To accept this job offer? DH thinks I am

[Skinit]

I'm a freelance writer, most of my bread and butter comes from writing SEO articles for various web design agencies. They get clients, build them a site and offer Search engine Optimization articles as part of the package.

I provide the web design agencies with the articles.

They're boring but they mean I can earn about £10.00 per hour at home.

One client has been giving me regular work for about 4 months now, it's good as he pays very quickly and keeps the work coming.

He's just emailed me to say he has been offered a 12 month contract with one company and would I consider going on a retainer at a slightly lower rate....

I think it's an ok offer. Yes, I would be on a lower rate per hour...probably £8.00 per hour. But I would be guaranteed regular income.

DH is that the client would offer this and feels the client should actually offer MORE per hour to retain me.

As I understand it, a retainer is a fixed monthly amount payed to me, in return for which I write any number of articles he wants.

So it COULD mean that one month he has me writing tonnes and the next almost none.

Have I got that right? AIBU?

Is the client? Is DH?

Hmm. IMHO you need to set a limit on the number of articles. £10 an hour at home is good but is that for all day working? If it's just for the time you take to do articles then what he is offering is a different kettle of fish. You don't know if you can provide all the content they require. How often they will require it and how much work it's going to take you to do it.
I'd work out what I could reasonably do for them and negotiate a limit.... otherwise they could start to extract the urine!

You can ask this client exactky what he expects for his £8.00 per hour, and decide from there. It sounds like you are in a position to negotiate.

On the whole, I agree with dh, and you have to think of the possibility that you would have to turn down work that pays more, and if the regualr income, albeit for only 12 months, means more to you.

it actually sounds similar to what my brother does, he was a programmer (like DH - you can imagine how boring it is at dinner if he's round and they get chatting ) but he now works as a freelance SEO providing consultancy to his OLD workplace (a website design agency)

my brother also works on a retainer basis, but i have no idea if he upped or downed his rate because of that. i should think you have the benefit of potentially doing less work then, in a quiet month, but still getting paid your retainer rate?

if you don't get dcent responses to this freelance question in a few days, i can ask my brother how he structures his fees. i know he earns much more than he did when he was directly employed by the website design agency (not sure of figures, but he said something like four times, when my parents were worried about him setting up on his own).

"in return for which I write any number of articles he wants"

hang on, no, i defintely know my brother doesn't do that. i believe his contracts stipulate something like "up to 1 day of consultancy per month"... i.e. there is an upper limit to the time spent on that client contract.

they are effectively paying you for block booking your time in advnace, but that surely can't be a white flag to ask you to do, say, 100 articles for them! that would be a mad setup.

on the other hand, i sill haven't answered your specific question about whether to raise or lower the fees but i wantd to point out that, despite not really know much about my brother's business, i was around at my parents long enough when he was setting up that i know the bit i've quoted is a bit

I have a client I work for like this. I get a monthly retainer plus X amount an hour for up to 4 hours of work a week and Y amount an hour for every hour after that. Their Y amount is the same as my non-retainer clients' X amount, if that makes sense?

I also have in the contract that I will be paid for 4 hours a week even if I don't have 4 hours of work from them.

So I get my retainer every month and at least 16 hours a month at the lower rate.

Tree....that sounds very sensible. I'm a bit about it all really...not sure what to do!

I assume you mean me, Tee?

I really would write the contract you want and negotiate from there. That's what I did. They at first wanted to give me a lower amount for X and I challenged it and got them to agree the 4 hour guarantee, just by asking for it!

Ask for the stars, accept the moon! That's my negotiating technique!!!

ok i checked msn and my brother said this (piecing it together coherently i hope):

"
I don't work with all of my clients on a retainer basis, but the larger ones seem to prefer it. Rates are £550 a day on retainer work up to 3 days.

Extra days are £350 each. Anything over 6 days I don't take, so that I'm not overly reliant on each client (you remember what happened with the [name deletedsorry] account last year - nightmare).

If your friend wanted to hire on an ad hoc basis, the freelance rate is £750 a day. Training rates are between £750 - £1000 a day, onsite at the office. I'm pretty flexible about how many are on the training, as long as it didn't become too much (the larger the group, the harder it is). I've never done offsite work before so I'd have to speak to Ian about how much we'd charge for tha
"

so it looks like he charges LESS on a retainer basis, ust like Tee said. basically giving a discount for the work. in which case you would be right, not your DH.

Tee! sorry! good advice re stars and moon!

frgr does your brother do more than write basic SEO articles?? I can't believe I'm on a fricking tenner an hour!!!

As a consultant...he must sort out their keywords and create plans for them...

I hire a company with 1 design person and 1 copywrite on a retainer. Our agreement stipulates a maximum number of hours that they provide. I pay them less per hour than I was previously when it was on a per job basis.

They like it because it gives them a guaranteed level of money every month. And the reality is that they are never going to do the maximum number of hours every month all the time by the time you take into account Christmas and summer holidays - so that pushes up their hourly rate.

You could do what I did. We agreed an annual contract but with a break after 2 months. This meant both sides got to check out how it worked in practice.

But if you always have enough work to fill all your working hours then it would make more sense to say no to this.

I think the best thing is to decide how many I can realistically write per month...and then accept his offer of a lesser amount per hour on the understanding that anything I write over and above the decided amount, will be charged at thefull rate of ten pounds an hour.

Is that sensible?

Thanks so much frgr for checking up with your bro!

The trouble is lsley that I am working in the evening after the DC go to bed....it's hard to say...I always seem to be playing catch up.
The client did mention a 6 month break...he must have been talking about the same thing as you did...

no, he's an SEO

consultancy work.

his card says "SEO consultant"

he did programming stuff (don't ask me what that entails really ) like DH for 8/9 years after uni, but moved into freelance SEO work after he found that the sheer incompetence of the people at his website company were too much to handle (can you tell i've listened to his rants on it too many times?)

basically he is hired as a consultant to tell people what they are doing wrong with their websites, and to troubleshoot them, as far as i can tell. like if you're not getting visitors, or you have money to spend but don't know where to spend it to prmote something, or want to get it

in fact i just googled "what is SEO job" and my eyes glazed over before i got to the third one down. but my brother seems to love it - he gets into arguments with my DH over dinner all the time (because Dh is a programmer and "the enemy", apprently )

i just asked him what he does all day on msn and he said "think of like a PR company but for websites" - does that help?

frgr...then he's far more knowledgable than me...he will know things which I wouldn't have a clue about. My client is like your bro...he basically gets them top ranking on google.

He gives me the subject matter and I write it. That's as far as I go!

You don't have to accept his offer of £8. You could ask say you are happy with his offer but £9 is fairer.

I could lesley...I did think that. I am SO grateful Mumsnet...so many sensible people here to advise!

fingers crossed he finds the 9ph level amenable - good luck!

Thanks frgr!