Field Guides / Pricing

How to price a video project so every quote isn't a guess

A price isn't something you find, it's something you build, the same way every time. Work out your day rate from your real overheads and the number of days you can actually sell, decide your margin once, then build every quote in four sections (pre-production, production, post-production, production company fee) with a contingency line. Add them up and you have a floor you can explain and hold. A price you can explain is a price you can hold.

Why does every quote feel like a guess?

Every quote feels like a guess because the number is coming from what you think the client will accept, not from what the job costs you plus a margin you chose. Nobody ever built you the second version, so you price from the first.

I get the same message constantly, from owners who have quoted a hundred jobs and still seize up on every one. They've worked out a number, they're about to send it, and they stop. "Den, does that sound fair?" It's never really a question about the number. It's a question about the method, and the method is missing.

A price has two possible sources. One is what you imagine they'll pay. The other is cost plus a margin you decided on. Almost everyone prices from the first, which means every quote is a negotiation against your own imagination. Fear does the pricing, so you land low. You can't explain how you got there, so you fold the moment a client pushes. And every quote eats hours of agonising the job never pays you back.

This isn't a confidence flaw. It's a missing tool. These are capable people, years in, and nobody ever showed them the arithmetic.

How to build your day rate in four steps

Your day rate is your monthly overheads divided by the days you can actually sell, plus a margin you decide once. Four steps, done once, then reused on every quote.

1. Add up your real monthly overheads, including your own salary. Rent, insurance, software, gear (maintenance, upgrades, the slow wearing-out of kit), marketing, accounting, subscriptions, and the wage you'd have to pay someone to do your job. Owners who don't pay themselves a salary think their overheads are low. They aren't, they're just unpaid.
2. Count the days you can actually bill in a month. Not twenty. After admin, sales, quoting, client calls and life, most owners have ten to fourteen days a month they can actually bill. Being straight about this number decides whether the floor means anything.
3. Divide overheads by sellable days. That's your floor. Any day you sell below the floor is a day you're paying to work.
4. Add the margin you've decided on. That's your day rate. Margin is a choice you make once, not a hope you have on every quote. Decided, not discovered.

The Pricing Calculator runs this for you, and builds the quote underneath. No login, nothing leaves your browser.

How to build the quote so the number holds

A quote that holds has four priced sections plus a contingency line, so the work the client never sees is on the page instead of absorbed. Day rates alone leave the planning, the scripting and the client management unpriced, and you eat them quietly on every job.

1. Pre-production. Recce, scripting, interview prep, planning calls, crew and location booking. Priced in days or as a fixed line, never free.
2. Production. Crew, kit, travel, the shoot days themselves.
3. Post-production. Edit, grade, sound mix, delivery, and the included revision rounds listed by number.
4. Production company fee. 15 to 30 per cent of the production cost (the three sections plus contingency), as a visible line at the foot of the quote. This is the management, the accountability and the years of knowing how to run a job so the client doesn't have to. Towards 15 per cent for retainer and repeat clients, towards 30 for new clients, tight turnarounds, or jobs with more unknowns.
5. Contingency. 10 per cent of the subtotal as its own line, calculated before the fee, with one sentence saying it's only billed if it's used. The fee is then a percentage of the production cost (subtotal plus contingency), so the order on the page is subtotal, contingency, production cost, fee, total.

The full anatomy, with the reasoning behind each section, is in Anatomy of a Profitable Quote.

What to say when the client asks "roughly how much?"

Give a range, make scope the variable, and hand the next move back to them. A single number ends the conversation. A range starts one.

The ballpark moment is ten seconds of the highest leverage in the whole sale, and it usually comes out as a mumble or a blurted low number that anchors the entire job. The low end of your range keeps them talking, the high end does the anchoring, and the question at the end hands you the next step.

What to say when the client pushes back on the price

Explain the number, don't defend it. When you've built the price from parts, pushback is a walkthrough, not a negotiation with yourself.

That last sentence matters. If a budget is lower than the work, reduce what's delivered, not what a day of your time costs. Discounting teaches the client that the first number was padding.

A worked example

Here's the whole method on one job, in round numbers.

The day rate. Monthly overheads including the owner's salary: $18,000. Sellable days: 12. Floor: $1,500 a day. Decided margin: 40 per cent. Day rate: $2,100.

The day-rate version of the same job quotes about $9,000 and hopes nothing changes. The gap here is wider than usual because that version carries no fee and no contingency at all. On a typical quote, pricing the full anatomy is worth around 15 per cent more per job, and it isn't padding. It's work that was always being done and never being charged.

The mistakes that undo it

The method fails in five predictable ways, and every one of them lowers the floor without you noticing.

• Counting only the camera days. The hours the client never sees still cost you the hours. Shooting, editing, travel, admin, the back and forth: all of it goes into overheads and sellable days.
• Not paying yourself a salary. Your overheads look low, your floor looks low, and every job looks profitable while you go without.
• Assuming twenty sellable days. It's ten to fourteen. Divide by twenty and the floor is a fiction.
• Treating margin as whatever's left. Profit is a line, not a leftover. Decide it once, build it in.
• Setting prices in a quiet month. One owner had a $7,000 job undercut by a competitor's $4,700 quote in a slow month, and the pull was to drop his price: "I really need the money." A discount made in that mood teaches the client the first number was padding. The quiet month is the worst time to set your prices, and it's when the urge to discount is strongest.

The rule of thumb for pricing a video project

A price you can explain is a price you can hold. Build it the same way every time: overheads, real days, floor, decided margin, then four sections and a contingency line. Any job below the floor is you paying to work.

Hold yourself accountable

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

• You know your floor, and it includes your own salary.
• Your last quote had pre-production and a production company fee as visible lines.
• You answered the last "roughly how much?" with a range and a question, not a single number.
• The last time a client pushed back, you walked them through the number instead of dropping it.

Your one move this week

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

Take your last real job and build the four-step number on it after the fact: overheads, real days, floor, margin. Then rebuild the quote in the four sections. Compare both to what you actually charged. That gap is the conversation.

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

Related tools and guides. Pricing Calculator, Client Profitability Calculator (rank the clients you already have by profit per day), Anatomy of a Profitable Quote, Charging for the invisible work, The three revision emails, Drop the scope, not the price.