Field Guides / Pricing

What to charge for video work: the pricing checklist

Charge what the work costs you plus a margin you've decided, built into a quote with four sections and a production company fee. Six checks hold every price to that before it goes out: you know your cost of a delivered day, you answer a ballpark question with a range, the number is specific, the whole job is priced, the quote has four sections with contingency and the fee on top, and a lower budget changes the scope while the price holds. Pin the list beside the keyboard and run it on every price.

Why do experienced owners still get the price wrong?

Experienced owners still get the price wrong because the price gets decided in the moment, under pressure, with nothing to check it against. A checklist takes the decision out of the moment.

A price can only come from two places: what you think the client will accept, or what the work costs plus a margin you chose. Almost everyone prices from the first, because nobody built them the second, so every quote turns into a negotiation against their own imagination. I see it in owners who have quoted a hundred jobs and still stop with a finger over send to ask, "Den, does that sound fair?" Nobody ever showed them the arithmetic.

The arithmetic lives in the pricing system, and the structure of the quote lives in Anatomy of a Profitable Quote. This page assumes both and does a different job: it's the list you run against a draft price in the minutes before you send it, so the number that goes out has been built, and checked, before anyone sees it.

How to run the six checks before you send a price: the method, step by step

The method is to run every draft price, spoken or written, through the same six checks in order, and to fix whatever fails before it leaves. Each check below says what to look for and why it's on the list.

1. Know your cost of a delivered day. This is what a day costs you to deliver: kit, insurance, software, your time across pre-production and post, overheads. Your day rate sits on top of it. If you don't know this number, every price you give is a guess, and the other five checks have nothing to stand on. You've passed when the floor and the day rate are written on a card by your desk and the draft quote is above the floor on every day in it. The Pricing Calculator does the arithmetic.
2. Never blurt a single number under pressure. When a warm prospect asks "roughly how much", give a real range and make scope the variable. A low number blurted in the moment anchors the whole job, and a refusal reads as evasive. Keep a written range, with its scope drivers, for each of your three most common project types, and end the sentence with a question about scope.
3. Use specific, non-round numbers. A quote of $12,850 reads like accounting. A quote of $12,000 reads like a guess with room in it. Specific numbers get negotiated less. Let the total be the sum of its priced lines, and leave it where they put it.
4. Price the whole job, not just the shoot. The thinking, the planning, the project management and the revisions are work. If they're not priced, you're donating them. Pre-production is where most of the money gets left behind, and "we'll sort that in week one" isn't a price. Give every person working scoped hours a line, including you before anyone lifts a camera, and state how many revision rounds are included.
5. Structure the quote in four sections. Pre-production, production, post-production, and a production company fee. Most video businesses are missing at least one, and it's usually worth about 15 per cent of the job. The fee prices the work that never made it onto the invoice: booking and managing crew, licences and insurance, the time spent scoping and quoting, the basic kit you don't itemise. Done means four headed sections, contingency as its own line at 10 per cent of the subtotal, and the fee calculated on the production cost (subtotal plus contingency). Start the fee at 15 per cent or above, and go lower only as a deliberate relationship rate.
6. When the budget pushes back, drop scope, not price. The price holds. The deliverables flex. Discounting tells the client the first number was padding. When a lower budget arrives, take something out of the job (a deliverable or a revision round) at the rate it went in at, and send the revised scope in writing.

The routine to run before you send any price

The routine is three steps once the six checks pass: read the quote back as the client, say the total out loud, and send it with nothing apologetic attached.

1. Read the quote back as the client. Can they see what each section covers, how many revision rounds are included, and what triggers a variation? Nothing on the quote should surprise anyone at invoice time.
2. Say the total out loud. Once, plainly, the way you'll say it on the call.
3. Send it with nothing on the end. No "does that sound fair?" in the email, and no discount offered before anyone has asked for one.

A worked example

Here's the checklist run on one draft quote, in round numbers, on the same job the pricing system uses.

The draft. A two-day shoot for a new client: a scripted interview piece and a social cut. The owner has priced the shoot days and the edit at day rates, folded the planning in without a line for it, and arrived at $9,000.

Check 1. Monthly overheads including the owner's salary: $18,000. Twelve sellable days, a floor of $1,500 a day, a day rate of $2,100 with a 40 per cent margin. The draft is above the floor on every day in it. Pass.

Check 2. The client didn't ask for a ballpark, so nothing to do. If they had, the range for this job type is $6,600 to $12,000, built in the ballpark guide.

Check 3. $9,000 is a straight multiple of day rates, which is why it lands round. Leave it for now: once check 5 adds the missing lines, the total stops being round.

Check 4. The planning days are inside the number but not on the page, and revision rounds aren't mentioned. Fail. Pre-production comes out of the $9,000 as its own line, and post-production gets "includes two rounds of revisions" with the clause underneath.

Check 5. Three sections, no contingency, no production company fee. Fail. Contingency goes in at 10 per cent of the subtotal, billed only if used, and the fee at 20 per cent of the production cost for a new client.

Check 6. Nothing to do yet. If the client comes back with a lower budget, the social cut comes out at the price it went in at, and the day rate stays where it is.

The draft and the rebuilt quote are the same job, and the difference is $2,880. Of that, $1,980 is the production company fee for work that was always being done and never charged, and $900 is contingency, billed only if it's used. That's a bigger gap than the 15 per cent a quote typically recovers, because this draft was missing both the fee and the contingency.

The mistakes that undo it

Three mistakes show up once owners have the list.

• Running the checks after the quote has gone. Before you send, a failed check is one extra line on the quote.
• Calling the fee "admin". Clients resent paying for admin. Nobody blinks at a production fee at the foot of a budget. One small "admin" percentage covering both the planning labour and the overheads means the labour is free and the margin line doesn't exist.
• One bundled line with no build-up behind it. A single number can work for some buyers, but only if the internal build-up carries all four sections. A bundle without a build-up is a guess.

The rule of thumb for the pricing checklist

If saying your price out loud makes you flinch, the problem is rarely the number. It's that you don't yet know the numbers underneath it. Start at check one. The benchmark: a floor and a day rate written down, four sections on every quote, contingency at 10 per cent of the subtotal, and the fee at 15 to 30 per cent of the production cost.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• The six checks are printed or pinned where you write quotes, and the last quote you sent went through them before it left.
• Your floor and day rate are on the card, and the last quote was above the floor on every day in it.
• Your last quote had pre-production and a production company fee as visible lines, and stated the number of revision rounds included.
• The last time a budget came back lower, the scope changed and the rate stayed where it was.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Print the six checks and pin them where you write quotes. Then pull your last three quotes and run each one through the list after the fact, marking which checks it would have failed. The checks that fail on all three are the ones to fix on your quote template before the next one goes out.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. The pricing system (the floor and the day rate), Pricing Calculator, Anatomy of a Profitable Quote, What to say when a prospect asks for a ballpark price, Drop the scope, not the price, The three revision emails, Charging for the invisible work.