Do you want to prosper as a freelancer? Or are you looking to quit your day job and become a fulltime freelancer? Then you’ll need a solid strategy to boost your earnings –and maintain that higher level of income over a long period of time.

To help you get the most out of your freelance career, here are 4 income-boosting tips:

1. Specialize

Being a jack-of-all-trades will land you more freelance jobs – but will you earn more money? Most likely not, because the general work you can do as a jack-of-all-trades is often lower-skilled – and, therefore, lower-paying – than more specialized work would be. Working as a generalist also means you’ll face a lot more competition than a specialist, and this will drive down wages for everyone in the field.

On the other hand, if you specialize in a hard-to-fill niche that requires some advanced skills, you’ll have less competition and command a higher price per job.

2. Upsell

Selling extra services to an existing client is what we refer to as “Upselling”. This is a great way to increase your income as you’ll already have a willing client to whom you can make your pitch, which saves you time, money, and marketing efforts and increases your profits per job. Also, upselling will make your sales cycle shorter: The less time you have to spend engaging new clients, the more time you can spend working and bringing in revenue.

In order to upsell successfully, there are two things you must do. Firstly, you must establish a good track record with your clients, because they won’t go for the upsell if they aren’t already convinced of the quality of your work. Secondly, you’ll need to favor bigger clients, as they are more likely to have the kinds of budgets that will accommodate your upselling.

3. Find Your Unique Selling Point

Due to the stiff competition for jobs among freelancers, it will be in your best interest to develop a unique selling point (USP) that makes you stand out from the competition. A USP will make you seem more desirable, and this will enable you to command higher fees and win more work.

Your USP can pretty much be anything, as long as it’s valuable to your clients. Are you multilingual? That could be your USP. Do you offer the shortest turnaround time in your field? That’s a USP! Give out consultations for free? Another USP!

Just pick something value-adding that few (if any) of your competitors offer, and you have yourself an income-boosting USP.

4. Increase Your Rates

When you’re a freelancer, there are no unions, HR departments, or sympathetic managers to fight in your corner. If you want a raise, you’ll need to get it yourself.

Know what you worth by checking the marketplace. Are your underselling yourself? If you are, you may want to negotiate a fee increase with current clients or consider applying your new rate to new clients. If securing new clients at your new rate proves difficult, maybe your fee increase is not reasonable.

On the long run if you can build a bank of new clients at higher rates, you can be sure you are underselling yourself to existing, lower-rate clients. Should the lower-paying clients refuse to accept your new rates – even with the overwhelming market evidence, then make sure you replace them with new, higher-paying clients.

Want to become a highly paid freelancer? SIGNING UP on eWorker is the first step you should take!