How to Set Your Freelance Rates and Charge What You're Worth

There are several methods that you can go about charging for your freelance services. From hourly to per task completed, you can decide what suits you best. It can be challenging to select what is right for you, but by trying out different methods, you will be able to figure out what is the right pricing strategy that works best for you, your niche and the clients who choose to invest in your freelance services. Below, let us take a closer look at these in more detail.

Hourly Rate Based Pricing

When charging for something at an hourly rate basis, you charge for every hour you work on a certain project. This model can be used if you are someone offering freelance writing services, graphic design services and even consulting services. If you want to charge by the hour for your services, you will need to discuss this with your clients. Usually, if you intend to charge by the hour, it is best to use platforms like Freelancer, Upwork and LinkedIn. These platforms are some of the common examples of platforms that most freelancers use if they offer hourly rate-based pricing. Some of the key benefits of opting for an hourly rate-based pricing system involves the convenience of tacking and billing for time spent working on a specific project. This can be fair if the project scope has not been clearly determined. If you look at the drawbacks of this system is that your income is tied to the hours you can work and stay productive, which means that your income will depend on how productive you can be on an hourly basis.?

Project Based Pricing

If you decide to charge for your freelance services based on per project, you know that you will get the fee at the end of the project. This is great, because if you are highly skilled and experienced, you will be able to complete many tasks much faster than other less skilled or experienced peers. If you are a highly experienced and skilled freelancer, you might want to consider opting for project based pricing. Charging based on the project means that the client is aware of the complete cost which will help streamline the process of negotiations and communication. One major drawback of this includes the fact that it becomes difficult to estimate the time required for completion when it comes to complex projects.?

Retainer Pricing

If you are planning to work for clients long term, then you might want to consider signing them up based on a retainer pricing system. This is the closest you will come to having a paycheck, quite similar to if you were working in the corporate world. But this involves you searching and reaching out to clients to get orders or work. One down side of retainer based pricing is it does restrict your level of freedom and autonomy as a freelancer. If you value these above anything else you might want to rethink your decision about implementing a retainer pricing system.?

How to Figure Out the Ideal Rates as a Freelancer?

If you are looking to figure out how to set your ideal rates as a freelancer, then you might want to go about considering several factors when coming up with these rates. You will need to take into factors such as how much you want to earn per month or per year. This will help you decide where, when and what to invest in your time. Of course, there are exceptions and everything isn’t always about money (that might be the reason you decided to leave your toxic and draining nine to five job which absorbed not just your blood sweat and tears but perhaps your sanity and peace of mind). Let’s dive into some of these factors below.

Figure Out How Much You Want to Earn

If you want to become a freelancer and take it seriously and earn as much or hopefully even more money than you did at your day job, without scaring away potential clients who pay well but maybe not illogically large amounts (only you know if you can charge the amounts you charge). As long as the client is satisfied with your skill level, which they are most likely to judge based on your portfolio

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Have an Idea about Your Availability

Though people might think you are not doing a “proper” job, that’s their opinion, and usually this is quite unjust and jaded, especially if they have no idea about your daily schedule. Some might even use it to their advantage, so you might want to look at who your close circle is and change it if you are not quite happy with it. Some people say humans are social creatures, but I’d like to say no theory is absolute, and find out what works for you. In my case the more people in my life, the messier things have got, so I prefer to write and work on my own. You need to find out what works for you, and that is once more up to you. No one is going to push or beg you to do the work. No one’s going to coax you or motivate you to do your work. You will have to do all that and be solely responsible by identifying how many hours you can be productive and deliver quality work.

The cool thing and the perhaps scary thing about freelancing is that you are on your own, but the best thing is also that you are on your own and if you win big you can be proud that you did it all on your own, mostly, without relying on others to motivate you to get the work done. That in itself is, I believe, a worthy accomplishment worth being proud of.

I hope you found this article useful and hope it will motivate you to take a shot at freelancing if you always wanted to or have always been putting it off. I’d like to say to you, there is no better than today and the thing about life is that tomorrow is never guaranteed. If I were you, I’d chase my dreams instead of getting caught in the rat race and going about my life like a hamster on a wheel. I’m not saying it is going to be easy, but if you get where you want to, I can almost guarantee you that you feel that you have achieved something awesome.

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