How to Charge Clients for Video Work | Tips for Freelance Videographers and Photographers

[Music] all right got my iPad here with my notes alright so in this video we're going to be talking about how to get paid for your video work that's right how to charge your clients to do video progress what's big grand fan Brandon Washington here first of all thank you so much for checking out this video if you're new to the channel definitely consider hitting that subscribe button because this channel is all about filmmaking gear tips and tutorials and like I mentioned before in today's video we are talking about how to charge your clients now I have broken this down into five rules that I personally try to follow no matter what situation I'm in and this is the way that I charge my clients now of course there are tons of different ways you can actually do this and as far as getting into the actual practical ways like how to send invoices and all that stuff we'll definitely cover that in another video but I wanted to talk to you about the way that I actually come up with my prices for my clients and ultimately charge them in a way that fits my lifestyle but also in a way that I think helps me to stay somewhat sane in this whole freelance world all right so the first rule that I have for you guys is don't get paid for your time get paid for your value now this was one that was really hard for me especially because before doing video freelance you know full time I worked retail and in the world of retail and most jobs you get paid hourly now when you're paid hourly it's pretty straightforward you work for ten hours and you're getting paid twelve dollars an hour well then you're going to make 120 bucks right makes perfect sense however the problem with doing video at an hourly rate is you're technically going to eventually become penalized for being better at your job so for example back when I first started doing real estate video I used to shoot the videos in roughly about three hours and then it would take me about another four hours to edit the video so seven hours total of work not including travel then I would charge them about $200 to do those videos now you do that math and I'm making roughly 28 dollars an hour now back then when I was shooting you know real estate when I first got started I was working and I was only making about fifteen to seventeen dollars an hour around that time frame well to make $28 an hour sounded amazing however as technology got better and I got better at my work well it started taking me less and less time to actually shoot the houses and much less time to edit the houses so did this mean I should charge less in fact it was the opposite I actually started charging more and the reason why was one I can offer faster turnaround times but two I started being able to shoot bigger and better houses because my overall video quality and video production was getting better this is why I don't typically recommend charging by the hour once you tell a client that they're going to get X number of out of hours for X number amount of work if you start to become more valuable to them in the sense of you're able to get the work done sooner well now it's gonna be so much harder for you to charge them more per hour because they're gonna want to be able to save as much as possible which it makes sense it's business but this is the reason why I don't say that you should charge per hour for your work never put that down on any type of an invoice or anything like that always get paid for the work that you're doing not the time that you have to spin in order to do that work because look at it from this standpoint a video that's worth a thousand dollars is worth a thousand dollars because of the finished video not because of how much time that had to go in it or lack thereof time they had to actually go into the finished video thing that's actually pretty good alright rule number two your prices are not too high you're just selling to the wrong client now this is one I personally struggled with for the longest time you know I kept hearing that these people were charging these like crazy multi-thousand dollar stranges for videos and I was over here just shooting my videos for only a couple hundred dollars and honestly for probably about a good two years I could not figure out how people were making money doing videos and especially enough in order to make a living and I found out that it was because I was actually selling my services to the completely wrong clients see there are different clients who are willing to pay different price points for example if you're someone who wants to take photos of pretty girls right and you're in high school and so you decide I want to take pictures of high school girls and so now you are out there and you're doing your thing well most high school girls don't have a whole lot of money and so they're your target audience you're not really gonna make that much money however if you decide I want to make a good amount of money I'm gonna go take photos for a doctor's office or a dentist's office well those are companies that make a lot more money and obviously have way more money to spend on things like marketing and photos and video see a lot of times we think that our prices are too high and so we have to start thinking okay well how do I bring my prices down in order to get the jobs that I want well the truth is set a price that you are comfortable with and then go find the clients that can afford you I spilled coffee there we go Oakley alright so now that we talked about how to set your price and find the right clients I'd be lying to you if I were to tell you that you still won't find those clients who want to negotiate with you so that is where rule number three comes into place and that is set your price and negotiate the work not the price see a lot of clients you're gonna tell them what your budget is and for your video and rightfully so they may not be able to afford that now that's okay I don't say that that's really a big problem that's actually if they're still communicating with you you're in a really good place now what do you do if they say you know you tell them that the project is sending five thousand dollars and they come back say well we really only have $3,000 for this project so how do you negotiate that well the first thing you