Seth Godin shared an interesting thought today on his blog about pricing and rates.
Prix fixe, indeed. Hmmm. Retainer anyone? What would happen if an illustrator changed the typical billing model for services (which I assume to be XX dollars for XX time or XX result)? Is it still possible to flip the artist billing model on its head, or have all sides of the head been explored?
I’m gonna start thinkifying this now. I’m curious to know other’s thoughts on this subject. Designers? Illustrators? Animators? Freelancers?
What are your model-flipping ideas? Anyone is welcome to start or join the conversation, I want to hear from you!
When most clients don’t want to pay for discovery and planning phases, this seems really impossible to me. On almost every project that I’ve worked on in the last 18 years that didn’t have a discovery and planning phases,the project went over budget. This type of pricing would put the onus on the designer to ask every possible question under the sun up front before estimating. And then the promise that you and the client will be sticking to well-written restrictions and boundaries at the BEGINNING of the project. No exceptions. It would take a massive sea-change to actually do this at an agency so entrenched in their processes. :)
[...] while back, I asked about ideas of how creatives could flip the usual rate model (rather than the trading-hours-for-cash thing). I wanted to hear about [...]