Pricing video and script work for clients starts with two numbers: a floor that keeps you solvent and a target based on what the work is worth to them. The floor stops you from taking jobs that cost you money. The target stops you from leaving half your fee on the table every month.
Add up rent, software, gear depreciation, insurance, and the months each year you bill nothing. Divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year, not the hours you sit at a desk. For most freelancers that number lands between thirty and sixty dollars, and anything under it is a hobby, not a business.
Your floor is not your rate. It is the number below which every answer is no. Writers who skip this step tend to accept cheap work out of fear, then wonder why they cannot afford a new camera in December.
Hourly billing punishes you for getting good. If a script that took eight hours in January takes two hours in June, your effective rate quadruples while the client pays the same. That is fine early on, when you need the reps. Past the learning curve, quote the project.
Estimate your hours honestly, multiply by your target rate, then quote a flat number slightly above it. The buffer covers the inevitable revision round, and the client gets cost certainty, which they almost always prefer over an open-ended clock.
Charge for the result you deliver, not the minutes you sit in the chair.
Write down three packages: a short-form script, a long-form script, and a full video with research and revisions. Give each a fixed price and a short list of what is included. A rate card turns a negotiation into a menu, and menus make people pick instead of haggle.
Defensibility matters. When a client asks why a ten minute script costs four hundred dollars, you point to the research pass, two revision rounds, and the retention notes attached to every delivery. Concrete deliverables end price arguments faster than any speech about your experience.
Revisit your numbers every six months while you are building. Each new niche credit, each testimonial from a known brand, each case study with a view count you can show moves you up a tier. Raise rates for new clients immediately and for existing clients at the next contract renewal.
The freelancers who earn well are not the most talented ones in their niche. They are the ones who wrote their prices down, stuck to them, and updated them on a schedule instead of on a bad day.
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