Scott Oldford Site

Tag: raising freelance rates

  • Tracking Freelance Earnings: November Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    Tracking Freelance Earnings: November Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    When was the last time you approached a client about increasing your freelance rates?

    We’re almost at the end of the year, which means it is time to start sending out those rate negotiation emails and seeing if you can increase your income in 2016.

    But before we get to that, here are November’s earning numbers:

    Completed Pieces: 71

    Work Billed: $6,561.63

    Earnings Received: $5,136.00

    This month, I more than made up for October’s low earnings, billing $1,561 more than my monthly income goal of $5,000. I wrote roughly 46,700 words in November, with an average per-piece earning of $92.42. My highest earning piece was $1,023, and my lowest earning piece was $35.

    Examining my financial situation

    I’m in an interesting position as a freelancer, because at this point I earn as much writing one piece for my highest-paying client as I earn writing a week’s worth of pieces for my lower-paying clients. To put it more bluntly: I can spend 40 hours writing 15 pieces to earn $1,000, or I can spend four hours writing one piece and earn $1,000.

    I know clients willing to pay $1,000 per piece are rare — if it were that easy to secure those clients, everyone would have them — but it’s making me think about the value of my work and how I can shift more of my client relationships to the higher end of the pay scale.

    After all, if my work is worth $1,000, sticking with my lowest-paying clients is actually costing me money over time. I like all my clients, which makes it difficult to want to move on from them. A good relationship is often just as valuable as a paycheck, but I know that if I’m going to earn more money in 2016, I have to find clients willing to pay more.

    Part of this process will include securing new clients. This month, however, I’m going to use my current client relationships to negotiate as many rate increases as possible.

    Three ways to approach rate negotiations

    Every client relationship is different, which means my rate negotiations have to be tailored to the individual client. With that in mind, here are the three strategies I’m using to start the negotiation conversation:

    1. Email clients with a suggested 2016 rate

    The easiest way to start the rate negotiation process is to email a client to suggest an increased rate.

    “Easy” in this case is relative; first, you have to decide what you want that rate to be, knowing that the client may push back with a slightly lower number. Second, you have to justify the rate increase — is it because you have transitioned into a regular contributor role? Is it because your pieces consistently achieve high rates of engagement and social sharing? — and lastly, you have to figure out when to make the ask. (The day before a holiday weekend, for example, is probably not the best time to send this email.)

    But once you have all those pieces in order, it is pretty easy to write an email that begins “I want to start a conversation about 2016 plans and rate adjustments,” and lay out what you think is appropriate and why. This strategy successfully worked for The Write Life, and we quickly completed the rate negotiation process to everyone’s satisfaction.

    2. Link a rate increase to a scope increase

    One of my clients announced a change in publication strategy that will require writers to do more research and prep work before drafting pieces. That’s a perfect context in which to suggest a rate increase. I’m going to write one of these new pieces this week, and keep track of the additional work involved. Then I’ll be able to send the client an email quantifying the time and scope increase and suggest a new rate.

    3. Ask the client if their publication offers a pathway for growth

    In some cases, I am one of many freelancers working for a single large client. Using the “email a suggested rate increase” is difficult in this situation for two reasons: first, because my editor might not have the ability to directly adjust my payment; and second, because when you are one of 30-plus freelancers, it becomes much more difficult to quantify how your pieces bring the most engagement or the greatest value to the organization.

    I did an interview with Katie Lane of Work Made for Hire for The Freelancer on how to deal with these types of negotiation scenarios. She suggests contacting your editor to say that you enjoy working for them and you’d like to continue the relationship, and “you’d like to know how [the client] makes adjustments to compensation or how they make compensation decisions.”

    So that’s how I’ll approach these clients. I’ll know pretty quickly whether there is any opportunity for rate increases, or whether I’ll have to plan to phase these clients out in the future as I continue to grow my client portfolio.

