Two. The answer is two. Here's why, what a "round" actually is, and how to bill round four without burning the relationship.
A revision round is one consolidated set of feedback, delivered together, followed by one updated cut. Write that sentence into your contract. Without it, "round one" becomes a six-week trickle of emails from four stakeholders, each arriving after you've addressed the last. The consolidation requirement is doing more work than the number.
Round one catches the real problems — wrong shot, wrong emphasis, the CEO's name misspelled. Round two polishes. A third round almost never improves the film; it relitigates taste. Two included rounds respect the client's voice while forcing feedback discipline: when people know rounds are finite, they gather their notes, rank them, and send them once. Unlimited revisions produce the opposite — feedback becomes casual, deadlines evaporate, and the project ends by abandonment rather than approval.
Some projects legitimately need more — new stakeholders appear, strategy shifts mid-edit. Fine: that's billable. "Additional rounds at $X" in the contract turns scope creep into revenue instead of resentment. Clients don't resent the line item; they resent surprises.
"Happy to make these changes! Quick heads-up — this would be round three, and the project includes two, so this round bills at $X per our agreement. Want me to proceed?" Sent cheerfully, this email works nearly every time, and roughly half the time the feedback shrinks to what actually matters — which was the point of the cap all along.
Half of revision drama is that nobody knows which round they're in. Fix the bookkeeping: track rounds where the client can see them, timestamp the feedback, keep every version. When the count is visible, the conversation about round three starts itself.
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