BrianKitts

personally if I were still doing freelance, for me it would come down to if I was losing money or not over it. If not, than the whole shared recognition sounds fine to me. It's the trade off you take for them drawing in the business for you. The biggest precaution i would warn on is to not be transparent to the client.

If this ad agency is tossing you jobs, then you need to be the one handling the billing and contracts then you can give them their cut...... not they bill and pay you out. This is important for two reasons, the biggest being the ad company can't cheat you and start charging more for your work, taking a bigger cut and paying you the same. And by doing it this way the actual client knows of your existence and works directly with you. I worked a project where I was transparent, the client wasn't happy with my work, I later found out the ad agency was doing a poor job of passing on their requests and changes for my imagery and they lost the project. Luckily they felt bad and still paid the $5000 in invoices they had accumulated, but that is not a typical case, and I won't make that mistake again cause I probably won't be so lucky next time.

Good work draws attention and as long as the client knows who really did it..... then your work will work in your favor. You need evaluate what's going to cost you more, going after the people who give you work with attorneys and losing them as a job source as well as having to pay legal fees, or giving them a 15% cut anytime they throw you a job.

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Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN