I wrote a blog post recently about how to choose a rate to charge for freelance blogging.

Choosing that initial rate is certainly a difficult challenge, but soon after you start your blogging career you will encounter a new challenge – asking for a rate increase.

When to Increase Your Rate

To understand when you should consider increasing your rate you need to think about the different reasons why you might need to increase your rate.  Let’s take a look at a few of these reasons.

You Bid Low to Build Experience

I’m not personally a big fan of charging low rates to build experience, but some people are.  There is nothing wrong with it, but I think the work is worth the full rate if it is good quality regardless of the experience level of the blogger.

At any rate, eventually you will build the experience and confidence that you felt you needed and realise it is time to raise your rates accordingly.

The Work is More Effort than Originally Thought

This happened to me for one of my jobs.  I charged the same rate for one blog as I did for another, but the second blog took much more work to create the same length blog posts because it was of a deeper technical nature requiring more research and more time setting up step by step demonstrations.

Your Time is Becoming Scarce

Just about everyone who runs a business knows that when there is more work coming in the door than there are hours in the day then it’s time to increase your rates.

There have been times when I have accepted writing jobs and charged double or triple my usual rate to justify fitting it in to a very full schedule.

How to Increase Your Rate for New Jobs

The first step for some people is to overcome a fear of losing business because you’re asking for too much money.  This fear is irrational unless your entire business strategy hinges on being the cheapest blogger out there.  If that is your plan then be my guest, but working long hours for little money is not how I want to get through life.

Take a measured approach to increasing your rates.  Don’t ask for double the money straight away – increase it by small increments.  Add $5 or $10 per post to your rate and see if that affects the number of jobs you win.

You can take advantage of unappealing work to test even higher rates.  Have you ever had a ridiculously high quote from a painter or plumber?  These guys are saying to you “I don’t really want to do this job, but if I do it I may as well make a bundle of money out of it”.  Try the same on the next piece of work that you are capable of doing but just don’t want to.  If the client accepts you’ve now established a precedent for charging a higher rate.

How to Increase Your Rate for Existing Jobs

Charging more for existing jobs is a negotiation process.  Before you go asking for more money be sure you have a valid justification for it.  This might include:

Better offers elsewhere – Tell the blog owner that you have higher paying work on offer and that they are now your lowest paying client (if that is true of course).  To keep the work worth your while you need to increase your rate.

Traffic performance – If your blog posts are receiving consistently high numbers of visitors then you may be able to justify a rate increase.  You usually won’t have access to the website analytics to get exact visitor numbers but you can still get an idea from other metrics such as the number of comments you recent, inbound links, hitting the Digg front page, or if they go viral on social networks like Twitter.

International currency rates – If exchange rates have changed significantly and disadvantaged you then you can try to negotiate a change in rate.  However be aware that this will work both ways, and the blog owner may ask you to lower your rate again later when exchange rates swing back in your favour.

Next you need to know have a new rate in mind.  Don’t get caught by them asking how much more you’d like and not having an answer for them.  Apart from looking a bit silly you might blurt out an answer that is still too low a number and waste the opportunity to negotiate a higher rate.

Be ready for a little negotiation as well.  While I’m personally not a fan of asking for too much just so I can be seen to compromise to a lower amount, some people do find this to be an acceptable negotiation strategy.  My own technique is to that I ask for what I want and back it up with a valid justification, and stand my ground if necessary.

Finally, be willing to resign from the position entirely if they are not willing to give you an acceptable increase.  This is the last card you can play in any negotiation, so use it wisely.  Don’t use it as a bluff because if they call you on it you will have to go through with it, or if you change your mind then you’ll weaken your position for any future negotiations.

Do you have a negotiation tip to share?  Leave a comment below.

Image Credit: Flickr

Tagged as: Blogging, Freelancing, Writing