Freelance for agencies V Freelance direct for clients?
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- breadlegz
For those of you that freelance, have you had more success going direct to clients, or working for agencies on a project by project basis?
- Continuity0
Define success, first. You want financial success or personal (creative) satisfaction?
most freelancers I know take job from agencies to pay the bills (financial success) and use their own clients for more creative satisfaction.
- Continuity0
Well, it can be yeah, but the day-by-day realities of freelancing is that it's typically one or the other.
Example:
By the time a freelancer is called in for a job on the agency side, the idea/concept phase is already done, as is the setting of the art direction. Agencies typically call in the freelance guns for execution, though sometimes it does happen they get them in on pitches for ideas.So that's where your financial success is, executing someone else's ideas at a 450/day.
The flip-side is that your own clients may or may not be able to afford your handsome day rate, but at least you're in on a project at the very beginning, hence the creative success.
- rascuache0
From my (limited) experience the above is spot on.
Subcontracting is at least 50% of my work and very much pays the bills. I've found it difficult to find clients that want to do nice work, and don't have a problem with my rates.
Although a lot of the subcontracting gigs have allowed me a little more freedom than I'd anticipated, so it hasn't been a total washout creatively.
- Continuity0
One thing I would like to add, though, is that agencies aren't just cash cows, if you play your cards right. If you land regular work with the right shops, that means you might have a hand in projects for really big brands (e.g.: the Coca-Colas of the world) and that — in turn — puts you in a much better position to get the calibre of own-clients with respectable budgets you want down the track.