This week’s freebie for Premium Members and email subscribers is a spreadsheet to help you create video job estimates.
Probably the second most popular question I hear from newbie video producers (after “Can I use so-and-so song in my video) is “How much should I charge?” There is an array of answers you might get to this question. There are many factors that go into what one charges for their services. But at the end of the day, it needs to come down to how many man-hours you/your company puts into a project.
For years I’ve used a Google spreadsheet I’ve created in order to generate bid estimates for potential clients. It breaks down each video project into four distinct areas: pre-production, production, post-production and hard costs (e.g. equipment rental, travel, music licensing, etc.)
For the three video production sections, I line-item each core task, how many man-hours allotted and the price per hour. The hard cost section breaks down all the costs associated with a job with a modest markup added. (Note: even if you own the equipment you’re using, depending on whether or not your hourly rate is high enough, it’s still a good idea to add in some equipment rental cost allocation. For no other reason than it helps you to keep in perspective that those costs are real to you — whether you rent equipment as you need it or buy it up front and amortize the cost over time).
This Week’s Member Freebies
This week I’m offering all DDfm Premium Members and email subscribers this estimating document as an Excel spreadsheet (it can be opened with any major spreadsheet software like Numbers or imported into Google Docs). If you’re a DDfm Premium Member, you will have permanent access to this spreadsheet. Just login (if you’re not already), and a download area will appear at the bottom of this post.
If you’re an email subscriber, the document is in the weekly freebie Google Drive folder. Just click the download link image at the bottom of the email:
If you’re NOT already an email subscriber, sign up now and the link to this weekly freebies folder will be on your welcome page once you confirm subscription.
Happy estimating!
Downloads
Premium Members login to get see the download links.
