Thank you for your input!

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I can totally understand and respect being new to the game. I will say that after being around for a decade or so I have learned many things that I thought were restrictions originally like taking projects regardless of price were actually personally imposed limitations. Meaning they were a mindset and not necessarily a reality. My first $25,000 project I had never done anything like it before. I had no portfolio to show in the arena of the content we were making. I was confident in my proposal and simply explained the value in what I was providing. That of course comes with time and experience but when you’ve been doing it for a few years I think you’ll come to notice just how much quicker you could expand your pricing. One of the easiest ways I do it is by hiring people that are better than me and pricing accordingly!

@@zephanmoses I wholeheartedly agree. You can't shoot yourself in the foot just because you don't have experience. My first video client wanted a multi-camera live-stream setup in my studio. I charged them a DISCOUNTED price of $1,100.

Thank you!

Thanks for watching

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Thanks for your question! Approaching a price change that is so drastic after setting the stage with a low introductory price is a HUGE up-hill battle. This is why in our course Six Figure Live Streamer, we teach a pricing strategy that ensures you are getting paid adequately from the start. It's a big challenge that requires sitting down with the client and helping to reset their expectations and showing the value that you are bringing the table. Clients understand when they are getting more value, they don't understand when they are getting more costs. If it were me, I'd say take it as a learning lesson and make sure to price properly next time. At $155 an hour I would lose money just going out and doing this myself so I can't imagine bringing on a crew of people and being able to pay them. I'd explain that the average cost of a livestream is $750-1500 per finished hour of the event and while your initial pricing was low so that you could begin a relationship with them, your normal pricing is $XXX. If they don't want to continue that relationship, you may need to chalk it up as a mistake and move on. It also may be a sign that you aren't showing them the value in the service you provide.

@@zephanmoses Thanks a bunch for this response, Zephan! Truly appreciate you. I definitely had to take the loss, and they decided not to continually hire us. They wanted a $200/hr rate weekly and an annual contract. Ultimately have a new rate that is much reasonable for us and also for our level of expertise in the industry within our area. We definitely helped to improve their virtual worship service from where it was pre-our service compared to where we elevated it to - pre-our service they were using an internal laptop webcam.... you can only image how that turned out, especially trying to have the background presentation also clean and clear in the feed. Ultimately on the final event day when they were making their final decision, it was monsoon season in the area and a storm BADLY interrupted the network towers, so the webcast was not coming through clearly. They were an elderly clientele and couldn't grasp the technological complications presented by bad weather on the network connection/signal no matter how I attempted to inform and educate on the situation. We learned from it and learned our value for sure! Also checked your website and took a look at your TED talk, Love it!!

@@DivineLightProductions So glad you liked it! I will say we worked with a synagogue and determined that our pricing was not reasonable for them for the long haul so we made a bid for them to hire us to do a permanent install with an ATEM Mini Extreme and some PTZ cameras. This way they could work toward finding a tech to come in and run the show instead of bringing in a full crew. That could be an option next time for at least getting one more push with the client and leaving them in good hands.

My best advice is just double your prices on the next new client you get. If it works, keep the pricing. If they object, learn to have better sales conversations and to show value.

Great question! When I was first starting out, I took what I knew and that was my paycheck equivalent from a job. I started at $25/hour because it felt fair but as time went on I realized there's no way that $25/hr will pay for my lifestyle and expenses because I wasn't working a 40 hour week. When you first start, you might "work" 80 hours in a week because you're hustling but you might not be billing 80 hours a week. So a business coach gave me the advice that I should double it the next client that came in the door. Then double it the next client, until finally I was charging $200 per hour and I finally started to get a little bit of resistance. Now you have to be able to know the difference between resistance on price and clients who simply were never serious enough in the first place. Just because one person says no doesn't mean your price is too high. It can be everything from you not having enough experience to not being able to show them the value of the service you're providing. So my recommendation is start with something reasonable. Maybe it's $40/hr to film and $25/hr to edit. I'd also say give people a minimum so even if you only film for 1 hour, you still had to set up for an hour and break down was 30 minutes, that's 3 hours from arrival to departure. So if you give them a minimum of a half day (at 40/hr you just call it $160), you'll start to make a little more and you'll gain some business savvy and start to realize how your pricing should adjust as you grow bigger and better. Does that help?

Everyone has to start somewhere for sure.

Haha I think it’s under armor.

Hi there! We bill for non-profits pretty much the same way as we would bill a corporation or small business owner. At the end of the day, we're billing for a value that we bring to the table and the service that we are providing so I would be billing based on how many people I had on-site whether it's one camera operator or two and then I would be billing hourly from arrival to departure with a minimum of 3 hours. Non-profit doesn't always mean low budget. We've worked with plenty of non-profits that have the money.

Non-profits sometimes have more money than regular companies! Non-profit status only means their goal isn't to make money for gain, but only to acquire money in order to help others.

Hey there! We actually made a video for this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/b8iPZaeJxtW-YqM.html