“I’m going through a performance review in March,” my sister told me on the phone recently.

“Huh,” I said, thinking how lucky I was to not have to do that kind of corporate garbage anymore as I petted my cat in my comfortable home office.

“Yep. I’m angling for a promotion and a raise,” she continued.

“Oh,” I said, suddenly interested and extremely jealous. “Wow. Good luck!”

Hours after we’d finished our conversation, I found myself still thinking about the concept of a raise. My husband will be up for one in a few months. My dad has climbed the corporate ladder through promotions. My friends have leveraged their skills and experience to find new roles with a higher salary and better responsibilities.

And me? I stagnate. There’s no one I can appeal to in order to give myself a raise or promotion. What would I even be promoted to? Senior Executive Content Creator?

Just call me SEC-C.

The world isn’t set up to promote freelancers or give influencers raises

When I googled “how to give yourself a raise when you’re self-employed,” one of the top results was a blog post/ad about QuickBooks that bragged about how QuickBooks users get back money in tax savings and how that is pretty much, basically, if you squint your eyes, a raise.

But that’s like saying when I use my loyalty card at a coffee shop and get my 11th coffee for free, I’m getting a $2.50 raise. That’s not how any of this works.

There’s no accepted formula on how to give yourself a raise when you’re self-employed, or a freelancer, or an influencer. So, most of us muddle about, earning more on some months and less on others.

I wasn’t happy with that. I wanted to figure it out. So I sat down and worked out how to give myself a 25% raise, even though I’m self-employed. Here’s how I did it.

Table of Contents1. Start with what you have.
  ∘ How you can do this
2. Decide where you want to go.
  ∘ How you can do this
3. Find the potential gaps.
  ∘ How you can do this
4. Conduct your performance review.
  ∘ How you can do this
5. Make an action plan.
  ∘ How you can do this
My results.

1. Start with what you have

Most salaried employees have the benefit of knowing what their monthly income is.

I do not. I tabulate my monthly income, but it varies tremendously. To come up with my starting number, I took an average of my salary for the past 12 months: about $8,000 per month.

This serves another purpose, too. As a freelancer, I’m prone to feeling like I’m constantly on the verge of losing everything. After all, the ball could conceivably drop on all my income streams at the same time.

Numbers soothe my emotional brain. I know that if I’ve managed around $8,000 per month for the last 12 months, it’s unlikely that’s going to go away without warning.

How you can do this:

Track all your business income and expenses for a reasonably long period of time to spot consistent trends.

Can you say how much you earned in the last month? How about the last twelve? The more familiar you are with your own income patterns, the more easily you can give yourself a raise.

2. Decide where you want to go

OK, I admit it — I picked 25% to get to the arbitrary income of $10,000 per month. It’s long been my goal. A five-figure monthly income sounds good, doesn’t it?

But I wanted more reason than “it sounds good.” What would I actually do with the extra $2,000 per month? Accumulating money for the sake of it isn’t super motivational for me on its own, and $8,000 a month already allows me a very cushy lifestyle. There’s nothing I need for, and little I want for.

To help motivate myself, I decided on a long-term goal and a short-term goal.

Short-term: travel. My husband and I haven’t been on holiday in a long old time. I planned a luxurious trip to Mexico.

Long-term: real estate. As we get more settled in Boston, we see ourselves living here for some time. It makes sense to buy a house.

How you can do this:

Just as if you were negotiating with a boss, come to your own raise review armed with a number. Exactly how much more money do you want to earn?

Money is a great motivator up to a certain point. But if you already have a comfortable life, money won’t be enough. Determine what you’ll do with the new income you earn beyond just sticking it in a savings account.

If you really are just saving, then at least give yourself a concrete savings number to aim for, like $5,000 in the next five months.

3. Find the potential gaps

As long as I’ve been self-employed, I’ve categorized my income in three brackets:

• Clients: writing, videos, ghostwriting. Companies pay me a set fee or rate to make stuff for them. An example would be if a cat toy company paid me $1,000 to write four posts on their blog.
• Platforms: posting stuff in exchange for revenue share and discoverability. Think YouTube — I post videos, they sell ad space, we split the proceeds.
• Self: my brand, website, digital products, newsletters, and so on. My audience pays me directly for stuff I give or sell them. An example would be a Substack account.

