Chose a full retainer over a per-project rate, regret it now

Back in January I had a client in Phoenix offer me either $2,500 a month for 20 hours or $85 an hour for whatever I logged. I picked the retainer because it felt stable, but March hit and they only needed 9 hours of work. Now I've got 11 hours of nothing and they're holding me to it, so I'm turning down other gigs. Has anyone else locked themselves into a retainer and watched the hours dry up?

2 comments

2 Comments

hernandez.gavin4d ago

Flip this around for a second. You picked a set number of hours for a set price, and that client is paying you for your time whether they use it or not. That's not a trap, that's the whole point of a retainer. It's on you to fill those 11 hours with something useful for them, like a monthly report, a mini audit, or even just checking in on their systems. If you're sitting around waiting for them to hand you tasks, you're doing retainer wrong. The deal isn't "they owe me work," it's "I owe them value for those hours." Go find problems to fix or improvements to suggest. That's how you keep the hours from drying up, because they'll see you as proactive instead of just a clock watcher. And honestly, if you can't find 11 hours of useful stuff in a whole month, maybe the retainer wasn't the issue.

danielowens2d agoTop Commenter

My last retainer client only used 4 hours in a six week span, so I started sending them a weekly one page breakdown of their site speed and any broken links I found. Tbh, @hernandez.gavin is right about the proactive angle, but the real kicker was when I used those dead hours to rebuild their email template and they ended up paying me extra for it anyway. Now I keep a list of small improvements I can pitch when the hours start stacking up. Honestly, the trap isn't the retainer, it's treating the hours like a countdown instead of a toolbox.