if you're a wedding videographer like me, you probably spend a lot of time
thinking about how you should price your wedding films.
I know that when I was starting my wedding filmmaking business,
I was constantly stressing about whether I was charging too little,
which meant that I wasn't making enough money to survive
or charging too much and pricing myself out of couples wanting to book me.
So in this video,
I want to help provide you with clarity and share with you three big mistakes.
The new wedding videographers make with their pricing,
as well as how to fix them Also, because I want to help you out even more,
I have a free guide that I've put together to help you book more couples
for your wedding videography business.
And if you have not downloaded this guide yet, I will link to it down below.
It is completely free anyways.
Getting right into it.
The first mistake many new wedding filmmakers are making is
they are not charging enough to cover their fixed costs.
What do I mean by fixed costs?
Well, your fixed costs could be a lot of things, but for your business,
they could be things like buying or renting or repairing gear, the gas
that you buy, driving to and from a wedding, a hotel room.
Do you have to book the night before or after a wedding in essence, a fixed cost
is anything that you have to pay to run your business story for you.
When I was getting started as a wedding filmmaker, I had zero clue
about the concept of fixed costs.
I was completely winging it.
There were no YouTubers making tutorials about wedding filmmaking for me to watch.
So when I filmed my first wedding, which I charged $500 for,
I had zero concept of what it actually cost me
to film and edit and create that wedding film.
In reality, it cost me a lot more than $500
because that wedding was in Dallas, Texas, which was a three and a half hour
drive away from where I was currently living.
thankfully I was able to stay
at my grandma's house for free so I didn't have to pay for a hotel room.
But whenever you factor in that, I had to buy gear to make sure
that I was able to film this wedding, to even film, it cost me more than $500.
What most new wedding filmmakers forget, too, is that editing is
where you are going to spend the bulk of your time
when you are creating a wedding film, sitting in front of your computer,
typing away, cutting together clips, downloading music, etc..
Of course, music licensing is going to be another fixed cost,
but more important than that is your actual time that you spend editing.
Your time is valuable and you should be charging for it.
So I speak to and coach a lot of wedding filmmakers and they start their business
without even considering what their time is worth.
And whenever I speak to them about their fixed cost,
they'll say something like, Hey, Matt, I charged $1,000 for this wedding video,
but look at my fixed cost.
It looks like it only costs me 700 or $800 to film the wedding.
So I'm doing good. That's $300 profit there.
But then whenever I ask them how long it took them to edit
and how much money they charge the couple for their time spent in editing,
that's when I get this blank stare in their eyes
where they realize, Oh, I didn't charge for that.
So suddenly an editing job where even more novice video editors out
there in the editing space are charging, let's say 50 bucks an hour for editing.
New wedding videographers aren't charging anything.
It's like the couple pays you to film their wedding
and then they get the editing for free.
My point is that this is not sustainable.
So as you are looking at your pricing for your wedding filmmaking, regardless
of whether you are brand new
and have only filmed one wedding or haven't even filmed a wedding at all.
But you're planning on it.
Or if you filmed dozens of weddings, I want you to look at your fixed cost
and make sure that you are actually making money.
If you're making very little to no profit, especially if you've been
filming weddings for a while and have already filmed five or ten of them.
That is a sign that your business is in big trouble
and you're going to need to rework your prices a.S.A.P.
Otherwise, you're not going to be in business for long.
Okay.
Not charging enough to cover fixed costs is mistake number one.
Moving on to mistake number two, most new wedding
videographers are not charging what their market can afford.
In short,
what this means is that where your wedding videography business is located
is going to affect the amount that couples are going to be willing to pay
for your films.
Again, I've coached many wedding filmmakers over the years,
and while a decent portion of them live in bigger cities like Dallas or Chicago
or Miami, we're talking a million plus people living there, etc.
Plenty of them live in smaller towns as well.
Maybe you live in the suburbs an hour or two way from a big city.
Or maybe you live way out in the country and you like it like that.
But driving to a bigger city is going to take you three plus hours.
Well, regardless of where you live, what you need to keep in mind
is that the population of your surrounding area is going to affect
how much couples are willing to pay to have you film their wedding.
If you live in a smaller town,
there are literally less people there that are getting married.
Case in point when I was starting my wedding
filmmaking business, I went to Texas A&M University and I was living
in a smaller town of approximately 100,000 people,
of which approximately 50,000 were college students.
I very quickly discovered
that while there were some weddings that were happening in my town,
I was very quickly hitting a cap on what I could charge most
couples in my town or wanting to spend 1 to 2 grand for me to film their wedding.
And while there were exceptions, I found that I was hitting a pricing
ceiling for the majority of these weddings where I was like, oh, 3000 and people
didn't want pay. 3000 is like, No, come on, get up there.
And it just wasn't working.
So if you are like me and you live in a smaller town,
you may be experiencing something like this
to where you are trying to raise your prices,
but it feels like none of the couples are biting.
And while you get lucky a few times a year with a couple with a bigger budget,
it isn't happening often enough for your business to feel sustainable.
That sucks, right?
Well, here's how I fix it.
And here's how you can fix it too.
What I did was I expanded my market instead of simply focusing on wedding
films in my small town of 100,000 people in College Station, Texas.
I realized that if I was willing to drive an hour and a half southeast,
I would be in one of the largest cities in the world.
Houston, Texas.