I reviewed each source to identify if there was potential for an increase, or if I’d capped out.

• Clients: I could either get more, or I could get the ones I have to pay me more.
• Platforms: I could post more, or I could try to post stuff that did better.
• Self: I could sell more to my audience, or I could work on growing my audience.

How you can do this:

Look at your income stream or streams. Ask yourself candidly: do you think you’ve peaked at that income stream? Or is there room to grow? And if so, how would you do that?

4. Conduct your performance review

At a salaried job, I can negotiate with my boss to give me a raise and prove I deserve it by showing my progress and accomplishments.

As a freelancer… what would that conversation even look like? I took a stab at a self-employed approximation of that performance review.

“Zulie, you deserve a raise. But you also have to scrounge up the money for your own raise. Get to it.”

I reviewed my performance across my three income sources. Unlike a salaried employee, I also had to judge whether I thought there was potential for an increase.

• Clients: My quality of writing hasn’t risen enough to justify asking for a higher rate. My client acquisition method involves clients coming to me (I’m bad at pitching), so I don’t control that. Not a huge amount of potential for growth. The only real way for a raise would be to skill up so I could justify my promotion.
• Platforms: I’m nowhere near the cap of the earnings for certain platforms like YouTube, but I am at capacity with uploading content. Algorithms determine distribution and income, and there’s an element of luck. Not a great contender.
• Self: My audience appreciates my content, and I’ve had success creating specialized products in the past. By reviewing my income spreadsheet, I also see this is the lowest source — only about 10% of my income. Definitely room to grow here.

How you can do this:

Be honest with your capabilites, but in both directions. A lot of freelancers have an artificially deflated sense of their own worth thanks to platforms like Fiverr, so dig deep and genuinely ask yourself where there’s room for you to shine! Have you gained new skills? Did you recently join a new, promising platform? Do you have the time to send out more pitches?

In other words, find out where your strengths aren’t currently represented in your income.

5. Make an action plan

At this point in my self-raising journey, I was like a loaf of bread ready to prove. I had all the ingredients mixed. Now I just needed to turn on the heat.

I was inspired by a recent article of Nick Wolny’s in which he coached his readers to launch one product a month. “The audacity! I could never!!” I gasped to myself the first time I read his article.

But as I thought about how to give myself my 25% raise, I kept coming back to that idea. I thought about what my audience had asked me for, what I hadn’t yet delivered to them, and why.

I realized I had been too scared to do it, but that fear signaled an area of growth. I set up a product, sent two emails, and made a quiet $4,900. It was my easiest product launch to date, indicating an area of high demand and low service.

How you can do this:

The best — and hardest — way to do this is to lean into your fear. Fear signals it’s something you know you should do but are afraid to.

What are you most afraid to do?

• Explore a new platform
• Pitch new clients
• Ask for a raise from existing clients
• Sell something to your audience
• Try something new on your existing platforms
• Something else!

Once you have a direction, put together a plan. For example, if you want to increase from $5,000 to $5,500 per month, could you offer a bundle option to your client where they get more work, but at a lower rate per piece? Or could you argue that your skills and experience merit a 10% increase?

Send that email. Launch that product. Build that profile.

Take that step towards the raise you deserve.

My results

I gave myself the raise! And I was able to earn the raise! (There’s no real language yet around how to give yourself a raise when you’re self-employed. I’ll keep working on it.)

By looking at my existing freelance income, figuring out where I wanted to go, finding potential income gaps, reviewing my performance, and finally just going for it, I earned 25% more last month than I do on average. It was a great feeling.

One of the huge differences between freelancing and being an employee is that you’re in much more control of your salary.

Most people intrinsically grasp the negative side of this coin: Do less work, earn less money.

But few grasp the power of the positive side: Do more work, earn more money.

Only time will tell if my raise is permanent. But in the meantime, I’ll put down a bigger chunk of money into our house-saving account and enjoy a delicious margarita in Mexico.