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Business

Business: Charging clients when they plan to resell the work

As a general rule do you charge more when the main aim for the client is to resell your work as a template, say on ThemeForest or similar.

So if this the case should it be in the contract that the client cannot redistribute the work other than selling the actual site as a business and that is the site for that business as a one time sale.

Just curious of the views and opinions on this from a professional standpoint.

4 Answers

John Wheal
John Wheal
27,969 Points

I don't have any first hand experience about this but unless you or a client signs a contract any work produced is your intellectual property. They can't then simply resell your work under there name without giving you credit for it.

If you allow the client to resell your work under there name make sure a legal contract is used. It will solve any problems in the future.

If I were in your situation I would certainly charge more or ask for a percentage of the sales.

Matt West
Matt West
14,545 Points

My standard contract defines that the work is only to be used for the project which it was commissioned for. Where the 'project' is defined in a proposal that has been signed by the client.

"... We own the markup, CSS and other code and we license it to you for use on only this project."

If a client wanted to resell the work I would setup some sort of royalties or 'unlimited global license' agreement. The later of which would involve an increased initial fee. It is worth noting that it can often be hard to enforce a royalties agreement if you do not control/have access to the sales data for the product.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

It all depends on what you are making, of course across the "creative" world.

You can read the thoughts of the awesome Jessica Hische on the matter over at http://jessicahische.is/thinkingthoughtsaboutpricing/

Caroline Hagan
Caroline Hagan
12,612 Points

From what I've seen, I believe you can get them to pay you a large nominal sum to cover passing the rights to them, or request that the IP rights stay with you and you license them usage for a certain amount of time/quantity/website etc.

Depends on your countries law on copyright, Intellectual Property and licensing and what you wish to agree to.