Seeing Resistance to Freelance Writing Rate Raises? Try These Now
We've all been there with our freelance writing rates. A client we've had forever puts on the breaks when we begin talking about an increase in the cost of the project. But how do we continue moving forward with ease while making tough decisions? In this week's livestream, we're going over why resistance to rate increases happens, several winning ways to position your rate raise to clients, and the boundaries to keep in place to move forward with ease.
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Seeing Resistance to Freelance Writing Rate Raises? Try These Now
This is totally normal. It's just a little awkward sometimes to deal with your clients digging their heels in. When it comes to rate raises, and I've talked to a ton of different writers who are in a bunch of different niches, and there are times where they don't even ask for rate raises for years, like five years.
They work for the same client. And they don't ask for a rate raise. They don't ask to even increase just a little bit. They just sit at that rate for years and years and years, and that's not okay. So today we're gonna talk about how to deal with that resistance when you are, um, wanting to increase your rates, both res resistance from clients and resistance from yourself.
Hi Vicki. Hi Jennifer. We're a little late today 'cause I was just a little late. Here's our little dirty taco. She um, She's all, Charlotte has this thing that, uh, she goes outside and she just rubs herself in all of the dry grass. So here in, uh, here in Austin, it's been, it's been really, really hot and dry.
And, uh, so Charlotte takes advantage of that by scratching her back on all the dry grass and, uh, all of the dirt outside. So if I uncover her back, she's covered in dirt and like little pieces of grass and we wipe her off all the time and she just comes in all dirty. I sna. That'sa. I'm gonna say I'm getting that in my mind.
So, vesna, sna, boop, boop, boop. Okay, let's get started. Let's talk about some stuff. Um, oh, and big shout out. So I wanted to shout this out in case any of my runway students watch this. My runway students are killing it. They're asking great questions, they're watching all the lessons. Um, they're showing up live.
They're taking notes, they're getting wins. They're doing awesome stuff. So big shout out to my runway students this week. All right. Let's do, let's find the number one if we can. There we go. Okay, number one. Hi Getty. Good to see you. Okay, let's talk about number one. So our number one thing is, why does this happen?
Right? Why are we do having resistance to rate increases? I think this is kind of, I, I feel like there's a. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like talking about this seems like this is normal, right? People always don't like the price of the thing going up. Um, but when we talk about the writer's side, right?
When we talk about the writer's side, it gets ins, it, it gets interesting. So your clients have either a set budget or they're just like, this is what the thing costs, right? Even if you work with them for years, they're like, it just costs this much. Um, and either their budget doesn't increase or, um, what ends up happening is they just get comfortable at that rate and they, they're not increasing their business.
So they're just like, our budget is this for the next 10 years, and that just doesn't work for us. We need to move up to bigger clients and we need to get paid more for all that experience and knowledge that we're gaining over those years working for that client. When we're talking about writers, the resistance is weird.
The resistance I think is clients. It makes sense, right? They're just like, this is our budget, or, uh, they just get comfortable at a certain rate. So the resistance is like more, that's more logical. But for writers, the resistance is out of like fear or that they, there is like zero other clients out there who will pay that rate, right?
Oh my gosh, how are you so cute? Look at you in your little ham leg. You just look like a little taco. Yes. You're a good girl. You're a good girl. I saw you do like a little tail. Tail wag there. Okay. Back to things. So writers are like afraid that there's no more fish in the sea, that they finally got a fish, right?
They're like, I finally got a client. I'm gonna hold onto them forever. And it's just not the case. In order for our businesses to grow, in order for us to grow as writers, we have to get new clients. We have to raise our rates, we have to move up. What I end up seeing if we don't do that is writers who have been stuck at like the 30 to 50 K mark for, I don't know, five, 10 years plus.
So they're not, they're in this kind of comfort zone bubble, and they're like, well, why am I not making more money? And they're not asking for rate increases. They're not getting new clients, they're not having sometimes these uncomfortable conversations with clients that they have, and it's out of this fear.
And it's just this, there are just so many clients out there who need your help, right? There are whole, whole giant piles, hundreds of thousands of freelance writing clients out there. I know that's like a, a random estimate, but there's millions, millions of businesses. So even if there's millions and millions of businesses, if I take 1% of all the businesses that would be viable for us, it would still be hundreds of thousands of clients.
So when we're thinking about that, there's this. Comfort level that happens. There's this fear that there's no other clients. I think I just messed all the camera stuff for Charlie. Oops. Oh, well, um, there's this lack, like this lack, right? This, this scarcity, this. Um, Feeling that they'll never be able to get another client.
And I think that's so interesting because when I started, that's what I thought for years, right? I think it's interesting that that mindset still exists. Like I thought, you know, sometimes I think by the time I'm like, man, like if all of us, you know, coaches or all of us, um, you know, senior kind of more veteran freelance writers start talking about this more, this won't happen as much, but it still seems to be a very prevalent issue.
Um, and I held onto it for years. I was like, oh my gosh. Like there's, my mindset was like that platform mindset, right? Because I started on the platforms. I started on OD desks and up and uh, um, Elance before it was called Upwork, right? So you go from this like, oh my God, there's thousands of writers vying for my job.
And instead, right. We wanna switch to a mindset of abundance. Like I'm looking for the right clients for my business, I'm looking to align with businesses that are growing like I am. Right. We don't wanna just get a client, right. That, that has no, that has no metric of success. Right. Just a client. Right. We are looking for people who are, um, you know, their business is either their startup is getting more funding or, um, There are like just metrics where they're hiring more people or they're businesses that are good, adding more products or services.
