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Rather than talk about the nuts and bolts of rules and adventure design, I'd like to take a step back and talk about freelancing for a bit: specifically, some thoughts around freelancing RPG work for another company. This is the fourth in a series of four blog posts on this topic.
You’re finished! You’ve hit your word count targets, saved all your files, and you’re ready to turn it all in. Now what?
Are You Really Finished? Confirm everything about your assignment is in order. Many assignments have several separate pieces, and you should make sure you have all of those (like maps you created, spreadsheets or HeroLab files for your NPCs, and so on).
Turn Everything In. Send it all to your developer in whatever format you’ve agreed on; email usually works just fine, but sending it through Dropbox or some other method might be preferred. If you don’t know, just email it. Your email should be short and polite, and contain everything the developer needs. (A developer might not save any back-and-forth email correspondence with you, but they WILL save your email with your turnover, so keep it to the point.) Thank the developer for the opportunity.
Then, You Wait. Developers are usually stretched pretty thin, making assignments to other people, reviewing other turnovers, and so on. It’s not unusual to get little other than a “Thank you!” email right away. Here’s a developer secret: we sometimes don’t look at a turnover at all (other than to confirm it’s complete and start the process for payment) until a week or two after the turnover. This doesn’t mean the turnover was early; we need to schedule some wiggle room for freelancer tardiness, but we dislike having to use it—and we remember which freelancers are punctual.
Be Sure You Get Paid. If you need to submit an invoice for your work, do that. There are plenty of good sample invoices on the internet for you to use as a model if you haven’t done that before; invoices don’t need to be fancy but they should specify the assignment, word count, and rate. If you had some prearranged payment terms (like payment 30 days after turning in your work), but sure the payment happens during that time. If it doesn’t, reach out to your developer, or whomever sent you the contract. It’s not too early to reach out on day 31 if you were supposed to be paid within 30 days. You’re a professional here, and professionals get paid.
Ask for Feedback. A week or two after you turn over your work, it’s appropriate to ask the developer for feedback about what you did well and what you could have done better. The developer might not be able to get back to you right away on this; in fact, it might be months before the developer has the clearest picture about how your assignment fit into the overall product and what was easy or hard about making it fit. Good developers know that freelancers can only get better with practice and feedback, so providing feedback in some form is useful. It’s not inappropriate or pushy to ask for this.
Ask for More Work! If you liked the job, feel free to let the developer know you’re interested in more work! There’s nothing wrong with reaching out a week or two (or even longer, like a month or two) after your turnover and letting the developer know you’re available for more work. This email should be polite and to the point. (You might also include the request for feedback, as described above, in the same email.) Don't be surprised if you hear back from a different developer instead; we have a lot side conversations like "oh, you should use X Person, their stuff was good and on time, and I'd totally use them again but don't have anything to assign right now."
When you get more work, start over the process from my first blog post in this series!
