Increasing my rates

jf design

New Member
Hi everyone

I am a graphic designer with 12 years experience. I have been freelance for just over a year now and am thinking of increasing my fees. I mainly work direct to design agencies, there's about 20 companies who I work for currently (some very regularly, some just occasionally). I think my fees are slightly lower than average for my skillset and ability and I want to bring these inline by increasing them by about 15%.

I'm not sure how to word this to my clients. I guess I need to give them a reason, apart from "I think I can charge you a bit more than I do now"! If anyone has any advice or opinions on how to approach this I'd be really grateful.

Thanks
 
My view? 15pc sounds like quite a hike in one go; it'd be different if you were able to say that you hadn't revised your rates in, say, two or three years but one year in sounds a bit soon for such a hike (an annual increase is fine: correcting an error you feel you made in setting your prices less so). If I were one of your clients I'd want proper justification for it and just might see what other options I had before I signed off an extra 15pc on any work I wanted to farm out.

In short, give it a go if it's important to you or consider either waiting a while or settling on a lower figure.
 
It's always difficult to set your fees - you probably got them wrong in the first place!

It does depend a bit on how you charge. I agree that 15% would seem to be a big rise ... unless you are starting from a low base! £20 ph with 15% is only £23 ph. If you charge for mileage and other expenses that could increase. The government now says that each mile costs the average motorist around 65p. If however you are charging £60ph putting that up to £69ph would be too much in one hit.

Give it a go... but perhaps to the guys who give you a lot of work only bump it up 10% You can charge different people different rates.
 
Do what the supermarkets do, change the size of the packaging, then sneak in the old pack as better value. So rather than put the hourly rate up 15% put it up 7% and charge the 8% as extra time. You can rationalise it up later.
 
Cheers for the replies everyone. I like the idea of spending more time per project! Also I'd be very happy if I was on £60ph :icon_biggrin:

The hourly rate would increase by £3 (or by about £24 a day) which isn't much more for agencies to shell out, although obviously this would add up over the course of a week or more. I hope this wouldn't offend anyone too much but it's just a tricky subject to approach.
 
The hourly rate would increase by £3 (or by about £24 a day) which isn't much more for agencies to shell out, although obviously this would add up over the course of a week or more. I hope this wouldn't offend anyone too much but it's just a tricky subject to approach.

I take it all back: my maths is pretty awful but is that all agencies pay?
 
Go for it
Too many people underprice themselves. If you are cheap, you are a commodity.
As long as you can justify why you charge X, you can charge it.
Inflation is going up, so go for it.


Cheers for the replies everyone. I like the idea of spending more time per project! Also I'd be very happy if I was on £60ph :icon_biggrin:

The hourly rate would increase by £3 (or by about £24 a day) which isn't much more for agencies to shell out, although obviously this would add up over the course of a week or more. I hope this wouldn't offend anyone too much but it's just a tricky subject to approach.
 
Hi everyone

I am a graphic designer with 12 years experience. I have been freelance for just over a year now and am thinking of increasing my fees. I mainly work direct to design agencies, there's about 20 companies who I work for currently (some very regularly, some just occasionally). I think my fees are slightly lower than average for my skillset and ability and I want to bring these inline by increasing them by about 15%.

I'm not sure how to word this to my clients. I guess I need to give them a reason, apart from "I think I can charge you a bit more than I do now"! If anyone has any advice or opinions on how to approach this I'd be really grateful.

Thanks

This would be a good way to lose clients. If you have a good relationship with your clients, best to talk to them and try and get your point across and listen to their views, I'm sure you will get various agreements, in which case you may have to run with a different pricing structure for each. Any new clients can be quoted at the rate you want to move to. In time perhaps you will get back to some uniformity.
 
do you just have one flat rate or do you have a trade rate and a consumer rate (eg; £25 trade £35 consumer)?

You could perhaps increse both prices by 5-6% and write to your clients explaining that despite your best efforts to absorb the increasing business costs, the most recent increases in diesel, gas, electric are just too much and you've had to implemet a slight increase
 
Well, I bit the bullet and sent out an email to my clients regarding this last week. Almost all of them have replied to say thanks for the update + it's no problem :icon_smile:
 
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