Raising Prices Without Losing Clients
The number you are raising from should already be a real rate, not a salary divided by 2,000. If it is not, fix the floor first: how to set a freelance rate. The clients you are afraid of losing are the first ten, and some of them were priced as a favour. This page is the second conversation.
- Raise new work first. A proposal at the old price after you have decided to raise is how the old price survives another year.
- Give current clients a date, the new price, and one sentence on what they are buying. Do not narrate your rent.
- Do the arithmetic on profit, not on feelings. Losing a client who consumed the margin can raise what you keep.
- A one-time discount to keep someone is a new price. Write the end date or do not offer it.
The arithmetic, labelled as a method
Suppose, as an illustration and not as a market study, that a client pays $4,000 a month and the time costs you $3,200 of the hours you could have sold, so the margin is $800. A 15 percent increase makes the invoice $4,600. If they stay, the extra $600 is almost all margin, because the hours did not change. If they leave, you lose the $800 and you get the hours back to sell. You are not ahead until those hours are sold. You are also not automatically behind. Write your own two numbers: margin if they stay at the new price, and hours returned if they leave. The feeling that every client is irreplaceable is how prices freeze.
Do not borrow a percentage from a survey this page does not have. Fifteen percent in the illustration is a teaching number. Your increase is the gap between the rate worksheet and what the current invoice says.
The script
"Starting on the first of next month, this engagement moves from $A to $B. The work stays the same: the deliverable we already scoped. I will invoice the new amount on the May cycle. If you want to stop at the end of April, tell me by the 15th and I will close the file cleanly."
That is the whole message. No essay about inflation. No apology for the original price. If they negotiate, you can trade scope, not dignity: fewer rounds, a longer cycle, or an annual prepay at a price you still like. You cannot trade your way back to a number that does not cover CPP and the empty weeks. Those are in the rate, and the rate is the floor under B.
Who hears it, and when
New inquiries hear B today. Current clients hear it with enough notice to finish a cycle, usually one billing period. Do not raise the price in the middle of a fixed quote you already signed. Do raise it when that quote ends. A client on a handshake has had the handshake. The email is how it becomes a price.
If several clients leave and the hours do not resell, the offer is the problem, not the courage. Go back to the first-ten list and see what people actually bought. Then price that, instead of a vague retainer nobody can describe.
Frequently asked questions
What if my biggest client says no?
Then you have a choice with a date on it. Keep them at the old price for a defined period while you replace the margin, or let them go. An indefinite exception becomes the business. One named exception with an end date is a transition.
Should I raise a little every year or a lot once?
Either can work. A small annual increase that still leaves you under the rate worksheet is a delay. A single correction to the worksheet number, with notice, is cleaner if you are far below it. Do the worksheet before you pick the style.
Do I tell them my costs went up?
You can say the price now matches the work. You do not owe them a tour of your CPP or your rent. Cost stories invite a debate you will not win. The date and the number do not.
