Contracts & Invoices for Freelance Artists & Illustrators
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- Practical Freelancing Part II: USING CONTRACTS AND INVOICES!
Hi guys! This video is the second in a two part series covering some of the practical aspects of freelance illustration, including:
Finding work, using contracts and getting paid!
We’ve already covered ways of finding clients in the last video, so here it is in case you missed it: bit.ly/1P8Nt7W
PART 1: Contracts
- Scope of the work (How many illustrations? What size, what subject, what level of detail?)
- Rights to the work (How will the client be using the illustration? How long can they use it for? Who owns the copyright?)
- Payment (How much will this cost? When will the client pay you? How will they pay you? Will you require a deposit?) (I definitely recommend that you do)
- Project schedule/delivery date (When will the project start? When will the drafts be delivered? When do you need the client’s feedback? When will the finals be delivered?)
- Client responsibilities (What does the client need to give you before the project starts? i.e. signed contract, deposit, reference photos, creative brief)
- Delivery (How will the client receive the work? Digitally? PSD, JPG, PDF? Physically?)
- Number of revisions allowed (How many times will you allow the client to request changes before increasing the price? How much will the price increase with additional revisions?)
- Contingency upon payment clause (Be sure to say that the client will have no right to use the illustration until payment is received in full)
- Kill Fee (In case the project is cancelled after you've already started working on it)
PART 2: Invoices
- Amount due
- Due date (generally 30-45 days after the date of the invoice)
- Amount they’ve paid you already
- Description of what client is paying for
- Directions on how to pay you (Check? Paypal?)
- An invoice number (I use a formula of year+number of the invoice. So for my 35th invoice for 2015 was 201535. This helps with organization, and with sending follow up/reminder emails)
Thanks for watching!
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well, I have to say this is one of the most helpful and useful videos I have found about the illustrator working life. Thanks so much for all this information Kendyll !!!!!
+Patricia Thank you so much, Patricia! It was a lot of specifics and technical stuff, but I know it's what I would've wanted to see when I was first getting started. Really glad to hear that it was relevant and helpful for you!
Thankyou so so so soooo much!!!! Watching this after 5years. Still I feel this is the simple yet lot of information in very less time video that I have found on youtube! That's really sweet of you to share everything that you have learned over the years! It's really generous of you. Lots of love💖💖💖
Same! Really helpful video. I also suggest googling Negotiating the contract, by Ilise Benun (by artists network). It's also from 5 years ago but it goes by each point with details. Probably 5 years ago is when the knowledge was free yet xD
Found this by searching “how to make paypal invoice for art.” I’m just starting out, though I wanted to start years ago, and I couldn’t find a concrete set of guidelines on what to do. This has been an absolute lifesaver. Thank you Kendyll!!
Ahh, fantastic! So glad to hear it!🙏🏻💕 I know I needed this sort of thing when I was first starting out too, and had trouble finding so I'm thrilled to learn it helped you. Best of luck!
Been an artist for 18 years. Man, I wish TH-cam was around when I started. No fair! Great video! This would have been invaluable information. I had to go check out books at a library in a small town in Kansas. It's a wonder I ever made it.
Thanks so much, Ray! Glad you liked the video. Sorry it and TH-cam couldn't have been around sooner!😭
i guess im asking randomly but does someone know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account??
I was stupid lost my password. I would appreciate any tips you can give me
@Maxim Reed Instablaster :)
@Hank Emory I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site thru google and I'm trying it out now.
Takes quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Hank Emory It did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. I'm so happy:D
Thank you so much you really help me out :D
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! So needed this:)
I'm so happy I found your channel! You have been so helpful!
Oh yay! I'm so happy you found it too, and very glad to hear that it's helpful!
This was very useful to the drafting of my own contract - Thanks so much for posting this video and the bullet points below. Really helpful video :)
+Aoede Pando Wonderful! I'm very happy to hear that. Thanks for letting me know!
I love that you included your notes! Thanks for all this great information Kendyll! It's one of my "New Years resolutions" to be more businesslike about my work! I am bad about contracts. So that was a good reminder!
+Allison Ranieri Yeah, someone commented how they were taking notes on the last one, so I thought I'd just include them! Contracts are a total drag, but worth it! Like going to the dentist.