Uh, Fiona says a hundred thousand, but seems like none wants to work with me. Well, that also, there's a couple of things that go into that, right? So it's not just that we're having resistance from freelance writers who are like afraid to get more clients. It's also like, are you approaching the right clients?
Are you going after the ones that actually have a marketing budget? Are you sending enough Lois? Right? Or if you're working for magazines, are you sending enough pitches? Right?
Um, are you kind of doing the things on LinkedIn or doing the things that you need to do in your website? That help you get more clients, right? Are you doing all of the stuff that makes sense for explaining how you help your clients' problems? Right? How do you solve them? How do you help them move to the next step?
This is something that we're going over in runway right now, right? We did that I think on Tuesday. Uh, we did LinkedIn and websites, right? We went over all the steps about how to set those up, but it's not like we're not looking for a ton of clients. We're looking for like three to five. I like three to five.
Some people say two to five. I like three to five. You don't need a ton. And it's not that they don't seem like they wanna work with you, it's that we also have to make sure we're doing the right pre-filtering processes, right? We also have to make sure that we're doing all the marketing that needs to be done.
We're sending those lois letters of introduction to businesses. And I always say the same thing. You need to have a traditional company that makes at least five to 50 million, if not more than that depends on your niche. So like I always like to use vest's niche, which is biotech. There are biotech companies that need to have a hundred million before they have a marketing budget.
'cause they have to build everything out. Right? And that costs a lot of money. Or a startup with at least three to 10 million, if not more. So it's not that no one I, I think that idea is a little bit backwards. I think it's that you have to be more active in finding clients. Like you have to be like, who's the right client for me?
Versus like, no one out there seems to want me. It's not that. It's like, who do I want to be my client? And sometimes what helps with that is reviewing your client list, right? Who have been your clients? Who have been your best clients? What revenue ranges did they have, or did they have a real budget? I think a lot of the analysis too comes from our actual client base that we've had.
So I think, you know, when we're talking about this resistance, we're also talking about what types of clients we're bringing in, right? We're talking about. The, uh, people who are looking, you know, you're, you're having a call with them, right? So you send an l o i letter of introduction, and then you end up getting on a call with your client, uh, potential client, and you talk through like, what are your goals?
Why are you creating content? We're not looking for small business owners. We're not looking for people who are just like, I'm just told I need to create this content. We're looking for businesses that have established a plan. We're looking for businesses that are trying to move forward. We're looking for businesses who can tell you why.
They're creating a series of blog posts or a series of emails. We're looking for clients that are telling us like, um, oh, we noticed that our competitors do this, so we realized that that was really helping their business. We need to do that. Or someone who's, uh, a client who's looking at like their best content and creating more of that.
'cause that's really resonating with their audience. Your clients should be able to explain that stuff, right? And a lot of times these red light clients or these small businesses, or these like little tiny baby clients that are seedlings, they're not actually ready yet. They're not able to give you enough information, right?
You get on a call with them and they're just like, We need content or we need this thing done, and that's not it. That's not what we're looking for. We need to talk to someone who thinks of it as a partnership. We need to talk to a client who understands why they're doing something, how it helps their audience, how it helps their business.
They should be able to explain these things to you, and if they're not being able to explain it, oftentimes that leads to them just creating content. They have no idea. If that content is good or if that content is bad, and they're just like, we just need to create it because it helps with web traffic, right?
The other thing to think about here is that when you're increasing your rates, you should be working with more and more focused clients. So as we increase our rates, right, we need to be working with clients who are more and more honed into either the niches that we're working into or the specialties that we have that the things that we're good at with content.
So maybe you're really good at sales pages, or you're really good at reported articles or thought leadership. As we kind of grow in our business, we should be growing with types of clients that are more honed into that type of, uh, work that we wanna do. And I think a lot of times when I see writers. Um, make mistakes here is that they don't look at that stuff.
They're not looking at what do I wanna grow into? Do I wanna grow into case studies, or do I wanna grow into content strategy, or do I wanna grow into these types of projects or have I really enjoyed working with these types of companies? They just don't analyze it. They're just like spray and pray, right?
That's something that they talk about in real estate, is like, spray and pray. So we're not doing that. We wanna be more strategic and smarter about who we're reaching out to. Yeah. And we wanna be, Jennifer and I, years ago, years ago, Jennifer and I had a conversation about Kevin. She had, uh, this Kevin client that was just like, we had a conversation about Kevin's not your client.
Right. Kevin doesn't know, and we just use it as like a joke now. Right. Kevin doesn't know what he wants. Kevin has no budget. Kevin's just like, we should probably do this thing, but I don't know how to do it. Kevin is just like, he's um, he's on a boat with no sail. Right? So we always talk about Kevin is not your client.
So anytime you're talking to someone who's not on the bus, right, they're not having goals, they're not understanding how their business is growing, and you are not analyzing your own business and not figuring out which clients make sense for you, that's a bad combo. That's not good, right? Yeah. Come on Kevin.
Um, what do you think? Charlotte says No more Kevin's right Charlie? No more Kevin's right? Or do you want some snacks? She's like, I just want snacks, please. Okay. Well, let's do some snacks. Let's do some snacks. Really bad. Yeah. Do you think you, I don't know if you can catch 'em or you wanna do a little high fives?
