Photo by Michel Filion.

If the economy isn’t impacting your business, that’s great news in and of itself. But many freelancers are feeling the pinch from the global economy’s condition. Whether your business is thriving or flailing, try implementing these tips to help your business stay strong despite a weak economy. Not only do these ideas help you better reach potential customers, but they offer the kind of practical marketing advice you’ll want to continue to implement long after the stock market recovers.

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Photo by thebittenworld.com.

Like so many others before me, I realized long ago that freelancing is the only way to take full advantage of life in a free society. We all want greater control over our own daily schedules and future accomplishments. But while many of us can plainly see the allure of never having to ask a boss if we can go on vacation (or take a nap at 2pm), we often don’t view ourselves as entrepreneurs in the traditional sense… you know, those dynamic people who can make a business hum along profitably whether it’s an ice cream parlor or a rubber band factory?

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If freelancers could invent our own clichés, one might be: no two jobs are the same. Each gig we take on brings with it new personalities, new challenges and new rewards. Despite these differences, most any freelancing gig will fit into one of these twenty types.

Where does the job you’re (supposed to be) working on now fit in? Have you done each of these kinds of jobs before? My guess is that most experienced freelancers will have encountered quite a few!

1. The magnum opus

The job you’ve always wanted, the job you’ll tell your grand-kids about. You get asked to write a book, land design work for a super-company like Coca Cola or get an article published in Business Week. The money doesn’t really matter — though it’s probably pretty good! Because this kind of opportunity doesn’t come along every day, you make this job personal, you obsess over it and make sure every single detail has been polished to a brilliant shine.

The pros:

These kinds of jobs can feel more like play than work. They’re hard to forget for all the right reasons, and can take your credibility and perceived value as a freelancer to the next level.

The cons:

Magnum opus jobs can be time vacuums. Being paid $X,000 for a project doesn’t work out to much if you spend a total 100s of hours polishing up the bells and whistles.

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Photo by N_Creatures.

I had a client meeting this morning. This means I tossed on my best khakis, grabbed my portfolio and darted out the door feeling the rush of new business possibilities. Having already spoken to this potential client on the phone, I knew it wouldn’t be an easy sell. He had a tall order of information he wanted me to bring along. But I knew I’d be all right—I spent the night before updating my portfolio and working on rates for him.

Rates. I knew that would be the kicker.

While this new client will probably be a wonderful one, I did struggle to devise a set pricing scale for him. Why? Because he wanted a set rate for projects. Meaning one lump sum for website content. Another for brochures. One fee for a press release. And so on. Although my rates don’t vary too much, I usually give clients who want ongoing work a rate range, which gives me some flexibility in my pricing. Not this guy—he wanted one-rate fees for different projects. Continue Reading

Photo by rick.

A note before we get Will’s post started: winners of our birthday bash competition will be announced tomorrow! Now, for our regular programming… — Skellie

Although many experienced freelancers generally price on a project basis, there is still an hourly rate lurking behind their calculations, much of the time. We tend to derive those project rates from estimates of how much time a standard project typically requires. And we bid on new projects, that don’t fit established patterns, or tweak our project rates to fit unusual situations, all relying on some concept of an hourly rate — even if we don’t share that with the client.

Especially when you are new to freelancing (although it’s a lingering issue even for people who have been at this a while), the question of where to set that hourly rate consumes a lot of mental energy, and generates much stress.

Now, I’m not about to tell you what you should charge per hour of your time for the kind of work you do. But even more fundamental than the question of your “hourly rate” is the question of whether you calculate your bids based on your rate, or on your rates. Continue Reading

Photo by Hamed Saber.

If you take a look back through the comments here on the ‘Switch there seems to be an uneasy current of tension that appears whenever anyone mentions working with freelancers who live in less than first world countries and charge rates of $10-15 per hour (or less).

You typically hear cries of “You get what you pay for”, “You’re exploiting them” or “You’re devaluing the work of professionals in your own country”; they’re classic defensive statements.

The problem is that with the globalisation of the economy and the increasingly internet-enabled population in less developed countries, it’s opening up many industries to growing competition from all parts of the world.

And as a freelancer and business owner, it’s not good enough to simply sit there and say “It’s not fair”… it is what it is and only the savviest of freelancers will not only secure themselves and their business against the threat, they may even find a way of turning it to their advantage.

So here’s why the defensive statements just aren’t going to do you any good – and how you can turn the threat into an opportunity:

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Image by Seeding-Chaos.