Kendyll Hillegas Yeah, I actually got contacted yesterday about a sort of complicated commission and I thought of this video immediately to reference when drawing up a contract!!! :D
So incredibly helpful. I don’t think I can even express how invaluable this is. Well, I guess you know since you’ve been there too! Thank you!
That's wonderful to hear, thank you!!☺️
So helpful, such a great video!
Thank you, Olivia!
Great video, very helpful. Thank you :)
Really liked the invoice tips! Thanks ;)
Thank you so much! I learned a lot and feel more secure thanks to your videos :)
That's so nice to hear! Thank you!!💕
Very helpful, very good info and I am going to refer to this video for my future invoices and payments.
+Susie Lalonde Thank you very much! Glad it's helpful!
This was excellent advice Kendyll!!
+Art Class Thank you very much!
Super helpful, thanks!
Glad to hear it! 😊
thank you miss hillegas god bless thee
Thank you!!!!
Awesome video! Really informative! One question, once you send the contract to the client, do you only ask for a scanned signed version, or do you ask them to mail the signed contract to you, before you begin with the project?
thank you! very helpful video
Glad it was helpful!
extremely helpful. great tips thank you!
Wonderful! So happy to hear it!
hmmmm supa dupa helpful.
omg i love your part about looking at your socks :) made me HEART ALL FUZZY
Haha, aww, thank you!
That’s interesting, I guess I’m surprised that it’s normal for a due date to be 30-45 days after the art is received. I’m still just in those early stages, but I would have assumed that payment was due at the time of the artwork submission
it is helpful and perfectly presented. the time-tracking software (like webworker, tmetric, toggl or clockify bcz of their rich feature sets for freelance creators) would be even more helpful
Thank you so much - this video was incredibly helpful. Just a question: if you have an international client, do you have them sign the contract digitally? If not, how do you negate the issue of distance? (I suppose you could physically post them the contract, but that would be much more costly and time consuming)
Good! I'm so glad to hear that. And yes - for international clients, I just have them sign the contract digitally. :)
I enjoyed this video, it was very informative.
Question: If you were to have terms and conditions, would it still be necessary to have contracts? Example, by requesting a commission, you agree to the terms of service.
Glad to hear you liked it! I'm not a lawyer, so I can't answer that definitively. What I can say is that I don't feel comfortable unless I have a written agreement of some kind, with each of the elements I mentioned in this video.
Thank you again for the video Kendyll, Im wondering if you have different prices according to different amount of rights? Like if the image is only used once, or if they have full ownership of the image? Sorry for being so nosey, I'm fairly new to freelancing.
Hi Nianiani! You're not nosey at all, that's a great question! YES, pricing does vary according to rights/usage. I HIGHLY recommend reading this article by Jessica Hische: site.xavier.edu/gibsonj1/242/blackboard/business/07pricing.pdf Lots of good information about pricing in general, and tiered pricing based on usage scenarios. Hope it helps!
Oh yes! I came across that article before it is verrryyy useful, and I also bought the book you recommended in the video. It's very informative :))) Thank you so much for taking your time to reply to my questions ^_^
I love your videos.💖 And this is so helpful! all of this is still a headache for me. Is there any website you've found to be helpful to use as a model to build your first contract? I need to make a license agreement and I'm completely lost. thank you! keep up these awesome videos. 😚
+Josephina F Hi Josephina! So glad to hear that you're liking the videos and finding them helpful! There are TONS of resources online. A basic search for "licensing agreement for illustrators" should bring up a bunch of stuff. There's no one website that's especially perfect as illustrators, clients and individual jobs vary so widely, but some good ones are:
graphicartistsguild.org/tools_resources/license-it
businessofillustration.com/go-illustration-contract/
www.docracy.com/5843/commissioned-illustration-offer-short-easy
Best of luck! xx
+Kendyll Hillegas you are the best. Thank you ♥
Hi Kendyll! Thank you so much for this! I was wondering do we have to provide invoice after receiving the deposit too? I'm new to this lol
Hi Zuhkey! I'll be answering this question in this Friday's video! I wondered the same thing when I got started. ☺️
Hey Kendyll, great vid. How do you actually sign a contract for a client in a different country? I'd work for clients in the US from eastern Europe and I'm not sure if contracts are even useful in this case.
