Never Gets Old: Value for the Price

[Mike Cohen]

I’m late to this party, but here is my answer:

Pay yourself first. Don’t make your hourly rate the hourly rate you pay yourself. You have to figure your prices based upon your business staying profitable, not just you paying the rent. In other words, if you take home $50/hour as a paycheck, add to that your overhead and profit. That is your actual hourly rate – multiply by the estimated hours, plus a shoot charge and now you’re talking.

You want your client to walk away happy, as opposed to just walking away. But make sure you are charging enough so YOU walk away happy too. If you bid low and wind up working 40 hours, making your hourly rate $10, then you lose.

A good rule of thumb in business, don’t lose!

Mike Cohen

[Grinner Hester]

[Paul O’Brien] “Grinner – cool you can give a quote so quick. In such a pricing, does that include all music/narration/production costs? If it does, I see those elements eating into margins/profit really quickly – do you just go in with those factored in, how do you keep those costs down?”

Yes, partial quotes do a client no good. They’ll on ly make em made later when you change it or start babbling about fine print or expenses. I use dewolfe music most of the time and can pay a blanket fee for an entire production. I have not counted needle drops in years thanks to them and eager local bands looking for promotion. My VO dudes are top notch and because we such a great relationship, I can literally email a script and tag the email with how much money I have of it. They turn it around that same day and invoice me for that amount. Veeery simple.
In the case of this show, there will be no VO expenses and all of the music will be free from local bands. This was discussed and agreed upon before I gave the verbal quote in the same meeting.
This has been a great asset… being able to quote before another company gets the jump. They even commented on how easy it was and how much they are looking forward to it after wrestling with other companies that felt a need to make it difficult. I literally just look at things as a grand a day.

[Todd Terry]

Yeah, way low.

At least for semi-high-endish professional production. Not a cable production.

When we get the inevitable “How much does a video cost” question, my smartass answer is always “How long is a road?” It just depends on where you want to go and what kind of scenery you’d like along the way.

Actually, I always want to answer, “How much you got?” But I don’t.

But, to wild ballpark it, for long-form stuff (and here anything longer than a :30 commercial we consider long form) I tell clients that they are probably looking at somewhere between $1500 and $5000 per finished minute. It just depends on what goes in it and how long it takes. A talking head is cheaper than Gone with the Wind, plus car chases through Tara.

Your estimate to your potential client is dirt cheap, especially if it includes the narration (talent fees) and music licensing. If the $200 Comcast production is “good enough” for them, then that’s where they need to go.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

“We fix $7 haircuts”.

[Richard Cooper]

I need a video…. $500.00
I need a good video….. $5000.00
I want it all…. $50,000.00

“We fix $7 haircuts”….. Priceless

Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska

Everyone has a story to tell.
https://www.FrostLineProductions.com