Corporate Event Contract & Charging

Dear FPer!

I need your advice.
I'm a Newbie and have a really big corporate gig in sight.
I was asked to paint for 5 days, 10 hours a day.
The problem is the same as always. How much do i charge? I thougt about 150/hour. What do you mean? There will be many many Children (it's a Toy Exibithion).

Should i ask for a % of the Money in advance? Or let them pay it cash after the gig?

What should devinitely be in the contract?

Arg, pleas help, i just started with some private Birthdays, i am not jet prepared for all the Charging & Contract things. But definitely not going to turn down THAT much money ;-)

Love & Thanks

Liorit

Well.

First, you describe yourself as a newbie....??? How new? I don't know many newbies that would be charging $150/hour? I only charge $100 and I've been around awhile - even given the market differences. Where are you based? How fast can you paint?

For jobs like this it is pretty normal to negotiate a day rate or flat fee for the week.

I have a day rate and it would apply to a booking like this. The day rate covers up to 7 hours, so the additional 3 would be "overtime" at regular hourly rate... OR I would negotiate a specific rate for this contract only.

If you are working set hours just pick a day rate and charge that. For a guaranteed payday like this you can afford to offer a good deal! $150/hour is NOT a good deal (it is for you if you can get it, but...)

I would require a minimum of 50% as the deposit, and the balance at the end of the week. I would have a contract, and also invoice them.

$150/hr???? Good luck... at that rate, I could fly to wherever you are and do it for less. I can paint 20-25 kids per hour and rarely take breaks... I still only charge $100/hr AND anything 3+ hrs gets a 10% discount. For something THAT big, I'd probably give them an even bigger discount because it's guaranteed a huge amount of cash. I just did an event a few weeks ago that I knew was a fantastic event last year, 14 hours over two days of balloon twisting free to the public and the tips are amazing... I let them have me for less than half that because it's a huge press event, I get interviewed on the radio and it just so happened that one of their photo contest winners this year won with a picture of me. Am I saying that less than half regular rate is good? HELL no!! BUT it maintains a solid relationship with the downtown business association (that does lots of events and has great connections), gets me lots of press and thanks to the awesome tips at Balloonapalooza, I still made a nice fortune that weekend.