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Freelance copywriter invoice template for R&D

pricing how much should I charge for this that's always the question every freelancer wants to know the most common question that I get and that anyone who talks about freelancing gets is on pricing and the most infuriating answer you will get is it depends but the thing is if somebody comes at you and spits a number and says you should be charging this much that's actually a red flag it does depend so you have to do some of the leg work and it's going to require a little bit more than just popping in a Facebook group and saying hey how much should I charge for this now there's going to be an element of that because you want to understand what people are charging because you want to understand what the ranges are but do not take somebody else's opinion in a Facebook group as what you should charge because you could be wildly over charging or wildly under charging by going by someone else's advice because this will be based on you and several different factors so I'm going to break all of that down so by the end of this video you'll feel confident that you are charging something reasonable that's also stretching you a little bit beyond your comfort zone and ensuring that you can actually pay the bills as a freelancer welcome to the paid copywriter podcast this is for free thinkers and introverts who just don't fit the nine to five mold and want to break free and start a business of one I share all of the tips strategies and behind the scene fails of how I transition from a nine to five career to freelance writing despite having no experience so if you want to learn all things copywriting persuasion psychology and marketing make sure you subscribe or follow whether you're listening to this on podcast or YouTube so I'm going to share the most common ways that Freelancers set their rates I want you to choose the one that works best for you and it might be a combination of one or two of these different strategies I'll also share how I set my prices okay so the first and most obvious and the thing that most people just do automatically is to go into Facebook groups sock grips whatever and just ask hey what do you charge for this you will probably get wildly varying numbers and rates and fees okay but you will understand at least from a general perspective how much people are charging that's step one but I urge you if you do that strategy if you go and you ask people's advice or ask what they're charging take that as one data point and then continue on in the journey to find out what your rates are do not just take that as oh okay that's my template I'm gonna go charge that just use that as one data point Second Use industry reports that is how I set my rates as a newbie freelancer who didn't have any experience doing this who literally just decided to one day get online fill out my LinkedIn profile build my portfolio create a website I literally recreated myself as a freelance copywriter even though I was in a nine to five sales career before that what I did was I downloaded the awai industry rates report I will link to it below it is free I see people charging for industry reports I can't say whether or not that's good qualities have not purchased them but I just don't see why you should have to pay for that however there is reports out there again that will give you ranges so the awai report will give you a bottom range and a top range I made sure that I was in the mid-range when I first started out as a beginner but that's because I had the confidence to start charging that out the gate it's a mindset thing a lot of people will not feel comfortable charging a high rate when they don't have the experience and that's understandable I think you should be charging based on your experience if you're a beginner you're going to want to be more toward that mid-range or maybe towards the bottom range while you get your footing and gain the experience and can confidently demand higher rates because you're experienced and you're giving better value it also highly depends on your Niche so I basically came out the gate charging between 350 and 450 for a blog post because I was in the tech Niche that might not be what you can get in other niches you have to find out if that's normal for your Niche you want to look for any type of data backed report support online I'm going to link to two below one is by Peak freelance the other one is by super path so there's certain industry reports they gather data and they try to understand what these companies are paying and you want to be in that range not only for you so that you can make a living but so that you don't drag down the perceived value of this industry if you're a good writer you start charging bottom of the barrel rates it's going to give clients the false illusion that they can get great writers for that price so don't under charge yourself for the rest of us so that's just for you and your pocket let's keep the industry High let's keep our standards high now there's going to be a certain amount of Freelancers out there that are good at numbers who have that side of their brain where they want to understand how these numbers came about so for me somebody who is extremely challenged with numbers and freaks out when I see spreadsheets and numbers when I saw the range from awai I could breathe the sigh of relief because I didn't have to do math I could literally just say between 450 and 850 where do I think I stand right it was very easy to work in that range okay but if you really want to factor in a bunch of different numbers a bunch of different factors you're going to want to go the calculator route okay there are free calculators online that will factor in so many different elements of how you can get to that price and that might make you feel more comfortable if your