I soon discover that Houston is home to one of the most thriving wedding
videography markets on the planet,
with budgets that completely dwarfed that of my smaller town.
I'm talking about couples
that are willing to pay 5 to 10 grand or more for a wedding and not bat an eye.
A lot of that comes down to there
being more people in Houston than in my small town.
Exponentially more so.
And also these people having a higher cost of living
so they have higher budgets to spend on a wedding film.
And keep in mind, too.
The only thing that I had to be willing to do to be able to start taking advantage
of this higher paying market was I had to be willing to drive an hour
and a half to get there.
So if you are struggling with booking clients that don't want to pay you more,
I want you to keep in mind that you need to charge what your market can afford,
meaning that if you're in a smaller town, you may find yourself maxing out at one
or $2,000 for a wedding because there isn't many couples
getting married that have budgets higher than that.
But there's nothing stopping you
from expanding your market and traveling further.
Maybe you need to be willing to drive an hour or two
so you can book more weddings.
Or maybe you're like some photographer friends of mine that live way out
in West Texas, hours away from everything.
But they still run a successful wedding photography business
because they are willing to drive to bigger cities like Dallas
and Austin to photograph the majority of their weddings.
here's another secret for you.
There's no reason for you to limit the amount of distance
you're willing to travel to film a wedding. Sure.
I started by expanding my market to Houston
because it was only an hour and a half away.
But soon after that,
I also expanded to be willing to film weddings across the state of Texas,
which gave me access to cities like Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.
All of which are thriving wedding markets.
Then when I had a couple start to reach out from other states
and countries, I expanded my market even more because I knew that
I had airports nearby that I could fly to to go to those places.
So charge what your market can afford and don't be afraid to expand your market
if you want to be able to raise your prices even more.
lest mistake.
Now that new wedding videographers are making it, how to fix it.
The final pricing mistake is that new wedding
videographers are not using add ons.
add ons or anything extra that you can offer your couples to help
raise the price over the initial cost of their wedding film.
So once you figure out your fixed cost
and then you also figure out what your market can handle
if you want to make more money on top of that.
For example, let's say that the couple ask you
to film them a five minute wedding film which you are happy to offer them.
In that case, a great add on that you could offer
to include for the couple to purchase would be a full ceremony.
Edit where you create a separate video that shows their entire wedding ceremony
from beginning to end. While you are doing this.
I want you to think like McDonald's.
Yes. The fast food restaurant.
Or if you're from Texas or the southern United States like me,
think about what a burger, which is arguably a lot better than McDonald's.
what happens whenever you visit a fast food restaurant?
You order a burger and the worker is immediately going to ask you,
Do you want fries with that?
This is something that the restaurant has already made.
Literally, there's a worker back there making fries, basically 24 seven,
and they're just waiting for people to buy them.
And McDonald's and Water Burger know
that the odds are that
if you buy a burger, you're probably going to want fries as well.
And this is a great opportunity for them to make a few extra dollars
and for you to also be happier because you're eating delicious French fries.
Come on, everybody loves French fries for you as a wedding filmmaker.
Whenever a couple books, a wedding film, you need to be offering add ons.
And while these may not be French fries, which could arguably be very tasty
and I do think that there could
potentially be a market where you could offer French fries with the wedding video.
EDIT And then the couple sits down and they're eating fries
and instead of popcorn to watch their wedding film.
I'm just saying it's a great idea.
Anyways, you're at this point going to make a lot more money than $2 French fries
because you could be charging 300, 500 and $700 for this full ceremony.
Edit just like the fast food restaurant with french fries.
For the couple, this choice to get a full ceremony is going to be a no brainer.
Do you want fries with your burger? Of course you do.
Do you want a full ceremony? Edit with your wedding film?
Of course you do.
The couple just said yes to you filming their wedding.
Human psychology says that their most likely going to say
yes to having you sell them a full wedding ceremony added as well.
Keep in mind with the French fry analogy to just like how there's a worker
in the back always making French fries to the ready to go.
You, as the wedding videographer, have already filmed the wedding ceremony.
At this point it's just sitting on your hard drive
and you're ready to use a bit of it in the wedding film, but putting together
an edit of the full ceremony is not going to make you much time at all.
You've already gone through the footage once to make the wedding film.
It's going to be very easy for you to throw together a full ceremony.
EDIT So there's really no reason for you to not offer this
because it's a very low effort but high paying result, which is great.
Last fast food analogy here for you.
Don't limit yourself to just French fries.
If you're at McDonalds, they don't stop at offering you french fries.
Do you want fries with that is just the start.
Then there's the drink. Do you want it to be large?
Then there's dessert. Do you want the apple pie?
Do you see how many add ons they offer?
You should do the same.
Have a curated selection of add ons that you can offer to your couples
once they book.
Make sure that you offer them these add ons as well,
because the odds are that they're going to say yes
and you're going to make a greater profit.
So there you have it,
Three mistakes that new wedding filmmakers are making in how they price
their wedding videography and how to fix them.
Let me know
down in the comments below how you are doing with
pricing your wedding films as well as anything else
you would like me to cover to help you with your wedding filmmaking business.
Remember to if you have not downloaded my Quick
Tips Guide to book more wedding film clients,
that guide is completely free and link down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching.
Please like this video if you enjoyed it, subscribe
if you want to see more and have a great day.