billing question

[John Baumchen]

I once had a client ask me how much it would cost to make a video. I explained to him that as much as I’d like to give him a price, his question was like asking a builder how much it would cost to build a house. How many rooms,……..what materials…..

[Milton Hockman]

Glad you brought this up. As freelancers and relatively new studios it can be hard to establish a per hour or per finished minute rate. Whatever’s easier for the client to say yes to is better right?

A lot of people like “per finished minute” because its easy and good rough estimate for client to budget project on. Clients always ask me “how much will it cost, give me a ballpark” and per minute seems easiest in this situation.

These same people think that going by “per hour” could scare a client since they think you’re counting the minutes, could make unnecessary revisions, and don’t want to pay for those hours.

However, billing hourly but making it seem like per minute is best way to go. Just think to yourself, how many hours could I do this in…times it by your hourly rate…and says its per finished minute. Get what I mean? 10 hours x 100/hr = 1000.

Here’s a situation you’ll find yourself in if you don’t approach it the right way. Recently, my employer was asked by another internal employee how much a :30 second commercial would be for an upcoming conference we put on. One of our team members (who only works on corporate videos) sent her an email saying we charge $1,000 per finished minute.

After several weeks the client calls and is gung ho on getting it done. They already mapped out there idea for the spot, all excited, wrote a script etc.

We had a meeting, got their ideas (which was a CAD like drawing that turns into real life situations and follows an article throughout its journey…which we’ve seen on tv a lot.) When it came down to budget questions, we asked what they had in mind…guess what they said…”Your employee said it would only cost us $1,000 for a :30 to :60 spot!

Crazy huh? They want tons of animation work put into this thing for only a grand????

See how per finished minute quotes can get you in trouble? Unless you have all the facts…

Freelancer Designer Virginia
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[Lynn Elizabeth]

>>Rich Rubasch
We have three basic levels of per finished minute for editing and two basic levels for per finished minute of pure animation.

We don’t always use this to create an actual proposal, but we use them internally and with our best clients to throw a number out before the project. We are very close at estimating this way.<<< Rick, would you be willing to post in more detail about this? I'm dealing with the same issue of trying to estimate time to bid. I must admit it's a bit like trying to find your way around in a dark room. I'm about to change from life history type projects with packages to trying to bid to businesses for web video and am trying to get a ball park for how long various types of projects should take. Thanks.