So you want to raise your freelancing rates. You may have read that conservative freelance rate increases can be anywhere from 10% to 15%. But how do you sell your new, higher rates to existing clients?

A compelling reason to increase your freelance rates is the addition of new skills and services. Offer your clients a complete set of services, making it easy to complete a project with you.

What Services Do You Offer Right Now?

Maybe you’re a freelance designer. You focus on user interface design and user experience. You dream in wireframes and have Photoshop layers on the brain. Or maybe you are a web developer that takes the design and generates clean HTML and CSS markup. You could even be the back-end developer that stiches the user experience requirements and the markup together, launching the end product.

Opportunity

Do you see what just happened there? The client just had to go through three separate people to complete the project. That’s a pain point. One project is now three smaller projects that need to perfectly align for success. There is an opportunity for you here.

First, Increase Your Value

Imagine if you could take away that pain. You can. And it’s easier than you think. It is possible for a single freelancer to design, build, and launch a website or web application. It happens everyday. These individuals have honed the right skills to bring a project to life and see it through to the end. That is a complete service experience. The client comes to you with an idea, you execute the idea, and you launch the final project.

The more quality services you can offer, the more valuable you are. You save your clients time. Clients can’t create more time.

Then You Can Increase Your Rates

So how much can you increase your freelance rate? Well, by adding additional services you increase your involvement. If you used to only work on the design, but now you can do the markup as well, you have doubled your involvement in the project. If you can also take care of the back-end requirements and launch the project, you have complete involvement.

As your involvement changes your hourly rate should go up with it. Is that number a 20% increase? A raise from $50 to $65 per hour? From $70 to $80 per hour? That’s up to you. Just know that the more skills you have, the more valuable you are to your clients. Sell them on that fact.