“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!

Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”

We know it’s hard to judge a book by its cover, so we’re making the first chapter and the table of contents available to download for anyone who is interested. That way you can decide for yourself if this book is right for you. We think it’s great for any sort of freelancer who wants to write web copy, be they freelancer writers who are new to the web, or web designers whose clients keep asking them to take care of copy—it happens all the time, so it’s a great idea to learn the skill and make some money out of it!

• Download the first chapter here.
• Get your discount by signing up for the Rockin’ List here.
• Purchase How to Write Great Copy for the Web here.

One of the nicest things about freelancing is that you decide when to give yourself a raise. If you feel like you’re doing a great job, developing experience and becoming hotter property, you don’t need to wait for your boss to notice. You can give yourself a raise, and if your clients agree with your assessment, you’ll get it.

As a freelancer, you can give yourself a raise by increasing your hourly or per-project rates. This part is simple, but setting up the right preconditions for the change is a trickier process. How can you raise your rates while making sure you still get plenty of work?

Throughout this post, there are a few things I want you to remember:

1. There is zero agreement amongst both freelancers and clients about how much their work is worth. I’ve received quotes varying between $250 and $2,000 in response to exactly the same job ad, posted on the FreelanceSwitch Jobs Board. It’s clear that across the dozens of applicants, no two freelancers
   agreed on what their service was worth!
2. For any given service, one prospective client could have a budget of $500, and another a budget of $5,000, and everything in between. In many ways, it’s useful to think of your hourly rate as the price of a product. Some people will never pay more than $100 for a pair of shoes, while others regularly spend $500. The cheaper pair of shoes may be just as good quality as the more expensive pair, but in the eyes of the customer, the perceived value is different.
3. Raising your rates is fair practice. When a prospect accepts your pricing and becomes your client, they are accepting that the value you will outweighs your rates, allowing them to turn a profit on your work. If they didn’t believe this, they would have sought out a cheaper freelancer.
4. The market should set your rates. Your perception of your own value to clients is a guesstimate unless you test it. If you’ve never experimented with different rates, how do you know that your clients don’t feel like you’re undervaluing your services? They certainly won’t be the ones to tell you!

When to Give Yourself a Raise

One situation where you should always try raising your rates is when you are unable to meet the demand for your services. If you have enough clients to keep you busy 50 hours of the week – and you only want to work 35 – it’s time to incrementally raise your rates until supply and demand equalize again.

Another sign that you might be charging too little is if nobody ever mentions your rates as a sticking point. At the very least, you should occasionally have clients try to negotiate you down in price, but still choose to work with you even if you don’t budge. The saying “You can’t please everybody” is true—and if you’re pleasing everyone, something is probably wrong with your rates.

If you’re doing lots of work each week, are being paid for it, and still struggle to make ends meet, you may find you are charging too little. In the developed world it would be considered very unusual for a skilled freelancer to charge less than $25 an hour. After all, you’re not flipping burgers, or doing a job the average person could be trained to do in a week. You are a skilled worker and deserve to be compensated as such.

Another time to think about a rate rise is if you’re simply better than you were at the time you first set your rates. If you’ve been working 30+ hours a week in your freelance field for a year, you can’t help but have become more skilled than you were when you began. For better results, clients should expect to pay more, and you should expect to charge more.

There are also some situations where raising your rates might be a good idea even when your roster of clients isn’t full. While some freelance services—like HTML & CSS markup/coding—are in widespread demand, others—like programming in Ruby on Rails—are more specialized. There may not be a large enough pool of prospective clients to keep your hands full for 35 hours a week, but as a specialist, trying to attract more clients may not be the best way to increase your income. Instead, remember that your services are rare, and as such, can command higher rates.

Opposite to the situations described above, there are circumstances where you probably shouldn’t meddle with your rates:

In these situations you should stick with what’s working until you have a more solid base from which to experiment.

An Approach to Testing

My philosophy for finding your current ideal price-point is to raise your rates in small increments on a per-client basis until you find your sweet spot. The second half of the strategy is to make sure you receive feedback on your rates. This is so you can clearly observe how your rates are affecting your business.

