Pricing your sevices...cost per finished minute?

G

greenwood

Member
How do you price your services, in particular corporate/buiness type production? Do you have a cost per finished minute? What is the per finished minute cost in your area? I know there are alot of variables, but how do you estimate your quote? Thanks.
 
Ballpark for me was always $2,000/finished minute as a rough estimate, but -- you never want to approach it that way. You don't tell someone what it will cost, you ask them what they want to spend. I found that if you ask for their budget, there were frequently surprises to the upside, and you could also get a feeling for whether they were realistic or not. I mean, them asking "how much will a video cost" is about akin to me asking the architect "how much will a house cost"? What kind of house? A cabin? A castle? A mansion? A one-story ranch? New? Old? In downtown Manhattan, or in central Detroit? The variables are ridiculous to consider, so -- instead -- you ask "what's your budget?" And from that, you can tailor your services and expenses towards what they can realistically afford.
 
I quote per job, and my rate will vary depending on the type of client ( i.e. non-profit agencies want low cost solutions ) and the scale of the job. ( i.e. a 2 person job vs. a 6 person job )
 
Yep, definitely ask for samples too so you know what they're expecting.

And, again, you may be very pleasantly surprised -- you may have been prepared to bid $2,000 only to find them saying that their budget is $15,000. And you need to know that -- you don't want to go giving someone with a $15,000 budget a $2,000 video, any more than you'd want to sell a Mercedes shopper a Kia Rio. Plus it'd be leaving money on the table, not really a wise business practice.
 
Quoting per finished minute is useless... it can take me 20+ hours to edit a 30 second piece of 30 minutes for a 4 minute piece depending on what the video is.

I've learned how long it will take me to edit and quote based off an hourly rate for editing, ballpark it, and make it the project cost.

+1 on Barry asking for their budget first. It's not even a game, I charge the same rates either way... but until you know roughly what someone's budget is + what sort of video they want you've got nothing.

And clients don't really know how long they want their video to be. They aren't artists. A lot of times someone will say "umm... 7 minutes" and then I hear the vision and I'm thinking "the way you want to communicate this is all wrong. You need a 2.5 minute video that focuses on this and does this and this to communicate what you want."

Well, that's why they pay us, because we know that stuff.
 
I agree that asking a clients budget is a great place to start. But how hard do you push to get an idea? I find that most potential clients want to keep their cards close and would rather hear quotes from multiple vendors.

How do you phrase a follow up to this topic when they say they are just looking for quotes but don't actually give you a budget range?
 
Cole said:
How do you phrase a follow up to this topic when they say they are just looking for quotes but don't actually give you a budget range?
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If the client doesn't know what their budget is or doesn't want to disclose this, then I provide them with a basic quote with options to expand the project. The basic quote might have all interviews shot at one location to save time and reduce production costs, where an option might be to shoot the interviews at multiple locations which costs more and is time consuming but it would be more interesting and visually stronger. Also, clients tend to have no visual imagination so it's a good idea if you can show examples ( even if it's just a still photo ) of what the different options will actually look like in the finished product.
 
I was really surprised on a shoot recently where I quoted a client a price in the range of $750-$1500, and after we discussed the details, the client noted that it was beyond the scope of what we originally discussed: and he himself tossed out a number nearly 2.5x larger, and simply stated: "if we go over that, let me know, and we'll work it into our budget."

Barry's answer is honestly one of the best routes you can take in any creative business. We all know the caliber of work we personally want to create, and we can aim for jobs with budgets in that range, but sometimes there will be jobs that are worthy, but simply don't meet that point. I keep to a simple mantra "Let's create something meaningful", and that can be done with a $1500 budget or a $100k budget, with the correct expectations in mind. Have a set of baseline expenses already established (i.e. crew member day rates), that you can provide to the client as well. Charging by the minute/second has always seemed odd to me, because most of us have a massive amount of variety in the work we do.

Remember, you can typically go lower, but you can rarely go higher (unless the scope changes).
 
I've always been a little shy about asking "what do you want to spend" 'cause I think it makes me appear greedy (like they'll think, "whatever we say, that'll be his quote.") On the other hand of course, getting that out of the way at the START of your conversation can save a lot of wasted time down the line because you find out at the start that they wanted spend $250 for the whole video, and that's unfeasible for you. Has anyone experienced turning a client off by asking about budget?
 
Absolutely not. What I have encountered is the stock response of "well, we don't know what it should cost..." and that's when I say "well, it's like asking what a house costs -- you can buy a little log cabin, or you can get a 5,000 square foot modern mansion... it all depends on what you're looking for." And then I'll ask them for some examples of videos they've seen that they liked, so I can give them ballpark estimates on what it'd cost to get something like that. And if they're still struggling with the concept, I hit 'em with the three tier approach, where I say "well, look -- we can get you a video that meets the specs you've laid out, for $5,000. We can do a really nice one for $8,000. Or, if the budget allows, we could really pull out the stops and give you something really very, very special for $20,000." Invariably, every time I've done this, they choose the medium price point. Every single time. So, just make sure the low price point is something you can live with, and the medium is what you really want, and you should succeed. And, who knows, maybe you'll get a client who asks for the top of the line.
 
Josh,

The only people Ive ever turned off by asking the budget off the bat, are the people that wanted something done for nothing! So no big loss.
 
I was on the receiving end of this discussion recently when I went to a local post house. They asked what my budget was, I told them the entire film cost under 10K to make and they immediately understood I couldn't spend the same amount on post, and proceeded to cut me a break on closed captioning. I appreciated that and paid their full rate for transferring to HD cam and QC.
 
Barry_Green said:
You ask them what they want to spend.
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Barry I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for this advice. I read it in a freelancer thread last year. I don't freelance much, I work 9-5 in a digital marketing team producing content, however a freelance opportunity did arise. I was expecting that they'd want a short 3-5 minute, $3000 video. But I asked them what was their budget - they told me $20,000. In the end we produced a 17 minute video in three parts with subtitles in two languages and came about $2000 under budget. If I'd just pitched them the $3000 job, things would've been very different.

In regards tot he original thread question, this averages about $1000 a minute.
 
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