    Then I’ll have to start looking for more of those $1,000-per-piece clients — but that’s a project for next month.

    How do you approach rate negotiations? Have you used any of these three strategies?

  • Tracking Freelance Earnings: October Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    Tracking Freelance Earnings: October Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    If you don’t make a monthly freelancing goal, what steps do you take to keep yourself on target? This month, I didn’t hit my $5,000 income goal — but I’m working on changing things for November.

    Here are October’s numbers:

    Completed Pieces: 81

    Work Billed: $4,985.36

    Earnings Received: $5,521.62

    I wrote roughly 44,500 words in October, with an average per-piece earning of $61.55. My highest earning piece was $849, and my lowest earning piece was $20.

    I also came close to hitting my $5,000 monthly income goal. Seriously, I’m only $15 off! The fact that I was just shy of $5K — not to mention that I earned nearly $7K last month — means I’m not beating myself up over this.

    Still, it’s worth looking at what happened.

    How my projected income dropped by $1,000

    For most of the month, I thought I would earn more than $5,000. But one of my clients asked that I hold off completing a piece until November, and another client accidentally assigned the same piece to two writers (thankfully, this client let me know before I started writing the piece).

    My income line dropped by $1,000 overnight, without me doing anything “wrong.”

    A year ago, losing two pieces might have cut $150 off my bottom line. Now, it’s a more significant income drop. The more successful I get, the bigger my risks become. Having one client cancel a piece or getting a request to hold on a draft for a month can mean losing 20 percent of my monthly income.

    It’s also important to note that earning less money in October means receiving less money in November. I need to be prepared to only receive $4,500 in freelance payments this month, which means having a little less discretionary income than usual.

    It’s time to start trading up

    So I didn’t get a few assignments that I thought I would. This hasn’t happened before, but I bet it’ll happen again. This means I need to come up with a solution to this problem.

    Can I prevent a client from canceling a piece? No.

    Can I prevent a client from asking me to hold off on writing a piece? No.

    What’s the actual solution here? I need to get more high-paying clients.

    As you saw above, I earn $849 for some pieces and $20 for others. I’m always happy to earn that $20, especially if it’s for a piece that takes me 20 minutes to write, but I sat down with my freelance spreadsheet and started figuring out how much more money I could earn if I traded out that $20 piece for a $75 piece. Or if I traded a $75 piece for a $250 piece.

    Those numbers jump significantly, if you do that kind of math. More importantly, the value of an individual client assignment becomes less critical. In other words: The more high-paying clients I land, the less risk I absorb if something happens to one of those high-paying clients.

    This means I need to spend the last two months of the year trading up.

    I’ve already sent out a referral request, asking one of my high-paying clients to introduce me to a new client that I’d like to land. I also need to start the end-of-year negotiation process with my current clients, to talk about rate increases for 2016.

    In both cases, the onus is on me to explain exactly how I provide value and why I’m worth the referral or rate increase. You can’t just ask; you also have to show the client how they benefit from your request.

    I also need to pitch more. I started pitching bigger markets this past month, and one of the pitches landed, so I’m hoping I can grow that into a regular relationship. I also have a list of additional clients to pitch before the end of the year.

    I know that the $1-a-word clients are going to be few and far between, so I’m not expecting to turn every client into a $800-per-piece client. But it would be great to trade a few of those $20 pieces for $200 pieces.

    As always, I’ll let you know what happens.

    What do you do when you don’t meet a freelancing goal? Do you agree that more success equals more risk?

    How do you know when it’s time to start trading up for higher-paying pieces?

  • Tracking Freelance Earnings: September Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    Tracking Freelance Earnings: September Income Report From Nicole Dieker

    Do you have a plan for what you’ll do when your next big project ends? Doing a little bit of advance work in preparation for a project’s end or a client’s departure will help ensure that losing a gig doesn’t also mean losing money.

