I am not sure if anyone reading this remembers the Videomaker Expos. Videomaker Magazine did these for many years usually on the east and west coasts. It was approximately a three-day event with classes on videography, lectures, roundtables, video contests, vendor fairs, guest speakers and tons of other fun stuff. I used to love attending these events. Home Video Studio would attend the Expo and I was a guest speaker.
Most of the guest speakers were covering topics like editing, cameras, mikes, etc. I spoke on something much more important… making money with video!
Picture this. There would be several hundred people in the audience – most of them pro and amateur videographers and video company owners. Always… always when I was introduced the people in the audience would not know what to think at first. Who is this guy? He’s not talking about equipment, computers, cameras or lenses, etc. What??? What’s Home Video Studio?
I would quickly start off by asking one simple but direct question. I would shout out “raise your hand if you have ever made a video for free.” Every hand would go up. That’s because this is the way that almost everyone starts out (yours truly is an exception – my first film was a $23,000.00 documentary) by making a freebie for someone – your kid’s dance team, swim team or the marching band. Maybe you shot your friend’s wedding for free. So almost everyone’s hands would go up when I asked this question.
I would shout out “raise your hand if you have ever made a video for free.” Every hand would go up...
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| Producer/Director/Editor Robert Hanley |
Then I would ask them to raise their hands if they had ever sold a video job but had not received as much as they wanted to receive in payment. This time virtually every hand would go up. What do we call this… undercharging and it is rampant in our industry.
Ask yourself. Have you ever made a video for free? Have you ever worked for hours and hours on a video project for which you weren’t paid enough? If you have made some videos or if you are a pro already the answer is probably yes. There are a lot of reasons for this. For one thing our business is a creative business and in any creative business there is a huge tendency to give a way the store. The other consideration is all of the great software we use. It’s so easy to make a video and to add Hollywood effects. So of you are afraid or hesitant to charge appropriately. Furthermore, most people starting out have little or no frame of reference for pricing a video project. So they just pull numbers out of thin air. Usually that number is way too low.
Once you start out by doing free and cheap jobs, it’s easy to get into the rut of giving video away for next to nothing. It’s habit forming! This is a really bad problem to have.
At Home Video Studio we solve this problem. We call it “respecting the price.” When you come onboard with us one of the major things I do (personally) is to teach you how to price custom video productions. What’s the difference between a $500.00 video and a $1500.00 video? How about a $5000.00 video? $15,000? $20,000.00? How do you know what to consider in making up the price? How do you quote? How and why do you mark things up? How do you attach value? What are you worth? How do you present the price? And how do you get people to say yes and then pay you in advance. It’s easy, once you know what I know but first you have to believe 100% in your price, you’ve got to be able to back it up, and you have to be willing to walk away from any potential job. Here’s the most important point: you have to attach tons of value to your price.
Value is the most important word here. The key to success in the video business is to understand how to price and how to provide value to go with your price. One of our secrets that I will share with you is this. We will teach you how to be so profitable that when you do quote a video production or editing job, it won’t bother you if you don’t get the job. That’s because you’ll be making so much money from all of our other profit centers that losing one or two jobs won’t make any difference. In fact, I will go one step further. I’ll teach you how to pick and choose only the most interesting (interesting to you) and the most profitable productions to quote. Your position grows stronger as you learn about the power of saying ‘no.”
One of my rules is to only price out jobs that you really want to be involved in – especially on the video production side. On the editing jobs… well let me put it this way: once you learn how to price video productions, pricing video editing is easy.
So rule #1 on pricing and quoting out video jobs is this. First, get yourself and your company into a strong financial position. That will allow you to price and quote video jobs from a position of strength. You’ll get more jobs. You’ll be paid more and you will be much happier! The other part of rule #1 is to only get involved in the jobs you really like.
...I’ll be taking about this and much more at my next HVS Show ‘N Tell Saturday in Houston on November 18. Contact me if you would like to attend. You can also call or email if you have questions on pricing and quoting video productions.
Making great money and putting your company into a position of financial power is tops. I’ll be taking about this and much more at my next HVS Show ‘N Tell Saturday in Houston on November 18. Contact me if you would like to attend. You can also call or email if you have questions on pricing and quoting video productions. Want to schedule your own Show ‘N Tell and/or a trip to our Indianapolis headquarters? Call me at 1-317-358-5932.
May the Force be with You!
Robert Hanley
Producer/Director/Editor
President & Founder
Home Video Studio
317-358-5932
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