Yeah. Good girl. There you go. Good job. All right, let's do one more mean. Let's do one more bean. Ready? Yeah. Yeah. Are you trying to show everybody your ballet? Good girl. She's just like wrapped up. So when you're thinking about this stuff, we should know what we are doing in our business so we can align with businesses that are going in the same direction or that are doing the same thing, right?
You have to know what you're doing. I think that this, a lot of times, even for generalists, sometimes I'll get resistance from people that are like, well, I'm a generalist. Fine, but you at least have to know where you're going, right? We have to have some kind of plan. We have to know which clients have been most successful.
What were their revenue ranges, and revenue is directly correlated to budget. There's just no way around it. Revenue funding is directly correlated to how much money they're going to have for a budget. Now everybody spends a little bit of different amounts, but there is like a minimum viable one, right?
The minimum viable one is five to 50 million for traditional businesses and three to 10 million for startups. So sometimes, like for example, for me, for my projects, I've talked about this before, I like Series B and series C startups with 20 to 50 million for the types of projects I work on. And that's because I've analyzed my business and I've been aligning with more companies who are doing the things that I wanna do.
And they have the budget to do that. There are some times where you'll get a company who has 3 million as a startup and they're spending a ton on marketing. Sometimes you'll find a company that has 25 million as a traditional mid-size company, um, and they don't have any marketing budget, right? They need more money coming in first.
So this is also an experimentation process. This is something that I think a lot of writers resist. They just wanna send Lois. They just wanna push the button. They're like, if I send Lois, I will push the button and I'll get clients. That's not the case. You have to be strategic about this. So if you're looking at a niche, right?
Let's say I'm looking at um, health clients. I'm looking at health clients and I need to send some to startups with 10 million or startups with 5 million, or companies with 110 million or companies with 210 million. I need to go across the board because I need to figure out who's kind of having the budget, what things are going on, who's answering.
Um, and this is how I kind of did it in real estate. I found out. Um, oh my gosh, you're so cute. I found out that, um, real estate client, like brokerages, real estate brokerages were not my client because they needed to have at least a hundred million. I sent it from, uh, 20 million, I think to a hundred million plus.
Good job. And, uh, I figured out that these brokerages needed to have a hundred million, just have a budget. And this was from doing this research, from sending a lot of Lois to different revenue ranges. So then I was like, okay, that's not gonna work. There's not enough brokerages nationally that make over a hundred million.
So then what ends up happening is I realized that the amount of tools that they use was way more like they had way more money and there were way more tools serving the real estate industry, tools, platforms, softwares, SaaS products, whatever. There was that stuff that was more serving the industry than the brokers.
There was way more of that. So I started targeting that and I'm still writing pretty much to the same audience. Right? I'm still writing about real estate stuff. I'm writing about PropTech stuff. That's the missed thing that I think a lot of writers make mistakes on is they're like, oh, if I write for a tech company, now I'm writing to the, to a different audience.
You're not, you're not. It's usually the same people. It's just one is looking at this product and one is looking at that product. It's just a different thing. Can you go back to your hubba hole? All right. Let's see if we can catch it on camera. Oh, that was my fault. Sorry. Okay, one more. Let's try again. Let, let Ready.
Oh, sorry. Mean, that's my fault. Those both, those were were poor throws. Okay, so think about these things. This is one we need to move on to two. One, we need to be in alignment. They're resisting, right? Because it's a price change. You are resisting because of fear, scarcity. There's not enough clients, but you're also not analyzing your business.
That alignment between their plan and your plan, they need to mush 'em together, right? So we also need to make sure that we're doing enough with our lois or with our marketing, or even to magazines, that we're figuring out who's our best client, right? Who's working for us? Let's talk about two. So when we are positioning rate raises, now, this is why this is important.
There's several ways that we position rate raises. So I always like my number one favorite way is to go in when I'm considering a client for, oh, sorry. When I'm considering, um, a rate raise with a client, right? I go in and say, Hey, do you have any wiggle room in your budget to raise the rate? So I'll go in and say, Hey, uh, we've done these projects together.
I will either share some wins that we've gotten together, or I'll, you know, do some recon so you can go to Uber, suggest like you can use a tool. To see if their website is getting more traffic. Now that you've been posting more, uh, blog posts or you can see that, um, their ss e o keywords are working, or you can see that your blog post is the number one thing driving traffic to their website do a little recon, right?
And if they've told you metrics, if they've told you how you're getting wins, that's even better. Share that, right? So we're building value, right? We say, Hey, I've done all these things, we've gotten these wins. Things are awesome. Um, and I, you know, we've been working together for X amount of time, right? I think, uh, like I think the minimum for a rate raise is like six months.
I kind of feel like that's the minimum to me. Uh, but usually if you're like at the year point, you should be raising your rates. Um, we'll go over a caveat on this, but if you're raising your rates, tell 'em all the great stuff, then say, Do you have any wiggle room in your budget to raise the rate that throws the ball in their court, right?
To kind of figure out like, well, is our budget changing for the upcoming year? Can we, yes, this has been working, uh, this is bringing a lot of value. Yes, we can increase the rate. Um, and then there's also, um, the kind of like seeing where they'll go, right? So maybe you can kind of see from the number that they're giving you, how much value they think that work is worth.
Right. So for example, if they come back and they're like, yeah, we'll give you like 25 extra dollars, like, that's not value, right? That's not gonna work. You okay? Ho Hold on one second. Hold on one second.
