After posting an article on the reasons freelancers feel guilty over their pricing, the response was pretty overwhelming and I realised that it’s a problem almost all freelancers and small business owners face.
Here's my quick guide on how to price well so you can attack pricing as a freelancer with confidence -
1. Know your audience
You can’t please everyone. Understanding exactly who your customers are should be the number 1 thing you do as a business. Without the consumer, your business wouldn’t exist, so it’s important to tailor everything to suit them. This includes pricing.
2. Know what your competition is charging
Research, research, research. You don’t necessarily need to know the exact pricing of your competitors but having a ballpark in mind will let you know if you’re wildly out.
Apart from trawling through Google responses, you could ask freelancer forums or Facebook groups for advice. For creative freelancers, networking platform ‘The Dots’ is really great for this!
3. Know what value you bring -
By understanding and acknowledging your skills and abilities, you make it much easier to talk about what you can do for your clients with confidence - When you speak confidently, it makes your customer feel as though they are getting value for their money.
By adding this value to your conversations and sales calls, you’re more likely to convert potential customers into paying customers.
4. How much experience do you have?
Been doing this for 10 years? Great, people will, and should, pay more for your expertise. Been doing this for 10 weeks? There are companies who are willing to work with people to help them gain experience (you could also target companies with smaller budgets to build up that experience).
SIDE NOTE - It always pays to be honest about your experience. Don’t be embarrassed if you are just starting out and don’t have a huge portfolio, people can usually tell if you're lying. (I’ll talk about this in another post later!)
5. Offer packages or figure out a set price list
Even if you aren’t planning to show pricing on your website, have a price list for all the different services you offer and all the variables of that service.
Two different customers needing blogs written may need different wordcounts and different levels of SEO research or specialism, for example.
You may also want to think about offering packages, which demonstrate value and also provide a price anchor. Sure, you may put some people off but it will negate those awkward conversations with someone who definitely can’t afford your services.
Obviously, that is a very simplified version of what is a complex topic but I hope that gave you some useful things to consider. They’ve certainly all helped me!
As always, get in touch with any writing needs you may have and keep checking back for more articles.
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