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How much to charge for making promo videos for businesses?

Hello,

I'm starting a video production company with my younger brother. We will make 60-120 second long corporate promotional video for youtube, dailymotion, etc for local small businesses.
I'm in charge of securing clients and my brother is graduation next month with his degree in video production/digital filmmaking.
Anyway, in the next two weeks we're going to shoot videos for my Aunt's Beauty shop, my Dad's contracting firm and a few non-profit organizations free of charge for portfolio purposes.
Researching similar businesses I see prices that range from $200 to $1250 for creating 60 second online videos. I even found a company that creates videos for $99, $199 and $299 then charges the same price monthly for maintaining the video seo rankings.
My question is what would you charge a small business for this service? Say for a 60 second video.

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
It really depends on the market in your area and what the video will require. You should be bidding out each video separately depending on the requirements on the project. For example, do they want a drone shot? That would require more if you need to hire a drone operator for a day if you aren't a registered drone operator for commercial work. That's just an example. Have an idea of what you charge per minute of editing though. Such as $2,000 per finished minute of the video. Then the rest will be additional to actually film it. And yes, $2k per minute is not out of the question for finished video.
 
Welcome to indietalk.
My question is what would you charge a small business for this service? Say for a 60 second video.
I dd not charge based on the end running time - I charge based on
the hours I spend. As I got better and my reputation grew I charged
more.

It seems you've done your research in your area. Can you afford to
charge less than the others? If so, do it. If you can't then charge what
the others charge but offer better service.
 
For businesses a video needs to be a good investment.
Cheapest can be the worst investment as it can hurt business to make a terrible video.

You need to know a few things:
- Your cost of doing business: in other words what expenses do you have and what do you need to charge to stay in business. Otherwise it is an expensive hobby.
- What is reasonable for your clients?
Small business owners often have less to spend on video than large businesses.

If they spent $30,- on a crappy video which does not return any money, they will be disapointed, but happy it was cheap.
If they get backlash it will cost them money.

If they spent $3000,- on a video that made them $6000,- in revenue growth it's a good investment. Then you earned yourself an ambassador.

These figures are just made up, but the point is that you need to add value to your clients for a sustainable and reasonable rate to build a sustainable business.
To create opportunities don't ask too much, but also don't ask so little that it costs you money to make something for them.)
 
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