Okay, we got settled and now we're back up. We were settled. We were all wrapped up, and now we're back up. Okay. So wiggle room in the budget also applies to magazines. So when we're asking that to businesses, we're throwing the ball in their court and seeing, do you actually see value in my work? But also like, can we kind of negotiate a rate raise?
I always do this with magazines, so every time a magazine says This is our going rate, or like, this is our typical rate, I'll say, great, thanks for sharing, but I'll be like, okay, sounds great. Do you have any wiggle room in your budget to up the rate? And every single time with magazines. That's really important to do that every time you get a new assignment.
Sorry, I've been talking a lot this week. So we're doing that because magazines have a variety of different rates for different writers. So
that means that a writer can start. The writer, um, who doesn't negotiate the rate can start at 50 cents, and the other one who negotiates eventually could get to a dollar 25. So there was, there's a story. I always tell that there were two writers I know about this. There were two writers at the same magazine.
One was getting paid 50 cents a word, one was getting paid a dollar 25 for the same material at the same magazine. We don't wanna be the 50 cent person, okay? We wanna make sure that we are negotiating from the start, right? And this is something where, There's, um, there's a lot of times where like this is just their standard rate and they'll see if you accept it, if you negotiate.
Hello? Do you unmute yourself yet? Yeah.
Okay. Um, so Tommy was worried I didn't unmute myself, which is a valid concern 'cause I do forget to unmute myself so I know. Woo. Oh no. You want some snacks? Um, when we're going in at magazines, we wanna make sure we're starting off at our highest possible rate, so that when we do get rate raises at magazines, those are a lot higher, right?
We start at 70 cents instead of 50 cents, so we're closer to, you know, the max rate of a dollar 25. All right. You wanna go back to your how a hole. Good girl. So, every time you get a new magazine assignment, ask that question. Man, sorry, Sharra. Um, and this is something that I think is important with rate raises just because knowing that magazines have all different rates now, the worst thing that'll happen is the magazine's like, Nope, this is our rate.
Like, there is no other higher rate. This is it. And you can just accept it and be like, okay. Um, or you can walk away if you choose to. But you should always be asking the what, what's the, do you have any wiggle room in your budget to magazines the first times? You were muted. Oh, of course. Yeah. I'm not muted 'cause I can see it moving.
Okay. So, um, the other ways to position your rate raises are that you kind of go in with a business and you say, Hey, we've been working together for X amount of time. We've done these cool things, we've seen these results, or we've, we've added to your content library. Here's all the things we added to your content library.
Um, and then we can position that as like, Um, you know, it seems like, you know, most of my other clients are paying this rate. Would you be able to match this rate? Right? That's something else we can do. Or the other thing you can do is if you're going into a new year and you are doing rate raises across the board, you can always, um, just tell them like, Hey, going into 2024, and give them advanced notice, like three months notice, right?
So think about it now and start notifying them in October, right? Start telling them. That starting in 2024, your rates are gonna be blah, blah, blah. Now the way, like when you're presenting that, that's something that if they say no and they don't wanna negotiate, you have to walk away. You have to stand in the integrity of saying, my rates are this, or like, I'm doing this.
Can you, can you meet this new rate for 2024 and walk away? Because you can't just say like, okay, you know, let's keep the old rate. Like that doesn't work. That any like that's, that is just like, That's just like, it makes it look like you were just trying to squeeze money out of them. And that's not the case, right?
We wanna go on value. So anytime you give the ultimatum basically of like, Hey, my rates for 2024, this, can you match it? You know, I would love to keep working together. If they say no or they won't negotiate, you gotta walk away. So anytime we're starting, but with rate raises, something to keep in mind is that you might have to walk away.
That's something that I think is the caveat here. The caveat is we can ask about wiggle room in their budget and that's kind of like a soft negotiation where like we could kind, we get to kind of decide what we wanna do, but if you tell them your rate raises are this or that, you want the rate to be increased to X amount or um, you want to.
Um, go into a new year or a new type of project with a higher rate, and they just say, no, you have to leave. You have to stand in integrity. It looks really bad if you're like, Hey, I would like to be paid more money. And they're like, no. And you're just like, okay, that doesn't look good. And it's not good for the relationship between you and that client.
They'll never give you a rate raise after that because you just like folded. Right? You were, they, you made it seem like all you were doing was a money grab. You made it seem like you're not actually serious about it. Right. Go girl. And uh, I think that's really important to pay attention to. So when we're kind of going through these rate raises, we have these three different options, right?
We have the, do you have wiggle room in your budget? We have like, my other clients are paying this. Can you match that and see how that goes? And we also have like, my new rate is this, can you work with that? And if they say No, you have to walk anytime you're talking about money. Walking is on the table.
That's something that I think is forgotten quite a bit. Um, it's not just asking for more money and then getting the more money like that. There's a lot of things that can be complicated with your client when it comes to budget, when it comes to how they think about their content, when they can think about value, when they think about working with you.
It's a negotiation. And I, every time, like for me, when I think about clients, I really love working with, um, there are clients where, Um, you know, I don't ask for a rate raise because I like working with them. Right? In the past there's lots of clients where I was like, I really like working with you. I've worked with you for over a year, and you know, if I, I don't, you know, I'm not gonna ask for a rate raise because I don't really want to walk, right?
So anytime you're asking for a rate raise, you have to be prepared to walk. Usually we have enough turnover with our clients that like, you should be upleveling enough that this is like not a huge deal. So every new client you get, raise the rate a little bit. Um, every new client should be kind of this cycle of upleveling to better clients.
