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Start with your real day rate
Take everything your business must earn in a year: your salary, gear replacement, insurance, software, rent, taxes, and profit (yes, profit is a cost). Divide that by the days you can actually bill. Not 260. Between shooting, editing, admin, and selling, most solo operators genuinely bill 100 to 140 days a year. That math is why the $600/day shooter is slowly going broke while the $1,500/day shooter with identical skills isn't.
Project pricing = days × rate × the multiplier
Count every day the project touches: pre-pro calls, scouting, the shoot, selects, the edit, revisions, exports, delivery admin. Multiply by your day rate. Then apply the overhead multiplier, 1.2 to 1.4, for the invisible work: emails, file wrangling, the revision round that goes sideways. If a project feels like six days, it's eight.
Price the value axis separately
A brand spot that anchors a national campaign is worth more than the same three shoot days for a local nonprofit, because usage is a product. Charge for where the work goes: organic social vs. paid media vs. broadcast are different licenses at different prices. Give the buyer options; options move budgets up more politely than negotiation ever does.
The three-tier proposal trick
Quote almost everything as three tiers: the version they asked for, a leaner cut of it, and the version with the add-ons you know would help (second cam, drone, cutdown package). Buyers anchor to the middle, choose feeling in control, and take the top tier about a fifth of the time: pure margin you'd never have proposed as a single number.
Hold the line with process, not personality
Pricing collapses at the edges: the scope that grew, the round-four revisions, the invoice paid in 60 days. Write the edges into the contract (rounds included, overage rates, payment schedule, late fees) and let the system be the bad cop. It's easier to point at a clause than to be one.
Want the paperwork half of this done for you? Our free proposal template and contract template bake these ideas in.
A worked example
Here is one way to build a price from the ground up, for a sample half-day interview and a 2-minute edit. Use your own numbers.
| Line | Sum | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Your shoot time | Half a day at $1,200 a day | $600 |
| Prep and travel | 3 hours at $120 | $360 |
| Sound mixer, half day | Half of $700 | $350 |
| Kit | Camera, lights, audio | $300 |
| Edit | 1.5 days at $960 | $1,440 |
| Color and mix | Half a day | $480 |
| Your cost | $3,530 | |
| Margin at 30% | Cost ÷ 0.7 | $5,043 |
| Quote | Rounded | $5,000 |
Two things are easy to miss here. Prep is real work, and a day of shooting often comes with a day of prep and a day of loading in and out. And margin is what pays for the weeks with no job, the insurance and the new lens. A studio with no margin in its quote is working for a day rate with extra risk.
Find your own day rate
- Pick the income you want before tax.
- Add your yearly overhead: insurance, software, gear, rent, a car.
- Divide by the days you can really bill. Prep, slow months and admin all eat the calendar, so try 100 to start.
| Target income | Overhead | Billable days | Day rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $70,000 | $20,000 | 100 | $900 |
| $90,000 | $30,000 | 120 | $1,000 |
| $120,000 | $40,000 | 130 | $1,231 |
These are sums, and they say nothing about the market. Check them against what crew near you charge, and see day rate or project rate for how to present them.
What moves the price
| Change | What it does |
|---|---|
| A second shoot day | Adds crew, kit and more footage to edit |
| Usage beyond the client's own channels | Should raise the price, often a lot |
| A third round of notes | Adds edit time, so price it, or limit it |
| Rush delivery | Costs nights and other jobs |
| A second location | Adds a company move and a half day |
Put these in the proposal as optional add-ons, so the client can choose. The proposal guide shows how, and the crew day rate calculator works out overtime. To cost a job line by line before you price it, see how to build a video production budget.