Increasing your freelancing or consulting rates is the key to generating more income. In a service-based business, there are only so many hours in a day that we can work.
Eventually, you hit a point where there’s a limit to your income unless you’re interested in sacrificing work-life balance. The answer to this is increasing your rates. Increasing your rates can be life-changing. It reduces the amount of work you need to do to make the income you desire.
If you’re hesitant to increase your rates, mental roadblocks could be the reason. Here are some mindsets to help you increase your rates:
The Expert Mindset
Clients usually pay you for “doing a job,” or they pay you for “expertise that you can bring to the job.” These two sound similar, but are slightly different. Many people can do a job or specific tasks. However, only certain people may be able to bring a level of knowledge or expertise to the job at hand. Experts bring in more money and can back up rate increases.
For example, almost anyone can create a website. Just look around for a simple website builder, follow a few steps, and the job is done. But an expert at web design knows more.
They can make a site from scratch. They know how to structure a site soundly for SEO purposes. They can make recommendations on where to put design elements to grab the attention, money, and email of website visitors.
Don’t think of yourself as just a “doer.” You’re doing more than putting a website together when assisting clients. You should charge more than a low hourly rate to cover your labor costs. Take on the cost of the value you’re providing.
The Confident Mindset
To raise your prices, you have to stand firm. You have to be confident in your pricing if you want your prospects to take you seriously. There will be questions about why you charge more than the next guy. There will be times when people will say that you’re charging more than they think you’re worth. You will fold if you’re not confident.
Slowly increase your rates and take note of how it makes you feel each time. You don’t need to triple your prices overnight. Increase them by a few percentage points and then list out everything you bring to the table that backs up the price.
The Abundance Mindset
The abundant mindset is absolutely key. The abundant mindset is when you believe that there are unlimited opportunities. Pricing very conservatively could mean that you have a scarcity mindset where you believe there’s not enough work or clients out there that believe your value. As a reaction to this, you’re trying to beat out everyone in price.
Trying to beat people with the price is a race to the bottom, especially in the freelancing world where there are so many people who charge next to nothing for work. Adopting an abundant mindset can be challenging. It’s something that you’ll have to work on. I’ve worked on my mindset by coming from a place of gratitude.
I take notice when I’m having negative thoughts about scarcity and try to uncover where they’re coming from. I debunk my thoughts or fears with evidence when I have been able to attract abundance into my life. It takes practice, but you need an abundant mindset to attract higher paying clients.
Final Word
Coming up with pricing is nerve-wracking. Ultimately, a business transaction is one where you’re trading value for money, and both sides of the deal should feel satisfied with what they got. Not feeling satisfied will eventually leave you bitter and overworked. Start working on improving your mindset so you can ask for the amount of money that will help your business succeed.