So you shouldn't have a ton of rate raise conversations. I, I haven't had a ton of them over time just because I feel like, um, my business has kind of been in this like, This like one client becomes my super low payer or that project ends, so they're gone and I get a different client at a higher rate, right?
So like we're constantly in this kind of cycle. But again, this also goes back to analytics. You should know what's going on in your business.
What do you think, Charlie? What's going on in your business? Charlie, you got your interested ears on. Can you catch it? Oh, okay. The girl, you're cutie. You're a little being cutie. We call, uh, you know, Charlotte has like a little den, like she has a crate that she loves to spend time in. So we call it her item shop, where she has all of her toys, sorry, Charlie.
Uh, so she spends time in her item shop. Sometimes people come in and do a little shopping at her item shop and play with her items with her, and. Then, uh, you know, but she doesn't sell anything. She try, she pretends like she wants to sell 'em, but she doesn't. So her business is like, you know, it's, it's successful in like emotional points, but not successful in financial points.
Right. That's okay though. You have lots of treats and snacks and everybody loves you. You're a cutie bean. You're a cutie, you're a cook. Okay, let's talk about three. Also, Charlie's doing better. I know that sometimes people ask me how she's doing with her dental stuff. She's doing a lot better. So Charlie started eating on her own this week.
Hooray. So we have been hand feeding her and she's kind of been struggling with eating for six weeks. So she had a dental where she lost four teeth. They had to remove four teeth, and she has been really struggling eating on her own, really disinterested in food. So now she finally started. Eating by herself, not being hand fed, eating regular hard food this week.
So that was a really big step, and she seems more interested in food, so that's good. So big step for Charlie. All right, let's talk about three. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a freelance writing business, you adore, subscribe. Okay, let's go talk about our boundaries.
So when we're moving forward. With these rate raises, or we're feeling resistance from clients, sometimes that's a lack of boundaries. What that means is that you have either become your client's friend, So you're like, oh, I can't raise rates on my friend. Um, or you like try to, you know, give them way too much benefit of the doubt instead of treating it like, my business needs to make more money, you know, and I wanna grow my business and I wanna work with better clients.
You're just like, oh, they can't afford it like this. You know, like it's a, it's like a poor them conversation when you're struggling to pay your bills. Right. So I think this is something where we need to have boundaries in place about not becoming friends with our clients. Like we can be friendly with our clients, we can be nice with them, but we don't wanna be like best buddies.
Uh, and, and ruin kind of that boundary between like we have work and money to talk about. The other thing is that we need to have boundaries around like what we will and won't accept, right? So what will you accept? What rate makes sense for you? What rate won't you accept? What kind of treatment or what kinds of negotiations, what types of projects?
We need to have boundaries and rules around what we're kind of running in our business. If we're just accepting anything and everything, then it becomes this wild jungle of untamed clients, right? There is, um, there's a lot of resistance when, you know, sometimes you end up with these rate raises where someone's like, well, I thought, you know, we were working well together.
Like, they, they take it personally, right. There are times where you talk to a client and they might be like, well, I thought we were working well together. Like, why are you raising the price like that, that, that there's something wrong with you raising the price, right? And the way to think about it is you're raising the price because as you've worked with this client for either months or years, you have gained a lot of experience.
You've created a lot of quality stuff for them. You've given them a ton of value, and that needs to be compensated. Right. Our freelance careers are very, very different than full-time careers. We get a lot more raises. A lot faster, right? This isn't like a regular full-time job where a, some people are in full-time jobs for like 10 years and they never get a raise, right?
This isn't like that at all, right? This is more like someone's at a company for a little bit and they're like, oh, and now that I've been here for a while, market rates have gone up 20%. I need to get a different job if I wanna make more money, right? I need to kind of move companies to make more money.
This is more like that. So we need to have boundaries around this and we need to understand it's not personal, right? So when we're doing these rate raises, These are important for growing our business. These are important for building the kind of life or lifestyle or, uh, types of clients or types of projects that we want, right?
It's not about punishing a client, right? Or it's about, um, it's not about waffling when they dig their heels in, right? Especially the people who have had clients where I've talked to writers where they've had clients for three to five years and they haven't asked for a rate raise at all. So there's a big difference too between keeping a client because you need the money and because that client is reliable and the rate raise right there should be like, there should be a conversation at least if you've been working with them for many, many years.
Right? About, yeah, I like your Jennifer's emojis. There should be a conversation if you've been working with them for years, about a rate race. Like that should be normal. Um, it should be something where, You've given them enough value, enough stuff, enough deliverables, enough help that that makes sense, right?
There are, I think that for me, I used to feel a ton of fear that there just weren't any more clients that like if I let a client go or if I did something like I would never find another client. The key is that you have to do the marketing, you have to do the filtering process. You have to send those lois, you have to connect with people on LinkedIn.
Um, you have to grow your network. You have to make more freelance friends, and then you guys can either refer work to each other or talk about clients and see if you can help each other find more clients. So a lot of times this holding onto a client for three to five years is the fear that there's no clients or that they're like, well, this is my consistent money.
Someone else will pay you more money to do that thing. If you're always filling your pipeline, right? If you're continually sending Lois, you're continually planting seeds, you're continually adding irons to the fire, something will work out. That's the thing. There's, we can hold onto a client. So let me just, I just wanna be straight about this.
You can hold onto a client for financial reasons, 100%. But you should also be building to the next step, right? We can't just hold onto this client and do nothing. We can't just hold onto the client and be like, well, there's nothing else. Nothing's coming in. No, no, no, no. You have to and I, this is something I was talking about with runway student.
