Hit your first 6-figure year with freelancer day rates
I’m a big BIG fan of day rates for freelancers. VIP days, day reservations, day rates—whatever you want to call them, I’ve seen these intensive offerings help so many freelancers grow from the messy middle to booked and busy.
Why and how do these work so well? They require extreme focus and a master of your craft, but also contain loose ends into neat and tidy boundaries really well. It’s a win-win for you and your clients.
In this blog post, I cover:
- What is a freelancer day rate or VIP day?
- When it makes sense for you to add a freelancer day rate or VIP day to your services suite.
- How to structure a VIP day for more freedom in your business.
- How to use VIP days or freelancer day rates to position your services as expert level or premium.
- Where to learn more about how to charge for freelance work.
What is a VIP day or freelancer day rate?
A VIP Day or day rate is essentially like the various names sound: It’s reserving a single day of time for a single client as a freelancer. Some people bend the rules of the “day” idea—they make intensive offers that are actually multiple days or an entire week, but call it a day.
My preference is to keep your day to almost a true day. This usually pairs well with a strategy session or some kind of meeting in the days or weeks prior to align the plans for the big day and get to know your client. Selling true day rates vs longer intensive offers keeps things simple and seamless for you and your clients.
Freelancer rates
The first challenge all new freelancers face when they land their first client is how to charge for freelance work. To be honest, this challenge doesn’t go away for a while! I work with high level freelancers inside my mastermind, and freelancer rates are a repeat question… What should I charge? Let’s talk about this.
How to set freelance rates
The decision of how to set freelance rates often depends on your business goals and overall business structure. There’s a few ways you can choose to set freelancer rates: Hourly, per project, per word (or other deliverable), and with freelancer day rates, or VIP days.
Sometimes a freelancer may include royalties in their fee structure, although this is more technical and only advised for the right fit client.
My recommendation is to go for the most scalable option, like charging per project. However sometimes, it makes sense to use a freelancer day rate fee structure instead.
Other resources that may help you with how to set freelance rates:
Freelancer day rates vs hourly
In most cases, I don’t recommend freelancers charge hourly rates. There are a few instances where this might be a good idea, but often it keeps you stuck with a certain revenue ceiling as a freelancer.
Freelancer day rates are a similar alternative because technically you’re selling a block of hours worked over a single day. Although these are often charged at a premium because they’re able to reserve an entire day of your time. Hence the names freelancer day rates, or VIP days, for this type of intensive service.
When should you add a VIP Day to your offer suite?
VIP Days aren’t for everyone. Some people find the structure too stressful since most of the work happens all in one day. People pleasers might not benefit from this type of service because they find it hard not to work on the project outside of the scheduled hours. (As an actively recovering people pleaser, I would know.)
But it’s all about creating a structure that works for you. So who is it good for?
How to decide if a VIP day or freelancer day rate makes sense for you…
A freelancer day rate or VIP day could make sense for anyone who has limited availability (or who wants to limit availability) for client work.
- Work-at-home Moms who work around family schedules.
- Side hustlers juggling full-time hours.
- Busy af entrepreneurs trying to get shit done fast.
If you’re one of those types who will get frozen from pressure on the day of, this isn’t for you. Or if you need to mull things over with every project, this isn’t for you. If your brain moves quick and you like to get in and out fast, this could be a great addition to your services suite as a freelancer.
My advice: if you’re unsure, try it a couple of times. The first time a member of the Inner Circle tried a VIP day in her business, she couldn’t stop raving about how much she loved it…
“I can not BELIEVE how awesome doing a VIP day service model is. I’d toyed with the idea of doing one before, but Jill was the only one that made it make sense for me. As a stay-at-home (working) Mom, I needed this to work… I have *very* limited hours. So I tried it, and when the day was done I felt like I was on top of the world. I had done SO MUCH work, and I thought I hated doing work under pressure. But I was on fire. I’m literally never going back. They’re my favorite thing now.” —Dianna Candido, Copywriter, Content Marketing Strategist + Consultant and member of The Inner Circle
See what I mean? Life can feel pretty good when you work smarter, not harder.
How do you structure a VIP day?
A VIP day doesn’t actually occur entirely in one day in most cases—there are things that have to happen before the actual day to make everything run smoother. I know this is contradictory to the previous explanation, but I can explain what this means!
Yes, the client is only booking a single day of time. In my case, I book half days only (4 hours), but that’s a full work day for me.
