Freelancer Diaries: How I set my rates

Getting better at the money side of freelancing (kind of)

Just over a year ago, I worked on some social media copy for a friend as a favour.

He offered to pay me, but I said no, I’d do it for free.

First, because I knew I wanted to go freelance and thought it might make a nice consumer portfolio piece. Second, because I was working full-time at an agency and didn’t want to (accidentally) commit tax fraud by taking on extra income.

But mostly — even more than the fraud thing — I had absolutely no idea what to charge.

More than once he asked me what I’d be charging if he was a ‘real’ client.

And every time he did, I did a weird nervous laugh that was part clamming up, part admitting that I literally didn’t have a clue.

Now, he’d been self-employed for years at this point, and so I was fully expecting some life-altering pearl of wisdom about pricing to be the next words out of his mouth.

Instead, he nodded sagely and said:

“You need to get better at this bit.”