You’ve achieved it. You’ve finally got regular work from loyal customers who pay on time and in full, after all these years of struggle. Happy days. Yet you won’t just settle for that, will you?

It is one thing is to become a good freelancer. But you still think about ways to be more successful, so let’s look at some tried and tested approaches to improving your freelance finances in 2020.

1. Specialise

Let’s say you run a blog for self-improvement and you seek a writer to grow your content output. Which of the following writers will you hire? 

• Anyone contacting you promising to write about gardening, dating, dog training, sports and anything else you’ll pay them to write about.
• Someone who sells himself as a specialist in self-improvement and spends most of his time writing content based on self-improvement.

In other words, the age-old question: will you go for a renowned expert or the Jack of all trades? However, more importantly, which of these applicants would you probably pay more?

The answer is simple, of course, is the specialist. If you brand yourself as a professional, you are more likely to secure clients, and more importantly, you are also likely to earn more. So make sure that you are using a properly branded email and have a portfolio to back up your claims and prove you are a professional, perhaps even include a business social media or LinkedIn page.

2. Get More Social Proof to Raise Your Freelance Writing Rates

The first step to boost your freelance rates is to create and strengthen your reputation. Having more social proof will help you get that done. Testimonials would improve your reputation in your market as an expert and authority, giving existing customers an abundant signal to continue working with you.

At the same time, new and potential customers get the impression that you are the right person to hire. So, get as many testimonials as you can, and you’re ready for the market and you can increase the writing prices comfortably.

3. Find higher paying clients

Everybody wants clients who pay more, but how do you find them? Tools such as Who Pays Writers will guide you to publications paying within the amount you want in the case of writers.

Spending some time networking is a great way to find clients. It can also be good to start building a relationship and potentially attracting a new client by sending letters of introduction and examples of your work to potential clients.

4. Avoid Problem Clients

Many bad clients are excessively focused on money. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being careful, but when a client tries to milk every last penny out of you, that should set off the alarm bells. If you’re only dealing with good clients– who trust you and understand the value you’re offering–you’re giving yourself more flexibility rate in the future. 

When you regularly do a top job, these clients will not be battling you for a small additional increase. They’ll realize that with experience the value of your time improves, and they’ll want to reward you for the brilliant job you’re doing so they can hold you around longer.

You have almost zero opportunity to get a raise from problem clients for the record, which further emphasizes the importance of due diligence. Getting insurance is important too when dealing with bad clients as there are people out there who would claim you poor services, bad advice or dodgy design just as a means to getting compensation or a freebie, so be sure that your business is properly protected again things like this happening to you.

5. Raise your rates

Most freelancers are wary of rising rates, even experienced ones. The real concern is that it will cost you jobs, or offend long-standing customers, and be massively harmful in general.

Getting wary is understandable. And yet so many successful freelancers say that they knew their doubts were unfounded once they did it. Even better, higher rates will increase the client base. Why? Simple reverse psychology. When your services are expensive, people assume that your work will be better.

And if some customers walk away, fine. Stick to your guns; there’s going to be a lot more clients. You may have to spend a couple of weeks soothing your nerves, but you’ll end up benefiting immensely in the long run.