If you display your rates publicly, in the Services area of your website or blog, clients have the opportunity to evaluate them in private. Ten people may consider your services and reject them on the basis of price without you ever knowing. This can be a great time-saver when you’ve settled on your rates and are confident in them — these are all people who may have otherwise requested a quote, only to reject it after they saw the bottom line. But the situation changes when you are trying to re-evaluate your rates. You want your client’s decision-making process to be open to you. This is why you should consider removing public pricing from your site during this phase, and discussing prices only after prospects contact you.

If you’ve put effort into an email exchange, or into preparing a quote, most prospects will take the time to write a response, even if they decide your service isn’t right for them. And most of the time, they will state a reason for deciding not to hire you. Keeping track of these reasons will be invaluable when trying to determine your current
‘sweet spot’ rates.

Giving Yourself a Raise

If you’ve decided to re-evaluate your rates and have made sure you’re in a good position to do so, here’s how to begin: the next time a new prospect inquires about your services, add $5 to your previously quoted hourly rate. If you are someone who charges by the project, increase your project rate by 10%. Try the same thing for the next prospect, and the next prospect, and the next.

Do you notice a change?

If you find that more people are knocking you back on the basis of price, to the point where you aren’t able to work as many hours as you like, you may need to return to your earlier, more successful rates, and work on building up the value of your services before trying again. However, if you find that you are converting at the same rate, and being hired just as much, this suggests that the market has accepted your new rate.

Because this process is based on small incremental increases, you can continue to repeat the process until you finally feel the market pushing back, telling you that you’ve gone a little too far. At that point, pull back one notch to your last successful price-point. For now, this is your current sweet spot. In future, when you feel you’ve once again increased the value of what you provide, you can attempt to advance further if you feel confident doing so.

Value-adding Can Take it Further

Earlier, I talked about how clients will measure your rates against their perception of the value you will provide them. By increasing this perception of value, you may be able to raise your rates further. Here are some ways you can add more value to your services:

Increase your skill. The most obvious method to start: simply get better at what you do. Learn new techniques, develop unique methods of working, and refine your style. More impressive work justifies more impressive rates.

Become better at expressing the benefits. This relates to the way you talk about and describe your service. If you can become better at the way you communicate the benefits of what you do, clients will see it as more valuable. Compare:

I write highly polished blog articles using impeccable spelling and grammar.

to…

My articles are highly optimized for StumbleUpon traffic, and have the potential to attract tens of thousands of visitors to your blog.

Both are important and desirable qualities, but the latter seems more unique and valuable.

By describing the benefits differently you might find clients are all of a sudden willing to pay more for your work, even though the final product is the same. The perceived value is different.

Create a perception of scarcity. People often associate scarcity and exclusivity with quality. Even something as simple as adding the following sentence to your service page can create a perception of scarcity:

Please be aware that, due to high levels of demand, there may be a waiting list for this service.

If you ever find yourself swamped with work and need to stop accepting new clients for a while, avoid taking your Service page down. Instead, add a notice letting prospects know how busy you are:

Due to overwhelming demand, this service is temporarily unavailable. Please contact me if you’d like to be notified when it re-opens.

Earn more prestige. Become well known enough for what you do and people will value you on much more than the apparent face-value of your work. People know that experts are always pricey, but usually worth it. If you can be truly perceived as an industry leader, you can probably charge your dream rates — and then some!

Tap into hot trends. A few years ago, a relatively new freelance skill emerged — SEO copywriting, in other words, the ability to write persuasive sales copy that would also rank in the search engines. Though any person with copywriting skill and a basic knowledge of SEO fundamentals can perform SEO copywriting, for a while it had a much higher price tag than ordinary SEO, because many small business owners were desperate to tap into the benefits. By being flexible enough to tweak their service to tap into a hot trend, copywriters were able to significantly raise their rates.

