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). Divide that 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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