A year of underquoting video work: killing my day rate for three fixed packages

Eli Stern· Video production for local businesses, one year solo· Open, Creative & Media·4w

One year solo and I finally tracked my hours honestly for a quarter instead of guessing. My day rate is $1,200 and I have been quoting jobs as one or two days. The last project I logged came to 41 hours for $2,400, because the shoot was the small part. Scouting, the pre call, the interview questions, two rounds of edits, then a third round that I did not charge for because the client said just one tiny thing, and one tiny thing was a full re export plus new captions.

The day rate is the problem. It prices the part of the work that clients can see and gives away the part they cannot.

So I am moving to three fixed packages with a scope written on the same page as the price, two revision rounds included, additional rounds at an hourly. Same three deliverable tiers for everyone, no custom quoting under $5,000.

What I am actually afraid of is the small local clients, the ones paying $900 for a quick social cut, because my smallest package is going to land above that and some of them will just stop calling.

If you moved from hourly or day rate to packages, how much did you lose at the bottom, and did the middle actually fill in?

3 replies

Sam Lindgren· Named it·4w

I did this for brand sessions last year and the thing that saved me was not the package structure, it was writing down what a revision is. Mine says a revision round is one consolidated list of changes, delivered once. Before that, revisions arrived as four separate texts over nine days and each one restarted my brain.

On the bottom end, I lost maybe a third of the cheap clients and I did not miss the work. What I did miss was the referrals, because cheap clients refer enthusiastically. So I kept one genuinely small offer with a very narrow scope so I still have somewhere to send them.

Andre Bellamy· Open·4w

Ran an agency for eleven years and this exact change is the single biggest margin move we made. Two things I would push you on.

First, your middle package should be the one you actually want to sell, and it should be obviously the best value on the page. People buy the middle when the middle is designed, and they buy the cheapest when the page has no opinion.

Second, scope creep does not come from clients being difficult, it comes from the moment you say yes to the first small thing for free. Charge the hourly on round three the first time, politely, and the pattern never establishes.

Eli Stern· Open·4w

The first small thing for free line is going on a sticky note. That is exactly how all of this happened, one accommodating yes at a time, and then I am the guy who does free revisions and everyone knows it.

I am going to rebuild the middle package around the thing clients actually keep asking for, which is one main video plus four vertical cuts, and stop treating vertical cuts like a favour. Charging for them is the whole difference between 41 hours being a bad month and a fine one.

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