Freelance Rates: Hard to Set, Easy to Botch

How to avoid leaving money on the table AND pushing the envelope too far.

Rates are hard to set. It’s like negotiating a salary with yourself.

$0.20 per word.

Are you sure?

No.

Of course, you want to pay yourself well, but you also have to be both fair and realistic — otherwise, you could price yourself out of gigs. (Oh yeah, and if you’re setting rates for the first time, you have the added hurdle of zero baseline for what’s considered “market.”)

I’ve understated and overstated my rates. Let me tell you a couple of stories.

Leaving Money on the Table

It’s October 2021. I was neck-deep in client work, and I really wasn’t interested in sinking any deeper.

A rep for a B2B consulting company messaged me on LinkedIn. For whatever reason, when they asked about my pricing for 500-word blog posts, I threw out $500, half-expecting them to balk at the implied rate of $1 per word. Something about their request led me to believe they had a small budget, so I didn’t really take them seriously. Mistake one.

In a follow-up message, the company wanted to clarify whether this was a fixed rate…