do is you do not do the same project for less amount of money that is a terrible idea because what you've just done is devalued yourself so here's how you fix it instead of negotiating the price negotiate the work see if you give them $5,000 worth of service a video with pre-production lighting audio assistance you know someone to come out and do grip you're gonna write the script you're gonna produce it you edit it you can do all these things and you tell them that all this is gonna cost $5,000 and then they say they can't afford it well that is when I start negotiating the work and what I mean by that is you do less in order to charge less so if you wanted to charge in $5,000 and they can't afford that well put some things on them at that point you can tell them well you know since you can't afford it that's no big deal here's what we can do you can take over writing the script you can take over doing the location scouting you can take over the producing set means setting the schedule getting off all the talent there and making sure that food water and all the Hospitality's things are there you can basically turn over elements of the project that can technically be done without you doing it over to them to ask them to do it this is going to one make you feel so much better about not making as much for the project because now you're not doing as much a lot of times that there are certain elements of the project that we have to do right we have to bring out the gear we have to shoot it we have to edit it but some elements of the pre-production can actually be put on less skilled people and you can put it on your clients in order to help them save now they're not gonna devalue the work that you actually do but instead one though probably more so value either you doing those things for them because now really don't want to do it but more importantly they're gonna value the work that you actually are doing for them because they're gonna still see that they're still paying top dollar for your service they're just having to do more of maybe some of the homework on the front end now one quick little pro tip here and that is always have money saved up now the hardest part is when you start to get into negotiations with clients and they start saying like oh well we really can't afford this if you are on your last dollar it is super hard to negotiate with an honest heart because I've been there when you are like needing that job because you need that money for that month's rent or whatever the case may be you know and when the client says well we can only have four three thousand you're quick to say okay that's fine I'll do it for three thousand because you need that money that's why I always recommend having some type of savings account have an emergency fund have something in place so you're not living job to job because when you're living job to job trust me it's so hard to negotiate so make sure you save up some money put it away and then that way when you go and to negotiate you can actually negotiate the work that you're doing not the money that you're making because honestly you don't necessarily need that money because you have money put away to the side just in case alright so now let's jump into rule number four rule number four is to create a pricing model that you can grow with with your production company despite the job that you're actually doing so as you get into this whole video world you're gonna find that there's gonna be tons of projects that get thrown your way and sometimes you may think that it makes sense to charge one price point for one type of job and then another price point for a different type of job alright so take this situation let's say you have a job on Friday and it's a real estate job and it's gonna take up about let's say half your day and then you get a call for a commercial job and they want you to come out and shoot this commercial job all you have to do is shoot it no editing nothing else we just want to show up with your camera do your job but they want to pay you three times as much as you would make doing that if you were doing that real estate job well now it's gonna suck because well you could be taking on that job but you can't because you got this real estate gig and you can't cancel on them because that's just bad business this is why I always recommend setting your price points no matter what the job is the way that I personally do this is I have a half day rate and a full day rate the reason why I have a half day rate in a full day rate is because there's almost never a situation where I can take three jobs in a day and in most situations I'm only gonna be able to take one and so the way my pricing model is set up is I have a half day rate but if you need me between the hours of 11:00 and 4:00 you have to buy the full day rate because during those hours it's almost impossible to get a second job on that day by having people have to pay that half day rate or that full day rate you guarantee that no matter what the job is you're still getting your fair amount of wages you never want to take a low paying job on a day especially when you start getting busier and you're booking weeks and months out that you've booked the date and then someone comes along with the job that should pay you more and now you're stuck doing this low paying job for instead of doing the high-paying one this is why you charge the same rate no matter what the project is now this is gonna start to sound a little bit crazy when you start thinking about things like shooting a commercial versus shooting something like real estate you know you kind of have to weigh that balance do you want to take on lower paying jobs just because they're there because if it means that you could potentially miss out on high paying jobs and you're starting to get more and more of those come through trust me you're going to regret it now also whatever I'm out there creating these pricing plans one thing you will want to kind of consider is all the little elements that go into shooting your video or producing your video so you're thinking about pre-production production post-production going back and forth with clients dealing with props location scouting there's all these other little elements and so the easiest way and trust me this is this changed everything for me right here you ready the