For the past three years I’ve been a freelance editor, content writer, and researcher. Why? Well, because it’s a lot easier to pay the bills when you have an additional income outside of your graduate teaching assistantship. But, one of the big issues I’ve noticed when freelancing is how to rationalize your fees to others.
How to set your fees. I think the biggest issue is what to charge. I have always used this infographic, and I hope it works well for you. I should note this is for a full-time freelancer. I usually cut everything into about 1/4 because that is how much time I have that I can allocate to freelance work as a graduate student who already has a 20 hour job. But I’ll mention some of those in a bit. Take a few minutes to look over this infographic. 
So, one thing I will mention about this infographic is that a) it does a great job of lining out costs you should consider but also b) this might not work for you if you’re starting out freelancing. For example, when I started freelancing, I charged only $8 an hour because I had no clientele. Being one of the cheapest editors in town made my list grow very quickly. Sometimes you have to start out low and work your way up. Also, this infographic doesn’t mention geographic location much. In the college-town I work in, you would be hard-pressed to find an individual who would pay you $70 an hour, but then again, many companies might. While I’m not a full-time freelance editor/writer, I do it a lot, and it helps my husband and I pay our bills. Below are some tips I use when growing my client base.
Ways to stick out with clients:
-Do more. When clients ask you to copyedit — do more. If you catch some content issues, you might not spend a ton of time working on those, but you should point some of them out, and then you can offer to fix those as well.
-Sometimes you gotta do pro bono to build that clientele. One of the best ways I’ve had successes with new clients, is to do a page or two of free work for them to show them what my editing looks like (to give them a sense of the depth/type of editing I do), and it usually makes them more comfortable with my prices.
-Contracts. Okay, so for me, this is a little scary, but it has been really helpful after two rough freelancing experiences I’ve had. The first one was working on a dissertation. The client told me to just line edit (which I did), but then I did some of that extra work I mentioned above and also pointed out issues with content/organization/etc. I was working with this client for about four months, and kept mentioning that the content and arguments that were being made weren’t clear, and that I could help work on that, but she declined multiple times. Long story short, her dissertation was rejected, and then she wanted her money back. It was tough, but I showed her the work I had done, and mentioned several times that I thought she needed to work on these areas, and I wasn’t going to offer a refund for the good quality of work I had done. The second instance of this was actually with a scholarly journal. I worked as a freelancer, and they would actually send out contracts with how much we would be paid for each project. That sounded great to me. But, on four different projects, I never received payment. So, I pushed that I had a contract, and grew a bit thicker skin that I usually have and suggested that I would take it further if need be. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. BUT, I think as freelancers, we have to have this thick skin and be able to show the validity in work and the time it takes. It isn’t something lesser, and if someone doesn’t want to pay your rates, so be it.
For your contract, some helpful portions to include might be:
- Scope of work– Lay out in detail the work that will be performed
- Timeframe– Indicate if this is just a one time project, ongoing work, etc.
- Deadlines– Include deadlines for both parties, such as when you need info from the client for the project, when you will deliver drafts/final work, etc.
- Payment terms– All the money info such as your fees (by the hour, by the project, flat rate?), when payments are due, how you accept payments, and any other money details
- Ownership– If you are producing creative work, such as graphics, photos, written content, who owns it and are you allowed to include it in your portfolio?
- Changes, edits and drafts– How many changes or edits can the client make for things like a blog design or other creative work
- Changes to the contract– How will you make amendments or changes to the contract? Does it need to be in writing, verbal?
- Termination– Lay out what will happen if one of you decides to end the relationship early, including payment terms, ownership of work product, etc.
- Legal disclaimers and terms– You should include any other terms related to working with you and legal disclaimers for certain types of work (List from: http://neshawoolery.com/blog/5-legal-tips-every-freelancer-needs-to-know)
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 