Something you commonly hear freelancers say is, “Charge what you’re worth.” And I totally and fully agree with that.
The more you cut back on pricing, the less people will value you, and the more burnt out you’ll get.
Having low prices is a ridiculously fast way to get burnt out. You can’t survive on low prices. The lower they are, the more work you have to do, and the more you’re going to start feeling like you’d make more money flipping burgers. It’s insane to try to take on 20 projects a month so you can pay your bills.
So, naturally, the solution is to raise your prices. Stop trying to compete with other freelancers in your field. It’s not a race to the lowest price. The higher your prices, the fewer projects you have to do each month, and the saner you’ll be.
But… (yes there’s a but)… it’s not quite as easy as that.
Other freelancers often post about raising your prices and talk about it like it’s so easy. “Just raise them!” they say. As if that’s all you have to do.
But it’s not that easy.
Can your niche actually afford higher prices?
Sometimes you might find yourself caught in a niche that isn’t ideal for your business. For example, if you’re surrounded by hobbyists, then they’re not going to want to shell out much money for a custom brand, blog, or website. And that’s understandable. If your blog is a hobby, you usually have a smaller budget than if your website is an investment in your business.
If you raise your prices outside of your niche’s comfort level, you could find yourself seriously strapped for work. Sometimes the only way to get work at all is to have cheap, competitive prices. But unless you want to find yourself stuck working for minimum wage, that’s not a good solution.
It might not be as simple as “raising prices”. You might have to find a whole different niche.
It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Especially if you find yourself getting tons of work (albeit for cheap prices) in your current niche. How the hell do you move outside your niche into a different one? What if you can’t get any clients in another niche? How do you even pick a “good” niche?
These are all questions I’ve had to ask myself, and they’re scary as hell. I still haven’t even got it fully figured out yet. But some things I’ve come to realize are:
- You can’t just pick up and move to a different niche. It’s something that has to happen gradually.
- If you have a blog as part of your business, start changing up your posts to target a different niche. Don’t do it all at once—do it slowly.
- Think about your ideal client. To get projects with bigger budgets, you have to target businesses who want to invest. Once you’ve pictured your ideal client, start talking directly to them in your blog posts.
- Don’t double your prices straight away. Whenever you find yourself booked around 6-8 weeks in advance, raise them a little. Then keep raising them again every few weeks. You’ll get fewer clients (maybe), but it will be less scary if you’re well booked when you raise them.
- Join new communities where you might find your ideal clients. These might be forums, Twitter chats, Facebook groups, etc. Start reading blogs written by your ideal clients and leave comments.
Finding a new “ideal client” is a gradual process.
I think that’s the most important thing. If you just pick up and move to a whole new niche, you probably will be almost completely without work. No one will know you, you won’t know anyone… It’s like starting from ground zero.
But if you change things slowly and one piece at a time, then it’s not quite like starting from scratch. It’s a slow transition from one niche into the other, and you don’t have to swap over completely until you have a few connections and prospects.
As you said it, it’s a fine line.
I actually was in a (kinda) similar situation. I accepted a job to work as a test engineer in IT company with a promise that I will soon be transferred to work as a software engineer – the work that I went to college and studied all my life to do (and actually already did couple minor free-lance projects). After two years and a lot of promises that soon I will get that transfer – I quit.
But when I looked for a next job everyone only offered me to test, no one wanted me as something else. You know, because of my previous experience. :/
I had to accept to work for a wage that is less than other people with same qualifications got. Everyone were suspicious, because if I was good, why the previous company had me working as a tester only, you know.
But after hard work and a couple of years I was a leader of GUI team.
So if you are good and believe in yourself you can do anything and change your niche. You just have to accept that at the beginning you will have to be less payed…
Maybe your way is better, doing it gradually.
I understand why and what you want to do. I recently stumbled to a website that charged 150$ for one pre-made theme. And they were not even half as good as yours.
That’s an interesting comparison—thanks for sharing Dragana!
$150 for a pre-made theme is pretty crazy!
Great post! I certainly think gradual changes are the way to go. I actually made the mistake of when I started my company to ask too high prices for some of my tours. No one knew me and people didn’t want to risk paying that much when they didn’t know if I could deliver.
I slowly lowered them a bit, added an extra tour to fill in a gap and I even slowly upped the price of one tour as the more my company grows the more worth it is and I think the price should reflect that. And when I grow mroe I might up them a little bit again. Pricing might be one of the most difficult things of running a business and very important as well. If you charge too high you don’t get a lot of clients, but if you charge too low people will think you don’t offer good quality or you get so many clients that you feel overhwelmed, which isn’t good either.
