As a beginner freelancer, it’s hard to know how much to charge for your videography services. There are guides and calculators online which claim to make it ‘easier’ for you, but in reality they are just built off the back of an algorithm that knows nothing about you as a creative. So we’re going to go through 3 of the fundamental components you need to consider when pricing your work.
1) Your Experience
If you’re a freelancer that has worked on multiple projects on quite a large scale then this needs to be taken into account when pricing your work. Understanding how to handle multiple elements within a project, as well as delegating time to different aspects of the client’s brief isn’t something which comes naturally to a lot of freelancers, but instead it has to be learnt overtime. Taking this into consideration, an experienced freelancer should be charging more for their work compared to little Johnny that got his first camera last Christmas.
2) Gear and Expenses
If you’re still reading this blog article then chances are you have invested some of your own heard earned cash into your videography gear. Now use this as a reminder of who bought that kit and where the money for that kit came from. That gear was bought as an investment into your craft, and therefore you need to be pricing your work to cover the investment costs of your gear. This doesn’t mean charging £2500 extra for a project because you bought a new lens, but think about how much insurance and replacements would be.
3) The Timeline of a Project
Over the course of being a freelancer, you are going to encounter projects which can be planned, filmed, and edited within a matter of days. You are also going to come across projects which require an extensive amount of time for all of the steps listed before. Factoring the time a project takes into your overall price is vital. Because if a project takes you an entire month to film, edit, and finalise, then that project needs to provide you with a months worth of income too.
There really is no simple guide to pricing your work as a freelance videographer as it is all bases off of an individuals perception. Hopefully these tips have given you some thoughts about what you need to cover in your costs, and have helped you to understand your worth as a videographer a little bit more.
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