A222 - How to charge more as a freelancer? - a podcast by Jason Resnick

In the last episode you learned some things to delight and create the perception of value in your business. Today you will learn exactly what to deliver that validates that perception.

I get asked how to get more clients and I often say that it’s not about “more clients”, it’s about “right clients.”

I stress that it’s about getting the right quality clients.

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What you need to think about is how high-quality is that client that you are working with right now and how much are you charging them.

If you are looking to increase the budget, it comes from not just leveling up your skills, not just your experience, but also that you are doing more for them in your solution.

Which means that if you are including more, that, in turn, requires more time spent on the solution and obviously a bigger budget.

What is it in those budgets that allow you to charge more?

This could be strategy and consultation. Could be a weekly phone call. This could even be an add-on service like marketing on social media.

Maybe you are thinking that you don’t know how to do marketing. Or that you aren’t experienced enough yet to give a valuable strategy.

That’s ok.

Figuring out what you can add into the mix to increase those budgets isn’t about you.

It has to be about your client and what they want.

As a developer, I take pride in proper coding practices such as environments, coding standards, and efficient deployment scripts. My clients, not so much.

What my clients' value is communication. This comes in 2 forms.

The first is how we handle everyday communication. I tried Basecamp, Asana, and others for project management with clients. All too often though they would forget their password, forget the URL to go to.

It made working with me in their eyes, difficult.

So instead of forcing them into something that would frustrate them, I stuck to something that I know they know. Email.

They send me an email and then I do what I need to on the backend to file it accordingly.

The second form is a weekly call.

I asked my clients “how can I be more awesome?”

What I was told was that communication is great through the email, but having a regular phone call would be awesome.

So I added in a weekly phone call to my services.

Now I rather spend the time doing work than talking about it, but that’s me, not the client.

In order to make that phone call reality and provide more to the solution in that way, that would require time carved out of the week, and require prep and post time.

You may be thinking how can you charge more for something like a call when those seemingly are needed anyway.

Are you charged more for consultations with a lawyer or accountant?

Since my main form of communication is through email and the one-off scheduled calls, a weekly call isn’t something that is necessary to get the work done, in fact, it pulls me away from getting that work done.

However, the client deems it important enough for them to do business. If that’s the case, then I can charge for that added time for that level of communication.

To charge more is to get into the head of the client.

Don’t charge more for the sake of yourself, charge more because you are adding the value to your package that the client sees as valuable.

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