Pure paranoia on my part, to be sure. But as costs go up you have to ask yourself if your rates shouldn’t increase as well. That’s a hard call to make with your loyal clients, and even tougher to do with new clients. It’s a catch-22 situation. You don’t want your reliable standbys to think you’re getting too expensive for them, and it’s easy to be seen as a price-gouger with the newcomers.

There’s no easy answer to this one. It boils down–for me, at least–to going with your gut instinct. In my own personal case, my instincts tell me that some of my new clients may NEED a price increase due to a variety of factors–typical doing business stuff. The economy is just an additional factor. If the economy suddenly gets worse, I’d be tempted to do a re-evaluation at the six month mark in the business relationship. As things are now, it’s wait-and-see.

But for my old standbys, I’m currently inclined to ride out the financial rollercoaster and see what happens. This time next year my rates may NEED to be higher for survival’s sake…but they could just as easily remain where they are if the current global financial craziness starts to settle back down to a reasonable level again.

Hurry up and wait…

I’m doing a feature on freelancers who rely on the iPad for part of their freelance work and would love to interview someone who’s got a strong opinion, pro or con, on the subject. If that’s you, please feel free to drop me a line at:

jwallace (at) freelance (dash) zone.com

I can give you some additional details and a set of interview questions to get things rolling. Thanks in advance for your interest!

Oh, and that goofy picture and other out-of-the-box features of a fresh WordPress install will be disappearing soon, too.