ladies and gentlemen one of the biggest problems that I have seen editors struggle with is pricing especially when you're getting started so how much should you charge as a video editor in 2025 this question can be quite a pain to answer pricing your service can feel like a game of guesswork not because the answer isn't there but because if you price yourself too low then you're going to be working a job that you hate and if you price yourself too high all of a sudden you've scared the client away so how do we find that
sweet spot or how do we set a price that reflects our skills but is also competitive in the 2025 market now here's the thing most editors struggle with pricing because they don't actually know their worth and you might be thinking well I've just started out and I don't want to charge too much or I've been editing for a while but I don't want to lose my clients today we're going to clear that up and we're going to help you make a decision because by the end of this video you'll have a road map of how
you should figure out your rates so that you can get paid what you deserve in 2025 all right before we dive into the Practical steps let's first talk about why so many editors struggle with pricing there are a few two core reasons that hold a lot of editors back the first of which could just be the fear of rejection many editors don't want to charge higher rates because they simply fear that they might lose the client what if they say no or what if I price myself out of the job the thing that you haven't
realized yet is that pricing is a negotiation your client probably understands that rates are flexible that's why they hired you instead of hiring an agency and worst case if someone does turn you down don't take it personal learn from it and move on and find better clients the second reason you might be holding back your rates could just be impostor syndrome and I've heard this over and over and over again I'm just starting out so I can't charge too high everyone starts somewhere whether you've been doing this for 6 years or 1 month is not
the deciding factor when it comes to pricing what sets the price is the quality of your editing service and what that's going to be doing to your client's business so if you've been editing for only 1 month but you can make some pretty amazing videos then you can price your stuff pretty high and the third reason that you could be held back from being paid right could just be the lack of Industry standard knowledge it's quite logical if you don't know the standard or base price of the market then you're probably going to fall victim
for whatever price the client sets for you however you need to understand that it is totally normal to experience these things throughout your journey as a video editor but the good news is you can easily overcome them if you just understand how to set your rates and what factors influence your price so what are the key factors that influence your pricing as a video editor first we need to understand that pricing is not just a number it's several elements that have been considered so you can come up with a rate that benefits both parties of
the client and the editor and the first factor that obviously affects pricing is your experience and skill level are you a beginner intermediate or Advanced professional the longer you've been editing the more you should charge especially if you've mastered complex editing techniques so for beginners if you're just starting out your rates are probably going to be lower to reflect the fact that you're still learning experience and for basic edits you might charge anywhere between $100 to $200 per long form video but for intermediate editors once you've gained some experience and you've developed your animating stylization
and editing style skill sets your rates could range between 30 00 to $400 per project depending on the complexity and for expert editors if you've worked on 3D projects bigger projects higher quality videos then you can easily charge anywhere between $600 to $1,000 per project these rates apply to larger businesses ad agencies or projects that demand top tier quality or Advanced technical skills the second big factor that plays a role here is the type of project the type of project you're working on also plays a very crucial role in setting the price you wouldn't price
a YouTube short the same as you would a podcast right so here's a rough breakdown of pricing for different content types for simpler YouTube videos these typically involve cutting adding music adding a few animations here and there and just mainly relying on b-roll you can charge anywhere between $100 to $300 for these for engaging shorts these will include higher quality animations and more complex and engaging scenes and you can charge between $60 to $100 for these and lastly for heavily animated videos these are videos that include heavy 3D scenes hyper realistic animations tons of Motion
Graphics and so on you can expect to charge anywhere between $500 to $1,000 per project on any of these and the third factor that plays a big role in pricing is actually the kind of client that you have the kind of clients that you're working with can really affect how far you can go with your prices smaller creators and influencers generally have a lower budget that they can spend so you might be pricing your stuff somewhere around $200 and $300 for them whereas small businesses and agencies generally have a higher budget to spend on editors
so this is where you can get away with $500 to $1,000 per project and corporate clients like people who are looking to do ads for their real estate definitely have a way higher budget to spend so you can get away with pricing your stuff at $2,000 per project for these clients now with this being said one of the best ways that you can find out how much you should actually be charging is by simply asking other editors how much they're charging so here's how you can ask other editors about their rates without feeling awkward the
first thing you can do is join online communities these don't even have to be paid they could just be free communities Reddit groups Facebook groups whatever it is after joining these communities feel free to create a post post or send some editors a message like hey I'm a new editor and just wondering how much do you charge for this and you're going to find that editors are usually willing to share their prices especially if they're at a similar stage in their career another thing that you could do is just send a polite message if you
