How much to charge?

[Stephen Mann]

There’s WAY too little information here to give any advice. I have no idea what your market is since your profile is blank.
Are you in Podunk Wyoming or New York City? Do you have competition? Have your client done this before, thus have an idea what to pay?

How much of your time is really invested in the project and how much do you need to make per hour to stay in business?

[Greg Lewolt]

Local cable will try to get the work away from you by offering it free/included as part of the clients advertising buy.
This is how they control the clients buy and keep them from going to other stations.

I shot :30 sec spots and had a deal with a local production company for $500 total each years ago when I ran a small ad company.

I’m sure your time is worth at least $200, but as its local cable It might be hard to charge more $1000 per spot.
You can get an Idea by calling local video production companies and getting their rate cards, but deals are cut all the time.

Call the station where the client is advertising and see what they charge per spot.

Advise the client only to buy local news, noon evening whatever he can afford. Nothing else works on local stations. When his spots start to work then he will give you more work. Try to do two things:
Place something in the spot that will track when the custemers come in to buy from him so that he knows that the sale is from your tv spot.
Make sure the client answers his phone with his best salesman.
The best Advertising salesperson I ever worked with went in to the local stores and trained the person answering the phone, that way her clients were ready for the phone to ring and made the sale.
Ads take time, show the most beautiful picture of the product in action you can, people will buy up to a year later.
Good Luck

[Graeme]

Thanks for the response…I am in Riverside/San Bernardino a shadow market of LA (we don’t have local affiliates, our TV is from LA, but we do have loacal cable) The market is roughly 1.6 million people, though there are different cable providers throughout. When all is said and done I will have spent about 10-12 hours on the two spots. I am guessing about $500.00 (I am doing this in my spare time and don’t have to rely on this work to support myself). The spot is for a new agency and they don’t have a lot of cash floating around, plus I could use the expirience. $500.00 for 2 :30 sec. local cable spots? Editing, VO, and a small amount of animation. Seems fair?

Thanks,
Graeme

[Greg Lewolt]

$500 sounds fine. It’s always a matter of growing to bigger budgets, you have to make a start, and you have!
Next time talk about charges before you do the work.
Over the years most of my work started out this way, mostly by working for free first, or on spec. Then building to higher charges. One thing leads to another.
Good luck,
Greg