As freelancers it’s up to us to dictate the rates. If we leave these details up to our clients we won’t get paid at all.

What this did teach me is to be upfront that I expect revisions to be requested before payment is submitted. Once payment is received, it is my understanding that they have read and find the articles to their liking and there for no revisions will be expected. Revisions requested after payment’s been made any revisions are charged my normal rates.

Kinda sad, really.

The example you used is a bit faulted, too. You were granted a raise for loyalty in the face of others who didn’t hang on – that’s not the same as going to ask for a raise. There’s a difference

But I hear you. I know where you’re coming from and it’s good.

And yes, I think that proving your dedication to a project is definitely part of justifying a raise, the same way someone who has worked for a certain corporation is honored after a few decades for loyalty to a company. I have one client, for example, that gave me a raise after a year because I stuck with his project for that long. There may have been other writers who submit quality pieces as well, but he could count on me to be around every single week, not wonder if I was going to leave after just a month or two.

This is a great list, and I have used several points from your list to justify rate raises.

At this point, I don’t really ask for raises. It’s more like “I’m increasing my rates by X as of [next month]. If that works for you, great. If not, I’m happy to recommend someone else.” Not this exact phrasing, but that’s pretty much it.

So I’ll be eager to see if the way you do it is better than mine. You know, so I can steal your way.

@ Krista – If you’re willing to part ways with the clients you have, then yes. If you can get more elsewhere and are willing to pursue that, then yes. Both cases mean that you are making a *choice*. You are not demanding more money just because. See the difference?

The problem is that the numbers don’t match up. People want huge raises. Great! Go for it! Back it up. Cost of living generally isn’t enough to warrant the big money people want to leap for.

I don’t want to discourage people from asking for raises, but I do rather want to demonstrate that to get more money, you need to find ways to justify doing so. Make sense?

When there are no changes in the gig, the working conditions or the outside factors, no valid reason justifies asking for more money for your work.

Cost of living, economic factors et all are all outside influences that change the gig’s working conditions and thus do justify a raise.

The post refers to arbitrarily requesting a raise. No one can come in and say, “I’ve been your writer for ten years. You should pay me more,” if nothing at all has influenced any change in the situation.

But writing something certainly doesn’t obligate you to promote it too, unless that was in the terms of agreement, I feel.

On the other hand, writing well and having your piece be so good that Diggs galore crash your client’s server doesn’t really mean (in my opinion) that you have the right to demand more money the next time around. It could have been a lucky shot, could have been the right day, could have been a fluke, who knows? It could have been that good a piece, too, and in that case, you should be able to repeat the process in the future.

Consistently crashing servers, I would think, would put you in a much better position to raise your rates.

As for freelancers who do anything at any price, be cautious about passing judgment. Some people may need the money that badly, some may live in locations where the economy permits lower rates, and some may just feel that this is what they want to charge. There’s room for everyone

My main concern is that there seems to be, for every freelancer who genuinely values their work, a freelancer who will do anything for any price. How do we keep our jobs and ask for more?

Thanks so much for this article!
xAC

We also have a time-delay on revisions so that people who approve and pay can’t come back in six months, say they just got around to reading and would like everything changed.

But fear of PayPal? I get why you would have chosen to do that. That SUCKS.

I told her that since she’d paid anyone would assume she’d read them over and was happy, so if she wanted new articles, I was charging her for new articles. She actually went to Paypal and tried to get them to close my account for failure to provide satisfactory services. Paypal tends to back the buyer over the seller, though this time they were on the fence. In the end, I wrote new articles because the time involved in the fight was taking up too much of my day and stressing me out.

The choice of what you’d like to do is up to you. If you feel it’s out of the scope of your agreement, you can always cheerily say, “Sure, I’d be happy to do that for you. My rate would be XX and I can get that back to you in YY days. You’ll be able to compare the two and pick which you like best!”

What do you think?