Charging for (hard drive) space

[Ed Dooley]

Chris,
Do you mean you can’t put their projects on a $200 or less drive for storage and bill them the $200 plus for the time
to move the files off your RAID? I have yet to have a client balk at that. I tell them it’s the cheapest way to keep
their projects for archiving or re-editing (by far). I wouldn’t know how to start to charge for drive space rental, but I think whatever the fee,
it would quickly become more dollars than the $200 drive. You’re willing to transfer their files to a slower
storage-only drive, and in the meantime they’re using your fast, expensive array(s). Do they know that when you delete
the files from your array that it will cost them many times more than a storage drive costs to recapture their files?
Sorry I’m not directly answering your question, but something sounds wrong here, are they stupid? If they’re just ignorant,
then enlighten them.
Ed

[Chris Poisson] “Okay, in a sense we become landlords with clients who have large storage needs over time. If you can’t get them to buy their own dedicaed drives for storage, how would you charge them? Cost per gig? Over what period of time? Kind of a conundrum with quite a few clients I have…

Doing a batch re-capture for revisions is a hassle, and often too time consuming for the kind of demanding clients I have. Not to mention the scope of media I have to capture from… Have a wonderful day.”

[Chris Poisson]

I think ignorant is the word, so yes, your advice is good. Thanks!

Have a wonderful day.

[Nate]

Chris,

I have the same problem, dumb clients – who don’t want to understand – the best practice for archiving their edits. So, I went to Compusa, picked up an external firewire enclosure (for DVD burners) and their basic 19 dollar removable Hard drive bay. The Hard drive trays are only 15 bucks and it only took an hour, 2 drill holes and 2 pop rivets to assemble. Now I – SHOW – clients where I am going to store their edits. The client can buy the Hard drive and tray to keep at their office or mine. If I just store their edit on my hard drive Hot swap removeable, I tell them it is only going to be there for six months for re-edits or until I need the HD space for another client. But I buy hard drives for storage like candy when they are on sale I just don’t tell the client everything. I encourage them to be responsible for their media. IF they don’t care, translates into a money making oportunity later.

[Kevin Monahan]

Remember that you’re in business, so you should mark up the price of materials that you provide for your clients. My father taught me that it is ethical to do this, just don’t gouge. A figure of +15-20% is acceptable in my book.

Another thing I’d mention is to try to get the clients to take the source tapes and a copy of the project file OFFSITE. This protects you from having to pay for the entire reshoot, should you have a fire or natural disaster (a real fear in LA or SF). There is no insurance out there that will protect you from this. A fireproof, waterproof safe is a very good idea if your customers want to keep the materials on site.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters

[Travis Ballstadt]

I’m about to expand into the office space next to mine in the next couple months, and it comes complete with an old walk in safe! And the coolest thing is, it stays cool! I was in there measuring today and the AC was off. Hotter than **!!. Open the safe door and walk in, about 60 degrees!

Nice little perk…Fireproof, lockable, etc.

travis ballstadt
http://www.thrillcateditorial.com

[Jerry Hofmann]

Ya know what I do? I say I’ll keep the media for a month. Then, if they don’t want to buy the drives, I tell them i cannot afford to keep them online, and that means they’d have to pay for a recapture. They ALWAYS buy the drives. I’ve a lot of FW drives here full of client media and they STILL save a ton of bucks over all. One of the projects is in DV and takes up about 3 250 gig drives. It cost them about a grand. The recapture would take about a week… Plus they can just call me up and have another master made for a lot less than if I had to recapture. They keep the tapes I hate tapes… Their project files are keep locally, and they have a copy and so does my iDisk.

Jerry

[Kevin Monahan]

The only problem there is that I don’t trust drives that sit on the shelf. The ones that have failed on me are the ones that sit. Drives, like the human body, just rot if they are not moving around and working. I really don’t abide by the ol’ throw the drive on the shelf thing, but if it works for you, then great.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters

[Chris Poisson]

Hey Kevin,

Wow, I would never have thought that about drives sitting. I have 4 or 5 that have been sitting for over a year and they have all come back online so far. Go figure.

Have a wonderful day.