(Important note: While you read this, give the phrase “providing value” the most childishly sarcastic tone you can muster.)
If you’re looking for ways to earn more as a freelance blogger, the phrase “providing value” is one that you may hear a lot. I don’t know about you, but it’s one that I tend to skim over a lot too.
It’s not that I don’t want to learn ways to provide more value to my freelance writing clients. I do. It’s just, well, the term doesn’t really mean anything on its own, does it?
The irony is, I’ve learned that I’m already providing plenty of this value people speak of, and it’s causing me to earn more. It’s just that I call it something else.
“Provide value” simply means:
Give more to somebody than you ask from them in return.
Permission to delve deeper into what that looks like?
Great. Here goes:
An accidental income boost
As a freelance writer online, I’ve been “providing value” according to the above definition for years.
Not in any altruistic way, you understand. I didn’t decide to adopt this method out of any sense of charitable duty to mankind.
While I like to think my charitable duty is alive and well, and I’m inclined to go the extra mile for people, I only stumbled across this give-more-than-you-take strategy by accident.
And I quickly realised one thing about applying this to my freelance writing career:
It was making me richer.
As I saw my earnings increase, I naturally continued to use this method as my default approach to my work.
Well, wouldn’t you?
How to use it for your blogging business
First, know how much to charge for your freelance writing services. Read How Much Freelance Bloggers Earn: The Surprising Truth if you haven’t worked this out yet, or download The Be a Freelance Blogger Rate Guide for blogging-specific rates. Know your rate and never dip below it, or you’ll get into all sorts of trouble when applying this principle.
Next, always give more in usefulness and value to your client than you ask from them in monetary terms.
If your rate is particularly high, that’s some pretty high value you’ve got to deliver… Hang on! No, don’t drop your rate. Simply add more value instead.
This is what this looks like in the real world:
Say you bag yourself a new freelance writing client. They’re a small company with not much of an online presence and they need your help.
You immediately go about writing your first blog post for them. You work hard on researching and perfecting the post, and are proud of it. You realise when you’re finished that your own social media network would benefit from something like this.
You send your first blog post to your new client and tell them just that. You convince them of the benefits of spreading the message of the post across your social media networks. You explain that while you’d normally charge extra for this sort of thing, you’ll do this for free just this one time so that they can see the results for themselves.
The post is a hit and along with the shout out to your social media network, readers and potential customers are flowing your client’s way. Your new client now thinks you’re some sort of Dumbledore of the online world and asks if you’d be interested in looking after their social media accounts on top of your regular blogging gig.
The benefits of this increased exposure for your new client’s company are obvious, but it also benefits the people within your social media networks too. (It’s important to note that this example wouldn’t work if this was not the case.)
How you earn more money
This example illustrates that what we’re looking at is a simple case of cause and effect. Everybody’s situations, talents, ideas and resources are different so you need to ask yourself what sort of extra value you can legitimately offer.
In this example, you may have charged, say, $60 for that one blog post for your new client, but in terms of how many potential customers you sent their way, you gave them much more than this in terms of value.
So perhaps that new client doesn’t need anybody to manage their social media – maybe they just hired somebody to take care of it. Perhaps it’s something as simple as being so pleased with your work that they keep you on as their regular writer.
Maybe the client offers you absolutely nothing extra in return at all. But the next time they have a big project they need help with, or know anybody else who needs a skilled freelance writer slash online marketing wizard, who do you suppose they’ll think of first?
Giving more value than you could ever charge for — no matter how high your rates — almost guarantees more work and more money. Why? Because that’s the way the universe works. You get out what you put in.
Plus, it just feels kinda nice.
Think you’ve got nothing of value to add?
Here are a few examples of ways you can add value, and in the process create opportunities for higher earnings:
- Always deliver your work on time (or earlier than deadline) and complete it to an impeccably high standard.
Put the whole of your heart and the height of your energy into every piece of work. This is such a ridiculously simple yet effective concept to apply to your freelance blogging business. It leads to happy clients who think about you first and without hesitation when more work comes up (or they’re recommending a freelance writer to others). - Offer to distribute your clients’ press releases online.
This gives your clients’ brand more exposure, but in an affordable way that saves them time. It gives you more writing work (the press releases have to be written before they can be distributed) and potentially an extra service to charge for. - Offer to manage clients’ social media accounts.
Be certain your clients see the benefits of this and why you’re the right person for the job. (See the main example above.)
Some cautions and observations
I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious here: it’s probably unwise to approach your work, or any area of your life, with the aim of giving only to receive. That is not the purpose of this post.
The message of this post is quite the opposite — give more than you expect to receive, and then go about your business as usual. Opportunities to earn more will arise as a result of this approach. Your job then is simply to recognise these opportunities when they present themselves.
