Showing Value: How to Charge Higher Freelance Rates
11 strategies to increase your content creation fees
Increasing your rates as a freelancer or content creator means that you need to demonstrate value to your clients. If you can solve their problems, take away their hassles, and build trust, then you're well on your way to significantly increasing your income. Content creators often believe that their fees rest solely on—well—creating content. But doing more work isn't the only way to get more money.
Instead, it's worth looking at the more intangible areas that can help you demand higher prices—Your expertise and experience. Your ability to solve problems and add value. Your niches and portfolio. Your confidence to simply ask for more.
Focusing on these factors is key to increasing your content creation rates. Let's explore how you can do that.
Create a starting point from where you can increase your rates
Pricing content creation services is always tricky. Although there's a ton of information out there on average rates, who's to say what's average? How do you compare what you offer to someone else at a similar career stage?
It's why I wrote a series of guides on walkaway pricing—basing your initial rates on the money you spend to survive and thrive. Earning enough to cover your basic and extended costs is a helpful starting point for meeting your financial needs.
But, that walkaway pricing is just a starting point. It doesn't take into account your skills, experience, competitor pricing, or anything else. However, it is a useful place to build from. So, if you're looking to increase your fees and don't have foundational rates, it can be a helpful starting point.
Understand that many clients pay content creators to solve problems
One important concept for increasing rates is thinking beyond the approach of just creating content. Of course, producing a deliverable for a customer (an app, a website, a blog post, a design, an image) is a key part of your work—but in many cases, it's not all that a client is looking for.
Instead, many clients (especially in the mid-tier and upper-tier range) want you to solve a problem. To get there, you need to shift your thinking slightly:
Identify what the problem is—do they need to attract more people into their marketing funnel? Are they dissatisfied with their existing content? What are the pressures on the person who is commissioning your work?
Use that thinking to understand the wider context of your work. What is your content going to accomplish for the client in the mid-to-long term?
Establish the aim, intent, and audience of the deliverable with your client and figure out how it fits into the big picture.
Show that you understand the importance of not just the individual deliverable, but how it fits into the overall strategy and the way it gets the client from A to B.
Build this approach and thinking into your marketing when you're applying for projects, creating pitches, writing your portfolio website, and other promotional channels.
Build trust to encourage clients to pay higher rates
Another way to improve rates is to think beyond one-off engagements and start to build long-term relationships with clients. Those long-term relationships are built on two key areas: communications and trust.
Communicating well means keeping your client informed, letting them know of any changes, managing expectations, and staying ahead of their needs.
Building trust relies on you keeping your commitments, solving problems, meeting deadlines, avoiding surprises, and being a safe pair of hands.
If you can get these two areas right, you can create longer-term contracts and retainers. This will give you an opportunity to set decent rates, as your client will know what to expect and appreciate your approach and diligence. Making this a part of your professionalism means you'll build up a strong reputation as someone who is easy to work with.
Always look for how you can add value for the client
Learn how you can add value and do a little more for a client. This idea of adding value is important, as it says you're willing to go above and beyond the deliverable to understand and act on the client's best interests. There are many ways to add value, including:
Doing a little more than you normally would in terms of research, focusing on the project, and ensuring a high-quality deliverable.
Bringing in extra skills like analysis, project management, content strategy, or similar.
Answering a client's unasked questions about the strategy and context of the deliverable.
Suggesting new projects and deliverables where you can get involved and add value.
You can share this approach in your marketing communications, and in your updates to clients. Again, it helps to think about long-term client relationships, as adding value helps to build trust.
Reject clients that are not going to pay you enough
One way to increase your rates is to reject clients paying low rates. That's why it's so important to have minimum rates that you do not go below. The issue here is that of "opportunity cost"—the idea that the effort you spend working for a low-paying client is time that could be better spent marketing to and securing clients that do pay you a decent rate.
Saying no can be tough, but it's sometimes necessary as a foundation to better rates in future. Marketing yourself to mid-tier and high-tier clients forces you to up your game, but it's also a powerful way to boost your earnings.