+Mike M. Thanks, Mike! That sounds like a good question for a lawyer. As I said in the video, I'm not a legal professional so I can't offer anything beyond my personal experience. I can say that my international clients have always asked me to sign their contracts, so I ask them to sign mine. Usually we just e-sign to keep the logistics simple. Hope that helps! :)
I can't wait to write up my contract now! If I want to be paid by PayPal can I send my invoice through them, or do I still need a paper one? And do I address it to the art director or to the business? Thanks so much for this outline!
You can send an invoice through PayPal, but usually I just include my PayPal account info in my own invoice. Generally I just ask the AD I'm working with who the invoice should be directed to. Depending on the size of the company, it may to a dedicated billing department.
Thanks for this video. My question is, how would you go on about the revisions? One of my current clients (book illustration) has been asking for revisions for every image I've created for them. Our contract says the full price covers revisions, which I thought would be a few small things. But it seems quite unfair at this point, (money / hours ratio..) where I've remade every page maybe 3 times, as well as tiny changes to millions of details. How could I mention this, how can they be measured? These changes are all in different sizes / take different amounts of times, and I'd feel silly to invoice them for specific things like "changed the shoe colour, moved trees slightly to the left, redrew 78% of the page twice". Would the amount of time I've spent in total be the basis, to be mentioned as a single big thing at the end? Thanks in advance!
+scully Ugh, that sucks. Sorry you're in that situation. :'( I've been there, and it was definitely a learning experience. Unfortunately if you didn't specify the number of revisions in the contract, it can be difficult to negotiate more money with the client. If you are going to try to charge more, I would bring it up as soon as possible. If you wait until sending the final invoice and there's an additional charge beyond what the client is expecting, that could get messy. When I set up a contract I specify the revision process as follows: 1 round of revisions at the sketch stage (for larger, compositional changes); 1 round of revisions at the final stage (for small changes like adding more highlight or tweaking color). The client can send in as many requests for changes as they want during a round, but they have to all be sent in at once, which avoids dragging out each phase. If a client goes beyond this and wants more rounds of changes, that's billed hourly. You can also negotiate that ahead of time with some clients if they know that they'll want more than 2 round of revisions. Hope that helps! Hang in there!
+Kendyll Hillegas Thank you so much for your quick reply! Yes, I am pretty sure this current client won't want to pay any more than we agreed at the beginning, but I have definitely learned a lesson, and I'll certainly follow your advice from now on. You da best :)
Sorry you had to go through that, sounds really horrible! Good thing you're looking into contracts now. I should probably do the same for future projects. People still don't take illustrators seriously like all day we have nothing else to do than to please them. Very frustrating. ...
on the right track as long as you're learning from mistakes :)
Great video, but what would you do if the client doesn’t pay the kill fee? Or how do you go about receiving the kill fee?
If they've signed a contract, that includes a kill fee, and not paying it after being invoiced and reminded a time or two, you can use the "L" work (lawyer) or send a form letter indicating that they need to remit payment or be in breach of contract. However, there is no rock-solid way to guarantee that you'll receive it. That's one of the reasons it's important to collect a deposit before you start work. The deposit essentially becomes the kill fee if the client pulls the plug. You have the most power in the situation before you start work, and before you hand over files.
Soo cute
Thanks for the video it is SO helpful! Btw I have 2 questions : What's the difference between a contract and an invoice? I get the general idea but they seem pretty similar to me :/ And can to copyright still be mine if I give the permission to the client to use my art on a product or an add etc. I'm 15 and I want to learn as much as a can on being a freelance artist and you are a real inspiration for me. 😊 Thanks for your time!
+Catherine Girard Glad you like the video! A contract is your agreement with the client before you start work. An invoice is the bill you send afterwards. The short answer to your copyright question is yes. By default, you own the copyright and you can give the client permission to use the work for different purposes for specific lengths of time. Copyright stuff can be very complicated though, so I recommend you do some googling and look at example contracts (there are lots out there) to find info about usage rights and copyright. Everything I know I've learned that way! Good luck! :)
Kendyll Hillegas Thank you so much ^.^
I don't understand, if I say my clients that I'm having the right to upload my artwork on my portfolio online, or on my social media account, they will not work with me. Also, no one wants to pay or give royalties. What to do? Do the rights and royalties not exist? Maybe other illustrators just say it like that.
your instagram link directs me to someone called David Jackson!
I live in Brazil, and here the dollar cost 5,40 lol so it's very easy to make more money if I sell my art for North Americans XD
That would definitely be a good strategy!👍🏻