Giving more in value than you ask for in cold, hard cash will only ever lead to good things. It creates happy clients and can help you earn more as a freelance blogger.
And what if it doesn’t? At least the world will be a slightly happier place to work and play.
This post is absolutely true. I did this for one of my freelance blogging clients, adding value nearly two years of blogging with them. Imagine my surprise when my current liked me enough to actually offer me a full time job!
Yay, Patrick! Always good to see the principle in action. 🙂
Such a cool result! I primarily write for the music industry and was hired by a company with a new product I knew was really useless. Trying to find good things to say about something you know sucks is tough and made me feel like a slut – finally had to give it up and even return some money. Congrats to you Patrick! Thanks Sophie for yet again being so astute about this industry, bringing up a very relevant aspect and being so helpful and inspirational to all of us! Be Well – Jeff
Good for you Patrick. It does work!
It’s a great message to take into all areas of life but definitely beneficial when it comes to online business.
When reading I was reminded of something Anne Frank said, “No one has ever become poor by giving”.
Whether this is giving all you’ve got to create a fantastic post, giving some extra benefits you’d otherwise charge for, or just helping someone in the street, this ‘give-more-than-you-take’ philosophy enriches everyone.
You’ve certainly given me a great reminder Kirsty, thank you! You can never be reminded enough I think.
I second Edward’s comment – this is a great approach not only for your freelance business (blogging or not) but for every other aspect of your life.
In the context of freelancing though, beware not to be taken for a ride. Not all clients are created equal and there certainly are those who’d abuse your generosity and mistaken your good will with desire to work more for less.
But if you have good mechanisms in place to spot bad clients, that shouldn’t worry you – adding value is the best way to stand apart and get noticed.
Thanks for the nice read, Kirsty and Sophie 😀
You’re welcome Diana. 🙂 You make a great point too. Sometimes you can do everything to ensure all your clients fall into the ‘good guys’ category but still find yourself with a bad apple who takes advantage.
I say add value but stay vigilant!
Absolutely Edward. It’s certainly not a bad way to live your life and it comes with added perks!
Kirsty, this is just what I needed to read today! I’d like to hear more about how you communicate such value to your clients, though. Your one line of “I normally charge for this, but I really think this would hep you” is great! Do you have more ideas like that which work to communicate value?
Hi Bree. Glad you enjoyed the post and found it useful.
As Diana points out above, it’s important to be clear with setting boundaries with this sort of thing as some clients could take advantage. That’s exactly why I’d include a phrase like “I would normally charge for this” so that everybody knows where they stand.
With that in mind, it depends on what sort of work you’re doing and for what type of client. Another personal example of this type of thing is where I offered to use my PR contacts for a new travel client to personally pitch to some national (UK) travel journalists. I was writing monthly press releases for them and distributing them online (as agreed) and I knew that one press release in particular could be something the print press might pick up on. It took around 15 minutes to write an email pitch to a few journalists I had contact details for, and my new client was pretty impressed with my initiative after that! I made it clear is was a one-off and she even recommended me to another lucrative travel client.
You can think of and execute these sorts of things quite quickly, but of course I had to have the mindset of adding more value to come up with the idea in the first place.
Hope that helps and thanks for contributing to the post!
Hi Kristy, I enjoyed your post. It’s easy for clients to tell when you give them the bare minimum, and that does not reflect well.
I like that you offer ideas for ‘giving more’ to your clients. On that note, could you be more specific about the process involved with ‘distributing press releases online’?
Glad you enjoyed the post Danny.
It’s quite simple to distribute press releases online. You’ve likely heard of PR Web and similar companies. If you sign up for an account with one of these companies you can upload press releases to their system (for a fee) and they distribute it to a large number of online publications and journalists. They usually broadcast it on their social media sites too.
I negotiated a reduced cost for a certain number of press releases per month with a reputable UK press release company. This saved me money when it came to sending out press releases on behalf of my clients. (Sometimes you might see fit to pass this saving on to your clients.)
Some say this blanket approach to sending out press releases is dead, but they’re usually referring to using this strategy for ‘backlinks’, which I don’t personally get into. I only use the service to build my clients’ visibility and brands online (and sometimes even offline). My clients are happy and I’m happy!
I hope this helps Danny. It’s difficult to cover all the details here. I feel a blog post coming on…
Hey Kirsty,
Great Informative post.
All the points which you have covered in this post are contributing as a valuable source to structure about any small service business. These are compact business development techniques.
Thankyou.
Glad you enjoyed it, Alex! Kirsty clearly has a knack for adding value to her writing while being sarcastic about “adding value.” 😉
Hehe! Thanks guys. 😉