Most video pricing is a vibe: what the last client paid, minus nerves. Here's the arithmetic that replaces the vibe.
Take everything your business must earn in a year — your salary, gear replacement, insurance, software, rent, taxes, and profit (yes, profit is a cost) — and divide by the days you can actually bill. Not 260. Between shooting, editing, admin, and selling, most solo operators genuinely bill 100–140 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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