3x your freelance rate with this one trick
3x your freelance rate with this one trick
Lean into the clickbait.
I came onto the freelance scene charging a hefty $35/hour.
A respectable introductory rate (or so I thought) I was eager to increase. Just needed a few successes under my belt first.
Back then I wore different masks, offered separate but adjacent skills. SEO, content writing and web design. Plenty of people need those things.
Target rate $75/hour.
I never expected to hit it in a month. Never expected just a few years later, to hit $200/hr.
Weirdly, for doing a lot of the same stuff. The main difference (and your one trick)?
I started working with high-ticket clients.
Then I never had to work with the lowballs.
So when your competition charges crazy rates for the same things, it might not be because they're better than you.
Their clients are just better than yours.
Bigger budgets, higher expectations
High-ticket clients are the ones who:
have more money than time
are willing to pay a premium for your results
ask how much, with CC in hand
Premium clients want insurance. They want to know the job'll get done and they put their money where their mouth is.
They've got expensive problems, not time for the complexities.
Sure, with bigger budgets come higher expectations. You need to deliver.
They give you creative freedom, trust your expertise, and almost always keep your number when you treat them well.
(I’ll show you how to get really good at solving their problems. Then they chase you)
Lowballs not ready for you yet
Unlike the highballs, lowballs are focused on the lowest price. And there's nothing wrong with that, there's a market for that.
But you're not part of it.
Lowballs have more time than money. Time to micromanage you and how you do your thing.
They're usually looking for a freelancer they can boss around. A Freeployee.
They'll ask for free consults, kick tires, openly compare your rates to other freelancers.
Maybe you've fallen for that familiar, overused dangling carrot. The one where you do good work for cheap to earn a ton of new, ongoing, lucrative future work (that doesn't exist).
You don’t really want that work, do you?
Highball’s the work you want.
The lowballs have more demands. This goes for what they need from but also how they expect you to work and when.
They nearly always require more support.
more hands-on
more frequent updates
more pesky revisions
more micromanaging
more stress
But not more money.
So why work with lowballs?
-Patrick O.
P.S. - Wed’s newsletter is for subscribers only. I will begin breaking down my tricks and techniques for attracting high-ticket clients. Then I start pulling behind the curtains to some of my biggest projects.
No stone left unturned.