This post is part 5 of 5 in our four-author series on perfect pricing and rates.

Most freelancers hate dealing with pricing. We would rather focus on what we do best, and as a result, pricing sometimes doesn’t get enough thought and attention.

Pricing obviously has a huge impact on how much money we make, but what about its affect on potential clients?

Ways that Pricing Impacts Clients

While these items are not absolutes, they certainly should be examined and taken into consideration as you are developing a pricing structure for your services.

1. Their Level of Expectation

When clients see a high price tag they’re going to expect a high quality of work. Of course, it’s possible that the client will not have an accurate idea of what price is high and what is not, but most will also look at the prices of some other freelancers and compare.

If clients expect a higher level of quality with a high price, is it safe to assume that they will expect a lower quality of work with services that are lower priced? Not always. Continue Reading

Image by Richard Moross.

This post is part 4 of 5 in our four-author series on perfect pricing and rates.

Getting ready for a seminar I was presenting in February, I needed to get some t-shirts printed in a matter of days. I had the files ready to go and was looking for a service that could run off a quick batch for giveaways.

As I surfed around, I stumbled upon VistaPrint.com’s website and, being somewhat obsessed with sales processes, started to play with it.

I was blown away by the way they cross-sell products.

I wanted to see just how much they would try to cross-sell me, so I uploaded an image and went through the process of ordering a T-shirt, in an effort to see just how much extra stuff they would try to get me to buy.

Here’s what happened. Continue Reading

Image by visualpanic.

This post is part 3 of 5 in our four-author series on perfect pricing and rates.

As I step up to the counter to place my order for a tall skim-latte at Starbucks, the woman behind the counter immediately responds with, “would you like to make that a grande for only 50 cents more?”

I thought for a moment, then bit on the up-sell and went for the bigger-one.

I then heard the barista repeat the same process with the next five people behind, asking each one if they’d like to bump up one-level from whatever they ordered. Three out of five did.

So, if every person behind the counter in this Starbucks was trained to ask this same question, that simple act would effectively increase the gross-revenue of the location by 60%. If it started with $1 million, then, asking the question would raise revenue to $1.6 million.

Why do you care? Because…

Up-selling also works phenomenally with many types of freelance work. Continue Reading

Image by brunkfordbraun.

This post is part 1 of 5 in our four-author series on perfect pricing and rates.

I’m going to teach you how to raise your rates by 25% right now — and get away with it — all by using the ancient arts of negotiation and knowing your price.

I can vouch for the power of these methods: by learning a few simple negotiational tricks and analytical frameworks I’ve been able to more than double my rates in the last six months — an increase of not 25%, but 100%.

Premise 1: You’re probably under-valuing yourself

Let’s take a look at the graphic from our Freelance Switch survey showing the average hourly rates that freelancers charge.

For each of those numbers, there are plenty of freelancers charging less and plenty of freelancers charging more. Let’s forget about everyone else for a moment and focus on those freelancers charging rates significantly higher than the average. Some of them will be specialists in a lucrative niche, no doubt, but most of them will be comparable in skill to you.

Here’s the honest truth: the differences in skill between you and high-end freelancers are probably too minor and technical for most clients to notice. Continue Reading

Image by Creative_photography.

One of the smartest business decisions I’ve made as a freelancer is to stop charging by the hour. I want to take the plate and bat for this method — not because I’m trying to convince every paid-by-the-hour freelancer to do an about-face, but simply because I don’t hear a lot of discussion taking place about per-task payment and its pros and cons.

Throughout the course of the article I’ll outline the six strengths of per-task pay, then respond to a few of the questions and criticisms you might have. Let’s start with the pros:

1. You can charge based on value to the customer. Let’s say you’re a freelance search-engine optimizer. You see websites making the same mistakes all the time and can optimize any website for search traffic in an hour. If you’re charging by the hour, you might make $65 for your services. If your skills allow the website to make $50 more sales each week, your per hour price is just a fraction of the real value of what you do. You’re under-valuing yourself. A task-based price can help you change that.

2. It often sounds cheaper than it is. Let’s assume a simple logo takes you half an hour to make and costs the client $200. To the client’s mind, $200 for a finished logo is a lot cheaper than paying a freelancer the hourly-rate equivalent of $400 per hour (most clients would probably faint at the price!) I think a lot of clients will also compare the hourly rates you charge to the hourly rates they themselves make and think: “If I’m not worth thirty dollars an hour, you’re definitely not worth $70!” Separating payment from hours worked can help prevent that unfavorable comparison. Continue Reading