I think charging what you are worth is important, but it’s also important to look at the value your customers are getting. Often this might be the same, but for something that costs you little extra effort or time, but the customer still get’s something more it can still be worth it to charge more. Or the other way around, actually lower the prices if it isn’t worth as much to the customers. It also is important to see what customers are willing to pay for it.
Great post Ashley! It’s an important topic to think about for business owners!
Yeah it does help to start out low at first so you can get a few beginner clients, testimonials, and just get the word out about your services. Then the more bookings you start to get, the more you’re able to raise your prices. 🙂
I LOVE how honest this post is. Sometimes, you do have to find a different niche, and that can require some serious effort. But I love how you offer quick tips to help make the transition.
Thanks Nesha. 🙂
Love this, Ashley! Raising my prices is something I recently had to do and although it was, in fact, quite scary and it took some time to get up the courage to do so, it was absolutely the right decision. I agree, finding your niche is absolutely a gradual thing – I’m still working on that! 🙂
I’m going to bookmark this post so I can come back to it. Good reminders and guidance. Thank you for posting!
Great job raising your prices Allison! 🙂 Sounds like you made the right move. 🙂
It’s definitely a difficult question and a great post about the balance. As an indie author, it’s a similar question when it comes to book pricing. At what point do I encourage people to buy my books? How do I balance building a reader-base and setting a price that recognizes the value of my work? I really like your section on going slowly and using your blog to explore new topics in order to reach out to new readers.
That’s a great comparison Annie. I can definitely see the similarities there. I guess it’s not all that different from selling plugins/themes. You want them to be accessible, but you still need enough sales and income from those sales to make a living. It’s tough!
I love this post! Thank you for the great advice. As a wedding invitation designer, I think my prices are somewhere in the middle right now as far as pricing goes, but I would eventually like to raise them a bit more, and you make a great point about finding the clients you want and interacting with them rather than waiting for them to find you.
Good luck Shelby. 🙂 Definitely re-evaluate your prices every few weeks/months.
Interesting post! It’s definitely hard in the book blogging community since most of us are hobbyists. Actually, I think your ability to code awesome plugins could be a great way of transitioning to a different niche. If you could create a niche specific plugin (like the UBB is for book people) it would be a great way of drawing them to your site. I’m curious as to what niche you’re thinking of transitioning to. Or maybe multiple? The fashion bloggers are a pretty big group.
Yeah I’d love to make another plugin like UBB for a different niche, but it’s kind of hard, you know?
1) It’s hard to have an idea that hasn’t been done before (or hasn’t been done well).
2) It’s hard to market that plugin if you’re not actually in that niche yourself. So I’d have to find something that interests me enough to want to join a new community.
Right now, in terms of custom work, I’m just hunting for designers. So in a sense, I don’t have to worry too much about finding the niche. I just have to focus on forming relationships with designers I can code for. They bring the clients to me.
As far as pre-mades go.. I don’t really know. 😉
How I feel you! I am trying to start a small photography business. This is a passion and I’d like to make a little money on the side from it. So far I’ve only done free sessions to build a portfolio, and I’ve yet to book a client. I’ve advertised at a very low price, and.. nothing. I keep reading, Charge more, you’ll draw the kind of client you want. So I’m thorn between… I cant even book at that cheap, would I be able to book at higher? Do potential clients see me as poor quality because I charge cheap? I don’t know what to do LOL
In case you are curious, my photos: https://www.pinterest.com/deesse15/
I had been hearing and thinking of the same thing lately, Ashley! I was thinking how hard it is to charge high prices with book bloggers because nobody here actually has a lot of money to shell out for a theme, and it’s not the perfect market to actually profit from. But I think you’ve hit a happy middle, Ashley, although I wouldn’t know if it is a happy middle for you. But I hope you do end up charging what you’re worth someday, Ashley, because you’re amazing.
There are days I think I’d love to be a freelancer of some sort (especially if it were a job I could do while traveling the world), but I know I like stability too much and would stress out the whole time. ^^; It sounds like moving to a new niche is the same thing–a jump out of your comfort zone into the great unknown. You can prep for it and try to ease into it, but there are no guarantees. Which is scary. But you’re a talented designer/coder and I know you’ll do beautifully at whatever you put your mind to!
Thanks Kel. 🙂
I think the key to stability is passive income. That way it’s not all about getting clients and getting them fast. Instead you can sell products while you sleep and it’s a lot easier to project sales.
So good Ashley! I just had to put my prices back down because I decided to raise em without being booked out!! Sounds ridiculous when you write it all down so eloquently! 😀