A Final Word

Adjusting your pricing is a vital strategy to increase your profits over time, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy. Otherwise, you’ll reach a point where it’s not working
as effectively anymore. For example:

• There may come a point where, to raise your rates any higher, you may need to start working with a different kind of client — say, big businesses with big budgets. However, these kinds of organizations often prefer to work with trusted firms rather than individual freelancers. Eventually you may reach a point where your rates can’t increase any higher without fundamentally changing the structure of your business.
• In the future, you may wish to work fewer hours to focus on other areas of your life that need attention. Perhaps you’ll have a child—or another child—or decide to go back to school, or write a novel, or go surfing six months out of the year. Who knows? Either way, regardless of what your rates are, cutting your hours by 10 or 20 a week will result in a significant pay cut. If you want to maintain your current standard of living, you’ll need to get creative.

In the rest of the chapter, I teach you how to create low-maintenance partnerships you can profit from, while doing very little extra work. You’ll also learn how to add new products and services to your business that eventually remove you from the equation — except when it’s time to collect your earnings!

Discount Code

FreelanceSwitch readers can use the discount code ‘RAISE’ to get $5.00 off The Blog Business Funnel.

As a freelancer, I’ve tackled plenty of projects. Not all have been enjoyable, naturally, but I’ve been able to keep a steady flow of work. I don’t think every job has to be perfect, and as long as I’m making good money and maintaining my freedom, I’m generally satisfied with my career.

While I’ve worked regularly for some of the same clients, I have never had to work on one project that required multiple weeks of single-client focus. It’s a totally different beast. Not only can it be unpleasant, but it can uproot your whole vibe.

Obviously when you put “all of your eggs in one basket,” so to say, it’s not the ideal situation for most freelancers. Freelancers like to pick and choose, and the thing I love about being a solopreneur is being able to wrap up a project and kiss it goodbye when I’m not enjoying it. Most situations are temporary, and I have a say in who I work for. Of course there are initiatives that I enjoy but there’s no doubt that a huge advantage to freelancing is being able to finish a project and never have to look back on the work or the client.

In this case, I think there are two kinds of freelancers: Those that take on short-term gigs and focus solely on those. That can be lucrative, and often involves relying on a recruiter or agencies to find ongoing jobs. In my case, I am a full-time freelancer that takes on a mix of one-time jobs. I also have several clients that need ongoing work, and also hold down a very flexible part-time job. This blend of arrangements enables me to consistently pay the bills and live comfortably. So if you work strictly for agencies, taking on a long-term job for one client isn’t exactly dangerous–it can be great. But if you’re making a living off of several clients and having to constantly secure customers, and you take on one long-term job for a single client, it can hurt your business.

There are many issues that came up for me as I’ve been powering through the last several weeks. And I always try to learn from my experiences–and share those experiences with you–so here goes:

No Time for Marketing

It’s been hard to make time to outreach, and not only does that have the potential to hurt my business, but it wears on me emotionally. When you can’t plant seeds and you are the kind of freelancer who likes unveiling new opportunities, it hampers the feeling that you are spreading your wings and flying.

Instead, I’ve worried that I’m not lining up new jobs and ruining my business–but really, I know myself well enough to know that’s just an old fear I had from the beginning of my career as a contractor. In this case, it’s okay for me to take a break from marketing, because I haven’t stopped all efforts. I’m cutting down for now and I’m stable enough to step back from my normal marketing agenda. But I know it is temporary. Beginning freelancers may not be able to do this and ceasing on marketing could be devastating. Assess your own situation first before you take on a one-client gig that will go for a few weeks.

Perpetual Fretting

In addition to fearing that I’m not securing new work, paranoia can increase in other ways. Having hit a few snags communicating with the client, I couldn’t just throw in the towel. (First, I’m not a quitter. Second, the project is for awe-inspiring pay and working for a well-known company–a huge plus for any copywriter.)

The client and myself worked through some initial issues, especially in the communication arena, and while I would normally do that with any client because I like to see things through, I worried that the tension could hurt our relationship in the long run. The client is an agency that gives me regular work, so anytime I have to stand up to them or we have to go back and forth on project terms, I worry about losing future gigs. But this was a huge client of theirs they entrusted me with, so I wanted to make sure not to disappoint while standing my ground. Still, when there was some tension I felt very trapped. So I took many deep breaths, resolved the issues, and am now coasting through to the finish line. I trust in the end this client will use me again because they have in the past–despite issues. They know I’m a hard worker and there is back-and-forth with any employee.

