Hi all, I'm sure there will be lots of opinions (including you shouldn't use a royalties model at all!) but in a nut shell a friend of mine is between work and feeling kind of down. I feel pretty bad for her as she's had a rough time lately - I was thinking as she has a lot of marketing and PR experience I might be able to "help out" a little as I am close to releasing a game that I hope will make some pocket money.

It's not a big game, it was created as one of several projects I hope to create some trickle revenue to make it possible to work on some bigger things. But everything benefits from PR and marketing, right? So I was thinking that -if- she wanted and was willing to spend a couple of hrs in her evenings on social media etc getting the game out there then I could offer her a return on any revenue generated. But I have no idea what a non-insulting offer is (or a non-stupid offer for that matter) or if the whole thing is just a bad idea for everyone anyway :)

Any advice?

Many thanks!

Even offering small gigs like this to friends can lead to dissapointment. Be aware that when paid by friends, people tend to do absolutely no work (from my experience).

That being said, it depends how much advertising they do. If they just tweet//post on social media I can't see that being worth more than $50 unless you can prove the social interactions are generating sales.

Do you actually need PR? If not, then offering 'work' like this is more going to be distraction for both you and her as it doesn't look like you have clear goals for her to achieve.

In this scenario, it be best to start asking for advice on how to release and see if there is actually any meaningful work involved for her that you could pay her for.

or if the whole thing is just a bad idea for everyone anyway

Yes, in my opinion you shouldn't proceed. Reasons above.

Yeah, this seems like a great way to sour a friendship. You shouldn't ever hire somebody because you feel sorry for their situation.

I'm not entirely surprised at the responses I've received, especially as I threw the post together at lunch break and basically just typed my thoughts aloud - but I think it's possible to read a little too deep into something.

Essentially she is between jobs, will get another soon I'm sure but gets easily frustrated with nothing to do. She is grafting for work during the day but likes to have things "to do" in evenings etc so I was thinking of simply saying hey chill, if you're desperate for something to focus on then here market this, let me give you the details.

BUT, I personally do not like the idea of taking advantage of someone even with good intentions so assuming she was actually interested (which she may well not be!) I would like to be able to say fairs fair if you actually stick your teeth into this I will re-enumerate you fairly according to my means - ie if you drum up sales you can take a share of them. I just wasn't sure what that share looks like under the lense of "fair" because I've not worked with a PR person in this context before. Finding a wage for a PR employee is easy enough, but when it comes to a royalties model I didn't want to step out with good intentions and say "hey if you actually do work on this then you can take say 5% of revenue" and accidentally end up either a) insulting someone or b) accidentally giving away an unreasonable amount and setting a precedent in the process.

But I own up to the blame in this as it is an unusual situation and I didn't write the best post for my question. That aside, thank you everyone for your replies!

Essentially she is between jobs, will get another soon I'm sure but gets easily frustrated with nothing to do. She is grafting for work during the day but likes to have things "to do" in evenings etc so I was thinking of simply saying hey chill, if you're desperate for something to focus on then here market this, let me give you the details.

Rephrasing the question is not going to get different responses.
You're offering her a pig in a poke. The likelihood that she'll ever get any money out of you is
extremely low. "I'll give you X% of an unknown amount of money that may never materialize." Not
really doing her a favor. She needs to focus on finding reliable paid employment.

Note that it WOULD be considered a favor if you paid her a flat rate: "I'll give you $X if you'll spend Y hours advertising." That is very useful to someone between jobs.

But as written, even if she invested thousands of hours on social media she has no guarantee of funding. Any percent of $0 is still $0. She can commit boundless time investment with zero benefit.

Guys, again thank you for taking the time to reply. Seeing statements like "employ" and "what she needs to concentrate on" suggests to me I'm still being misunderstood.

I am not trying to offer anyone a job or suggest that I have a project that is a good replacement FOR a job. What I was trying to convey in my "Rephrase" was that my friend is a person who gets frustrated with nothing to do, just has that personality type where they need *something* and I was going to suggest that if they wanted they could do some PR work for me, in the evenings when they are currently doing nothing - not during the day when they are doing the usual job hunting etc. This is something I know they would gladly do for -free- being happy to just have something to work on, but myself personally would prefer to say hey you did some work have x% of the trickle - not as a salary but as a fair thanks. I wouldnt of even bothered trying to work out if they had an affect on sales or not, it sort of misses my point. But at the same time I didnt want to be accidentally stupid or insulting.

By comparison, last year a similar situation with a friend having a rough patch and just desperately looking for distractions who texted and asked if I was doing anything they had to get out and I said well I'm painting my living room, feel free to come join. Which they did. And after I slipped them some cash not because they wanted any but because hey you just saved me 3hrs of solo work, thanks.

I just like trying to honor people's time investments.

Anyway, this is all now moot as she has found another project to work on in the evenings and is feeling a lot happier :) I will be deleting this thread later (to give time for people to see why) as it will be quite a frustrating search result for someone who is actually interested in what the topic title suggests :)

I will be deleting this thread later (to give time for people to see why) as it will be quite a frustrating search result for someone who is actually interested in what the topic title suggests :)

Please don't. People have taken the time to write well thought out responses, and although it's unlikely future readers finding the topic will have your exact situation the advise IS actually on point for the title and may be of benefit to others.