Uh, runway students. You have to dig for the diamond clients. That's your job. Your job is to go dig for the diamonds. Your job is to do the filtering process of. Finding lists and cutting them by revenue. Um, and then reaching out with Lois and doing that consistently, right? That's something that you have to do as someone who's working on your business versus in your business.
In your business is like writing the blog post on your business is making sure that you're doing admin and that you're making sure you're sending your lois and, and your pitches, and making sure that you're tracking your business analytics, right? All that good stuff, and your business analytics are like, What types of clients am I working with?
What are their revenue ranges? Which ones are my favorite clients? What am I working on? All that stuff, right? All those things are really important. It's really hard to feel like there's other clients when you're not actively digging for diamond clients when you're just like riding the bus, right? When you're just on the bus of this client and you're like, well, no one reached out to me.
It's like, yeah, but you're not laying any groundwork. You're not planting any seeds. You're not putting any irons in the fire. You can't expect people to just find you. That's not the thing. What ends up finding you is because you're updating your LinkedIn, you're consistently adding clips and updating your website.
You are actively marketing your business. You're actively sending Lois. Where someone could pass that L O I onto someone else, or you're actively sending pitches to magazines, right? You are being an active member of your business. And I think that when you don't see that, right, when you're just kind of hanging on to clients and being like, oh, I sent five and it didn't work out.
Like you have to send a lot, a lot. We have to keep planting these seeds. We have to keep putting things out there. We have to keep putting irons in the fire. We cannot control when people will get back to us. We can't control, um, you know, the response time. We can't control if someone gets back to us, but our job is to consistently update the things that pull clients in, which is our samples, our website, and our LinkedIn, and then our second tier effort, right?
Our other effort is to be active in digging for Diamond clients. We have to send the lois, we have to do the marketing. And every time I think to myself, like when I get really fatalistic and I'm like, there's no clients. I can't do this. Uh, I send some Lois and then I'm like, oh. And you get some answers.
Like every time I think it's going to die. Every time I'm like, everything's terrible. Um, I send some extra lois and something works out the, the marketing always works. That's the thing, is like you have to reach out. You have to be an active person in finding better rates. You have to be an active person in realizing you have to let clients go after a certain period of time.
Uh, if they don't wanna grow with you, that's fine. You can grow and they have to. You know, deal with their own business. But, um, we wanna make sure that we're sending those Lois and those magazine pitches so we have choices. That's how you have choices. You don't have choices based on just whoever shows up at your website, because if your website and your LinkedIn aren't sharp, you're gonna get a lot of garbage coming in.
If you make sure your LinkedIn and your website are super sharp, they're answering the questions. There's videos in YouTube, in my YouTube here that talk about what questions you need to answer in your LinkedIn profile and your website. If they're not answering those questions, you're le you're really giving, uh, doing your business a disservice.
So you need to make sure you're updating those and you need to make sure you're planting the seeds. This is something that I think, you know, sometimes it's really frustrating and things will change, right? So as your business grows, you probably will send less. Fewer Lois. That's okay. When I started, I was doing it every single day.
Then it became every week, then it became every month, and now it's quarterly. So I'll send out a chunk of Lois every quarter. Every once in a while I'll be like, Ugh, I need to send some, and I'll just do like a little bit here and there. So like even if it's not my quarterly stuff, I do that. The other thing too is that when you send these Lois, you start growing a bigger, bigger, a bigger and bigger list of people to follow up with, right?
So someone will answer your l o I and they'll be like, Hey, not right now. Try again. Some version of that, they'll be like, we'll put your name on file. Or they'll say like, ah, we don't have any projects right now. Or they'll say some version of, try again later. Some version of, not now. Try again later. Add them to your list and follow up with them every quarter.
Now, as you do that, as you send these lois, that list of people who say not right now or try again later gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and those projects work out. So I always kind of tell this story where I've had multiple clients. I just, this is just a recent one, but I have a recent one where I followed up with them for a year and then I worked with them.
Well, I'm still working with them now, but, um, I followed up with a year for a year, like every quarter. So four times I followed up. Got a project, worked with them for a year. Um, and now we're kind of like doing a couple other things. So I feel like, um, the persistence piece is really important. And also sending these lois so you can build your list of warm leads.
Your warm leads are like, try again later. Right? Um, I think that's really important. Yes. Woo woo says you need to make sure that you're following up with all those things too. Is that what you think? All right. Can we catch this? Oh, dang it. Sorry. That was my fault. I'm not doing very good with tossing today.
Can you give everybody a high five? Oh, high five. Good girl. Good job. Good job. Oh my gosh. Back up. We're popped right back up. Can you give everybody a high five? Good girl. Good job. Good job, fuzz. Okay, Jennifer has a question. Let's go over Jennifer's question as I wipe all of Charlotte's jewel off my hands.
Okay. Jennifer says, how long on average do you work with a client? How often do you raise your rates typically? So I try, try to raise my rates every year. Um, but like I said, like I'll raise them. Uh, I try to raise them a little bit with each project. So, um, let's talk about that first. So when I'm raising my rates, you need to do an annual rate raise.
So I look at my rates and I will say like, this is the, like the minimum I was accepting was this amount. Now I'm accepting the minimum as this. Or I will be more picky about what I wanna work on. So for me, that means I phased out a lot of blog posts. Like I phased out doing a lot of repetitive work I didn't wanna do, and now I write more, um, profiles or reported articles or kind of thought leadership that take more.
