What to Charge for a Crowdfunded Project?
polycounter lvl 6
Hey Guys,
Its been a while since I posted on here but I have a bit of a conundrum.
I have a client I have been working for since Jan 2015 which gave (what my business partner considered) a pretty weak rate of payment in the beginning. I made about £600.00 for a for a fully rigged, modelled & textured character (It was my first Freelance job since Uni so I was nervous about overcharging and I couldn't get work anywhere).
I then went into business with my friend (late 2015) who strong armed her to a £100.00 a day rate which she has continually tried to lower saying stuff like "Can you give me your best price?" etc. Despite us already stating the rate as agreed. She gave us a small amount of equity in the IP/company (10%) which she has used to try to leverage fixed rate prices on jobs which have gone WAAAAY over budget.
Under these conditions we have done numerous animations for her which involved compositing, sound, effects, etc. everything with the exception of her pretty much penning the dialogue herself. I have not been allowed to show any of this work until she "launches" the project for Kickstarter this year. Now we have to pretty much tell her what our costs are going to be for her Kickstarter enterprise.
A friend connected to the app world saw one of the animated shorts and automatically assumed we made £40.00ph each on the animation. He was shocked when he learned we were making under £13.00ph each. Especially when all revisions are included.
So now when it comes to working out the cost my business partner will not accept less then £30.00ph going forward. For me and him that makes our costs £9600.00 (£4800.00 each) per month... I guess that means I want to know if that is an acceptable amount. When you consider we pretty much do all of the roles. I mean at that rate to hire us for 8 months will cost £76800.00.
She told me on the phone the other day she was thinking of asking for £50000.00 (we were thinking £90000.00) on Kick Starter and we have a meeting Monday to tell her the actualities. I guess I just wanted to know if this is right.
Please get back to me because I really am stuck here.
Regards,
Stitchshift
Its been a while since I posted on here but I have a bit of a conundrum.
I have a client I have been working for since Jan 2015 which gave (what my business partner considered) a pretty weak rate of payment in the beginning. I made about £600.00 for a for a fully rigged, modelled & textured character (It was my first Freelance job since Uni so I was nervous about overcharging and I couldn't get work anywhere).
I then went into business with my friend (late 2015) who strong armed her to a £100.00 a day rate which she has continually tried to lower saying stuff like "Can you give me your best price?" etc. Despite us already stating the rate as agreed. She gave us a small amount of equity in the IP/company (10%) which she has used to try to leverage fixed rate prices on jobs which have gone WAAAAY over budget.
Under these conditions we have done numerous animations for her which involved compositing, sound, effects, etc. everything with the exception of her pretty much penning the dialogue herself. I have not been allowed to show any of this work until she "launches" the project for Kickstarter this year. Now we have to pretty much tell her what our costs are going to be for her Kickstarter enterprise.
A friend connected to the app world saw one of the animated shorts and automatically assumed we made £40.00ph each on the animation. He was shocked when he learned we were making under £13.00ph each. Especially when all revisions are included.
So now when it comes to working out the cost my business partner will not accept less then £30.00ph going forward. For me and him that makes our costs £9600.00 (£4800.00 each) per month... I guess that means I want to know if that is an acceptable amount. When you consider we pretty much do all of the roles. I mean at that rate to hire us for 8 months will cost £76800.00.
She told me on the phone the other day she was thinking of asking for £50000.00 (we were thinking £90000.00) on Kick Starter and we have a meeting Monday to tell her the actualities. I guess I just wanted to know if this is right.
Please get back to me because I really am stuck here.
Regards,
Stitchshift
Replies
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Freelance#Freelance_Rates
Look at your living situation and see if its realistic.
What would the kickstarter include?
That's the thing I do want a living wage I am just concerned that if we ask for too much on kickstarter and it doesn't get funded... I don't know what that means going forward. We just know we cant continue to work for £100.00 per day rate... Its simply not enough. Really it would be nice if we were kept on this full time so we were secure and her work would get priority. As it stands we have to take the job that pays the most as priority.
as for the kickstarter, it's one thing asking for a amount that will actually get you through production and another thing to ask for
a realistic amount of money that you would actually be able to get, and to know that we would need to see what you are working on.
also you don't seem to have a link to a portfolio so I can't really tell you to throw this away and search for another job because I'm not really sure about your chances, but yeah you shouldn't be accepting £100, I'm guessing you would at least need to get the double amount to actually survive, that is still not good though.
I left Uni with a first but that doesn't mean much in this industry lol tried for jobs in games for a while. Got nothing apart from an internship in some kind of start up and it was quite a ways away and I needed money for travel so no dice there...
There's no doubt I have a ways to go but I have been able to draw a steady income from my company since the middle of last year doing whatever creative jobs I can get my hands on... Websites, Designs, animation, motion graphics, we have even done a TV commercial... me and my business partner together kind of cover it all...
I cant show anything in the way of this project sadly not until it's launched... my personal portfolio is still vastly out of date but I can post my company site: www.ffil.co.uk
Anyway thanks so much for replying I needed to hear that the money was ridiculous...
It seems like you have been able to get other kinds of jobs, do they pay bad as well?
When we raised our prices to £100 a day she chose to keep reminding us that we have a 10% stake in her company... (which to us is an IF not a definite)
If this kickstarter fails she will stop using us and I will have a nice portfolio piece for sure but I'm not sure I want to prolong this cheap labour and she micromanages everything (eventually agreeing with my opinion when it's too late).
it's quite easy to spot early on if a kickstarter campaign will be successful or not, no mediocre stuff ever get funded, it really has to be something that you see one pic of and it's an instant slam dunk, the game can be super good but still fail, kickstarter is all about names and presentation, so if you feel it doesn't really live up to those things it might be a good idea to spend your time on better paid work.