easiest way in order to figure out how to charge for all these things is to stop doing them yourself hire people see once you realize that you have to hire someone else to edit your videos hire someone else to do the pre-production to do the location scouting hire someone else to actually even let's say shoot the video for you you start realizing how much money has to go to all these different people and a lot of times when we're doing it all ourselves we're willing to cut costs here and there in order to try to win the job make sure that you find people who can do all these jobs for you now even if you still decide to edit the video yourself shoot the video yourself do all the pre-production yourself at least you know how much it would cost you if you were to actually go find people to do it for you so now you know that you're actually charging a fair amount for the video never cut somebody a deal on the editing or on the pre-production because when you do you're really just cutting yourself from getting paid which are actually worth are and my last and final rule rule number five and this is a big one never shoot for exposure shoot for experiences now I know you guys have heard that you know when you're first starting out you should shoot for free and shooting for free is totally different like shooting for free is a very base term there's a difference between shooting for exposure and shooting for experiences see shooting for experiences is shooting things that are going to make you better so this could be shooting in a new industry that you've never shot in before but you've always been interested in like for example the very first concert I ever shot I shot completely for free I wanted to get more experience in shooting a concert and having that for my demo reel and being able to show that with new up-and-coming clients that I could potentially be hired for see that is the experience another great experience can be shooting with new gear like if you're shooting for free for someone but you tell them hey I need to rent this gear so I can make better videos that's a great trade-off because now you're getting the experience to shoot with new gear however shooting for exposure is completely terrible like it almost never works out there are a few instances where exposure is kind of a good thing but here's the reason why I don't like shooting for exposure a lot of times when someone approaches you and they say come shoot this video or come take these photos for me it'll be great exposure for you tons of people will see your videos and photos well what you have to ask yourself is of those people who I'm being exposed to how many of them are actively looking for my service that's right so let's say artists because this happens all the time especially on Instagram I get this message pretty much almost weekly I will get a message from a hip-hop artist who says they want me to shoot their music video for them then in exchange they're going to blow the video of it I'm gonna get tons of exposure because so many people are gonna see that I shot the video for them well of those people who are actually going to see the video how many of them are looking to hire a music video director probably very few because most of the people watching the video are watching the video because they're fans of that artist the same thing range tree in business even if a business owner says come shoot my video and you'll get tons of exposure how many of the people who watch that video are actually gonna be looking to hire you and realistically are you really gonna be able to add at the end of the video if you're looking for a videographer contact me it's just not realistic the way I typically try to handle it is if someone reaches out to me and asked me to shoot a video for them in exchange for exposure I will legitimately ask them how much exposure like give me a number let's say they say that number is around 5,000 that sounds like a lot of people that sounds like a good amount of exposure until you go to Facebook and you trying to buy an ad and you see how much it actually cost to get exposed to 5,000 people it's not a lot of money see exposure now really doesn't cost very much I can run an ad on Facebook and Instagram and have my business exposed not only to large amount of people but a very targeted amount of people who are actually looking for my type of service so shooting for exposure really is a bad idea especially in 2019 if you need exposure just save up 20 bucks and run an ad on Facebook but if you're going to shoot something for free shoot for the experience the experience of doing something you either love or you enjoy or it teaches you something new or it allows you to experience something that you've always wanted to and that is when shooting for free makes perfect sense so there you have it guys I'm sorry if this video was really long I just wanted to give you guys all these notes and details I know when it comes to shooting especially in this freelance world it can be super difficult to know when to shoot for free when not to shoot for free how to charge clients what to charge clients and really how to negotiate through the entire process these are just five rules that I personally live by when it comes to dealing with clients now if you guys want to know more about this or want me to go more in detail maybe on exactly how to send you know invoices or how to same quotes or any other technical businessí stuff let me know down in the comments I'll definitely go in more detail if you like me too but this is a youtube video so I try to keep it pretty light-hearted thank you guys so much for checking out this video let me know any other questions or comments or basically topics you want me to cover on this channel and I'll catch you guys in the next video peace

Channel: Brandon Washington

Views: 45,551

Keywords: Filmmaking Tips, Photography tips, photography tips and tricks, photography tips for beginners, photography tips for mobile, full time filmmaker, filmmaker, video production, how much should i charge, how much to charge clients, how much to charge, how to price your work, how to get freelance clients, how to get video clients, how to get paid for videos, video production company, video production for beginners

Id: bxVvVuiv5xk

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019