Usually after I have some tension with a client, the project wraps up, we settle back into separate corners and meet up again refreshed and ready to work. The beginning of the project included a few bumps in the road regarding setting deadlines and settling on fees, and while they are settled up now, it was nerve wracking at first. But you can’t expect things to go perfectly, and you can’t blow tension out of proportion–negotiation is part of the project process.

Deadlines Galore

For this particular project, it was broken into several different deadlines. So an advantage to giving all my attention to this client has been that I only have to focus on their deadlines. There’s a plus. It’s nice to be able to focus on one thing instead of multi-tasking all the time. If you work for an agency on short-term projects, this is a huge advantage. For freelancers that rely on multiple clients, it’s nice to focus on deadlines from one client, but it’s not as feasible.

Maintaining Other Relationships

Even when you work on one project at a time with one client, you still have to communicate with existing clients and make time to respond to potential customer inquiries. While I haven’t had time to get out and establish new clients, my business thrives on several ongoing partnerships, including that part-time job I mentioned. I couldn’t just turn that off, though I could minimize other incoming work. Still, I’ve had to multi-task to take on other jobs without taking on too much. I ducked in to let the part-time job know that I needed less work for the next few weeks but let them know how much I could handle.

I firmly believe in having several ongoing jobs for any freelance business–waiting on individual projects to come in is too financially risky, especially if you have a lot of fiscal pressures. So even though it would be nice to focus on my big project, I had to make time to at least let others clients know that I could get back to them in a few weeks, or that I had time to take on a quick job. Maintaining communication and being honest is key when you have other clients. You can’t just turn off when you have a huge, ongoing task at hand. You want to be available but you don’t want to take on too much work and slam yourself at the same time. It’s a balancing act like everything in the contractor world.

I guess the point in all of this is that it’s easy to see the dollar signs when you are presented with a huge project. But you have to consider if it’s right for you and your business, especially where you are now as a contractor. For me, this was a huge undertaking. But now that I know how to manage a persistent project–and all is well with the client–I would do it again in a heartbeat. But first, I need a week to breathe. Maybe four.

As a freelancer, you may find yourself either a) too busy or b) too clueless to handle your own marketing. This happens more often than you might think, and even some excellent freelancers with a strong reputation aren’t doing a very good job at marketing.

But you, you’re smarter than that. And you realize you should get some help to rev up your business and take it to the next level. So you start looking for a marketing expert to give you some advice and counsel, and you find what you think is the perfect person for you.

Someone who’s savvy and experienced. Someone who understands your creative needs and your lifestyle. Someone who’s had a lot of success getting other businesses the attention they need.

Someone who, a month into your working relationship, is driving you up a tree.

It’s inevitable. You’re two talented people with strong opinions about how you should present yourself. The marketer thinks he’s right because he’s the expert. You think you’re right because you’re you. And it feels like you can’t agree on anything, from your brand image to your web copy to what to put on your business cards.

Here’s how to work with a marketer without losing your cool, so you can get on with the important stuff – getting the word out to new clients that there’s a fantastic freelancer in town.

Don’t Get Locked In

One of the most common problems freelancers have when working with a marketer is getting way too precise about what they want.

Most of you reading this are either designers or copywriters, and you feel like you have a pretty good idea on how to create the basic components of a brand that’s marketable. This is what you do for other people every day, after all.

Unfortunately, when you’ve already decided on the layout of your website and the look it needs to have and the tagline you want to use, you don’t give the marketing expert a lot of room to work. And that person needs that room to come up with new ideas that are probably more effective than yours.

I know. That bites. But think about it a minute: you’re a creative artist. Marketing isn’t your thing.

Instead of locking yourself into your ideas right off the bat, decide what you want in abstract terms. Think about what you want to accomplish with your marketing. Think about the type of person you want to work with, and what clients you get along best with. Think about what sort of person you are, so the expert can craft a brand that suits you.

But let the rest go. You need to give marketing experts the space to be creative in their own area of expertise so they can get you the results you want. And they can’t do that if you’ve boxed them into what you think is best for you.

