I came across with Q&A with Henry Finn of Blueprint World Media, a top San Fransisco based video production company. In this Q&A, Henry responds to questions about how to charge more for video, and specifically how to get $10,000+ for every video that you make.
Note: I’ve edited the original Q&A for readability reasons. The answers are still Henry’s, but I’ve added punctuation, paragraph breaks and other grammar edits for readability. I’ve also included relevant additional links to help readers, as well as images and video throughout.
This is Part I of the Q&A. The rest of the Q&A will be released in two more parts, as it’s rather lengthy.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Introduction
Hi all, I’ve been a videographer for over 15 years in the Bay Area. I started when I was 19 shooting weddings for years and eventually got into corporate and startup work which has been my bread and butter for 10+ years. I don’t do weddings anymore actually.
I have worked for major companies and taught at the Academy of Art University and now I am considering creating a course to teach people how to build their work and clientele up to charge minimum 10K per video.
I learned a lot of lessons the hard way but also was helped by the community, so I want to give back and also create the ultimate resource guide for the business. You can see some of our work at Blueprint World Media.
What questions and struggles do you have as professionals that you want to address?
What You Will Learn
Some of the topics that will be covered in this Q&A:
- Essential knowledge areas for creating professional work.
- How to prospect clients.
- How to build solid relationships.
- How to manage client expectations and educate them to justify charging more.
- Pitfalls to avoid in taking work/managing time/resources.
- How to manage billing.
- How to save your money and grow (don’t just dump it back into gear).
- How to creatively solve client needs under budget.
- Tips and tricks to increase profit margin.
- How to not burn out.
- Building a team and working with other freelancers.
- How to strategically reach out to build relationships in niches you want benefits from.
- And much more, this is just off the top of my head.