Charge Differently For Different Services
A lot of copywriters, freelance writers and general freelancers on the internet seem to fall into a trap: They get an arbitrary figure in their head which is what they’re worth/what they charge, and they stick to it.
This is perplexing to me. There’s a lot of different work you can get as a freelancer, and you’re not going to charge the same amount for writing a thousand-word sales letter as you are a few tweets.
In this article, I’ll quickly go over some principles that I follow for charging clients – for work you have done and work you haven’t done before – and I’ll talk about something related: How to know if a job is worth doing.
How To Charge Clients For Copywriting
I’ve written about this topic before. Check out this article: How much should a beginner copywriter charge?
Essentially, it boils down to this:
- How much time will it take you to provide your service?
- How much will it cost you to provide your service?
- How much are your overheads?
- How much does it cost to develop your business?
- How much do other people charge?
All of these questions will vary in importance for you personally, depending on where you’re at and where you want to go with your writing business.
Essentially though, you need to bear in mind that as a writer, you’re providing a tangible skill with tangible benefits. You need to charge accordingly.
If you follow the advice in the above article and work on your own projects, you’ll quickly know how much your writing is worth. Say you write a sales letter and it converts at 1% and brings in a return on investment of say, 100%. You’ll quickly know that a customer who commissions you to write a sales letter is getting their money’s worth.
If that is the case, then don’t sell yourself short. If somebody is going to make a thousand dollars from your work, don’t sell it for $5.
Moving on, let’s talk about when you’re new to a particular request.
Charging For Services You’ve Never Provided Before
Here is a brilliant way to not ever have this problem: Do as much for yourself as you can. For instance, if you see other copywriters are offering a service, learn and practice doing that service for your own projects.
Outside of that, you follow the same rules; you see how long it will take you, how much it will cost and the effort you’ll have to go to to provide a service. You will stick to the idea that you can’t provide a service if it costs more to do than you’ll make.
However, there’s a bit of leeway here; you can’t expect your client to pay to train you. Research time? Sure. Set up costs and time? Sure. But learning is done under your own steam. Other than that, nothing changes. Also, you’ll have to be honest. Let’s use an example.
Let’s say you’re happily writing articles for $20 an hour on Upwork. It’s all going great, but your client wants you to add a new service: write a quick headline/summary for each article so that it can be posted to the company Facebook and Twitter account.
You’ve never done this before because you hate social media. What do you do?
The first thing you do is this:
Send an email along the lines of, “Hi. I don’t currently provide that service, but I’m happy to. I’ll send you across some rough drafts. Let me know if you’re looking for something different.”
Then, you go and find a book on social media stuff. An example is “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.” It goes over how to create native ads for each platform. Read that, make notes, get the gist of it.
Create some mock ups and send them across. Wait for the client to get back to you.
Make your adjustments, and then tell them the price. If you usually give them a cost breakdown, then do that here. “This includes stock photos, 100 words copy and everything will be formatted.”
See what they say. They might come back with a new price, an altered requirement list or something else entirely. Use your business Kung-Fu to help you out.
The process is quite simple if you stick to the above rules.
However, something that isn’t simple is dealing with clients who are out of this world.
How To See A Bad Job Offer
Something you’ll find as a freelance writer is that some clients act like your boss. It’s hard at first, but you need to make it quite clear that they aren’t your boss.
Essentially, you’ll have a set amount that you work for. Let’s say it’s $50 an hour. You can’t go below that, no matter what the offer and who the client is. (See below for setting your freelance rate.)
Also, your time is your own if you’re a freelancer. Unless a client is paying extra for you to hit an unreasonable deadline, you should write as you see fit.
The more you charge, the more businesses will tend to appreciate this. The most demanding clients I’ve ever had are also the ones that pay the least.
Here’s an example. Check out this post on the copywriting subreddit from the other day:
I’m not going to knock the guy unnecessarily, because I don’t know him and his business is his business.
But that’s an insane amount of work. And the budget? $100.
For all the freelance writers out there; if you ever see a job ad like this and your first thought is, “That’s an insane amount of work” or “That’s an insanely low price” then you’re fishing for work in the wrong waters.
Business owners… if you ever consider writing a job offer like this then actually look at the going rates of professionals in each field. That job ad has about four or five different jobs in it, and each of those would probably charge more than the combined figure. I mean, the above example is a full-time job.
I’m not mentioning this for fun: Most internet marketing guru stuff teaches you to have a business idea and then outsource it for $100 a month. It’s stupid and you’re only ever going to get low-hanging fruit by catering to this market.
Final Thoughts
If in doubt, follow your gut instinct. The worst that can happen is you don’t get the work. The best that can happen is that you get the work and it works out more profitable than you thought.
With a lot of business things, as long as you follow the plan, you’ll succeed. When it comes to charging, you have to stick firmly to your price, and not be afraid to not do the work if it’s not going to be profitable.
Once you get yourself into that mental framework, these questions answer themselves in a straightforward manner.