How to Increase Your Freelance Income Without Working Harder

Freelancing is far from being an easy option, though, and many freelancers find it hard to scale their business and earn more money. Simply working longer and longer hours isn’t a sustainable way to give yourself a raise as a freelancer. 

How to Increase Your Freelance Income Without Working Harder

This is the most obvious way to earn more money. Simply charge more for your services. It’s not always easy to do, however, and many freelancers are putting off raising their rates, because we’re living in uncertain times and they’re concerned that their clients can’t afford to pay more.

Raise Your Rates

Raising your rates for new clients is as simple as updating your rates page on your website, and quoting those new rates to new clients. Raising them with existing clients is more complicated. The main thing to do is to give appropriate notice.

What you’re really aiming to do as a freelancer is to be constantly replacing low-paying clients with higher paying clients. I aim to keep my freelancing schedule full, but keep pitching to higher quality clients. 

Replace Your Clients

Replacing an existing client with a new client who is happy to pay twice as much is an easier way of doubling your hourly income than trying to persuade the existing client to double what they currently pay you.

You may also want to consider how much you enjoy the work, and how fast you can deliver it. I’ve written before about the benefits of specialising as a freelance writer, and it applies to other types of freelancers too.

As a freelancer, you may have the chance to re-purpose your work and get paid over and over again for it. Exactly how this works will depend on the kind of work you do. 

Re-Purpose Your Work

Making a good income as a freelancer is possible, but only if you give yourself a regular pay raise. And you need to find ways to do that other than just working harder and putting in longer hours.

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