What does money have to do with creativity?
A lot. Susan Baroncini-Moe writes a great blog post titled “Could You Raise Your Rates?”. She mentions that solo professionals resist raising their rates for one main reason–self-worth issues. I’ve often said that self-confidence issues are at the root of all the world’s problems, and they rear their ugly heads in the free-lance world, too. Not to say that a graphic designer who doesn’t charge enough is one of the world’s major problems, but my thesis is scalable from world peace down to an interaction between you and your neighbor.
The beauty of Susan’s post is that if people follow her ideas, they will lead to freedom. Financial freedom and creative freedom. If you raise your rates and lose some of your bottom-feeder clients, you’ll have more income and potentially less stress. Or you can opt to maintain your income and dedicate more hours to creative soul-searching and/or tinkering. Something that could result in you increasing your skillset and maybe even raising your rates more. I like joyful upward spirals much more than viscous downward spirals.