Specialize into niches where there's a lot of demand and not much competition
You can command higher rates when you're working in areas where there are not a lot of other freelancers or content creators. When demand outstrips supply, prices increase. It's just as true for creative people as it is for the economy as a whole.
The niches you choose will depend on your experience, curiosity, expertise, and willingness to learn. A niche doesn't just have to be about specific topics, it can also apply to the types of clients you work with, the format of the deliverables you create, or any other aspect of your work that makes it distinctive.
For more on this, please see my guide: Niche Rich: Supply, Demand, and How Much a Freelance Writer Can Charge. Although that article is mainly aimed at freelance writers, many of its principles can be applied more broadly.
Demonstrate experience and expertise through your portfolio
A proven track record is often the make-or-break decision point for clients. It's critical to have a creative portfolio that clearly demonstrates your skill and experience. Get permission to share content that you've created and link to it from your website or a portfolio service.
Categorize your portfolio, so it's easy for potential clients to explore it by niche, content type, or whatever else makes sense. Market the unique aspects of your portfolio using website navigation and landing pages to show off your expertise and experience. Highlight previous clients that you've worked with. Share social proof and testimonials.
Of course, content creators who are just starting out run into a dilemma here—how can they find better clients when they don't have previous clients whose work they can share? The answer is to create those samples yourself, as if you were working for an ideal client. Writers might write blog articles or white papers, designers could create brand identities, illustrators can mock-up images.
Put your best work forward. Hone your portfolio to show your strengths, and make it easy for those mid- and high-tier clients to make the choice to hire you at a good rate—because you offer something they can't get elsewhere.
Show off any extra skills you might have
One way for us to make ourselves resilient to the threats posed by AI and other areas, is to develop skills that enhance what we can offer to clients. These skills can also allow you to command higher rates, as your client won't need to hire someone else to provide that expertise.
Examples of skills that can drive higher fees include:
Project management, so you can manage end-to-end content creation requirements.
Content strategy, so you can plan deliverables across types, formats, channels, and schedules.
Marketing management, so you can understand the context of your deliverables and how to target the right audience and requirements.
Software platforms, so you can hit the ground running when a client asks you to use their systems.
Task management, so you can stay on track and meet your commitments and deadlines.
Research, so you know how to investigate, summarize, and understand critical information to improve the reach and quality of your deliverables.
Data analysis, so you can use numbers to guide decision-making and add authority to your work.
Interview skills, so you can talk to subject-matter experts and summarize their knowledge and expertise.
Be confident when you're stating your rates
Confidence is a huge part of earning more. The only person advocating for your career and the prices you charge is you. That means you set expectations and rates with clients. Start by seeing the value in what you do, demonstrated through your unique value, approach, expertise, experience, previous clients, and skillset. Don't be afraid to ask for more—you're worth it.
Then, decide on those rates and look for clients willing to pay them. I publish my rates openly on my website, which means I don't ever negotiate on my rates. Potential clients can see them and then decide if I am in budget or not. A similar approach could work for you.
Market yourself as the valuable content creator that you are
Getting higher rates means telling potential clients why you're worth more. The best way to do that is through your marketing. Whether you're applying for a gig through Upwork, highlighting your skills on your portfolio website, or responding to a job listing, you need to show what makes you special.
Build this into your initial messaging with a client. Mention the unique skills you can bring. Focus your pitches around their potential issues and the value you add. Link to relevant portfolio pages to prove your experience. Talk about the extra skills you bring to the party.
Marketing matters because it's your opportunity to put your content creation front and center. Experiment with different marketing approaches until you find one that works.
If you have a full pipeline, increase your rates
One way to understand how realistic your rates are is to look at your upcoming pipeline of work and the number of clients approaching you to work with them. If you're turning down clients and work due to a full schedule, that's a good sign that it's time to increase your rates. I'd advise doing this gradually, perhaps raising them by 5% to 10% and seeing how that impacts demand. You might want to review and adjust your rates every three to six months.
That's it—I hope you've found this guide helpful, and that it helps you to raise your rates and earn what you deserve. For additional tips on raising rates as freelance writer, here's a helpful post from fellow Substacker Alexander Boswell, over at
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