[Hidden-tech] Retainer Fees?

[Janis S. Gray]

My understanding (confirmed at one point by another writer who once worked on retainer) is that they are discounted from the hourly fee. If I can find my contract, I'll share it with you. (I signed it several years ago; while the amount I get has changed since then, the client never had me sign a new one.)

I'm paid for a certain number of projects a month, not by the hour, so I can't help you there. But the project numbers do "roll over" into other months in some ways. Unfortunately for me, fortunately for them, lately I've been running several months well "in the black" with them. (In other words, I've done more projects per month than I'm being paid for.) To "catch up" with me, they agreed to not send me any work for a number of weeks in December, which was actually quite nice. The creative director also told me that if I pushed, I could just ask for the money to make us "even." But I also know in the past they've had little work to send me, and I've started sliding towards "red." So it mostly balances out.

I'll be interested to see what others say! Good questions.

Janis Gray
----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rachel Wilsey 
  To: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 5:38 PM
  Subject: [Hidden-tech] Retainer Fees?


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  Hello all,
  I am working with a new client that has lots of ongoing design work for me and I am trying to accurately balance what I expect to get in work from them with taking on new projects. Ideally I would like to work out a retainer fee so I know to set aside x-hours per month for them. Then I don't have to worry about taking on too much or too little additional work. 

  How are retainer fee's usually structured? Are they based straight off your hourly fee or do they tend to be discounted? Does anyone have a sample retainer contract they could send me. Also if we agree to x hours and then the work comes in at less then that, it seems to me that is their loss as I have already reserved that time for them (and not taken on other jobs), but is this how it is actually done? They were asking about hours rolling over into the next month etc.

  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
  Rachel Wilsey


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  Rachel Wilsey Design & Marketing
  PO Box 1401
  Northampton, MA 01060
  413.358.0788
  RachelWilsey at gmail.com 


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