How I Built a Full-Time Career as a Freelance Writer
By: Adrian Drew
Tags: Creativity, Business, Work, Freelancing, Writing

Lesson Two: Find a Golden Ticket

One of the biggest problems freelancers tend to have is increasing their rates. They secure a few clients, those clients become accustomed to paying x amount of money per article, and then the budding writer gets stuck. They don’t want to demand more money and lose a client, but they also don’t want to spend years writing for the same nominal sums.

How, then, do you increase your rates once the money starts coming in? Well, as with any sale, if you’re expecting customers to pay big money, you’d better start demonstrating big value. You wouldn’t spend $10,000 on a fake diamond ring, so don’t expect your clients to pay triple your current rate if you still have next to no experience.

It doesn’t matter how much value you claim to provide. Anybody can say they’re providing value. You have to be able to prove it. You wouldn’t pay thousands for something if you couldn’t ascertain its value, so don’t expect clients to pay you a lot of money just because you tell them you’ll provide high-quality content.

In the world of writing, the proof isn’t in the pudding, but in the experience. Often, not even a degree in creative writing is enough to persuade a person to pay you. Trust me. I’ve employed many writers, and not once have I asked to see a degree. I ask where they’ve been published.

In my experience, being published in reputable spaces has enabled me to ramp up my rates quickly. Last winter, I was charging a standard price of £0.10 per word. Fast-forward 12 months and I’m being paid $500 for 500 words — $1 per word. That’s an enormous jump for a year, and the only way I was able to provide it was by demonstrating value.

Interestingly, the client paying me those rates approached me. I didn’t apply to work for them. They found me through my work.

So what changed? Well, around a year ago, I was catching up with my mum at a local cafe over a hot mug of coffee when my phone lit up, displaying an email that seemed too good to be true.

After reading the subject line, “An Invitation From Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global,” my first thought was ‘surely this is spam’. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

Getting published to Thrive was a huge deal for me. But most importantly, it was a golden ticket that allowed me to increase my rates. Adding to that, I had two articles of mine go semi-viral, attracting 50K views each. More recently, my publication, Mind Cafe, exceeded 100K followers and began reaching millions of monthly readers, as well as welcoming esteemed writers such as Nir Eyal, Benjamin Hardy, PhD, and Brianna Wiest to our roster.

All of these things communicate one thing to my clients. That is, that I know what I’m doing. I stand out amongst the competition, and therefore they’re happy to pay more money for my work.

If you want to charge more and get away from those peanut-paying clients, you need to find ways to make a name for yourself either by growing an audience or being published in a reputable space. Those are your golden tickets — your credentials.

Every decent feature is like an extra dollar in your pocket where your freelancing rates are concerned. You’ll probably be rejected a few times, but that’s okay. So long as you’re taking the time to write truly engaging, high-quality content, somebody will publish you, and that somebody will become your golden ticket.