How do you ensure video profitability and sustainability?

If you don't have a formula to your pricing then you may potentially overwork yourself make promises you cannot reasonably keep and/or work more time for less money.

Operating costs are certainly an issue. One important concern to bear in mind is transitioning to newer technology, as the trends change. For example, shooting/editing/delivery in 4K. 4K is the expectation these days (although standard HD is still quite common). This means operating with editing software, acquisition cameras, etc in 4K. The 4K will likely continue for several years, and then in 5 years, it will be 8K. In other words, you'll need new equipment every 5 years in this business to deliver to most of your customers. If you purchase 4K today, realize you need to gain the greatest ROI on it, within 5 years, so you don't want to overspend on all of your equipment. That's a challenge in video today!

Ensuring video profitability and sustainability is like running a successful farm. Your content is the crop you're growing - it needs to be nourishing and appealing to your audience, the consumers. You need to regularly "water" your content with investments, such as production quality and promotion. To sustain your "farm," you need to keep an eye on the harvest - monitor your video analytics to understand what's fruitful and what's not. Remember, a bumper crop doesn’t happen overnight; it takes patience, adaptability, and careful cultivation. So, ready to don those overalls and grab a pitchfork?

If you're scattered about who you're clients are you will waste time attempting to sell to any and everyone. Knowing who needs you're Services helps you to create a better video based on you're specialty. Additional you can use other successful work as a Model to what works well for you.

In video, like photography, you have creative artists, and also creative marketers. I prefer to think of myself as a creative marketer - because my goal is to get ROI for my client, rather than produce the most beautiful images that win awards, but don't achieve the goals of my clients. Everyone loves an incredible looking video or photos, but if those images/video do no reach enough eyes and return revenue, there's a chance the client will consider that the product failed to achieve any worthwhile leads, fundraising, etc. I think too many videographers spend a lot of time and money making their videos beautifully produced, a bit more expensive, but then do little or nothing to help boost the videos views on social media or websites.

Experience will tell you what clients the various approaches will work with: bottom line is as a video editor, you don't want to double the amount of labor you provide, with no additional revenue from it. This just leads to you burning out.

It is really important to set the standards of terms in which you do business with your clients because it protects both of you in the event of a dispute and it clearly defines what you're responsible for.

This is the right approach. Once you're more established, you can work with clients/colleagues and payments won't be an issue.

It is important to follow up on your videos, to understand how many views you received, or how much revenue or leads they generate. Clients will desire a "pretty" video, but 6 months or a 12 months later - how many views and how much revenue or success they gained will be a much more important figure. If your videos get more views then competitors - you will likely get more return business.