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Topic: How to draft a retainer agreement?
| Author | Message |
| mushkambaryan | Posted – 8/22/2008 2:45:03 PM | show profile Any self-employed writers out there? I have a question. One of my new clients wants to arrange some sort of retainer agreement. I will have to write 2 press releases a month. Something like that. Should I add any additional charges or should I just charge for 2 press releases each month? And should they pay in the beginning of the month or at the end? What if in the middle of the month they send an additional or a bigger project my way? Never worked on a retainer. Please advise. |
| Lula | Posted – 8/25/2008 4:08:06 PM | show profile A retainer is just a contract that guarantees a certain amount of your time to the client. Typically it's an hourly arrangement - the client pays in advance for XX number of hours per month at an agreed-upon rate, and you guarantee you'll be available for those hours to the work for them. Some clients are prone to taking advantage of retainers by either providing no lead time on projects (e.g. "Drop everything, I need this tomorrow, and since I've got you on retainer, I own you"), and/or asking you to do work outside the scope of the arranged services (e.g. "I know we agreed you'd write press releases, but we don't need any this month - can you just handle copyediting for us for now?"). To avoid this, just make sure the contract spells everything out: - How long the retainer is for (3, 6 and 12 months are typical). - How many hours you're guaranteeing and how much per hour. - The nature of the work. - Required lead time (you should be making your retainer clients top priority, but 48-hour notice is reasonable to ask for). - How you'll charge if you exceed the retainer hours. - What happens if the client doesn't use up all the retainer hours (normally nothing - "use 'em or lose 'em" - after all, you made yourself available, like being on call). I suppose you could skip the hourly arrangement and just base it on number of press releases, but then I'd be extra careful about spelling out "not to exceed" terms, in case what they give you requires a lot of extra work. |
| Lula | Posted – 8/25/2008 4:09:56 PM | show profile Oh, and yes - the client should PREPAY. The point is that they're putting down a non-refundable deposit to secure your time. Payments should be due on the first of the month - you should invoice them 2 weeks in advance to be sure they don't forget (they will forget). |
| mushkambaryan | Posted – 8/25/2008 4:10:42 PM | show profile Excellent response, Lula. Thank you so much ! |
| Lula | Posted – 8/28/2008 1:58:53 AM | show profile No problem; glad it was helpful. |