Don’t Be a Pushover

While you don’t want to dig your heels in and completely ruin the marketer’s ability to create great new concepts for your freelance business, you also don’t want to be a pushover. If you absolutely hate the ideas the marketer comes up with, say so – and say so quickly.

Usually when you hate those ideas, it’s because the marketer didn’t really understand what you want. It’s time to go back to the original conversation and reiterate what you do want, who you are, and what impression you want to give to your clients.

It often helps the marketer immensely if you can demonstrate exactly why his ideas won’t work for you. Concrete examples of what works for you and what isn’t lets the marketing expert get a stronger grasp on your needs, and he’s much more likely to come back with better ideas that fit you more.

For example, you can point to a particular tagline and say, “Look, I’m an easygoing, casual sort of person, and this makes me sound like a guy who lives and breathes numbers and results. I don’t think that fits with who I am.”

Don’t let the expert walk all over you. Many might insist that you that you have to go along with their idea, because this is what will sell. That’s all well and good, but if you don’t feel that you can back that up, then it’s not going to work. Stand firm if you’re uncomfortable and ask for new concepts to work with.

And if the marketer won’t back down, find a new one.

Be Willing to Walk

Sometimes you and the marketer just aren’t a good fit for one another. It happens. That person may just not be able to get a good vision on what you’re looking for, or his skills may not be developed enough to deliver a brilliant new concept for what you need.

You can walk away. It’s allowed. It’s okay. As a freelancer, you’ve been on the other side of this equation. Freelancers inevitably get clients who they just can’t satisfy, no matter how hard they try. So you know, personally, that not being a good fit isn’t a measure of how skilled you are at your job.

It’s just that you couldn’t get your visions to mesh.

Be polite when you’re parting ways. This isn’t a judgment on the marketing expert for not doing a good job. If you know that person tried their best, be sympathetic. It didn’t work out, and you’re going to work with someone else, but it’s not a good idea to burn bridges behind you.

You never know – that marketing expert may be looking for someone just like you for their next client’s campaign.

Go out and try again. It’s worth it to find a marketer who gets you and is capable of finding just the right way to sell you to new clients. Be willing to put in the time and money to find the right fit, because it really will pay off in the end.

It’s worth all those new clients, isn’t it?

About the Author: For more tips on how to get the most out of your freelance business, check out James Chartrand’s blog at Men with Pens, where you’ll discover on-target advice that helps you get ahead of the game.

If you’ve ever wanted to get into web copy—whether you’re a freelance writer now or you’re a web designer whose clients always ask you to create the content as well—this book will help you immensely from the very basics up.

“In How to Write Great Copy for the Web, author Donna Spencer will help you start writing content for the web that works! Learn about how writing web copy differs from other forms of writing, and how writing useful, functional and concise copy can both help persuade your readers, and also help with search engine optimization!

Whether it’s for your own site, or for somebody else’s, How to Write Great Copy for the Web will quickly bring you up to speed with some clever strategies that will make you popular with your site’s visitors, or with your clients!”

We’re going to be releasing this book any day now and wanted to make sure you knew about it in advance–and had the opportunity to get a great discount on it. The book will cost $15 for the ebook and $19 for the print copy, but if you’re subscribed to the Rockin’ List you’ll get a coupon to get the ebook for only $10.

The Rockin’ List only sends out mail occasionally when there’s a new release–other than that, you won’t hear from us, and you get a great free report on Personal Branding when you sign up.

Click here to subscribe to the Rockin’ List and make sure you don’t miss out on your discount!

And for the 49,000 cunning entrepreneurs reading this—Rockable provides an affiliate program to help you make some money of your own, by helping us sell books. It’s definitely worth checking out.

There are two basic types of motivation: intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation comes from the feeling of self-achievement inherent in the task or project achieved, i.e. solving a puzzle, completing a school assignment, or finally publishing that website you were working on for a client.

Extrinsic motivation is the reward you get from others – or outside “forces”. This includes money and other financial or tangible rewards, such as a free vacation for achieving your sales targets, a trophy for winning first place at the Olympics, or even the crowd cheering as you overtake car #2 in the last stretch of the race. This explains the “home team advantage” methodology.

