Retainer
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- BonSeff0
If you go retainer, I see a lot of:
"hey, can you knock this out real quick"
in your future
- gramme0
Yeah Bonseff, that very thought has crossed my mind. I'm already doing a certain amount of little things like that (web ads, small one-off print ads for other publications, etc.). They have web production people who do a lot of simple tasks like this already, and besides the two magazine art directors, there's a guy who's sort of a jack-of-all-trades who could do the same things for little tiny print projects.
- hallelujah0
we just entered into a similar situation with our best client... a monthly fee, based on mutual trust, no contract, no specified number of hours, no limitations on outside work
- johndiggity0
i would write in hours per month just so they don't slam you with little shit and they know everything they give you counts toward their hours. and if they go over you can have an agreed upon fee, or deduct hours from the next month. i'm just saying...
- gramme0
Good point JD, hadn't thought of it that way. They obviously know what I charge hourly, so once I'm approaching let's say, a monthly cap, I'll let them know.
- gabe0
the only circumstance i can see a retainer being advantageous for an agency is when they're doing a substantial amount of work (hundreds of thousands of dollars worth) and the agency has to maintain a large staff to execute the work. or, if each and every time you start a project, there's a ton of paperwork and formalities that bog the process down. otherwise, the only person that can benefit from being on retainer is the client.
my opinion anyway :)
- gramme0
Right gabe, but you've gotta to scale everything back from the agency perspective... remember I'm only a one-man studio. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars" worth of billing is the absolute most I ever hope to receive in a single year from all clients total. I don't see myself every having more than one or two employees, so $300,000 in billings per year would be pretty freaking sweet.
Let's just say that the retainer from this single client alone is going to be substantially more than my full-time salary at my last job.
- floccinaucinihilipil0
The clients we have on retainer get priority service due to the fact that we can count on their hours from month to month. We have our own benefits package, so I wouldn't consider the other offers of compensation. Why mix the two?
Anyway, in my experience, if you can get companies to sign on to a deal of this type it's a good thing.
- er... have us on retainer, I should have said. X number of hours per month is how we do it.floccinaucinihilipil
- gabe0
that was part of my point matt...
you don't have that nasty overhead to worry about. a retainer would only be beneficial to you if you were doing exactly the amount of work you're being billed for or LESS, for the majority of the term of the retainer.
all it takes is a bit of scope creep on one project before you're in the red, whereas if you weren't on a retainer, you would be able to bill for any additional hours.
only you know how much work this particular client requires!
- hallelujah0
it was a nobrainer for me
- gabe0
...completely disregard everything i've said if you intend on writing in a limit on the hours per month (didn't know you were considering doing so).