As some of you may know from reading my previous blog posts, I have worked as a freelance social media manager + content creator for over a year now.

I love being a freelancer and being able to work from home, while still being in college. I have a post where I specifically go into depths about what it means to be a social media manager, and the job details, which you can read by clicking here.

However, today I am going to be talking about a certain “hack” that I came across while freelancing that made me a lot of money and gained me more clients than I could keep up with.

When I first started freelancing, I was a novice social media manager and, in turn, was working many hours a week for low pay. I thought that I had to undersell myself in order to gain people’s trust. Which to some extent, is true. At the beginning of your career, you will need to gain experience and build your resume before you can charge more.

Not sure how to become a freelancer yet? Read my post on how to quit your job + become your own boss here. 

But, something I realized after some time is that people are somewhat more inclined to hire a freelancer with a higher pay rate. For example:

After I had worked with a couple different clients, I raised my hourly freelance rate for social media management by $10 or so. Not a huge increase in my rate, but noticeable enough. Right after I did this, I started getting tons more of responses to my job applications, invitations to interview, etc.

Why is this so?

People looking to outsource in their business and hire a freelancer are looking for quality. They want the job done well, and to their standards. So, when they see someone charging $3 an hour (trust me, there are tons of people like this on freelancing websites), they question how valuable the person will really be to their company.

Think about it. If you were working for someone, and being paid only $3 an hour, would you want to work very hard? Would you be determined to create awesome content? Please your client to the fullest extent? If you are being honest with yourself, probably not. Because you aren’t being paid for that level of carefulness and perfectionism!

By raising your freelance prices, you are showing people that you are worth it.Your services take a lot of work on your end. You need to be compensated for your time. Do not sell yourself short! You deserve to work with your dream clients.

So, I challenge you to raise your prices (even just a little bit)! Let me know any results you see, and I wish you the best!