Photo from PPDIGITAL

There’s another great article over at Freelance Switch, about pricing and quality of work. Lea makes a great point and I agree with the fact that $10-15 / hour sounds great for some freelancers who live in less than first world countries. In Romania the medium wage is about $450 / month, so you can imagine that most freelancers would be happy to earn >$1000 / month.

Still… I don’t entirely agree with this pricing strategy:

How do I do it?

When I started out as a freelancer I used to charge $30 / hour. Just to get the idea what this means to a freelancer from Romania, that allowed me to earn 3 times as much as I earned at my last full time job. Now my hourly rates range between $50 - $80 / hour, although I do prefer pricing per project.

While some fellow freelancers might find these rates very high, I find them average rates for someone delivering quality services like I do. I rarely charge less than $50, because I value my work and also out of respect for other freelancers.

Does that work?

I find my rates to be average compared to US or UK rates and astronomical compared to what other freelancers in my country are charging. That’s why I always try to teach younger freelancers to put the right price on their work and don’t settle for less. It took me some time to realize that too.

How do I manage to stay in business? By providing high quality work, by speaking good English and by having great people skills. Do you want to know what happened when I increased my rates? More clients started knocking at my door, I now have more time to spend with my family. These are the reasons I started freelancing in the first place.

Do small prices work?

Like I said, I don’t think this is a viable pricing strategy, for 3 main reasons:

1. You’re up against a lot more competition than if you were to charge an average or higher rate
2. You will attract the wrong kind of clients
3. On the long run, you will not make profit, or at least not enough to justify the effort of being self-employed

What should I do then?

Ok, I understand that the cost of living allows you to, but why would you set your rates 10 times lower, when you can set them let’s say 2 times lower and still keep your clients happy? You should also research what others are charging and update your rates accordingly. Find your buoyancy point.

So my advice to freelancers: if you really have to set your rates lower, don’t undercharge too much. There are other ways to keep clients coming back. You started freelancing in order to make more money and have more time for yourself.

Charging slightly less than average will help you achieve that. Charging $10 / hour will only make you feel like you just got a new full time job, but you’re working from home now.

Photo by powerbooktrance

Freelance Switch has an interesting article about Passive Marketing for Freelancers. My freelancing work really took off in the last couple of months, so I want to share with you my thoughts on topics such as: How do I find new work? How do I manage to convince people to come back to me again and again with new projects?

The strong portfolio

When I made the switch to full-time freelancing about a year ago, my best tool for finding new clients was my web design portfolio. I had quite a few designs to show, considering I used to work as Flash Designer and then Creative Designer for almost 5 years before making the switch.

Although this is still working for me, I feel that my portfolio and services aren’t properly marketed on my website right now. That’s why I’m working on a redesign and writing some more content, so that the website can really work as a passive marketing tool.

Here’s my advice to freelancer / bloggers: build a website, add a killer portfolio, describe services, add a bold, very visible “hire me” link, then just sit and watch your Inbox fill up with project requsts.

The happy clients

After one year of working as a freelancer, I met quite a few people, worked on quite a few projects, and I have to say the thing that works for me best is repeat clients and referrals. Don’t mean to brag or anything, but my clients are always happy. If you want to have happy, returning clients, the first thing you need to do is improve your people skills.

What do I mean by that? I mean listening to your client’s needs, being polite and most of all being patient. For most of my clients, an important aspect (next to the quality of my work) of working with me was the fact that I was patient and listened to their every problem. For me this is not a big effort to make, because this is who I am: I like to help my clients make the best of the website or blog that I create for them. But if you do have to make an effort, then by all means… do it! You’ll be surprised how that will affect your referrals ratio.

There’s one other thing that’s crucial to having return customers and even getting new referrals: when things go bad or you’re just not getting through to your client, DON’T start burning bridges!

The honesty

As a freelance, it’s a good idea to blog about how you work, about how you handle a project, even about more sensitive aspects like pricing or client relationships. Talking about all of these things in a sincere manner will help your potential clients see you for who your are. That way, they can make an informed decision about whether your’re the guy for the job.

As you can imagine, this also works the other way around, meaning you will be able to filter your potential clients, by making an upfront statement: “Hey, this is how I work, this is who I am. If you don’t like it, sorry, but it will difficult to work together”. This way you can work only with the people that are as dedicated to a certain project as you are.

In conclusion

Combine all of the above and you’ve got instant addiction. To your services, of course.