A freelancer at a coffee shop in Austin changed how I think about client retainers

He told me he charges a flat $2k monthly fee for unlimited revisions and said my hourly billing was burning me out, and after crunching my numbers from last quarter I realized he was right - has anyone else tried flat fees or is that just a recipe for scope creep?

3 comments

3 Comments

ryan_shah3829d ago

Wait what? UNLIMITED revisions for $2k a month? That sounds insane honestly. How does he not get eaten alive by clients who just keep sending changes forever? I get the appeal of not watching the clock every second but that feels like a disaster waiting to happen with the wrong client. My buddy tried flat fees and ended up working 80 hour weeks because one client wouldn't stop tweaking things. Maybe you can make it work if you set really strict boundaries upfront about what unlimited actually means but I don't know if I could do it.

diana51229d ago

Honestly @ryan_shah38, your buddy's story hits close to home. I had a client last year who thought "unlimited" meant I'd redo an entire brand guide six times until it looked nothing like the original. It got to the point where I was rescheduling other projects and barely sleeping. Some people just don't get that a flat fee isn't a blank check, you know? But I think if you spell out in the contract what counts as a revision instead of a full rework, it can keep the worst of it from happening. Your friend definitely isn't alone in that nightmare though.

quinncarr29d ago

Setting boundaries early is EVERYTHING. I started defining "revision rounds" in my contracts and limiting each round to specific changes, not endless do-overs. That stopped the death spiral before it even started for me.