Extrinsic motivation (namely money) is often the primary basis for our motivation. Everyone needs money, and wants as much of it as possible. That’s no secret. However, I believe the feeling of self achievement is equally important when it comes to staying motivated.

When you’ve finished the design work for a client, what feels better? Getting paid or seeing your client smile, succeed, and receive brand recognition partly due to your efforts? If you picked getting paid, try thinking about it this way:

A small, startup company seeks your help in setting up their identity (logo, business card, website, etc.). The company is completely unknown but happens to take off. All of a sudden the company is everywhere – the NY Times, TechCrunch, CNN, a trending topic on Twitter, you name it.

Do you still feel the same? Okay, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully my point was made.

But what about the money?

There are many ways that you can use money and your personal financial status to keep yourself motivated. Here are a few ideas:

• Reward yourself: decide on an amount (that doesn’t cut into your bill paying or savings) and reward yourself after a job well done. Of course you don’t want to spend every hard penny you’ve earned on your favourite hobby, but if it’s all work and no play you’ll get burnt out. Reward yourself as a reminder of what you’re working towards.

• Financial status: do you want to put a down payment on your own place in 2 years? Pay off the house in 7? Have children and send them to private school? Remind yourself how much money you need to earn each month in order to support your desired lifestyle. If you’re not quite there yet figure out the steps needed to get there and write them down.

• It takes money to make money: do you have any business plans that require startup capital you don’t currently have? Do you plan to buy and rent properties? Invest? These are other good ways to remind yourself to keep at it.

What else?

Networking. It’s easy to meet other people in your industry on the internet these days (especially if you’re a designer). If you don’t already have a blog, consider starting one. Sign up for Twitter and get out there! Meeting other people in your line of work helps you to learn the language and communication styles that are effective in your industry.

If you know a lot of designers, for instance, they can refer clients to you when they’re overbooked, or when a client requires something beyond their expertise.

It’s also a good idea to try to network in person. It’s refreshing to get out of your home or office and meet people face to face. People will often share more in person than they will on their blog or via Twitter. Escaping your workstation every once in a while will give you that added fuel you need to move forward when you return from your mid-day vacation.

When all else fails, I tend to go on a “success story” binge. Take an hour to watch a few TED Talks, read a few articles about people on the Forbes 400 list, or poke around the Small Business Success Stories page on BusinessWeek.

Stay motivated – and if you can’t, try something new.

If you’re working for an employer, your career patch can be pretty clear: work hard and move up the corporate ladder, hopefully winding up somewhere near the top. But when you’re freelancing, your career path can be a lot less clear. We all want to land more clients and earn more per hour, but where do we want to wind up?

A Creative Agency of Your Own?

One logical career path is to keep taking on more clients and hiring a few creative professionals yourself. The end result is a creative agency that allows you to take on more and bigger projects. Once you get to this point, it’s relatively easy to continue to grow — but there are also a few drawbacks, like the fact that you’re responsible for paying those folks you now employ.

A Product of Your Own?

Another option that many freelancers seem interested in is creating some sort of a product out your freelancing skills, shifting your income from being based on your services to being based on a product. Such businesses can look very different: your product could be a web application, a book or dozens of other things. The switch can make it easier to increase your income, but also can take a whole new set of business skills beyond what freelancing requires.

Taking a Great Job?

Not everyone wants to freelance forever. Perhaps you have a dream job in mind, one that you want to work towards with your freelancing experiences. That can mean taking on particular types of projects, so that you can make sure opportunity comes knocking. Considering an employer can offer certain benefits, although a reduced level of freedom, it’s no wonder that many freelancers move back and forth from freelancing to employment as we find opportunities.

Sticking With Freelancing?

For many people, the flexibility of freelancing is key. You may want to increase your rates over the years or specialize in one particular niche, but sticking with freelancing and avoiding adding frills is definitely an option. Other career paths can require very different types of responsibility, as well as fundamental shifts in how you do business, and the switch isn’t comfortable for many people?

What Does Your Career Path Look Like?