brain works that way so I'm going to link below to the copy hackers free calculator and let me just give you an idea of what type of questions they're going to ask right so it's going to say which of these best describes the project you're quoting is it an email is it a home page is it website copy is it a sales funnel is it a website audit how many times have you completed projects like this so they're gauging how experienced you are how many hours of Professional Training have you completed yikes is where this gets a little dicey because there's no real like certification that you need to become a copywriter and a Content writer but okay whatever so if you are a calculator person you're going to want to go that route so you can really feel confident I'm going to link to at least three different calculators you can use okay here's a strategy that I use as well once I understood the ranges this is what really allowed me to dial in my prices and that is to set your income goal first and then work backward to understand how much work you would have to do and at what price to make that full income so in the beginning it's like I I knew I wanted to make at least fifty thousand dollars a year right because I was coming from a 90 000 base salary as a salesperson I knew I wasn't gonna be making millions as a copywriter as somebody who was inexperienced I knew I would have to build up okay like I wasn't like the get rich quick person a lot of people they're hearing all this content online saying six figure copywriter this and that and it's very it's very enticing it's very seductive please do not fall for that height not to say that you can't it's just not you would be the exception rather than the rule especially if you're starting from complete scratch as a beginner like I did but fifty thousand dollars was a reasonable range I said okay I could probably make fifty thousand dollars on my own as a full-time self-employed freelance writer who has never been self-employed who has never been paid so professionally right that was reasonable from years ago maybe we want to hit that up to 60 or 70 000 with inflation and how expensive cost of living is nowadays but you get what I'm saying choose a reasonable range work backward and the beauty of doing it this way is that it helps you hold out you're not gonna take that 15 blog post when you know that's gonna put you so much much further back from that income goal so if I know that I can reasonably work for five or six clients I'm gonna have to factor in what is the lowest rate I would be able to take from those clients without having to take on more clients right so if I have a client that's paying me a hundred dollars for a blog post oh well I'm gonna have to find like a bunch more clients to make that fifty thousand dollar goal so it really sets your standards a bit higher because you're like I need to be choosy about the projects I take I need to Target higher paying clients I need to offer this this package in a certain way so that I meet that fifty thousand dollar income goal and anything anything that doesn't meet that requirement that's going to make me hustle with all of the other work to catch up it's not going to be worth it which is a really really key because a lot of people are tempted to take lower paying work because they're just so excited to get that initial opportunity we've all been there I've been there I under understand how it can be however the problem with that is is that once you're working for them you hate your life they're probably not a great client and you wind up resentful that you're working for so little and then your motivation dies so you're better off holding out now the hourly to Flat pricing equation is something I rely on especially for lengthy or more involved projects such as web copy where I know that there's going to be calls and a lot of instruction and a lot of going back and forth and revisions that's when I try to imagine what this is going to cost me from an hourly perspective it's a moment where I sit there and say how long realistically do I think this project is going to take me to complete and what dollar amount do I want to assign to that hour now the hourly to Flat equation it's trying to understand how long something takes however this is not charging by the hour it's us estimating how long it will take and assigning an overall dollar value typically I do not recommend anybody charges per hour or per word per word I'm going to go there it's not something I've ever done it's not something I ever will do I don't think you should either let's throw that out but let's talk about hourly I have done hourly before and it's been okay but the problem with hourly is that if you can get a blog post for example done in an hour and it's 65 to 85 dollars an hour you're only getting paid 85 dollars Max per hour for an entire blog post when you could be charging much more so just because you have honed your skills enough to complete something in a shorter amount of time the hourly rate actually penalizes you for being better at your job do you understand what I'm saying it's when you charge per hour you're basically more incentivized to take longer on a project so you can make more so it's not fair to you or the client so just try to steer away from hourly I think hourly can work when it comes to like social posts when it comes to times when you have to get on calls you want to be compensated for that time or maybe a social post like you know that's only going to take an hour so you wind up charging 125 dollars per hour right but in general I don't want you to think about charging hourly sometimes clients will push it the only way I would agree to hourly at this stage of my career is if they're saying hey we need you for like 10 hours per month to do X Y and Z maybe I would agree to that for like long-term stability work I just