What’s Your True Professional Freelance Value?

When push comes to shove, do you know the true value you bring to the table?

 

A few years back, I had a referral client who hired me to help him with his Wordpress website. The project went well at first but it became obvious that my customer was having financial troubles. It was at this point he began questioning the value I brought to the project in his attempt to negotiate a lower rate. At the time I was at $75/hour (now $90/hr) and he stated that he could get someone to work on his website for a fraction of the cost. 

 

I agreed with him. In fact, he could probably even get someone more skilled than I at WordPress to work on the project. But, he wasn’t paying me this rate to work on his WordPress project, he was paying me a higher rate to get the project done. 

 

Part of my true value is moving things forward and carrying projects across the finish line. I’m driving my clients forward and accelerating project completion. If my client were to hire a lower rate WordPress worker, he’d likely have to manage that project and person to move it forward. He’d spend a lot more emotional and physical energy on the project.

 

 

To my active and happy clients, it's worth paying my increased rate. My differentiator is getting stuff done, problem-solving and proactively taking care of issues before my clients know they’re issues. I’m great at what I do and I know where I bring tremendous value.

 

How about you? Do you know what hill you can conquer and stay dominant in compared to your customer's alternatives or when clients push back?