Video Production Business Tips

1. Find a way to add at least $200 to every video proposal you write.

You can write it in as a couple more hours of editing or add it to your day rate for a shoot. It doesn't really matter how you do it, just do it! I don't think I've ever lost a project because of a difference of $200.

The other thing to consider is that you shouldn't be so transparent in your proposals. I don't show how many hours its going to take to to edit a project anymore. I simply tell them that the edit fee is $X number of dollars. This makes it easy to build some profit in there.

Remember, as an owner, you want profits on top of your salary. If you pad your budgets by $200 or more per video, you can add several thousand dollars to your bottom line each year.

2. Renegotiate your fixed contracts such as cell phone, office phone, internet, etc. to reduce the monthly expense as much as possible.

Everyone is dying to keep customers these days so use that to your advantage. I ate lunch with a guy today who was able to cut his monthly high speed internet bill by $50 a month just by making a phone call and asking them what the best deal they could give him was.

I was able to reduce my phone bill by $200 a month just by asking the question "What's the best deal you can give me? There are a lot of phone companies asking for my business so I want to know what you can do to convince me to stay with you." That's $2,400 back to the bottom line each year.

Remember that I'm giving you ideas on how to boost profits....reducing expenses increases the amount of money you have left over at the end of each month. Don't ignore this.

Sure, you can sell more but in a down economy, its a great strategy to focus on negotiating new terms that benefit you 100% so that when the economy gets strong again, you'll be making more money and spending less of it. Both working together results in fatter wallets!

3. Don't include a lot of extras in your video proposals.

Having a lot of extras in the initial video proposal drives cost up which can drive customers away or leave room for your competition to bid lower than you. I recommend that you quote the shooting and editing part of a video and only include 1 copy of the DVD master.

Then, in your video proposal, tell them that additional copies and/or website files can be provided for an additional fee. Most of the time, they will forget about the copies or the digital files until the project is complete.

Then, when they are in a mad rush to distribute their video, they'll want/need you to make the copies. You quote them a reasonable yet on the higher side number and they go with it because they are ready to get the videos into the marketplace.

Plus, the duplication budget will almost always be treated as a separate cost than the original video so it doesn't bother them to create another PO number that they can assign your duplication fees to. If you add duplication to the original PO number, red flags go off because they are having to increase the budget for the initial video project.

It's not uncommon to generate an additional $500 to $5,000 in duplication/digital conversion fees within a week or two of completing a project when you treat video production and distribution as two separate transactions.

Keep in mind that everything mentioned here is completely fair. The client is getting great value and customer service at every stage of the project and you'll still be charging less than other high-end production companies in your area.

Clients are willing to pay more and they should pay more when you are willing to turn quality work around fast. Don't forget that.

Kris Simmons is a successful video business entrepreneur and coach whose purpose is to help videographers around the world learn how to grow, manage and sustain highly profitable video production companies. To date, thousands of videographers internationally have taken advantage of the business-building resources found at http://www.mindyourvideobusiness.com.