When I originally started freelancing full-time, I assumed that sooner or later, I would find a full-time job and cut back on my freelancing. That hasn’t happened to me, although I know plenty of freelancers who have taken jobs (and just as many who have left them) over that time. Career paths change and have to remain flexible, especially if you’re freelancing. That said, though, it’s worth having an idea of where you want to wind up in the long run. Not only is it often necessary to work towards reaching those goals, but simply having those goals give you a reason to keep moving forward and finding new opportunities.

Have you asked yourself what your ideal career path looks like? Where do you want freelancing to take you?

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at website maintenance packages and what to do if people have a problem with were you live.

Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

It’s go time!

Question #1

My partner and I are starting a small web and graphic design business. We are still in the process of building our website and figuring out how to handle clients, etc, what I wanted to know though is what to do after you’ve completed a project for a client. Should you offer to maintain the website for a monthly fee (how much…?), or just leave it be as it is? Because if you do, then I guess you should offer that to all of your clients, but seeing as we’re only a two people team, the more websites we’ll have to maintain, the more hectic it will become in the long run. What if they call us 6 months after this is done saying “my website is down, help ASAP!” Are we supposed to help them for free, charge them…?

-Kimo

Thursday: In general, it’s up to you whether or not to provide maintenance service in the long run — assuming that you aren’t providing hosting. There are benefits to providing at least a certain level of maintenance, though: you can have regular income that isn’t dependent on landing new clients. As a two person team, it can seem tough to manage maintenance for multiple sites, but as long as your monthly fee covers your time, it’s worth working into your schedule. After all, if you have enough websites to maintain, you can always bring in a third person to handle the tasks associated with maintenance.

If a client doesn’t ask for or pay for maintenance, but calls six months down the road wanting help with an emergency, you’re under no obligation to help them free of charge. While you want to be polite to past (and potentially future) clients, it’s reasonable to tell them that you are unable to help or offer them emergency services at a price. Your time is valuable and it isn’t unreasonable to expect clients to understand that.

Travis: I heard a good line from one of our freelancers that a website is never finished, it’s just abandoned.

I think one of the most difficult things to get across to a client is that a website is never really done. In their mind they want to pay the price and be done with it and they start to get all twitchy when you bring up the idea of monthly work. It’s your job to educate them on how the website is an ongoing marketing tool and not a one off purchase.

You’ll want to start this education early, so don’t leave it to the last minute.

Some clients will get it, some wont. Before long you’ll get a feel for which type of client they are. Just don’t try pushing a monthly package on a client whose firm on wanting a boring static website. Just say to them – I see that you’re going to be a boring person. That always works.

I also heard another good line from one of our freelancers- There once was a man from Australia…

Question #2

What can I do to not put off people by mentioning “I’m a freelancer from India”?

While I do realize why there is so much dislike for Indian IT workers in general across the web, for obvious reasons mostly caused by Indians, I am just concerned about my business. I have always had this problem of staying online with my real identity as an Indian.

So my question is I have 2 choices :

A. Should I not disclose my location?
OR
B. Just mind my business on the internet without trying to be a part of the elite western IT club?

-Deb

Thursday: It isn’t right or fair, but many people — clients, bloggers and everyone else — make some automatic assumptions when they see a freelancer is from certain countries. How you deal with those assumptions depends on what your goals are. It is possible to build connections and land clients no matter where you’re from, but you can often do so faster if you’re willing to keep your current location under wraps. I wouldn’t suggest lying to a client, but simply not disclosing your location is an option. That said, it is possible to succeed while still disclosing your location. It requires perseverance, but you may be able to create a higher quality of connection in the long run.

It’s not an easy decision to make and there are consequences to both approaches. It’s important to choose the route that best matches what you feel comfortable with, as well as what your long-term goals are.

Travis: That’s a real tough one Deb. I think I’d also go with Thurday’s advice and keep your location under wraps.

If you do good work, then let your work speak for itself. I don’t care where people live as long as they are passionate about their work and deliver quality. And besides, India is the home of Aishwarya Rai, and if that isn’t high quality I don’t know what is.

If people really want to know where you are from, give them the name of your state or town. Or if you’re feeling particularly sneaky, grab yourself a US mail address and say you’re location independent and work out of many places.

For example, I live in Canada, but if for some reason I didn’t want people to know that, I could say I live in Saskatchewan. And then people would say “Gesundheit.”