4 Ways to Get Paid What You Are Worth

If you’re a freelancer, you are probably getting paid much less than you’re worth for the following reasons:

• You are influenced by what your competitors are charging – why charge $10,000 for that web design project that everybody else is charging $6,000 for?
  
  
• You are afraid clients won’t pay your rates.
  
  
• You are competing with a sea of “professionals” who will happily charge one-tenth of what you’re supposed to charge.

Good news is, no matter your reasons for charging low, you could be getting paid double, triple or more. Here are some tips to help you.

1. Upgrade your belief in yourself

If you find it difficult to convince yourself that your services are worth a premium, nothing can be done to help you get paid what you are worth. This first step is often the most difficult and everything else becomes easy once you get it right. Make sure you believe strongly in the value you’re offering to your clients.

If you are a freelance designer, start thinking about how your client will benefit from your design for the next 1-2 years. Your design will probably help your client make back 50 to 100 times what they are paying you. If that is the case, why not double your rates?

You should also look at the top people in your field to see what they are doing right, as well as how confidently they are charging what they’re worth. You will be surprised that they are easily charging 10 to 50 times more than what you are charging. Motivating yourself by studying these people and their experiences will surely go a long way to help you solidify your belief in yourself.

2. Have a clear unique selling point

If you are “just another web and graphic designer” then no one will pay what you deserve. Almost everybody is “just another web and graphic designer”, so it will be very difficult to convince your clients to pay you a premium, if that’s how you position yourself.

Have a clear unique selling point that helps your client realise that they are getting a service that they can’t get anywhere else. This could be about your approach, the kind of clients you work with, the kind of clients you actively send away, the niche you work in, etc.

Having a unique selling point will send some clients away, and that’s a good thing. You are carefully repelling the clients you don’t want, who probably won’t pay what you are worth, so that you can get clients that will value what you have to offer.

3. Attract your clients the right way

If you are getting clients on bidding sites or by competing with dozens of other freelancers, where they already have lots of potential candidates to choose from, it will be difficult convincing them to choose you and pay your “heavy” rates.

Instead, take charge of how you attract your clients. Get the client to come to you, instead of having to seek them out. Basically, this can involve having a website or blog and then advertising your services in one way or the other. Or it could be via social media or by appearing regularly on authoritative blogs in your niche.

Build a blog about the type of services you offer, regularly publish content on it, showcase case studies in your niche and appear on relevant blogs to contribute value, while promoting your brand.

4. Sell value, not money

Your clients are making a business decision and as a result they do not care about the money they are spending but about the value they are getting by spending that money.

The key to closing deals isn’t to tell your client how much they will be saving if they pay your rates but to tell them how much they will be making.

To most real clients, it probably won’t make much of a difference to spend $2,000 instead of $500 but it will make a lot of difference to make a profit of $98,000 instead of a profit of $1,500. This is what you should use to convince clients to pay your rates.

SOURCE: Hongkiat