Why Social Proof is the Secret Sauce to Charging More as a Freelancer

“Can you send me some results you’ve achieved with past email campaigns?”

This email landed in my inbox with a metaphorical thud.

The old me (like, two-years-ago-me) would have come down with a serious case of the cold sweats as a mega-dose of imposter syndrome set in: how could I possibly prove myself?

I was a writer.

I just wrote the emails and then clients did with them what they wanted. When I’d handed over my words, they were at the mercy of whoever was at the end of the email. It wasn’t my responsibility to find out the results.

Or was it??

Well, if I hadn’t got my act together and pestered (in a good way, of course) my clients to hand over the good stuff like numbers and figures, I wouldn’t have landed this gig.

“Sure,” my cool response started. “I’ve put together a case study for you that shows how one of my email campaigns sold out a client’s programme in ten minutes.”

I don’t think the client even waited half an hour to respond.

“We’d love to have you on board!”

And that was the beginning of a one-and-a-half-day project that paid £1,000.