There's really no solid information to go on here. **Not sure what "ridiculously low" means**... 80% your normal rate? 50%? 25? **No clue long have you been in the field?** If you are pricing to match those with 10 years experience in your field and you have 2 years experience... then you may need to evaluate that. Being *"not as expensive as an agency or other freelancers"* means nothing really. Clients looking to hire an agency aren't looking to hire an individual freelancer - different markets. And unless these "other freelancers" have the exact same knowledge and experience as yourself, their pricing is somewhat irrelevant. No totally, but to a degree. **No idea how proficient and skilled you are at whatever you do.** *You* may feel justified in your pricing, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world does. In addition, you may feel your work is stunning, be-all-end-all work. But if clients aren't returning, it would seem that they feel the work isn't worth the cost. **No clue where your clients are coming from.** Some client farms (freelance websites, craigslist, etc) are *always* going to be populated with a plethora of "dirt cheap" clients unwilling to pay *anything* they feel is unjustified. If you are gaining clients from these areas, *that* may be the issue entirely. **I don't have any clue as to your financial standing.** (Not asking for it either). If you haven't been tucking money away during the good times, you've been slacking. The nature of freelancing in my experience has always been "feast or famine" -- too much work or not enough. You have to plan during good times to compensate for the slow times. Failing to do this will inevitably put you in a rough spot when a slow period hits and you are financially drained. **I don't know how you price** -- Hourly rate? Value-based? Long-term contracts? The truth of the matter is, if you feel you are priced out of your market, then you've got to adjust something. ***Thinking* you are worth $X is quite different than clients beleiving you are worth $X.** Heck I feel I'm worth 2 to 3 times my rate... but that doesn't mean clients will pay that for the work I do. And I *know* clients gained from some resources would *never* pay my pricing. So, I don't use those resources to find clients. While it's true that most clients will *always* want a lower price, if several of them, especially existing clients, are not returning **they are telling you something**. There's an old adage that states, *"If you get every project you bid on your rates are too low."* and the opposite is true as well, if you don't get *any* project you bid on, your rates are too high. First thing to do is **[Fire Your Hourly Rate][1]** if that's how you are pricing. By *not* telling, or pricing work for clients, on disclosed hourly rates, you create some flexibility with your pricing. What this does is allow one to adjust pricing as workloads change. If there's a need for work, project pricing can easily drop 20%. This is much different than dropping an hourly rate 20%. We all know that once you drop an hourly rate for a client is *very difficult* to ever raise it for that client later. And conversely if there's an overload of work project costs can easily be increased by 20% to deter some smaller projects. ---------------- In the end, *only you* know your pricing, abilities, and market. And *only you* can take an honest, open, look at your work and determine if you can ride out the slow period (both financially and emotionally) or drop pricing to hopefully gain work. I *know* it can be difficult during slow periods. But I can't tell you if *you* should lower your prices. I don't know how anyone could. ----------- From a personal standpoint, I have noticed a drop in my workload during Q1 and Q2 of 2016. My larger clients slowed a bit and haven't had a great need for new projects. What they have done this year is determine previous items worked well so they are merely reusing older projects with minor changes. I don't make as much on changes to existing items as I do on new items. It does happen. But they are returning in Q3. Point is.... slow times happen. Don't expect to *always* have enough work. Completely random prediction... the last slow period I had which comes close to Q1/Q2 of 2016 was in 2006... a year and a half later the housing bubble popped and *everyone* felt the crunch. So... since Q1/Q2 of 2016 were slow here, does that mean another bubble is going to pop end of 2017/beginning of 2018? Hmmmm.... This is all ***just speculation***. You actually may be a rock star who is *absolutely* worth your pricing. I don't know. -------------- Additional: If you're in the design field, one of the more difficult things to do is to create some residual income with a multiplier. Something you can do once, then sell multiple times - art, templates, books, training, t-shirts, etc. This takes some effort. And I struggle with it myself. So, I can't offer any solid venues for this. However, finding and maintaining something, anything, that you can sell or collect on without having to directly work on it can be a great cushion for those slow times. [1]: http://freelancing.stackexchange.com/questions/4783/should-i-charge-my-client-for-mistakes-i-make/4785#4785