    I closed out a big project this month — one that provided almost 25 percent of my monthly income. Because I had planned ahead, I was able to ride out the income drop and secure new work to take the project’s place.

    Before we get into that, here are September’s numbers:

    Completed Pieces: 71

    Work Billed: $6,983.35

    Earnings Received: $6,137.81

    I wrote a little over 50,000 words in September, with an average per-piece earning of $98.36. My highest earning piece was $1,002, and my lowest earning piece was $35.

    I really, really wanted to beat $7,000 this month. I kept hoping I could fit in one more piece to push me over the $7K mark, but it didn’t happen.

    Planning for a project’s end


    This month, I wrote the last column in my Ask A Freelancer series. I delivered weekly freelancing advice at The Freelancer for just over a year, and the project brought in just under 25 percent of my monthly income.

    I began preparing for the end of Ask A Freelancer in July. So far, all of the columns I’ve written have lasted for about a year, and although my editors had not yet said anything about Ask A Freelancer ending, I suspected it would close out sometime in its second year. That meant I needed a plan to keep from losing 25 percent of my income overnight.

    I could have structured the plan as “find one new big client who is willing to pay me an equivalent amount,” but that seemed difficult and overwhelming.

    Instead, I thought of it this way: If Ask A Freelancer ends, I will need to write one new piece every week. (One piece that pays roughly what I would have earned for Ask A Freelancer, of course.)

    Next, I made a list of all the clients I could contact and ask for one new piece. As soon as my editors and I started talking about closing out Ask A Freelancer, I began to reach out to my list of clients to ask them for additional work. Some of the clients said no, but enough said yes that I was able to fill in the income gap.

    I also received a few new job offers after we formally announced the end of Ask A Freelancer. It was pretty clear that some editors saw, “This is the last Ask A Freelancer column” and thought, “I wonder if Nicole has more time available to write for us?”

    On a related note: Look forward to my new column, Pitch Fix, coming to The Write Life this month.

    It was also a good time for me to start pitching new clients, and I chose to focus on major magazines. I’ve done print magazine work before, but getting my byline in a popular, recognized publication would be a significant step up in my career. I’ll let you know what happens.

    Thinking ahead to 2016

    We are officially in the last quarter of 2015, which means I’m doing a lot of thinking about next year.

    Nobody can predict the future, but here’s what I anticipate will happen in 2016:

    1. This November, I’ll begin to reach out to my current clients and ask about the possibility of renegotiating rates. Some clients will be open to a rate increase, and some will tell me it isn’t in their budget. Still, it’s important to ask — and it will help me bring in a little more money for 2016.

    2. At some point, probably before the summer, I might end up losing a client. This’ll be due to budget adjustments or — worst-case scenario — a publication shutting down. I need to start preparing for another 25 percent income drop, because it will happen eventually.

    3. Also likely before the summer, I’ll land my next big client. Either the client will reach out to me directly, I’ll cold-pitch the client, or I’ll ask one of my current clients to refer me.

    I’ll need to work on pitching and asking for referrals, because I can’t sit around waiting to be asked.

    4. My novel The Biographies of Ordinary People will continue to gain readers and subscribers via Patreon. Right now my subscribers are growing slowly but steadily; if I want more rapid growth, I’ll have to figure out how to promote my novel.

    So far my best promotion strategy is social media, and at this point my social network is well aware of the project. I need to think of additional ways to share this project with people, such as writing guest posts for other writing sites.

    5. Now that I’m earning enough to save 10 percent of my income, I also need to start thinking about long-term investments. Do I fund an IRA, a Roth IRA or a SEP IRA? It might be worth talking to my CPA or another financial advisor.

    One thing’s for sure: I’m still going to be discussing money and freelancing with as many people as possible, because sharing this information helps us all get smarter about our own businesses.

    Do you have a plan for what you’ll do if one of your big projects comes to an end? What do you predict will happen to your freelancing career in 2016?