Login

I’m trying to figure out how to handle a client who wants a full branding package but insists on paying me through a revenue-sharing agreement instead of my standard project fee. I’ve only ever worked for a fixed rate or hourly, and while the potential upside is interesting, it feels risky to tie my income directly to the success of their launch. Has anyone here actually made this model work for a creative service like design?

I actually tried that revenue-sharing approach once with a branding package for a small e commerce startup. We laid out a base retainer for discovery, deliverables, and then a tiered share of gross revenue once they hit milestones. It sounded perfect on paper, but the cash flow was a roller coaster. For the first year I was chasing payments that depended on market success, and there were months the share didn’t cover my time. We eventually settled on adding a fixed fee for core work plus a small uplift tied to performance, but it felt messy to track and I spent more time admin-ing the agreement than designing. It did teach me to bake in protections like caps, sunset clauses, and a guaranteed minimum, but I wouldn’t jump back in without those baked in.

A different client tried the same idea and we ended up with a very limited scope and a hard timeframe. They wanted the full branding kit, but I insisted on a small base payment up front and a clearly defined revenue metric. When the product finally launched, the revenue numbers barely covered the hours I’d put in, so we renegotiated or parted ways; still, I learned to demand a contract that spells out what counts as revenue and who bears what risk.

Are you sure the issue isn’t the client or the project rather than the payment model?

Sometimes I think a retainer plus a success bonus is safer until you can prove product market fit; I’ve seen people try the all in revenue play and it evaporates when growth stalls.

Login
Username:
Password:	Lost Password?
	Remember me