A coffee shop chat in Portland convinced me to triple my freelance rates

I was sitting at this little spot in southeast Portland last month, waiting for a friend who was late, and this guy next to me starts talking about his own freelance pricing mistakes. He asked what I charged for my first gig, and I told him $15 an hour for some basic social media posts. He laughed, I'm not gonna lie, it stung a little. Then he showed me his own rate sheet from when he started, and he was charging $8 an hour for design work back in 2015. He said he finally doubled his prices after a client told him his work was way better than what they paid for, and that stuck with me. So I went home and changed my starting offer from $15 to $45 for that same type of work. Has anyone else had a random stranger convince you to stop underselling yourself? What was the breaking point for you?

3 comments

3 Comments

zarat3710d ago

Agree with tripling them, I did the same thing last year.

smith.lee10d ago

Ended up doing the same thing actually, worked out way better than I expected.

blairm779d ago

What specific part caught you off guard the most? Was it the timing or the actual outcome that surprised you? I remember tripling my own stake in something similar and thinking I'd regret it, but the payoff came way faster than I expected. Did you see results within the first few weeks or did it take a while to really show?