If you are a freelance designer you have different options as to how you work. You can create design work directly for the end user, the client or you can work for a “middleman,” such as a marketing company, or like myself you can do a combination of both.
The advantages of working through a third party
- You don’t have to go out looking for work and therefore can devote more time to design rather than sales and marketing
- A constant flow of work – if you build up a good relationship with a marketing/sales person could could find yourself with a reasonable flow
of work - No cold selling
- Less travelling
The disadvantages of working through a third party
- Less variety of work
- You have to please two sets of clients – Your contact is happy with the visuals you give them and takes them to their client. Their client rejects the visuals. You contact does then not want to pay for the visuals as they can’t charge their client.
- You have no control over the brief, and can not control whether you contact has taken a good brief or not.
- You do two sets of amends – one for your contact, one for their client.
- If your not careful you can end up with all your eggs in one basket. If your contact pulls their work you lose a lot of work at once.
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5 Comments
Definitely an important one. Best to have at least three main retainer clients if possible.
Yes I agree. Its quite difficult to juggle though. You don’t want to turn work down from a major client, but then you don’t want to end up working exclusively for them.
Always keep a months average gains on a safe account
and get some retainers as soon as possible
How do you guys negotiate your fees with middlemen?
How much of a cut is appropriate to give them? Or do you just state how much you will charge for the project and the commission they get is up to how high they are able to mark it up?
Hi Nikolas, I generally give them a price to do the job or they tell me the budget they have available.