Monday, March 15, 2010

Increasing the Value of Your Freelance Writing Services

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jennifer Chiat’s post over at FreelanceWritingJobs.com. She posted an interested article about how professional blogging jobs are changing.

According to Jennifer, more and more blogging clients are asking writers to expand their services. For example, a blogging client you once sent X number of blog posts to each month may start asking you to find images for each post, or to use some form of social bookmarking or social media to promote those posts.

This doesn’t have to be another case of scope creep. It could actually turn out to be a good opportunity if you handle things right from the start.

Searching for images, sending out messages about the latest blog post on Twitter or Facebook all take time and you should always be compensated for your time. If you find that you’re receiving more of these requests, you might consider this a springboard to increasing the value of your blogging services. Reach beyond simply supplying written posts and repackage your blogging service to include images, social bookmarking, social media, commenting on a predetermined list of related blogs, etc. and increase your rate accordingly.

Many clients will appreciate the fact that they can rely on you to deliver much more. If a client asks why your rates have increased, take time to educate him about the value of the upgraded service.

Have you repackaged and repriced any of your services to increase value? How have your clients responded?

2 comments:

Lori said...

I haven't yet, though I did ditch a client who didn't appreciate my price and value. He came back begging, and now he pays what others pay. He's also complimentary and tells me how much he appreciates me. Not necessary, but very nice to hear.

I'm okay with posting my blogs for others if they want, but many times there's a level of control the clients aren't willing to hand over, and that's frustrating. One client has over 3 months worth of my posts in his email. I suspect I'll be let go soon because he can't get to it. I've asked if he'd like me to post for him. No, he wants to tweak them before they go online. Weird, because the only tweaking I see is the errant comma or additional sentence.

Kimberly Ben said...

Yeah, that's very weird, Lori. Must be a control issue.

 
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