Are you on a journey to find better paying clients? You deserve to be paid your worth—and that’s more than $5 or $10 per blog post or a cent a word.
Wondering where those great payers are? The truth is they’re all around you but you need to get out and market yourself. You need to contact them and convince them you’re worth their money.
Here are my tips to find and get better paying clients.
Avoid the lower paying markets
You need to change where you’re looking for freelance writing clients. If you want to be paid better then you need to step away from the content mills. Yes, there are certainly benefits to content mills, especially if you’re honing your skills, but they’re not going to make you a lot of money. And some clients on those sites can expect way more than their budget is worth.
So, you need to look elsewhere. That means avoiding the bidding sites too. I know the likes of Fiverr and Upwork can be encouraging to get started—they can make finding clients easier, but they’re not going to help you find better paying clients.
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Search for magazines, publications and businesses in your niche
You’ve chosen your niche, right? If not, it’s time you find your niche. Once you do that, you can find better paying clients.
These come from businesses wanting blogs to boost the traffic to their website and email marketing campaigns to convert their traffic into sales. These come from trade publications and magazines that are within your niche. You’ll find better paying clients when you look at white papers and other more researched pieces of content. After all, the clients are paying you for the time to research as well as the time to write.
You could even find them guest blogging for other websites. Many are now paying $50 or more for high-quality guest posts and you get the exposure too!
MORE: 4 top tips for determining your true hourly writer rate
Raise your rates for better paying clients
It’s time to start raising your rates. You may have current clients that are paying you $10 for 500 words of content. Don’t start with them just yet. You want to start with the new clients you bring in.
When a new client wants content, you want to raise your rates, say to $20 per 500 words. You get that client and you start writing for them and then get a new potential client looking for content. That client may be willing to pay $30 per 500 words.
Eventually, you’ll have potential clients willing to pay more than your original one. Now you can ask the original client for a raise. They don’t want to pay more? Then they need to find another writer. Those who value your skill and time will pay more.
Avoid burning bridges when it comes to letting a client go. There are a lot of reasons a client may not be able to pay more. Just politely explain you can’t work for that rate anymore.
If you write at content mills, you’re not going to be able to get them to raise their rates. The same can apply to bidding or micro job sites depending on the type of site. This is why you want your own private clients coming directly to you.
There’s no need to justify your writer rates. You state your rate and leave it at that.
Learn to say no
“No” should be something that you can easily say. There will be business owners who want something for less but you need to know when to say no.
This isn’t just to find better paying clients but also to keep them. As you start earning more per piece, you may feel like you need to spend more time on it. You’ll accept more rounds of revisions or extra research that doesn’t add to the quality of the piece.
Determine when it is time to say no so the better paying clients remain that way. If you say yes to every little thing, they soon become the lower markets that you had in the first place!
Finding better paying clients is possible. They are out there! The trick is to searching in the right places. Take your time to check for trade publications and magazines within your niche and contact businesses about their blogging needs. You’ll soon be on the $100, $200 or even $300 per post or $1 per word!
MORE: Top tips for dealing with a PITA client
Do you have any other tips on finding better paying clients or are you stuck in the mills? Feel free to share your views, experiences and tips in the comments below.
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