Marketing Freelance Services | Secrets of the Game Business (Game Development Series)

Now comes the most delicate part of the operation: securing enough assignments to make your business self-sufficient. This requires excellent knowledge of your market and a significant promotional effort.

Who Will Retain You?

Companies hire when they have needs, and only if the service fulfilling the need can be acquired at an economically sensible price. Of course, "economically sensible" is a relative term:

In some jurisdictions, game companies receive government subsidies when they create full-time jobs, but not when they subcontract. Thus, it becomes almost impossible to convince them to hire freelancers for anything that could be done by employees.
The greater and more urgent the need, the higher the fees that the company will be willing to pay.
An artist who lives in Montana will be able to charge more for the same work if she sells it to a California company than to one based in Kentucky, because the price of an employee is higher on the West Coast.
Freelancers living in countries where the cost of living is low will have an easier time underselling their foreign competition.

In general, you will have to prove that giving you a freelance assignment will result in better, cheaper, and/or more convenient work for the company. This is not as difficult as it might seem, because the cost of a regular employee is much higher than his or her salary: hiring costs, office space, computer equipment, benefits, social charges, management overhead, vacation, paid holidays, and layoff costs all have to be taken into account. Examples of situations in which hiring an employee at $30 an hour might end up costlier and less practical than hiring a freelancer at two to three times the rate include:

Frequent but small assignments. Sound effect design, translation, press releases, and second opinion on management decisions.
Very specialized knowledge. Music composition, screenwriting.
Seasonal overflows. Beta testing, trade shows.
Unusual tasks. Business plan writing, staffing, employee training.
Disaster recovery. Project salvage, critical bug fixes, filling the gap between an employee's departure and a new hire.
Shortage of experienced people in a specialty. Senior programmers, game design.
A volatile job market. Why go to the expense of a formal hiring process when the employee is likely to quit within three to six months?

Your Marketing Targets

That being said, it is always easier to secure freelance assignments from people who already know and trust you. Talk to former co-workers and employers first, and once you complete an assignment with a company, keep asking them for more (unless the first project went horribly wrong). You can expect repeat business to account for 80% or more of your income after a couple of years.

That's the good news. The bad news is that existing relationships are the only reliable source of assignments. Finding work in any other way will require time, effort, and the stoic handling of many rejections.

Thus, you should spend your promotion effort on the following, in decreasing order of importance:

Repeat business. Call your current clients a month after completing a project, and every three months thereafter.
Former clients/co-workers who change companies. Producers, in particular, know when a project team needs assistance, and they often recommend the freelancers to hire.
Referrals. Make contacts at local institutions where people with limited knowledge of the industry are likely to call for information. Good relationships with schools and chambers of commerce might be especially helpful.
Visibility. Build a Web site advertising your credentials and current projects. Write for magazines and books like this one. Teach at a local college. Get involved in the IGDA. People who have seen your name before are likely to think of you when they have a project to assign.
Companies you can meet in person. If you can visit a client's offices during off-peak periods or set up a meeting at an IGDA chapter event, do so. Face time is valuable.
Trade shows. You can meet many people at E3 or the GDC, but they will have limited time for you. Make sure to book key meetings at least four to six weeks in advance.
Direct marketing. When you call, write, or e-mail potential clients, concentrate on those not actively looking for full-time staff; they will have more time to look at your proposals.

One final word: never stop marketing yourself. Companies go out of business all the time. A regular client might grow until it becomes cheaper for him to hire a fulltime employee to take over your duties. Or a new manager with her own stable of freelancers might replace your key contact. As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't let one client account for more than a third of your income on a consistent basis, because if this client ever disappears, you will be in trouble.

Handling Bad Debts

Speaking of trouble, what should you do if a client refuses to pay you?

Unfortunately, your options are limited. [Laurance88] says that law firms won't get involved unless a debt of $10,000 to $25,000 has been outstanding for at least six months. Collection agencies might present an alternative, but they will cost you 20 to 50% of the amount they recover, and in case of failure, you are still going to have to get a court order and have it executed by bailiffs—at your own expense.

Indeed, the best way to deal with bad debts is to not let them happen in the first place. Protect your interests:

Keep the first assignment small. This way, if the client shows bad faith, you have limited your losses.
Initiation of Service fee. When dealing with a new client, or starting any large project, ask for 20 to 50% of the assignment's value up front. This establishes good faith on both parts.
Split large assignments into several milestones. [Onder02] also recommends making payments part of the project schedule: inscribe payment due dates in the contract, and put in a clause stating that any delay will push back all further milestone deliveries accordingly.
Avoid making the final payment too large. Once you have delivered all of the work, a bad client has no further incentive to pay you.
Apply these rules to everyone, even people you know and like. A former co-worker and friend still owes this author thousands of dollars, four years after a project's completion.
Be careful if you spread the word about the bad client. It is all too easy to acquire a reputation as a troublemaker—and a libel lawsuit can ruin your life, whether you win or lose in court.

Case Study 2.8.2: Mark Barrett, Prairie Arts

Mark Barrett went directly from college to being a freelance screenwriter, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"Freelancing affords me two main benefits: I get to move from project to project, which keeps my interest high, and whenever I'm not employed I get blocks of time to pursue my own initiatives, some of which also generate income. Plus, since most of my freelancing is done via telecommute, I'm able to live where I want."

Since Mark's family has never seen him work any other way, obtaining their support for his freelance venture was not an issue. "While a steady paycheck might provide us greater liquidity—primarily because we wouldn't have to keep reserves on hand for the lean months—I think that would be the only direct benefit of being an employee. Having said that, if the lean months ever turned into lean years, the level of support I am currently receiving would probably drop precipitously."

Mark receives most of his assignments through word of mouth. "I am almost always contacted by people who know my work and my reputation from a trusted third party, rather than because of claims I have made about myself. Since it can be difficult for a company to get over the fear associated with hiring outside workers, particularly offsite ones, first contacts usually happen when the prospective client is in trouble: the original writer or designer failed, and there is little time in which to correct the damage and finish the job."

For Mark, the most important quality freelancers must possess is discipline. "If you are not comfortable working alone and being alone, and if you do not have a history of initiating and completing your own projects, freelancing is not for you."