A South Asia-based freelancer's path from $10k/yr to $100k/yr

Rachel here! This is The Rate Sheet, a monthly Superpath series where experienced freelancers dish (anonymously) on the pricing and rates behind their businesses.

Each issue, we dig into one freelancer's real numbers: what they charge, how that's changed over time, and what made it possible.

If you have questions, reactions, or your own numbers to share, send them my way!

The Rate Sheet is one of three rotating Thursday series. You can manage which ones you get here.

THEN VS. NOW

Amit started freelancing in 2018, and did so part-time for five years while also holding down a full-time job. “[At that time] my freelance income rarely crossed $10-12k a year,” he said. “In 2024 though, I took it more seriously due to a deteriorating relationship with my employer and made just shy of $46k alongside my salary.”

His first freelance project was a set of three SEO-focused articles for a very popular note-taking product in 2018. “I got paid $200 for the lot. If I took that same project today, I'd quote well over $5k.”

Amit told us he doesn’t do many conventional long-form articles anymore, “but when I do, they tend to be buyer’s guides and similar mid-funnel / down-funnel assets.”

He prices these now from $2,000 per asset — a far cry from his first project of $200 for 3 pieces.

INCOME OVER TIME

Amit told us he’s very fortunate to charge on the higher end of global rates while living in a low-medium COL country.

“$50k would be a bad year for me performance wise yet still put me in the top 5% of incomes for this country.”

The obvious upside: Amit can make about what he needs for a year in 6 months. This offers him flexibility. For example, this year he spent the first three months with no income to take care of some health issues (all good now!).

The downside, Amit says, is that this “margin” sometimes has led him to a high degree of complacency. “I’m now paying for this in the form of having zero pipeline.”

SETTING PRICES

In the beginning, Amit said pricing was “a lot of guesswork and trial and error for how much to charge.”

He started by figuring out how much he’d like to earn and how much time he wanted to spend working, and did the basic math from there to work down to a good rate. (He doesn’t charge hourly, though. In fact, he’s turned down great work that only wanted to do hourly billing.) Then he adds “a pinch extra” in case things go south or scope expands slightly after kickoff.

When he went out full-time solo, he didn’t change his rates from what he charged when he was employed full-time and moonlighting. But this year, he’s raised all his prices.

Some of his ability to increase rates came from moving his work down-funnel, focusing more on conversion marketing (rather than traditional long-form content). Since doing so, it’s become much easier for him to tie the outcome of his work to a specific dollar amount for the company. He said:

“Because I now work in conversion marketing for funded or fast-growth products, I'm able to justify my rates. Even a 1-2% increase in conversion rate tends to pay for my fee several times over — and I go all the way down-funnel to the point of sale (think lifecycle emails and sales enablement for SQLs).”

When you can easily point to direct revenue improvement that far exceeds your fee, it’s much easier to justify a high rate.

As these high-growth companies raise their pricing, it directly ties back to the value Amit is providing (because higher pricing = more value from each conversion). This gives Amit a clear opportunity to raise his pricing, too:

“Essentially, as the people I work with raise their rates, the value of my impact goes up and warrants a similar increase on my part.”

This is a brilliant strategy that I don’t think enough freelancers think about. As your client grows and they bring in more revenue per customer, every new lead you get them is worth more — making your work worth more, too. Finding ways to explicitly connect these dots and highlight this type of value makes the case for higher pricing much easier to justify.

Still, Amit says, he tends to follow the market in terms of raising or reducing his rates. “I’ll often reduce rates for agency leads and very early stage teams if I like the business and team.”

In the freelancing world, I feel like it’s almost anathema to admit you ever lower or reduce your rates. Charge what you’re worth!! Don’t back down!! But in reality, almost every freelancer I’ve talked to, including both of the ones we’ve run in this series so far, say they sometimes reduce their rates for certain clients.

In the long run though, Amit says he tries not to lower his rates out of reactivity. “Some people can afford me, some can’t,” he says. (Interestingly, the last freelancer we profiled said the exact same thing.)

“I did have two leads ghost me late this year after I quoted (what was at the time) my highest ever fee. Both of those took me by surprise and had me questioning my pricing for a while, but I ultimately decided not to be reactive. Which was the right move because I learned yesterday that one of them went with an agency I know and paid them 30% more than my quote.”

As freelancers, it’s easy to assume that if leads are ghosting, our prices are too high. But that’s often not the case. “Sometimes,” Amit says, “I don’t do a good enough job of clarifying the value I provide.”

This is easier with conversion-focused marketing, but it rings true for all freelancers. There is no “average rate,” although it would sure make things easier. In many cases, raising your rates simply comes down to being able to show more clearly the value you provide.

- Rachel

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