Ever wondered if you should raise your rates?

Let me tell you, my foodie friend, today is the best day to consider raising your rates. You might be telling yourself that extra spoonful of self raising rates will turn people away from your pie.

But I’m here to tell you, it’s time you treat yourself!

Let me paint you a picture…

You are a successful freelancer. A designer dancing the night away on an Illustrator high. As your weeks flows by, one coffee at a time, you are ticking off those amazing to-do lists for your clients. The work flow continues building, bubbling and almost starting to boil over the top of your pot.

As if this magical moment of a full client list isn’t making you happy enough, your enquiries funnel is getting chunkier than a slab of rocky road. Happiness flows through you as the caffeine hits and you keep telling yourself you didn’t choose the hustle lyfe, the hustle lyfe chose you.

But the cracks in the cookies are starting to show.

You’re crunching down, laughing at yourself that yet again, you’ve once more bitten off more than you can chew. The crunch turns to emotional choking and before you know it you’ve dropped that cookie and the crumbs are everywhere.

You’ve missed a deadline for the Milk Man.

Posted to the wrong client Instagram account.

Sent the wrong file to the printer, costing you and your client the big bickies!

It happens. We all make mistakes. For so long we’ve been taught that if you’re a freelancer, unless you’re hustling 24/7 – 365 then you’re not doing it right, right? And let’s be honest, that advice is about as helpful as diet advice.

What are the key ingredients to look out for?

Now I know that you don’t want to be eating humble pie and spending your late nights chasing your tail to fix those things that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place. Here are just a few ingredients that you don’t want to be putting in your weekly meal plan.

You’re rushed off your feet and you forget to eat.

If you’re too busy to take time to stop for lunch, you need to charge more for your time. This tends to sneak up on the best of us. We think we are handling it, then our tummy grumbles, we look at the time and its alot later than we thought. Sound familiar? Then you probably need to consider a rate raise…

You’ve learnt a new marketable skill

If you’ve up-skilled and increased how valuable you are, that value needs to be compensated. Think things like you’ve learn how to build ads or maybe you have a way with words but you aren’t a copywriter *officially*. If you’ve taken a course or self-taught a skill, you definitely are worth more now!

It’s been over a year since you last raised your prices.

There’s comfort in the time tested rates that you are charging. But this mindset has the potential to devalue your work. If you haven’t taken a look at your rates in the last 12 months, it’s to at least revisit them, they’ve probably reached their best before.

It’s been a while since you go a “ No, you’re too expensive” response

If everyone is saying yes, and you haven’t been told that you’re too expensive in a while then you’re probably too cheap! I like to think of it as if I have forgotten what a no feels like, I’ve probably gotten too comfortable with my rates. Besides, theres only so many no’s that come before the inevitable yes, and wouldn’t you want to make that worth your while?

Unless you do something about it, nothing will change. You’ll continue to stumble in the kitchen and cook up more mistakes than an episode of Great British Bakeoff.

And the simple answer? It’s time to raise your rates.