Hey freelancers! Your pricing is not about you

Wait what? How is my pricing not about me? I am the one who made the sale. I am the one doing the work. I am the one who needs the money. How is not about me? Read on.

I was reading a Facebook discussion about figuring out pricing as a new freelancer. There were some great resources mentioned, like this Google Sheet for creative freelancers, so they can compare their rates with people with similar experience and skills (including adding their own, so others can benchmark against them).

There were also comments about how pricing links to confidence level and how struggles with confidence can affect your rates. This is absolutely true, the questions that freelancers ask themselves can be painful and undermine their ability to charge appropriately.

• Am I qualified enough to charge this much?

• Do I have enough experience to charge this much?

• Will they think I’m greedy charging this much?

• Am I greedy charging this much?

• If I charge this much, will my clients think I only care about the money and not about the work?

• Do I work hard enough to charge this much?

• How many hours do I have to work to charge for a day?

• Do I really deserve to charge this much?

• Do I really need to charge this much, if I can cover my costs and live on less?

This kind of worry often comes from a place of seeing your prices relating to your effort and your needs. These questions are all about you.

These are the wrong questions. Some better questions are:

• What problem(s) will I solve for my clients?

• How easy is it for my clients to communicate with me?

• How careful am I to ensure I know how to give clients what they really need by listening carefully and asking clarifying questions?

• How much money/time/inconvenience/stress will I save my clients?

• How much growth will my clients get (income/new customers/brand awareness/whatever) because of my work for them?

• Do I demonstrated to my clients that I’ve done this? How?

The good questions are all about your clients, their needs and how well you meet those needs. The more you can answer these questions, the easier it will be to answer the most important question:

• How much value am I providing my clients?

Because this is key: you should be paid based on the value of your work to your clients. It’s not about how you feel about your work, how long it took you, how much effort you put in, your past experience or qualifications. It’s about whether you meet your clients needs and what that is worth to them.

Provide a high value service? Charge accordingly.

Answer the good questions and you’ll automatically develop the confidence you need to set the right price.

If you found this useful, you might enjoy this episode of my podcast, Squanderlust, where we talked about valuing your time with start-up mentor Jasper Lyons.

You can also pre-order my book on freelance finances for a special launch price of £8.99.