The need to raise rates can happen for many reasons. Two of the most popular are:

1. After you have worked with a client on a few projects, you may find that you underestimated the amount of time their projects would take and you need to raise their rates.

2. You’ve worked with a client for so long that your standard rates have changed significantly since you quoted them and now you want to bring their rates up to your new average.

No matter why you want to raise rates on an existing client, there are many things you must consider first…then there are a few steps you can take to make it easier.

Considerations

1. Are you willing to lose the client? Some clients may not agree to your rate hike and may, instead, decide to find a new writer. You must be prepared to lose them.

2. Is your work worthy of a higher rate? Just because you charge a higher rate to new clients or your existing client’s work takes too long, doesn’t mean you deserve a higher rate. Try to look at your work compared to other freelancers in the price range you want to be in. Is your work worth it?

3. Is there any way you can reduce the workload to make the current rates worth it? This is kind of a backward way of raising rates, but sometimes clients respond more favorably to you reducing services rather than raising rates.

Rate Raising Steps

1. Make an appointment to call the client to discuss it over the phone if at all possible. You want to soften the blow and open the discussion, and email isn’t always a good platform for that.

2. Make sure the client knows that you enjoy working on his or her projects. This helps to avoid your client thinking that you are raising rates as a way to get out of working for them.

3. Explain the reasoning behind the rate raising. If you are making $5 an hour because of the amount of work you must do for the client, let them know (unless this is because you are not working efficiently–the client should not be punished for that). Also, if all your other clients are paying significantly more, let them know that your rates have raised that significantly since you started working with them. Honesty is a good thing.

4. Give the client a choice. Let them choose between higher rates or reduced services.

It’s one thing to get a client, but it’s even more important to keep the client and become their go-to writer. There are a few really easy ways to do this:

1. Don’t treat the relationship as a one-time transaction. Show the client you are interested and invested in their project by going out of your way to create superior content with interesting twists they might not have expected.

2. Be easy to work with. Don’t be a prima donna, difficult, late, or undependable. Be someone who makes the whole process–from initial conversation to billing–effortless.

3. Include free future edits as part of your service. You know how things change and how Google likes updated content, so offer to update their content at no charge in the future. This will make you more appealing for work and, if it doesn’t result in any extra work now, you can email them in a year to remind them of your free edit and they just might have another project.

4. Offer a newsletter sign up. Many freelance writers have clients sign up for a quarterly newsletter. Not only does that establish you as an authority, but it also reminds them of your presence.

5. Email them when you have an opening in your schedule. We all have down time here and there. Why not shoot your old clients an email when you have an opening in your schedule?