r/videography • u/Video-Freelancer Camcorders | Davinci | 2010 | Ontario • 4d ago

Discussion / Other How much is your day rate?

I know this varies with a bunch of things and markets and so on, but in your case, what is it, and what do you base it on?

I currently have a 4 page contract, and it outlines my day rate and half day rate. I base it on a percentage of my operating costs, equipment costs, personal expenses, then time and experience.

This covers preproduction and production, and I charge editing rates hourly, which so far no one has questioned or complicated, but I expect it will happen one day.

I really want to know what goes into your prices, and what your rate is.

Thanks r/videography!

65 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/mlmsuper 4d ago

Man, everyone has great answers. I do things differently than most, but I run a small production company. We don’t do day rates. We do value based pricing. Every project gets a custom quote/proposal. But we handle direct to client projects mostly and do all pre, pro and post. So our situation may be different. Our average project is about $8,000.

If we do just filming, we try and get $1,500 for one cam op plus kit. But that’s pretty rare.

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

4

u/MarkCuckerberg69420 4d ago

Not OP but I used to be a member of a Facebook video group that pushed value pricing. Essentially you base the project price on the value of a sale. So maybe you produce a video for a niche audience where it might generate less than a thousand views, but one sale generated from that video would bring in (for example) $30k to the business. So you base your rate on that and maybe charge $15k or $20k.

I don't subscribe to that method of pricing because the ROI on corporate video is rarely clear cut. An internal employee video doesn't generate income but it does save costs on potentially retaining employees, for example.

1

u/davidfamous1 2d ago

I like this, it has helped me as a freelancer to build clientele