On the subject of price

I talked about pricing in a previous post but it was buried in my announcement post, so I’m going to give pricing a little more oxygen.

As a freelancer I’ve done a number of pricing models depending on the client; flat rate, hourly rate, variable rate and project based.

Flat Rate: Some of my most longstanding clients, a flat fee per edited episode is the way to go. Episodes tend to be around the same length, sometimes it runs a little long sometimes it runs a little short. I of course enjoy the consistency of the amount.

The one challenge with flat rate has is a lot of smaller tasks like revisions, correspondence and troubleshooting are not tracked. So ideally you want to raise your price to factor in these additional tasks.

Hourly rate: Now mind you, this doesn’t factor in jobs that I’ve had just ones where I was contracted. Being able to track time on any service means you can justify having your tracker on no matter the task, like those small ones mentioned above.

I found this did lead to some unease; of course I know my value and that I’m worth the time but you have to consider the value of your most important role, compared to the value of your least important ones.

Don’t blame your clients for taking roles away from you so someone with a more economically viable rate can do them.

It really is the best scenario for contractors, no doubt some of what we do is high-pressure, so if a company is willing to compensate you to answer relevant emails or even attend meetings, you did well.

Variable rate: This one doesn’t come up much for me, but essentially the length of the work (for editing) determines the price. Seems fair, but there are two situations where one side is missing out.

Let’s say you charge based on the amount of raw content you receive, this means I as the editor can cut as much as I deem necessary. But let’s also say there were long stretches of unrelated content, an interruption, a police siren, a dog… you’re being served a subpoena. It would be a bit irritating to have to add up all these clearly non-contextual incidents.

But there can be contextual ones, if the client knows the more they record the more it costs, this can put pressure to create shorter episodes when their format is much longer.

Now, even rarer, is having the length of the episode charged based on the result. This would actually create a situation where I would be incentivized to edit less so that the final result wouldn’t cross into a lower price threshold.

So clients out there, please understand that as artists and creatives, we want to bring our best every time, you never know what work needs to serve as leverage for applying elsewhere. If there’s potentially lost money for essentially doing a good job, you pretty much compel your editors to work less.

Finally, my experience with Project rate: My experience with this was a problem only because the amount of involvement – Hey did you know LinkedIn has a character limit? I just reached it.