A friend of mine came to me with a proposal where I pretty much do all the work (design/programming) and he deals with the client. Hes asking for 50% of the contract for the referral and to not have to deal with the client.
Seems like a lot but at the same time I would get nothing if he didn't bring me the client. I'm wondering what others would do or have done in similar situations. thanks
Do not underestimate the marketing/PR/selling headaches. Specially, given the current market situation. Of course, you do need some legal advice to clearly demarcate the responsibilities. Also, since this is the first such job, I'd not mind paying a bit more. Charges always go up on maintenance.
Just remember that you are still dealing with a client - your friend. When he get's squeezed by the client, he'll presumably be on your case? And, given you have a prior relationship, this could get quite uncomfortable.
I personally thinks that you should go with the deal and experience yourself with equal partnership.
In future, you can get your own project, based on your current partnership. Then you can earn 100 % without your friend.
thanks guys, good points. Ill do it for the experience. Hope it doesn't affect our friendship...
Having someone to deal with the business issues related to contract programming might be a good idea if you feel that this is something you don't do well or don't want to do. Paying 50% of the contract for it seems unreasonable, unless it's actually a partnership. If you're thinking of a partnership that would require a lot more thinking about how well you would work together and some reasonable estimate of how much work you would each actually do.
Personally I wouldn't want to put someone between the client and myself with regard to the requirements and priorities. I think that's just a recipe for building the wrong application. I'd advocate for a closer relationship with the client rather than isolating yourself.
If your friend is willing to go out and find business and needs you to actually get the job done, I'd suggest that you might want to contract with him at the rate that makes sense for you do to the work. That is, your contract ought to be with him. He can add whatever premium seems reasonable and the actual client will accept. Personally, I'd insist, though, on being able to deal directly with the client on the technical details.
Speaking personally, it would depend a lot on how much handholding the client needs, how much I think my partner would deflect that, and how thin the margins are.
I ran a small freelance consulting business for a few years (put myself through college with it), and had situations where I was the sole interface with the client, and other situations where someone else dealt solely with the client. It depended a lot on the situation, but there were definitely situations where earned significantly more per hour worked by not having to deal with the client, even though someone else was taking a significant cut, simply because I spent more time writing code, and less time figuring out what the heck they wanted.
The best situation I had by far was working with a design house who contracted me to do the backend programming for some movie promotion websites. They handled all interactions with the client, and gave me very clearcut definitions of what they needed me to do, and were able to answer all of my technical questions clearly and immediately.
If your friend can offer you a situation like this, you're likely to come out ahead. However, I suspect that given that you're doing design work as well as programming, you're still going to have to do a lot of interfacing with the client, as you iterate on the design. My suspicion is that you're going to have a lot more interaction with the client than you think, either directly or indirectly.