Research or interviews, and I can charge more for those. And I like doing those better. So I will phase out types of work. Um, I will try to do that. I will try to, it'll take like a while, like it'll take six months or so to phase out a type of work. Um, but for me, I try to do it annually. RA raises at least annually, um, if not every client.
So if I, so for example, I did, um, a project where, where I was like, um, well, I think the first. What was it? I can't remember, but there was the, it might've been my first content strategy project or my first. Kind of version of content strategy. Um, I realized very quickly that I undercharged and that it should be twice the price.
Like I was doing the work and I was like, there is no way this is the right number. Um, and I realized with all the work in there and all the stuff I was doing, it should be twice the price. So the next time I went to the client, the new client, right, and I'm like, this is the price. It was twice the price of the old price.
No one's gonna go do recon and be like, well, you're charging me twice as much. And even if they did, I could be like, yeah, 'cause it's twice as much work as I thought it was. So yeah, annually, um, if not with every client, so especially if you're like Jennifer, um, if you are, when you're working on articles, Jennifer, you should be looking for higher rates each time.
So I know Jennifer, Jennifer is one of my, um, Wealth lab slash breakthrough students. So we have the wealth lab and then the post-course community is breakthrough. So I know her business pretty well. Um, if you're working on articles, Jennifer, you should be raising those like a little bit every time. So if you're, um, getting 50 cents a word, your next client, you should try to shoot for like 70 cents.
And then if you say, my typical rate is 70 cents or 75 cents, if they wanna negotiate, they can do that. We should be kind of shooting for a higher rate. This is how I was working up to a dollar a word. So I would be like, okay, my minimum is 80 cents now. And if they wanna negotiate, yeah, I can still take 60 cents or 70 cents if I want, but at least I'm pushing the envelope every time.
Then you're like, Nope, I'm taking a dollar. Like my floor is a dollar a word for this. So I like kind of chipping away at it as well with new clients. And I think that especially if you have, I know, um, Jennifer has hundreds of thousands of article views that, so that should be something that you leverage to ask for more money.
Right? There's also a difference between working for certain businesses. So like if you work for. A place that publishes a lot of content. Um, that's a lot like if you work for like a US news, like when I was working for US News, right? They have like kind of their standard rate. So that's kind of harder as an online publication to, to raise the rate.
But if you're working for businesses and you're working on their. Content. Getting businesses like competitors of that business you have or getting new clients in there, that's a lot easier to raise that rate, especially when you get on a call and you ask about budget. Now, how long on average do I work with a client?
I have no idea. Um, I, uh,
I mean, most of my clients are long term, so like, I would say the average is like six months to a year, somewhere in there, because I'm trying to think through my last few projects. So there'll be times when I'm doing content strategy and that's like usually a three month project, but I, you know, can help them with content after.
So that could be a six month project. Um, I'm thinking about like the past, I did a project that was about six months. Uh, that ended in the spring. I have a project that I've done for over a year. Um, now, let's see, uh, sometimes like I really try not to take short-term projects. Every once in a while I will.
So if I want a clip or I want something that I haven't done in a while, uh, or I wanna move more into a certain type of writing, uh, I will take a short term, like one to two month project. Um, but usually, like, like I said, I think for me the, I wanna say it's like six months to a year. Like it's, it's typically six months to a year.
It could be more than that. Um, I think the longest client I had was more than two years, two and a half years, I wanna say. Um, I've had like, um, I just, I, it just depends, like, I think for me too, what's different is like I have. Shed parts of my business over time. So instead of doing a ton of magazine articles, I worked more on content, uh, like content marketing, so switching to doing more reported articles for businesses where I could get paid more.
And then I stopped doing so many blog posts and started focusing on. More case studies or more, um, profiles or like places where I would get paid a better rate for doing similar work that I would at magazines. Then I started moving into brand messaging, content strategy, um, messaging and positioning. And those projects could be as short as a month if we're just, you know, getting everything done really quickly.
Or it could be three months, or you could be working with them long term because after you set the strategy or help them with messaging, positioning, they want you to actually execute the content. Um, so I would, I would probably say like for myself and across the board with my friends, like it could be six months.
It's probably like six months to two years. That's, that's probably your average range. But I do wanna say a caveat. I know I have a friend who worked with the same client for five years, but she keeps raising the rate and they're like, yep, you're worth it. Let's do it. So even my friends who have had clients for like five years, they're still raising rates on those clients, right?
That piece is really important. Um, it's not that they're just accepting the same rate. They're like, if you wanna keep working together, this is my new rate. Um, it also helps too, when you have more clients, right? So it's easier to raise rates and you're like, well, if they say no, I just walk away 'cause I've got all these other clients.
Um, I usually think about it more as, I guess when I think about my business, it's like, where am I going? Like, what types of work do I wanna work on versus like, how long do I keep a client? Um, especially when it's easier I've found to get a new client at a better rate than to just stay at the same client for like 900 years.
So it's better to be reaching new heights for me, and it's better to find a new client who's maybe has a, a better view on their goals or who, uh, has more specific things they want done versus like repeating the same thing with that with your regular client and. I feel like for us as freelance writers, we change a lot.
Our business forces us to grow our business forces us to get out of our comfort zone. Um, and it really like, and if you resist that right, if you resist that, you get really stuck as a writer. So I feel like if you're running your business really well, you end up with, uh, a lot of opportunities for growth and change.
