About 6 years ago I worked as a freelance web designer, developer and products photographer for a local company (15 minutes of car distance from my office) that works in the fashion industry.
At some point they needed a more intensive service that I couldn't phisically provide (being a single worker) so they moved to a bigger agency with specialized teams of many workers. This agency is at 1,5 hours of car distance from the client.
The client after 6 years contacted me again because he wants me to provide him the products photography service because for him is too expensive and time consuming to bring the products to the agency, and the quality of the photos made by that agency is less or equal than the photos that I did for him.
In short words, he will give me a room at his factory, I should be there on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to shoot products photos, the products can be maybe 50 to 80 pieces (hats, bags, etc) each time, each piece should be made in 5 views (front, rear, etc), then I should take all these pictures and do the post-production in my office and return them to the clients in 3-4 different formats. He wants also me to assure that service with a 2 or 3 days or forewarning, each time he needs that job to be done, he will call me and in 2 or 3 days I should be there.
He said that this could be a long lasting work, if all goes good that could go on for years.
We already discussed the prices and he seems ok with that, we should meet by the end of february to try to organize the work for the next months (we did not agree yet to start or not, just discussed about it).
My problem is that if I get this job it will be almost a full time work for me. I have already many clients with long lasting good relationship and I don't know if I will be able to properly follow all of them if I take that new job. And I don't feel like disregard or abandon other clients because if this client will go elsewhere (as already happened) I'll remain with no other clients.
I asked the client if we can "concentrate" the photo shootings once a month, so I know that the first week of the month I have that task to do and for the rest of the month I can follow others jobs. He answered that this is not good for him because he sells a lot in e-commerce and when he has products to sell they must be ready as soon as possible not the month after.
I also have another problem: along the year my work schedule is already fixed for other clients. I have clients that does important trade fairs, conferences, etc, they usually call me 1-2 months before to say "please be available to work for me in the first week of july because I have that important trade fair...". In these periods I will not be available for the photo shootings with 2-3 days of forewarning.
The job is very interesting, I am specialized in products photography and it will be an easy going task with a trusted client and good earnings, but in the other hand he is too demanding with time commitment and availability, I already know that I will have problems with other clients for the above said reasons.
I thought that I could hire myself other freelance collegues to help me, I did that in the past, but the other clients were not happy that I sent them to another freelancer or sometimes I had problems with the general work quality.
What would you do in my place? I am very uncertain and undecided if I should go on or not.