3 Ways to Increase Your Income without Raising Your Rates or Working More Hours
Note from Jennifer: Congratulations to everyone who won a ticket to the Summit on Content Marketing! Thanks for sharing your wisdom. If you did not win, but would like to attend the conference, the cost is $199 for 10 days of online content with many sessions useful to freelance writers. I’ve looked through the sessions and think that this is a great conference for writers, especially for the price. I’m going to write a post later in the week that lists the specific sessions I think would be helpful for content marketing writers. If you register, please use my affiliate link (click here to register) since I am donating all of my commissions ($100 per registration) to the ASJA WEAF program (Writers Emergency Assistance Fund).
You only have so many hours in a day. And there is a limit to the amount that you can charge your clients. While finding new clients willing to pay higher rates or moving into a more lucrative niche are always good strategies, this takes time and new clients don’t typically show up exactly when you need them the most. Plus, finding new clients at least partially relies on forces outside of your control.
The Secret: Increasing Your Hourly Rate by Reducing Time Spent
When you reduce the amount of time it takes you to complete a project, you more time to spend on other projects and increase your hourly rate. If you take this extra time to take on more work, then your income grows. Or if you want to use that extra time to do something you enjoy, you have that option as well.
For example, let’s say that you typically work 30 hours a week and usually write about 3 articles (700 words) a week earning $500 a pop along with 2 blog posts earning $350 earning $2100 week. Let’s say each article takes you about 7 hours (21 total) and each blog post about 3.5 hours (7 hours total) giving you a few hours a week for admin and marketing.
Let’s say you work on reducing how long it takes you by using a transcription service for some articles, focusing on topics you are familiar with and writing a bad first draft without editing. By getting down each article to 5 hours and each blog post to 2.5 hours, you gain an additional 7 hours each week. This means you can take on another additional article and blog post adding $850 a week to your income, which adds up to $40,800 dollars a year (based on working 48 weeks in the year.)
Even when you take away the expense of transcribing, which I didn’t in this example since that variable will change based on the length of the interview. it is still a very significant increase.
But how do you do reduce the time each article takes? Here are three ways to reduce the time that each deliverable requires thus increasing the hourly rate you earn on the projects:
- Write Faster – I’m not talking about reducing the quality, but I personally have found that most high income freelance writers describe themselves as fast writers. In my opinion, you should aim to write a 600 word blog post on a subject with no interviews in 2 or 3 hours maximum and a 700 word article with 2 interviews in no more than 5 hours. Based on the current market pay for these, you will end up with a good hourly rate. For me writing a bad first draft, writing to the level of quality expected by the client, writing about topics I am familiar with, and writing in my head can significantly reduce the time each piece takes. Check out my post on 10 tips to write faster.
- Decrease Revisions – Everytime your client has changes, it adds time to the project which decreases your hourly rate for the project. If you can reduce revisions, then you reduce the amount of time it takes and you increase your hourly rate. My best tips for reducing revisions is to create an outline and have everyone who will be signing off on the content to look at both the content and first draft. Read this post for other ways to reduce revisions.
- Outsource tasks – If you earn $100 per hour and outsource a task to proofreader, VA, or transcriptionist for less money per hour, then you can end up earning a significantly higher hourly rate even minus the amount spent on outsourcing. It’s easy to think of outsourcing as a luxury, but in most cases it is actually a smart business decision. My post about outsourcing gives the facts and figures to back up the business benefits of outsourcing.
Have you had success with any of these three ways to increase your hourly rate? Any other strategies that work for you?
Writing faster has been a big one for me and part of that has been planning the article before I write it. I often write content that has multiple interviewees/case studies and spending 10 or so minutes before I start writing, planning the flow of the article and how each case study will transition into the next has saved me hours in going back and restructuring the piece later.
I do the same thing. And I think it is the main reason I am a fast writer. I often pretty much write the entire article in my head before I sit down to type it out. The problem is sometimes my brain writes an article that isn’t actually the one that is due next. And I cannot write anything else until I get the one sitting in my brain out on paper. And of course this usually happens when I”m on a deadline. But I”ve learned that it is futile to try to fight it and I have to go with my natural flow
Jennifer,
Thanks for the contest – this should be an excellent virtual conference.
Outsourcing mundane tasks like transcription saved my sanity. I don’t know why it took me so long to farm this out. I use Rev.com. When I think back on all the times, I transcribed interviews my hourly rate suffered. I recently hired someone to track down contact information from a list of 360 leads I located.
Great tips!
You are definitely not alone. Many writers don’t realize how much money they are losing by not outsourcing. Instead they just think of it is a luxury and an expense. I also think that some writers don’t really view their writing as a business so they don’t see the value in investing in themselves and outsource. Viewing your freelance writing as a business is a huge shift that made such as difference.
So much good in this post, Jennifer. “Writing to the level of quality expected by the client” is something that some writers fight back on. In fact, there was a good discussion in an ASJA session just recently in New York in which Andrea King Collier was pushing back on a newish writer who was talking about how he overwrites because he wants to tell the story, do it justice. Yeah, you do you, but you won’t make much money. And I would argue that if you’re turning in more than you were paid for, you’re allowing yourself to be used.
I also love outsourcing. It’s “opportunity costs” in economics. I’ve done this a lot with my business with a virtual assistant, transcriptionists and other sub-contractors. I’m also doing this now with my life: hiring a house cleaner and other people to do things I don’t want to do for my house at a rate cheaper than I can earn during that time, giving me more time for my business and personal life.
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