What Does One Video Actually Cost You?

The Question That Froze You

Imagine a company writes to you, likes your work, and after two emails asks: what do you charge for one video?

And you sit in front of the screen with no idea what to type.

You think of a figure and it feels too high. You halve it and it feels too low. You ask a friend and he gives you a number he can't explain either. In the end you type something and your hand shakes as you hit send.

A month later, when the work is finished, you sit down and add it up: two weeks, a trip, a reshoot, and four rounds of revisions.

And you discover you lost money.

All of it for one reason: you know what you paid for your camera, and you don't know what one video costs you.

The Real Cost Isn't Money

Gear is bought once and forgotten. Time is paid on every single video, without exception, forever.

And anyone who doesn't know how many hours a video costs them finds three decisions impossible: what to charge for paid work, whether to keep making a particular kind of content, and when to bring someone in.

Count Once, for One Specific Video

And don't estimate an average from memory, because memory forgets the small stages, and the small stages are the longest.

Take a piece of paper, bring the last video you published to mind, and write down how long each stage actually took:

Most people expect one number and find double it staring back from the page.

Where Your Time Actually Goes

The same result comes up for almost everyone who sits down and counts honestly.

Editing takes more than half the time. And it's exactly the part nobody plans for and nobody counts.

Filming is the shortest stage on the whole list, even though it's the part that feels like "the work" and feels like the reason you're tired.

And three small stages combined equal the whole shoot: the thumbnail, the on-screen text, and organising the files.

Writing stretches when the idea isn't ready. So if your writing hours look strangely high, the problem is in the idea rather than in your writing.

Turn the Hours Into a Number

Multiply the total by the value of your hour.

And if you don't know what your hour is worth, ask one question: what would I charge to give this hour to someone else? That's the number, even as a rough estimate.

Then add three things:

What you spent on this specific video: travel, entry fees, licensed music, an assistant.

The video's share of your gear: the price of what you bought divided by how many videos you'll make with it before replacing it.

And its share of your monthly subscriptions: their total divided by the number of videos you make in a month.

Now you have one number. And that number is the first thing you need to answer that company's email instead of guessing.

What to Do With the Number

Pricing Collaborations

The number is your floor, not your price.

Paid work adds things on top: client revisions, usage rights, liability, and the fact that you're putting your name on something you didn't choose alone.

But someone who doesn't know their floor accepts offers that lose them money while they think they've won. Which is the story we opened with.

Deciding Whether to Keep a Format

Count the format you dislike making.

You'll usually find it consumes twice what the others do and returns less. And that alone settles a question you've been postponing for a year.

The First Thing to Delegate

It's the longest stage that doesn't actually require you.

For most people that's culling footage, on-screen text, or the first assembly cut. Not the idea and not the writing, because those need you and nobody else can do them.

The Gap Between Formats

Run the calculation again for a video of a different kind, then compare the two numbers.

The gap alone will show you where your month is going.

And What the Number Doesn't Say

A video's value doesn't show up in its cost. A video that took you thirty hours might bring you a client a year later, and one that took three hours might bring nothing ever.

The number doesn't measure what you learned either. The video where you mastered a new skill was an investment rather than a cost.

So use the number for practical decisions: pricing, delegating, and choosing formats. Don't use it to judge the worth of your work.

In Short

Count once, completely honestly. Multiply by the value of your hour. Add expenses and the share of gear and subscriptions.

The number that comes out will bother you, and that's exactly the point.

Because you can't make a decision about something whose cost you don't know.