Recurring Revenue: The Secret to Freelancing Success

The major challenge freelancers face is generating steady income through recurring revenue. Some months can be busy, while other months can be dry. These inconsistencies and fluctuations can make life unpredictable for freelancers.

One way to generate recurring revenue is through offering monthly maintenance packages for existing clients. For example, f you are a website developer, you could offer ongoing website maintenance.

The idea is simple. Think about what your clients will need on an ongoing basis and see if these are things you can help with.

We’ll go back to the example of a web developer. Here’s a list of services website clients may need over time:

Backups

Clients want to make sure that their sites are backed up in case anything goes wrong.

Security Audits

Website security is a big concern these days. Making sure that your website is up-to-date with all the best practices is a great way to promise ongoing security.

Site updates

Another option is to include a set number of hours your client can use to request updates to their site. This way they can rely on you to help continue to improve their web presence.

WordPress and plugin updates

If you are building a WordPress website for your client, you may want to include WordPress and plugin updates as part of your monthly maintenance.

Performance audits

As your clients use their websites, they may make changes that affect performance. You could offer monthly performance audits to ensure that your client’s website is running optimally.

Support

If your client has additional technical needs or requires help with WordPress, offering technical support can be a good way to increase buy-in. Add a support phone number and take calls as needed!

How Do You Determine a Price?

One of the challenges in offering ongoing maintenance is estimating the amount of time required to do so.

So how do you price this?

Ask yourself how much time it would take each month to provide the services you’re offering. You could multiply that by your hourly rate and then you’ll have your price!

At the same time, you may want to test this out with your client month by month. This way you can make changes as needed.

How Do You Bring This Up To Your Clients?

The first thing you’ll need to do is to create that list we talked about earlier. Get a sense of whether or not your client would need ongoing maintenance services.

If they do, just ask your clients what their thoughts are about setting up a monthly agreement. Show them that you’ve done your homework by presenting all the services you would offer them.

The idea here is that by negotiating a monthly retainer, you and your client save time and money.

Look at it this way. If your client reaches out to you every single time they need something, you’ll have to go through the process of quoting a price, drafting an agreement and signing a legal document before you can do any work.

This kind of administrative overhead takes up valuable time on both sides. So a monthly retainer is the most logical option and the best of both worlds.

Let Me Know Your Thoughts

Have you tried pushing for a monthly retainer agreement before? How did it go? And did I miss anything?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Victor runs The Remote Lifestyle (http://theremotelifestyle.com), where he teaches you step-by-step how you can become a successful digital nomad.