My day reservations also include a strategy call done within two weeks of the actual VIP day. I also set aside an hour or so the day before a VIP day to make sure all the details of the plan are polished and I have everything I need to work, so when it’s time to sit down at my desk I’m ready to focus.
Many members in my mastermind, The Inner Circle, often do something similar. Usually, it goes something like this:
- Client Homework (invoice, questionnaire, contract, etc.)
- Strategy Call with both client and service provider
- VIP Day
- Wrap-Up Call (This is optional—sometimes it’s helpful, depending on the type of VIP day offered, but sometimes it’s unnecessary.)
- Offboarding
This structure gets projects on the books and finished faster. Which means a more streamlined process for you, and quicker results for the client.
“A lot of my clients need work done fast — which is why I decided to go for a VIP day model. I love them so far because there are crystal-clear boundaries in place, but also I can really help clients just get shit done. They add a much-appreciated variety into my weeks!”—Grace Baldwin, Brand Strategist + SaaS Copywriter and member of The Inner Circle
You don’t have to structure it exactly like I recommend above, but something similar will keep things tidy.
Create more freedom in your business with VIP days
These days, life is pretty busy. I can get some good focused work time between 6-7:30 ish before my husband clocks in for the day. But by 8AM, I’m in Mom Mode. And Mom Mode is kind of an all-day thing. When I can (read: naptime) I sometimes spend some more time in the office with my brain on client strategy, our own marketing, or coordinating with the team.
And at times, the studio books out weeks or months in advance for long-term projects. My Get Sh*t Done Days are my version of a VIP day, and they come in pretty handy for when life and the studio is full… This offer helps me help people on a quicker turnaround time as it fits within my life and other commitments. It’s an extra way to work with dream clients, even if they don’t fit into our full-service project requirements.
Ideas of deliverables for VIP Days
My Intensives are set up to give me and my clients freedom inside that day: While the structure is always the same, what I do is up to the client. Every business is different, so the work can be entirely customized to meet my clients where they are.
Here are some cool things they can use them for…
- Figure out what makes them unique and create a messaging strategy to implement across all their channels that really hits home with their dreamy people.
- Create, refine, and price offers that people actually want and support their business’ long-term growth (aka—they finally get paid well).
- Map out the moving pieces of their next launch, so they have an action plan to bring in sales as soon as the cart opens.
- Audit the current projects in their business and identify where they can streamline to increase revenue… While reclaiming space from a bad case of squirrel brain.
While the freedom to do things that make a big impact (fast) is great, the best thing about these VIP days is the freedom they create outside the office.
Client back-and-forth is eliminated.
Nothing gets pushed back for timelines and deliverables.
Project work doesn’t bleed into my hours outside the office.
And you can do the same to create more freedom in your business and in your life.
If you want to be a high-level entrepreneur, have high-level services
High-level clientele expect high-level services. Having a la carte or smaller packages targets the wrong people and makes you look less experienced. VIP days are an easy no-brainer that levels your services up in a simple yet super impactful way.
If you want to grow your business to be booked and busy with a line of dream clients out your virtual door, you need to look at ways to streamline, refine the client experience, and work efficiently. VIP Days are a great way to do all that.
Developing new offers and refining your services suite is exactly the kind of foundational work we do inside The Inner Circle Mastermind. Having clear, results-driven, value-based, desirable, and fairly priced offers is absolutely necessary if you want to grow and scale your business. With this gap missing, it’s impossible to grow to the sweet spot in your business.
If you’re nodding along to all of this, check out The Inner Circle Mastermind.
A VIP Day could help you earn $2k+ per day
I shared this in a video over on YouTube… Freelancer day rates are a premium service. You need to remember this when deciding how much to charge for your VIP day service.
- Clients often get to skip the line in your project queue.
- They get deliverables faster than if they were to work through a typical project timeline.
- And they get your expert eyes on their work in an intensive nature… Producing something valuable for them.
Watch the full video here:
Start with the business foundations
If you read this entire blog post and are starting to doubt yourself, but want to add a premium service like a freelancer day rate or VIP Day to your offer suite, maybe you need to take a step back to gain confidence in your positioning.
4 Steps to Profit is my free workbook and guide that helps you get started elevating your positioning in a saturated freelance market. It shows you step-by-step how to lay strong foundations that you can grow from. After doing the work inside, you’ll probably feel confident enough to add a premium VIP day to your freelance business. Learn more and get free access here.
