Posted by Steve Guidry on 10/10/05 21:17

In my experience, how much you charges, and whether or not you believe that
$1k per minute is a viable rate or not is more a reflection of your customer
base than your equipment list or even your skill set. Other factors like
the length of time you've been in business and how long you've been in your
particular market, and your age seem to play a part as well.

Here's what I mean :

If you're a seasoned pro, who has paid your dues, then you're more likely to
be able to grow or migrate your customer base up to that level. You've
built a list of customers who keep coming back because of the quality your
work represents. You and your customers speak the same lingo, and are
generally comfortable with each other's work styles. You're a "known
quantity" to them.

On the other hand, if you're fairly new, and just getting your customer base
established, then you're likely to think that guys like King, Jandro, Davis
(and your truly) are dinosaurs with an outdated view of what things should
cost. You're selling cost to your customers because that's what you've got
to sell. Heck, I've been there, done that. It _does_ work, but it's a
short-term business plan. As soon as you can do so, you're best advised to
shed all those leaches who want something for nothing. Refer them to your
newbie competitor, and try to poach a high-value customer or two from one of
us.

It's the way of the biz : everyone starts out competing on price, and ends
up competing on value.




"nobody special" <msu1049321@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1128806741.574014.228960@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I'm saying, Steve, that back in the 80's, when puppies were the oldest
> animal, there were technological and financial barriers to entry, so
> lots of bad ideas for projects never got past the inquiry stage. These
> days, all manner of cr@p productions are getting made, for the same
> reason a dog licks it's own... well, you get the rest of that. I swear,
> the next time a client asks me to do a streaming video of them reading
> an instruction manual out loud, and calling it "training", I will hit
> them upside the head with a gobo arm....
>
> At the same time, clients with no background order up projects with
> ambitious goals and a paltry budget, because "the cameras are so cheap
> now". Any smart video pro wouldn't want to touch it, but now there's
> always somebody out there with a camcorder and MovieShaker saying he
> can do it for beans, "hey, Bill in Accounting has a firewire card on
> his PC, HE can do it!" - and they go for it, because they don't
> really know...
>
> A real pro, an experienced writer-producer-editor, could use these
> low-cost tools effectively, and generate something better than a
> full-boat online A/B linear suite from the 80's could hope to do,
> without a lot of the time and expense of 1980's workflow. He'd be
> working solo, where back then it would have been a 2-3 man job. He
> COULD deliver that 1k project, say, a 30-second spot, or a simple
> five-minute product demo, for far, far less. Hopefully, he's converting
> the difference to more profit somewhere.
>

[Back to original message]