Clients on retainer
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- meffid
Who has clients on a month to month retainer?
How do you invoice and allocate hours to them, or do you do a set amount of projects for them per month?
All stories and ideas welcome. Thanks.
- mydo0
We've tried and failed a few times to do this.
Normally fixed price for a set amount of hours per month.
Client soon discovers their website isn't the international super hit they thought it would be.
- meffid0
It's for varied marketing, EDM, brochures, etc. Not just web. Any advice?
- BusterBoy0
I've moved most of my web clients onto monthly retainer. Helps immensely with cash flow forecasting. You just need to make sure they get value for money otherwise waste of time.
You need to specify exactly what services are covered in your retainer otherwise it can get messy.
Make sure you also send them hundreds of emails a month to make it look like you're doing something. ;)
- ximeraLabs0
Once you're working on a medium to large site a monthly retainer is a good idea because there'll be always something that needs fixing (you have no idea how people can even mess up the most simplest of CMS'es).
- maikel0
I had a few clients like that.
With a large website we had a dedicated resource and we billed them monthly. It worked because they paid for a mid weight, but we had seniors helping out when it was complicated and it was business for me because I could use an extra resource for other projects in his downtime.
Earlier I had a client with an 'account' in the ol' times' style. It was branding and print. We billed for projects and they had a credit. It was good for them as they could span large projects along several month and it worked for me as I had an even stream of money coming in.
I tried selling 10-hours package of dev services to a Spanish agency and it was shite. They always argued about how long took for doing anything.
- ximeraLabs0
The flip side of retainer work is that client will call you when their printer is not working or their inbox is full.
- maikel0
if you bill them accordingly that shouldn't be a problem.
once a studio billed me £90 for burning a cd. how's that? i mean, just copying files into a cd and sending it over.
- plash0
i work on retainer for a local pharmaceutical company here in Chicago.
i bill them 3 months at a time and keep meticulous records of my project involvement.