Sell Your Value, Not Your Time.

All too often freelancers simply set a range of fees for their work and then estimate and invoice accordingly.

If you are new to freelancing, your hourly rate or project rate probably reflects the fact that you don’t have a great deal of experience yet.
If you have been doing this for years, then your rates and fees are probably higher.

Either way, there’s a limitation here.

When you estimate jobs according to an hourly rate or typical project fee, you will usually find yourself ignoring a whole different element – and that is the value of your work and expertise.

As an example, a client might ask me to rewrite part of the company’s home page.

I’ll look at the job, and guess it will probably take me about three hours total.

What do I do then? Do I multiply the three hours by an hourly rate and then present the total as my estimate?

Not likely.

Nor do I poke around and see what other freelance writers usually charge for writing a home page.

What I do is look at two separate value points.

Question #1. What is the value of my expertise, regardless of the time the task will take?

This is a little like that old story about the plumber who is called out to fix a faulty water heater. He goes to the home, looks at the heater, kicks it once and it starts working again. “That will be $75.” He says.
The home owner says, “Are you nuts? You’re charging me $75 for taking one look at my water heater and then kicking it?” n
To which the plumber replies, “No, I’m charging $75 for knowing where to kick it.”

The plumber billed his service according to the value of his expertise. Not by the minute or by the hour. Not for the task.

When you estimate and bill according to your value, then all of a sudden you can start making a great deal more money than you did before.

That said, you do need to know where your core value lies.
That value is at its greatest at the intersection of your greatest area of expertise, and a high-value demand in the marketplace.

Question #2. What is the value of the outcome of my work?

Using that same example of rewriting a company home page, I might see that by making a few simple changes, I could help that company increase its conversion rates and revenues by a significant amount.

So why should I charge a few hundred dollars for my time, when the company will likely see a revenue increase of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Determining the true value of what you offer is rarely easy. Most of the time it is hard to be absolutely certain that you can make a huge difference to the performance of a web page, sales letter or any other kind of promotional material.

Even so, try to find a middle ground. Look at what you are going to do, consider the value of the likely outcome, and charge a fee that fairly reflects that outcome.

Concluding thoughts… n
It can take some time to establish your true value.

You need to build up a solid track record and reputation.

You need to prove you can deliver, and then build your authority based on what you have achieved.

Once you have achieved real authority, then you can reasonably start estimating your work based not on the length of the job, or the time it will take…but on the value of your expertise and the value of the likely outcome.