Here's a general question for those to sell services on a retainer basis (other than hourly) and those who buy them: Do you prefer retainers through a calendar month, a certain time period, or with no limits? Before someone asks... a retainer is basically a prepaid amount that puts the service provider on-call for your needs. I offer retainers on my PR consulting services which are hourly. Those I offer based on a calendar month, b/c it allows me to easily limit the number of retainers running at any time (you can't book more time than you have billable hours, plus accounting for smaller projects worked in), and because it keeps payments aligned for easier record-keeping (everything is paid prior to the first of the month the retainer is valid for. I also offer retainers on press release writing for sets of certain numbers. Right now, I'm also running them based on calendar months, and if they're not used, they're lost (for the reasons above, but also b/c you can't have no time limit where months down the road several people suddenly jam up your schedule with old releases they want to redeem). I'm considering changing those particular packages to a 30-day policy instead of calendar months, so people don't have to wait until a new month to get the bulk discounts. I'm just wondering if anyone else here has done something similar, and if you have feedback on those (or even other) methods. Thanks! Jenn
I use retainer for my ecommerce site's customer support. I like doing it monthly because it fits well with how we account our profit and loss.
But what kind of "unit" are you selling? Is it for a certain number of hours or other time period, a number of phone calls, or do you offer total support all the time with no limits per month, or even something else? With things like that it makes complete sense to do it monthly. Here's another example that might be more similar to what I'm considering changing... Let's say a content writer decides that they want to focus on bulk orders, and they offer a deep discount on orders of 1000 articles or more, but don't want to have to commit to that many immediately b/c of time constraints. Should they say, if you want the bulk discount, the articles all need to be ordered this month, in the next 30 days, or not put a time frame on it, have it paid for up front, and have themselves owing the articles no matter when the client wants them, even if it's months down the road?
Yes, purchasing "credits" is a good way to do this. People like this word better than retainer as credits has some ownership associated with it. You have a better idea of your getting something where as a retainer seems a bit more ethereal. So purchasing access up front is a good way to sell more and provide incentive "discounts" for doing so.