Walkaway Pricing: Charge Enough to Survive and Thrive
Part one: Introducing costs and minimum rates for content creators
I help to run a large forum for freelancers, and one of the things we’re asked most often is “how much should I charge?” It’s a difficult question to answer. So much goes into pricing yourself as a content creator — your expertise, experience, niche, services, confidence, and more — that it can be difficult to figure out how much you’re worth.
But, there’s another way to think about this question: What’s the minimum you should charge? What’s your walkaway price? If you can bill at least that, then you’ll be able to survive financially. And if you increase on that, you’ll be able to build your resilience longer term through saving money, investing, and having enough disposable income to enjoy life more.
It’s an important concept. If you’re not charging enough to cover your living costs and pay your taxes, then content creation won’t be sustainable for you. That puts you into a vicious cycle of struggling for the next gig, accepting low-paying work, and not having enough breathing room. If you want to avoid using this month’s earnings to pay last month’s bills, then you need to know your walkway price.
I’m going to help you figure out how much that should be, and how to build on that and earn more.
Freelance and content creation pricing can be tricky
Working out your minimum rates involves three main areas:
Adding up all of the costs and expenses in your life, household, personal, business, and more.
Working out how much of your time you can charge to clients.
Combining one and two together to figure out what your rates should be, and applying that to your content creation projects.
This is exactly what we’ll be doing over the next few guides.
It probably won’t surprise you that many content creators don’t have a firm grasp of their costs, chargeable time, or project rates. You might not understand how all of this works in your business.
There’s also another aspect of figuring out your rates—how much extra should you charge so you can live your ideal lifestyle? Once you add in your need for savings, investments, disposable income, and having enough to enjoy life, how does that affect your rates?
Fear not, I’m going to cover all of this in detail. By the end of this series, you’ll be able to answer the following questions:
How much are all of my living costs?
How expensive is it to run my freelance or content business?
How much of my time is actually chargeable to my clients?
What does that mean for my content creation rates and projects?
What should my prices be for me to have some disposable income?
There’s a fair bit involved in working out your rates, so I’m going to be breaking this down into several guides.
Seven Steps to Calculating Your Rates
Here’s what I will be covering over the next few posts.
Warning: Math, dead ahead!
As you’ve no doubt guessed, there’s going to be a fair bit of math(s) involved in figuring this out. Although I’m seldom happier than when messing around with spreadsheets, I know that many people do not love numbers as much as I do!
I’ll be breaking everything down and using examples to clarify how to work stuff out. I’ll keep everything simple, approachable, and practical so you can see how it applies to the work you do.
Some final thoughts on walkway pricing
As you’re following this series, here are a few points:
This is just one way to work out your rates, and it’s not the only way. If you’re already comfortable with your rates, this can be a useful “sanity check” to ensure you’re covering the essentials.
The costs of living and doing business change constantly, through inflation, market forces, and other areas. I suggest recalculating your costs and rates every six months to a year.
This type of pricing calculates your rates based purely on your costs and chargeable time. It does not take into account your experience, expertise, demand, value-add, niche, or services. We’ll explore how those areas can affect your rates in future posts.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series!