HOW TO CHARGE A CLIENT?
Figuring out what to charge a client is difficult. There’s a lot of factors that come into play when someone asks hey how much do you charge for a video. It’s not a simple question to answer. If you’re a freelancer, I’m you can relate to this especially if you’re in the video or photo world. This is one of the most requested questions that I get. How do you tell people what you charge?
Being a freelancer is difficult. Every goes through a different journey of how they price their work and what they think they’re worth. But here’s the truth. There’s not one right answer. There’s not a price that fits every type of project. Like you can’t charge a thousand dollars for a one-minute video no matter what the project is. Every project, and every client is different. Now there’s a general range that you feel comfortable asking for based on your skillset, how long you’ve been doing it for, and the equipment you have, but that can be affected based on who the project is for, who’s watching it, and the length of it.
So here are 3 things to consider when you’re ask what you charge:
1-Think About the opportunity
One of the first things you should do is to analyze this opportunity. Is this client a good fit for you? Have you met them or worked with them in the past? Do you think that working with them could lead to other opportunities? Is the work that I’m doing is lining with the type of my work that I want to be doing? I know these are questions that we sometimes subconsciously ask ourselves when opportunities come our way, but it’s important to take a moment and really consider working with this client. You never know who you could meet that could take career from one step to the next. There’s a ton of projects that I’ve taken on that I got paid way less for but led to more work. I end up meeting people on set and making connections that lead to more work down the road. Word of mouth is huge in the freelancing world, because we see a ton of new filmmakers creating amazing work but I think it comes down to trust which can be built when you meet someone face to face. Always look at the opportunity besides just the money. In the beginning of video career, I shot a ton videos for little to no money just to put my name out there and show people that this is what I’m capable of doing. If it weren’t for some of the free work that I did early on in my career, I wouldn’t be at this point telling you guys that it works.
2-Budget Range
Second question you should ask is what’s your budget. But I phrase my question differently. Instead of asking what’s your budget, I ask what’s your budget range. Because clients don’t always know what they’re willing to spend on, so asking them for a budget range shifts their mindset from saying hey I wanna spend from this low, but I’m willing to spend more if production is going to cost more. It’s always important to ask the question first before sending a quote because you can end up underbidding yourself. If the budget is $8k but you just quote them for $3k then you end up missing the chance to have bigger better production and make more from it. Once you have an idea of what you’re client is wanting to spend, then you move on to step three.
3-Analyzing production cost and opportunity cost
In the beginning days, whenever I was approached with jobs, I immediately would say yes because I didn’t have much of a portfolio. At first, you’re saying yes to a lot of things because you want to build your brand and build as many connections. But as you build your portfolio and get more opportunities, you can learn to say no if you don’t want to spend time on this particular project. This is where your opportunity cost comes in. Is the time you’re going to be spending on this project worth your time? Could there be other projects or ideas you could be working on that can bring more revenue to you? Is this video going to bring the type of work that you want to be doing? If you said no to this project, are there other projects that’ll help you pay your bills? If you think this job is a good opportunity for you, then you can move to analyzing your production cost.
Questions to ask when you’re piecing your production cost together. What’s the scale of the project? How long will you be shooting for? How long will the project last? What parts of the project are you willing to take on and what do you want to hire out? Typically in the music video world, if the label or artist says they have $10,000 I have to figure how much I can make my rate from it and also make this music video. Usually as a director, you could be taking 10% of the budget as your rate but that all comes down to what the budget is. If you can produce the video for way cheaper, then you end up walking away with more. If not, you can still walk away with your rate. Now day rates are a totally different subject, because I can get hired to just DP or to just edit, or shoot BTS of someone else’s music video, and in this situation, you charge a single day rate.
When it comes to quoting, it’s always helpful to give the client a line item of what everything is going to cost such as gear rental, location rental, crew, styling, HMU, post-production, etc.
Hope you found this helpful!