How much should I charge for freelance marketing services?

Question

A friend has asked me to help market a sports program. ( I know that doing business with friends can be tricky, so we will definitely have a contract of the terms of our agreement.) There won't be any money coming into the business until the sports programs are purchased by clients.

We have been discussing if I should be paid an hourly rate or a percent of the profits.

My idea (that I haven't presented to my friend yet) is that I should be paid a flat fee to help get the business off the ground. I will handle office type tasks and most of the marketing including preparing mailers and even some travel to visit prospective clients.

I haven't yet calculated how many hours I think all of this will take.

What is the going rate for this type of service? Should I ask for an hourly wage or a flat fee to get things started?

Once the business takes off, should I then get a portion of the profits? If so, what percent?

Thanks for your advice! I had no idea who else to ask

If you can tell me how you arrived at your answer instead of just giving a number I would appreciate it. Thank you!

Answer 1

if you think the biz is going to be hella successful, go for a percentage of the company for your assistance. or figure what it is your time and expertise is worth to you per hour and multiply this by how many hours you work on this project. this will give you your flat fee amount. keep in mind what your expertise may bring this company in dollars.

Answer 2

I think you'll get much better advice by connecting with a professional marketers association like the AMA, for example - http://www.marketingpower.com/

Here's a list of marketing associations - http://www.knowthis.com/groups/tradelist.htm

Some of them certainly must have online discussion boards. You may be able to find some through Google too. You might even wish to join one or more of the professional associations in order to get access to contacts and information.

I'm a freelance computer consultant, and my gut tells me that a flat fee is going to hurt you in this case unless the contract puts extremely clear limits on what you're going to do and how much you're going to do. And don't even think about reducing your fee (flat or hourly) in return for a portion of future profits. The thing about future profits is that they may never materialize, no matter how good the business plan looks on paper.

The rule of thumb for freelancers is to take the annual salary you would want to make if you were working for someone else on a W2 basis with benefits, multiply by 2 to cover your extra taxes and lack of benefits, and divide by 1000 because you're not likely to achieve more than 1000 billable hours in a year.

So if you think you're worth $50,000 as a salaried professional, you will want to charge $100 per hour.

Answer 3

Charge him $25 an hour.