corporate spaces offering serviced offices for freelancers, giving you flexible terms, affordable rates, and crucially, a touch of class to every meeting. Most serviced office spaces have reception staff who will happily greet your clients, offer them tea or coffee, and escort them to your office. This makes them feel special and creates an aura of effortless professionalism from start to finish.
Whether you’re connecting in person or online, a smart, well-equipped serviced office or plush meeting room will greatly elevate the experience. They will be primed to pay higher rates because you’ll seem far more established and professional.
2. Charge For Impact Rather Than Time
Rather than charging an hourly rate, you could price the services you offer based on the value they bring. This isn’t necessarily a strategy for a new freelancer, but if you have clients who can give you testimonials and actual proof of the impact you achieve, there’s no reason for you not to provide quotes based on the value of your entire contribution.
In some cases, this could even be measurable with analytical information, such as website visits, click-throughs, sales, views, and feedback.
3. Retainers
Around 55% of freelancers have had invoices go unpaid. An easy way to avoid this issue is to ask for a retainer fee. This could be the cost of all your work during that month for a set price, or a price to simply keep some of your time available for the work the client needs doing.
Retainers ensure you are getting paid for your time regardless, and usually encourage clients to actively stay in touch, pay upfront, and make the most of the money they are paying. If they want to retain your services, they need to pay monthly. Otherwise, the services stop. No pay-as-you-go messing around anymore.
4. Price-Per-Project
A per-project price allows for you to charge for the complexity and value you will be delivering. This stops clients from undervaluing what you do. When you charge an hourly rate, they might expect endless revisions, and expect the work to be done in an unreasonable amount of time.
If you get the work done quickly, they won’t consider the intensity of your work, and so you’ll end up effectively giving yourself a pay cut for your efforts. Putting time into an in-depth conversation upfront is a better approach. This way, you can agree on project results, an overall cost, and a timescale that suits both parties.
Always calculate your project costs carefully, and include a buffer to cover unexpected issues. Here’s an easy way to get started:
Use past work you’ve done to estimate how many hours the job will likely take you;
Add a few extra hours to account for potential issues, revision requests, and other setbacks;
Decide on an hourly rate based on what you think is fair and on market rates for your role;
Multiply your hours by your rate to come up with a quote for the project.
The beauty of this process is that, in figuring out the price you want to charge, you also get a good idea of how many hours it will take, and how that can fit into your schedule. So you can also give the client an expected deadline.
Again, always give yourself a little buffer with your estimate. Learning a project will be completed earlier than expected is always a nicer surprise than learning it will be late.
5. Anonymous Offerings
We would love to believe the world is now an equal place when it comes to gender. Unfortunately, it is very common for women to be bypassed or underpaid in freelance work, compared to males offering the same services.
In fact, a recent survey showed there is a gender pay gap of nearly 40% in freelancing. One strategy to overcome this is to advertise and communicate in a completely gender-neutral way.
As shocking as it seems, if you remove indicators that you are female, you can avoid discrimination and potentially attract more clients (and higher-paying clients) as a result. It’s a strategy that may seem unnecessary, but not if you have ever been on the receiving end of this kind of discrimination.
Work Smarter To Earn More
Freelancing is flexible, exciting, satisfying, and creative, but it can leave you a busy fool if you don’t try smart pricing strategies like those described above. Use these ideas to earn what you’re worth and start thriving as a freelancer.
