What's it Worth?

[Evan Donn]

The hard part to then realize is that any hour you DON'T sell at that rate, puts you in the hold. So a cancelled shoot or a client band that stiffs you STEALS time from your plan.

Then business is simple. Any hour you sell at that rate is a success. Any hour you sell at anything LESS than that rate is a business failure.

Except that that's only a starting point.

All failures aren't equal. An hour you don't sell at any rate is a bigger failure than an hour sold at half your overhead rate. Taking on a low budget shoot for a local band on an otherwise unbooked night may make more sense than sitting around at home.

We also aren't talking about selling widgets here. That low budget shoot may give you an opportunity to do a video that differs in style from your regular projects, or with different equipment. That not only potentially expands your skill set, but also potentially acts as marketing for you in an area you might not otherwise have anything to show for. So if you'd like to do music videos, but most of your paid work is weddings, you're probably going to have to do some music videos at below cost to get the skills and demo material you need to successfully charge at your base overhead or higher.

So that kind of calculation is useful as a yardstick for whether you're actually in business or not, but it doesn't necessarily work well as a per-job guide. You may be able to charge 3x your overhead for some jobs, and a 1/3 for others - as long as they balance out so that you stay in the black the cheaper jobs aren't necessarily failures if you get non-monetary benefits out of them.