As an employee, it’s easy to make more money. You knock on the boss’s door, point out all of the wonderful things you’ve been doing for the company and ask him to add 10 percent to your salary. If he laughs, you either ask what you still need to do to get that raise or you start looking for another job. Either way, ambitious types should always know what’s coming next. For freelancers though, increasing earnings is a little tougher. The most obvious way – to charge more – can have the effect of reducing your income as you price yourself out of the market. There’s often a difference between what a freelancer thinks he’s worth and what the market says he’s worth. But there are a few things you can do to raise your income without raising your prices.
Increase Productivity
Perhaps the most obvious is to work harder. One of the biggest shocks for workers new to freelancing is the recognition that time is money. While it’s theoretically true that freelancers are free to take time off whenever they want, provided there’s no deadline looming (and when does that ever happen?), it’s certainly true that they’ll be counting the amount of money they didn’t earn during those hours at the beach. The more billable work you can pack into a day then, the more you’ll be able to earn.