What made you decide to become a freelancer? Was it time freedom? Financial freedom? Sick of your old boss and you just wanted to do things your way?

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No matter what your reason for freelancing is or what your end goal is, charging more for your work can have a tremendous impact on both your business and your life. 

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Think about it, if you want more time freedom, charge more for your time so you can work less.

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If you want more financial freedom, charging more for your work will allow you to stockpile cash, and if you listen to the financial experts, 2023 is the year of stockpiling cash.

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So should you just double your price on your next sales call?

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For some people, yes, however, for some people no. It depends on where you’re at with your business.

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A lot of freelancers undercharge because they need the money. And that’s ok! You have to pay your bills! However, if someone is willing to pay $1000 for your services, they are probably willing to pay $1500. 

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At the end of the day, people will pay you to solve their problems and they will pay for reassurance.

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Think of it like this. You could go and buy a car for $5,000 and it should get you from point A to B. Or you could go buy a brand new car for $30,000 and have a better experience and reassurance that you’re going to get from A to B.

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The only difference is the experience and reassurance. That’s it.

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So how can we translate that into your business so you can charge more as a freelancer?

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Follow along for seven things you can do to start charging more for your work and reaching your goals faster than ever before.

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Build your portfolio

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This may seem obvious, but the bigger and better your portfolio is, the more you can charge for your work. Why is that?

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Because of the reassurance that you are offering by showing that you’ve been able to deliver time and time again. By showing your portfolio, you are basically showing your prospects that you can deliver.

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Plus if your portfolio exceeds their expectations, that’ll help you justify a premium price.

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But what if you’re just starting out in your freelancing career and you don’t have a huge portfolio?

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When it comes to freelance web design, you can always start your portfolio with practice projects and hypotheticals.

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Let’s use an example to illustrate this.

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Let’s say you want to work with law firms. As you’re practicing your craft, tailor your projects around your ideal client so you can use your practice work as portfolio pieces. 

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Think about it! There’s literally nothing stopping you from making a portfolio around a hypothetical business that falls in line with your ideal customer. This is a great way to have work that you can show to prospective clients to help them see your value with direct relation to their business.

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Translate your work into increased profit

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Why is someone hiring you? No matter what problems they are hiring you for, their end goal is to increase their profits. That’s why they are in business… to make more money!

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So even if they are hiring you for creative or development services, the goal there is to improve an aspect of their business that can lead to increased profits.

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So how is this going to help you out?

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By thinking of the famous quote by none other than Elon Musk, “You are paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve," we can start to see how this will help your business.

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If the problem you are solving is an extra $10k in revenue, you probably won’t be paid that much. However, if your solution will bring an extra $1m in revenue, you are setting yourself up to confidently pitch a pretty penny for your work.

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So how can you translate your work into direct business growth? 

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Here are a few ways that you can start putting a dollar amount into your projects to show exactly how you can help.

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Direct revenue: for ecommerce stores, like Shopify builds, this is pretty straightforward because you can directly track key metrics like conversion rates and average order values. Now if you think you can increase a conversion rate by 20%, you can show how you’ll help generate 20% more revenue. You can do the math from there.

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Indirect revenue: For marketing sites that are pushing for leads and demos, you might not be able to directly track revenue, but you can still track conversion rate changes and increases in lead flow. Then if your client has an average lead conversion and average order value, you can do the math from there.

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Operational efficiencies: Oftentimes when a brand is hiring an agency to build a new website, there are other issues at play alongside poor performance and/or design flaws. A lot of times, the client’s old site is tough and/or expensive to maintain. This creates a lot of operational issues that can often be solved with a better development process. Operation inefficiencies lead to wasted profits, so you can start showing how you can increase profits by improving maintenance or other operations.

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Show how your website will improve other areas of their business

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A huge selling factor, and value add, is integrating the website into other aspects of their business. Can you sync their lead forms to the CRM? Improve their analytics? Automate their CMS from airtable or other places?

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This ties back into the operational efficiency because you can save time and help things get done faster and more consistently!

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These may seem like smaller projects for a developer, however these efficiencies are huge time savers for your clients. Remember, time is money so you’re helping your clients make more money!

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Plus, a lot of companies don’t update their website very often because they either don’t know how or because it takes too much time, so if you can automate some of these updates, you’re going to look like a hero!

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Go through a professional pitch or demo

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What is your sales process like? Are you just sending an email with a scope outline? Verbal agreements? Or are you taking your clients through a formal demo or pitch deck?

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You’d be surprised how many freelancers are too informal with their sales process!

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Could you imagine closing a multi-5-figure deal with just a basic scope outline via email? Probably not! So why are you closing your deals like that?

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When it comes to sales and pricing, perception is a huge aspect to how you can charge. This goes back to the trust aspect of your business.

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When every touchpoint of your sales process is high-end and professional, your clients are going to feel more comfortable and will happily pay a premium for that added reassurance of professionalism.

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Not only will this help with justifying your premium price tag, but it will also help improve your closing rate! 

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Use a specific design system (client-first, Hatch, Wizardry, etc…)

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As a developer, you’re probably using a design system (hopefully at least!) like client-first, hatch, or wizardy. 

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Making note of how you build in your sales process is a huge value add. It may seem simple and obvious to you, however it helps position your work as higher quality and reliable.

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You’d be surprised as to how many companies have had bad experiences with web devs in the past due to unreliable builds, builds that are tough to update, etc… so elaborating on your build process and quality is a huge value add!

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You’re probably starting to see the pattern here, but what does this do? 

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That’s right! It’s building trust and client confidence!

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Speed is king

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Everybody in business wants to make more money and they want to make it faster. Most people who have worked with agencies or freelancers in the past have at least a general understanding of how long a project takes so focusing on your delivery time is a great way to add more value.

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This is also a great way to differentiate yourself amongst other freelancers and agencies that the client is talking with. If you can deliver the same, or better, quality results than your competitors on a faster timeline, you can also justify a higher price

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Position yourself as a professional business, not just some random person 

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Would you feel comfortable giving a large chunk of money to a random person who lives across the country, or even another country? Probably not!

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Now on the other hand, would you feel more comfortable sending the same amount of money to an established company? Probably!

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A huge area where most freelancers struggle is positioning perception.

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Even if you are a solopreneur, there is still a lot of room for positioning yourself as a legitimate business.

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From your portfolio website to your pitch decks to how you process payments, the better you can position yourself, the better the experience for your clients. 

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And people will always pay a premium for a better experience. That’s why Ruth’s Chris charges 2-3x for the same cut of steak that Texas Roadhouse sells!

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Although there isn’t any one thing that’s going to magically allow you to double your prices, by following along with this resource and improving your business and positioning yourself as the expert, you can start charging higher prices and closing at a higher rate!

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With that being said, freelancing is tough. It can take a long time to earn the profits that you dream of. So many people who don’t reach their goals, just weren’t patient enough and they gave up too early.

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