it's a little it gets very complicated but let's talk about the hourly to Flat equation because this helps me price like email sequences it helps me price web like website copy web copy and it helps me a bit with social media posts because I can understand how long it typically takes me to complete those projects and mentally I have set my hourly rate at a hundred dollars an hour so I always try to keep that in mind even when I'm doing anything it's like hey my rate is a hundred dollars an hour and I need to price this project so that no matter how long it takes me it does equate to at least a hundred dollars an hour so for example let's say I am tasked with writing a social media post on LinkedIn I would say for me at this stage that's going to take me like a minimum of two hours in terms of like research especially in the beginning if we just start off let's say it takes me two hours to write a LinkedIn post between researching several drafts editing stuff like that I'm just gonna you know I would say two hours would be safe I would charge no less than two hundred dollars for one LinkedIn post granted I am in a B2B technology Niche I sell to large Enterprise companies so I can charge those rates that's not going to be the case if you are targeting companies that don't have budgets like that so keep that in mind that's why I'm saying don't go buy what other people can charge because I've built up reputation testimonials referrals an impressive portfolio with samples logos I've gotten myself to the point where I can justify those rates you might not be there so it's okay to scale it back a bit and say hey this is what I'm going to charge now but eventually once I build up more credibility I'm going to start demanding a higher rate now if you're an experienced freelancer I would say this is something you want to try which is value based pricing so especially if you're in a more of a direct response Niche let's say you write sales Pages for course creators you can estimate how well that page that you wrote will convert and you can charge them based on that amount I'm just giving a very simple example because value-based pricing has a ton of different factors that go into it you can do this equation a lot of different ways but for this example let's just say I write a sales page for a fitness coach and I know that this Fitness coach is using that sales page to enroll students for a five thousand dollar membership well I can do the math how many five thousand dollar enrollments is this coach likely to get and what percentage of that enrollment do I feel Justified to charge for okay so again if you are really dialed in your freelance business value-based pricing is something you're going to be more comfortable with but I would say that's pretty Advanced and not something that I even do in my business now last but not least and this is your last resort if you're just starting out you just got that email saying Hey I want to hop on a call and you're freaking out right now and you're like Christine I don't have time to do all this freaking calculation I don't feel confident enough what do I do I would say this is a last resort get on a call with a client and ask them what their budget is right and worst case scenario you go by what their numbers are whatever they're offering maybe you can negotiate a couple hundred dollars up and then when you feel a little bit more calm and dialed in you're ready to take control of your business and you do do the calculations say okay then you can evaluate and say wow this person actually you know their rates were not up to Industry standard I don't think I want to work for them anymore and you just drop the client just don't freak out some of us who are new might just be like you know I just want to get client work under my belt I don't want to do all the heavy lifting and try to understand like exactly what I need to price and that's okay because a lot of freelance price set adding is trial and error and talking to a bunch of clients and seeing how much you can charge if if you want to know exactly how I set my rates it was using that awai rate sheet and then it was literally getting on calls presenting my prices and then seeing how the client would react oh I charge 450 for a blog post okay that sounds great that would make me think Hmm well I probably could have said 550 and they would have been okay with that so you start to incrementally raise your rates as you get more experience but it takes trial and error and the reason why Freelancers struggle with this concept is because they're not getting on calls with clients and they're not talking to enough clients they're not having these meetings and that's why they get stuck with low paying clients so if you really want to know the key to charging a high rate it's to get out there and talk to a bunch of clients and actually get live feedback on your rates and push the envelope a bit and see how much you can charge and the great thing is is that once you've gotten a client to pay you 650 for a blog post you're probably never going to go back to lower than that at least you shouldn't and that's really how we progress as Freelancers like we raise our standards and then we refuse to go any lower than that now if getting on those calls with clients is your issue you want to learn how to cold pitch and cold pitching is something that I specialize in like I mentioned in this video I used to be in sales so what I want you to do is click the link below and download my free guide to how to get on LinkedIn and start cold pitching that way you can have these conversations with clients and incrementally raise your rates and make the freelance income that you are looking for I hope this helps download that free guide it is linked below and it tells a little bit about my story too so it's not just some boring PDF download I hope you enjoy it