So we change a lot as writers and people in six months, right? Or a year, right? Like I look back on the work I did last year and I'm like, ugh, I could have done that better, right? So we should be growing at a rapid enough rate that shedding clients is kind of a normal thing, or our clients should be growing at the same rate and we're like running the same marathon.
So I would think about it as kind of. Um, well, at least this is how I think about it, is like, if I'm growing at this rate, you should too, uh, like you, my client, and that we should be on the same page in terms of how this content strategy or, or project or whatever is growing, how we're gonna execute that, how we should be on the same page in terms of like, yes, you should be getting paid more.
'cause obviously we're getting results, things are going well, we like working together. Your work is doing great things for us. Um, but the growth piece. Excuse me. The growth piece is really important. We should be growing a lot. There's a lot of things that we have to do in running our business, getting better as writers, reading more stuff so we can grow our vocabulary or improve our writing style, or, uh, improve our ability to meet different tones and styles.
That's a, a much more rapid process than a regular, like where someone's at a company for like 10 years. So for me, I feel like the shedding of clients is more. Aligned with like how I've grown up in my business. And that kind of reflects into like where am I going with my business? Me paying attention to, I really wanted to move into content strategy and I did it way too late.
I should have done it much earlier. Um, I. And, uh, there's just like you learn a lot of lessons running your business that then change how you move forward. Uh, this is why I always encourage people like, you should be looking at your business all the time quarterly. Like, this is why I love Dub Soto Dub Soto helps me look at my business as a whole all the time, right?
I'm looking at all the time. I'm looking at how are things going. Um, are these things changing? How are the lois, how are, like what's enrollment like, right? When I'm looking at my different classes, like when I'm looking at the wealth lab or I'm looking at runway, um, or I'm looking at people who join the free masterclass that's coming up in September, like that I run in September and April.
How is that going? Um, how's enrollment or is this thing making sense? Is are people actually getting results? Is this class make, you know, is this working right? So there's all these little things we need to pay attention to. And because we're kind of. Like we're, we're really looking at a lot of depth in our business.
A lot of these deep kind of like metrics in our business that pushes you to change a lot faster, which then kind of has you shedding clients and helps you raise your rates. So I, I feel like for me, that's, that's how I kind of look at it. What do you think, Charlie? Charlie's like, I don't wanna shed anything.
Charlie, you shed all the time. Oh. Do you wanna give everybody a high five? Yes. Good girl. Good job. You're so sweet. You're so cute with your little tiny mermaid legs. Your little tiny mermaid legs just sitting, sitting out there. Yes, you're the cutest and you're making your little pork noises. What a good girl.
Oh, now we just hold hands. Are we holding hands? Friends now? Charlotte hardly ever lets me touch her paws. She's like one of those dogs that's like, Ew, don't touch my feet. But, uh, every once in a while she lets me hold her foot. Okay. So, um, I think those are all the things that I wanted to make sure we went over for this particular livestream, but remember that this is a process.
So every time that you are going through rate raises, every time that you are. Hold on a second. Um, every time that you're looking at your clients, every time that you are negotiating, um, remember that you and your clients are equals, right? They should obviously see that you're helping them. Um, they should obviously see the value that you're bringing to the table.
There will be clients where they're just like, this is our budget. Like every year we set the same budget. Maybe they're not your client anymore. This is part of the shedding process, right? We grow up as writers. We, we should be, um, pushing ourselves, we should be reading more, we should be growing our skills.
And as we grow our skills and abilities, that time is actually pretty short. It's much shorter. Um, like when I had my full-time job, all the stuff I'd done in my freelance stuff was like, I grew way quicker than I did in my full-time job. Where, you know, sometimes when you have, um, Like sometimes there is like people don't want you to innovate, they just want you to do the thing, right?
Push the button. So I feel like when we're kind of in our business, in our freelance writing business, We want to align with companies that are innovating, right? They are doing that. So they understand where we're coming from, we understand where they're coming from, and then there's a lot more alignment with their goals, their content, how they're putting their stuff out, and rates.
Those things go together. So there will be times when you have to walk away. There's times where I've had to walk away. That's, that's part of your business, that's part of protecting your business and your income. Um, but we should also be able to, Make sure that we have opportunities, right? We're doing the marketing, we're sending Lois, and we can also put the ball in their court by saying like, do you have any wiggle room in your budget?
So try those things, see if they help. Um, I hope this has been helpful. Charlie, what do you think? Charlie's like, I don't care. She's like, more snacks, please. Charlie. Charlie, you know who, who gives you all these snacks? Is how we do these rate raises. Rate raises mean more snacks. I hope this was helpful. Um, we're here every Friday.
We're here every Friday. At, um, noon Central Time. Oh, and if you wanna hear about the free masterclass, so I'm in like two weeks. I'm gonna tell everybody about the free masterclass. So if you go to mandy ellis.com/pricing guide, you will get my free pricing guide and you'll be the first one to hear about the free masterclass.
So, uh, grab that. And, uh, yeah, you can always submit a topic or question as well. So if you have a topic or question you want me to go over on the livestream, go to mandy ellis.com/question and submit it. I've done plenty of topics. We've actually done some of Jennifer's topics. I'm pretty sure Marie. I'm pretty sure, um, Getty and Vesta and Vicki, I'm sure all of them have submitted questions or submitted things where I change it into a topic.
So we always, I always kind of pull things from, uh, what people are asking about. So I hope this was helpful and I'll see you next Friday. Bye.
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