Freelancers Should Give Themselves a Raise
Inflation passed 4% in the US last year, so why not?
For the better part of the past year I’ve been reading and watching videos that talk about how bad inflation has been getting. A quick google search will show you that in the US the inflation rate increased to 4.7% in 2021.
For anyone who doesn’t know what inflation is, inflation refers to the increase of the cost of goods or services in an economy. Basically, if inflation is going up, the value of the money people earn goes down (because things become more expensive to buy). In a perfect world your annual earnings going up at the same rate as inflation would mean that the value of your hard earned cash would remain the same indefinitely, assuming the inflation rate never exceeded the rate at which your earnings increased every year. But that’s not the world we live in.
So the point of this post is to challenge all you freelancers, side hustlers, and small business owners out there to think about giving yourself a raise by increasing your prices!
Most people working a 9–5 job usually ask for a raise each year to accommodate for cost of living increases (if not they should be) and freelancers should too!
We’re all in this to make money, if the cost of living in your area is consistently increasing year over year, you should try to do the same with your rates.
A common objection to this idea that I assume a lot of you might have is… “But if I increase my prices, I’ll lose my clients”
My answer to that is maybe you will price yourself out of your current market segment, but you might also find new clients and even keep existing clients at your new increased rates.
The reality is that inflation affects everyone. Think about your clients, prior to turning to freelancers they probably enlisted the help of businesses to get their projects done. Those businesses are probably raising the prices of their services to combat inflation, why wouldn’t you?
At the very least, just think about it! I hear from so many of you that talk about “the glory days of freelancing” when the money was good, etc. Well, if you aren’t increasing your prices, your profits are just getting eaten by inflation every year and that’s probably why you feel like things aren’t as good as they used to be…
Think about it, give it a shot, wish you luck my friends!
