How Much to Charge and How to Raise Prices

Through her company, Chloe Stout Translations, Chloe provides translation and subtitling services from French and Italian into English. She specialises in marketing and e-commerce, sustainable fashion and beauty, film and television, and e-learning and education. She has a friendly approach and always gives her customers a personalised service.

Chloe joined Charge with Confidence in May 2021. She felt it was a good time for her to get clear on her pricing as she was still relatively new to freelancing but was experienced enough to know what she wanted to get out of it. She knew what she wanted her business to do for her and how she wanted it to support her personal goals.

The challenge: helping Chloe develop consistency around her rates when deciding how much to charge her clients

When Chloe first started freelancing, she hadn’t been able to find much information about pricing, and she wasn’t sure how much to charge her customers. She’d been pulling numbers out of thin air and wanted to change her approach. Chloe decided to take Charge with Confidence so she could base her numbers on something solid. She wanted to put the foundations in place to develop her business.

However, Chloe’s industry posed a particular challenge. Methods of charging for subtitling vary widely. For example, rates may be based on the audio, on transcripts or on using templates. Chloe was therefore finding it difficult to charge consistently and in a way that worked for her business rather than just for the client.

My focus during the programme was to help Chloe understand what she needed to be taking into account in her pricing so that she’d know what her rates had to cover. This way, she’d be able to develop some consistency around her rates and have a guide for how much to charge based on the numbers in her business.

The solution: showing Chloe the value of her time and how she could use her time-tracking data to help her establish her prices

Before embarking on the programme, I always ask Charge with Confidence participants to start tracking their time if they don’t already. As well as providing various benefits such as an increase in focus, time tracking allows you to understand how many hours of paid client work you can realistically manage to do in an average day. This is essential when it comes to pricing your services because it shows you how many billable hours you have available to earn what you need to be earning.

Time tracking was one of the big things Chloe learnt during Charge with Confidence. Through the programme, I showed her the importance of keeping track of your time and explained how time-tracking data can be used to make decisions relating to pricing as well as to other aspects of your business.

I also showed Chloe what she needed to be taking into account when it came to knowing how much she needed to be earning. We considered both her business and her personal expenses, first by creating a business budget and then by looking at her personal income requirements to achieve her goals.

I shared the Charge with Confidence version of my business budgeting spreadsheet with Chloe, which is much more detailed than the free version. And I also encouraged her to think about saving for retirement and how she would set money aside for the future. Before doing the programme, Chloe didn’t really know what pensions looked like for self-employed people, so this helped take a weight off her mind.

Once we’d fully understood Chloe’s financial requirements and knew how much she needed to be earning, I helped her identify the minimum hourly rate she’d have to be charging to make ends meet. My rate calculator spreadsheet allowed her to insert all her figures so that she could calculate her minimum, mid-range and aspirational prices based on the number of hours she had available for paid client work each day.

Finally, I also shared some tips on how to raise prices with existing clients. While Chloe didn’t feel ready to raise her prices during Charge with Confidence, she knew what she had to do when the time was right.

The results: Chloe is now happy with her rates and knows how much she needs to be earning to make a project worth her while

Nine months on from completing Charge with Confidence, Chloe had built up the confidence to increase her prices with some of her clients. For the most part, she’s very happy with the rates she’s earning now. Chloe says she still has a couple of clients in mind to raise her prices with, but she’s already identified when she’s going to do this.

Since Charge with Confidence, Chloe has continued to track her time, to the extent that it has now become a habit. She’s found that having this data has really helped her in her business, both in terms of knowing how long things take her and being able to calculate her profitability per client.

Having the time-tracking data has helped Chloe understand how much she’s earning per hour on different projects, regardless of the basis on which she charges the client (audio, transcript, template, etc.). This has helped her tailor her approach to pricing and raise her prices on a client-by-client basis depending on how much she is earning per hour worked.

Chloe still uses the spreadsheets I shared with her during Charge with Confidence. She says that having the confidence to quote clients based on the data and the numbers in her business means she’s better at standing her ground when clients try to push her down on price.

“If you think Charge with Confidence might be a good fit for you, it probably will be! It’s very personalised and tailored and it’s a very good investment in your business because it’s not just the content that you get out of it - it changes your mindset, how you run your business, how you think about your business finances more long term…”

I’m so pleased Chloe feels as though she got a lot out of Charge with Confidence. As well as being able to re-use the resources she received, Chloe is now happy with her rates and knows how much she needs to be earning per hour to make a project worth her while.

If you’d like to get clarity around your prices and use the numbers in your business to understand how much you need to be charging, you can sign up for Charge with Confidence now. Click on the button below to find out more.

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