have editors that you're following and you admire or they have a similar skill set to you then just shoot them a message keep it friendly and just say something like hey name I've been following your work for a while and I love the way that you edit I'm curious if you don't mind me asking how did you figure out your pricing when you were first starting out but just remember if they are more welln they probably have a ton of DMS to answer so don't be shocked if they take a while to answer one more
thing you could do is just assess a logical price now this is going to take a bit more experience and I've personally never tried it but all you want to do is roughly calculate the amount of leads that they're generating every single month and roughly calculate how much each lead is paying them so you have a total revenue number and you just want to take a small percentage of that say my client is a coach who trains people and he's closing 10 clients every single month and he's charging them $250 each 10 multiplied by 250
makes him $2,000 $500 every month so he can most likely afford a $600 editor especially knowing that my editing can add three to five new clients to him every single week which actually makes the editing service an investment okay okay Joseph so we understand how to roughly calculate our prices based on a few factors but how should I charge my clients should I do it hourly or Project based these are two of the most common ways to charge clients and let's talk about which one fits you the most charging by the hour can either be
an amazing thing or a big steal here's why charging hourly makes you as valuable as the amount of time which you spent on the project which basically means the more time that you spend on the project the more you get paid but it also means that the faster you are as an editor which is supposed to be a good thing the less you get paid let me break this down a bit more say you got a project to edit from a guy and he wants it edited in X editing style and let's just say that
this editing style takes around 10 hours to finish if you're being paid hourly let's say you take that project and you end up working 15 hours on it right and you're charging $15 per hour so you actually end up making2 $25 from the entire project you worked harder on the video so you got paid more it's very reasonable but say you took the project and you were a more advanced editor and you were faster with your work so you ended up finishing the entire project within just 7 hours then you get paid $105 so you
get paid less for being faster and that's the only problem with the hourly pay is that they don't get rewarded for being faster which is actually a very good virtue in editors Project based pricing is a lot more predictable but sometimes it's even more profitable you just set a flat fee on how long you expect it to take you and how complex it is so instead of charging $15 per hour you can just do some calculations realize that the project is going to take 10 to 15 hours and just charge something like $180 for the
entire project now this is better because the faster you get it done as an editor based on the requirements that they gave you the more money you make but this is also good because your client now understands exactly how much they need to pay you and they don't need to guess it from the GetGo awesome so we know how much we need to price ourselves and what the best ways are to charge our clients but what if we want to raise our prices down the line generally there are three times that you're going to know
that it's right to raise your prices and first is when you're in demand if clients are consistently reaching out to you and you can't handle the workload you know it's the right time to raise your price as you gain more experience you're naturally going to become more in demand so take advantage from that and raise your prices second is when your skills have improved if you learning new editing techniques or mastering new skill sets your rates should actually reflect that the more you can do the higher you can charge if you started off doing basic
premere Pro animations for your client and now all of a sudden you're making imaji animations obviously your prices have to be different and third is when you attract high quality clients if you're working with bigger clients on bigger projects don't be afraid to raise your rates these people don't really care how much they need to pay they just want the highest possible quality so push yourself to the absolute limits when it comes to the quality of the video but also price yourself accordingly based on how much effort you're about to put in but now here's
the thing if you're an editor watching this it's clear that you want to make real money with editing but let me be honest everything that I've just shared is absolutely useless if you don't have the skill sets that are required to actually charge your clients $600 to $1,000 a month and in 2025 a highquality editor is not just someone who knows how to do basic Cuts you're going to need to master Premier Pro create stunning animations in After Effects and learn the eight viral editing styles of 2024 Styles like Houston cold bu maximize and Iman
and that's exactly why I created the ultimate editors program a program that makes you a highquality editor in just 60 days in the next 2 months you can go through 50 plus Premier Pro courses 50 plus After Effects courses 100 plus short form editing courses like our Houston cold bumax de jath and Ali ABD courses and 100 plus long form editing courses like our imaji Isaac and my own editing style courses and after all this you can get into our 30-day land client Master Class where we're going to teach you how to set up a
highquality personal brand post content that attracts clients and make your first ,000 with editing in the next 30 days our students are landing clients in as little as 23 days they're making $11,000 with clients even making $3,000 with clients and even moving into their own place all because of video editing you're also going to get weekly group exclusive presets and plugins and editing competitions so if you're ready to become a highquality editor and make money with video editing join ultimate editors the link is going to be down below but as usual thank you so much
for watching all the way till the end of the video we're going to be posting every single week now so I'll see you on our next upload God bless all of you guys take care and make sure to check out the link in the description and we'll see you guys next time
