Do you want to make more money filming weddings?
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson.
And over the years, as I've talked to and coached many wedding filmmakers,
one theme that has constantly come up is a desire to make more money.
So today,
I want to share with you
three things that you can do in your wedding filmmaking business
to start making more money.
We'll begin with what may be the most obvious, but I have to say it
if you want to make more money filming weddings.
One way to do that is to raise your prices,
and you're probably thinking doormats.
Of course, if I charge more money, I will make more money.
But the amount of wedding filmmakers that I've talked to
that have not altered their prices in many months or even years tells me that
there are many filmmakers out there that have not raise their prices.
Maybe that's you.
Maybe you feel stuck at your current price point and unable to raise your prices.
Maybe you feel like you've reached a ceiling for what you can charge.
Or you're getting told that your prices are too high by too many couples,
so you can't increase them.
Let me take a second and encourage you, because I think that the work that you're
making is most likely worth significant only more than what you are charging.
When I was starting, I felt like I hit a point where I couldn't
charge more and that I had peaked and that I would never charge
more than a couple thousand dollars for a wedding. I was wrong.
And if you have that voice in your head telling you that you've peaked, ignore it.
That voice is wrong, too.
I promise you that there are couples out there
that are willing to pay you more for a wedding film.
If you just raise your prices, don't worry.
Now, I'm not going to just tell you to raise your prices and not tell you how.
So let's talk about practically how you can raise your prices to start.
I want you to take some time and look at what your competition
is charging for a wedding film and then look at what you charged
on average for a wedding film over the past year.
Pay attention
to which one of your packages were most often being booked by couples.
And then ask yourself,
do you think that your couples would be willing to pay a bit more?
Here's where a lot of videographers get in their head.
You may think you need to raise your prices by some big amount,
something like next year I'll be charging $1,000 more than I am right now.
But I want you to stop thinking
about raising your prices in such big amounts, like $1,000.
And I also want you to stop thinking about raising them yearly.
Instead, I want you to reframe how you approach
raising your prices and instead try raising your pricing a smaller amount.
More often,
the thought of raising your pricing
by $1,000 next year can sound really intimidating.
But what if instead you only raised your prices by 250 bucks every few months?
I have never experienced a couple
that said they did not want to book me because I charged $250 more for something.
And in the grand scale of the cost of the wedding film and even the bigger
cost of the cost of a wedding, 250 bucks isn't much at all.
If you're charging $2,000 for a wedding film, maybe try charging
20 to 50 for the next couple that ask you about filming their wedding.
This isn't some massive increase, but it is an increase.
And what's great is that if you try this once and it works,
you can try it again a few months later and then raise your prices by 250
bucks again.
Do this a few times in a year
and you'll find yourself charging about $1,000 more a year later.
The only difference is that
instead of doing it all at once and saying All right, couples pay me $1,000 more.
You're gradually building up to it.
Psychologically, you're far less likely to freak out doing things this way.
Here's more good news
if you do start to freak out and get nervous that you're charging too much.
There's nothing stopping you from dropping your prices back down
250 bucks to a level that, you know, couples will be willing to book you.
So that's step one.
If you want to make more money filming weddings, raise your prices.
Moving on, let's talk about the next way that wedding
filmmakers can make more money, and that is by selling more.
Add ons.
Now, what are our add ons?
Add ons are anything
you add on to your wedding film packages that a couple can purchase from you?
Popular add ons that many wedding
filmmakers offer include things like a full ceremony at its or full toast.
Edit from the wedding day.
If you don't commonly sell the full ceremony to a couple, for example,
offering it as an add on it, it is a fantastic way to make an extra
300 to 500 bucks or more from a couple at once. It.
Now you may be thinking that
I already give my couples a full edit of their wedding ceremony
with their wedding film, so I can't offer it as an add on and that's okay.
If you want to give that to your couples, you can.
But I want you to ask yourself, why do you do that?
Why are you giving this ceremony at it to your couples for free?
Is it because you want to?
Or is it because you saw other videographer first doing it?
So you thought you needed to do it yourself?
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with giving a couple a full ceremony
along with their wedding film.
But in my experience, having filmed many weddings over the years, there's
a significant amount of couples out there that do not want
and have no interest in watching their full wedding ceremony again.
Instead, all they really want
is the creatively edited wedding film that you are going to give them.
And because of that, I recommend you give your couples a choice
and let them tell you what they want if they want a full ceremony at it.
They can purchase an add on,
and if they don't, then you don't have to make it this way.
You are compensated for your time editing and the couple gets exactly
what they want by using add ons this way for full ceremony edits and full toast
edits, etc.
You have the potential to dramatically increase the amount
that you make from a couple and both they and you are going to be happy.
Lastly, let's talk about one more way that you can make more money
filming weddings.
And this is a bit controversial But it is also
one of the easiest and low effort ways by far.
You can make more money by offering your couples raw footage of the wedding day.
The reason that I say that offering roof footage is controversial is that
there are some videographers out there that think that you are compromising
your creative integrity by offering couples rough footage
or you are potentially showing your flaws and shortcomings
as a wedding videographer to your couples.
But I don't really agree with that,
and I do not think those reasons are good enough to not offer raw footage
because just like how they're
going to be couples
that want their full ceremony at it, as well as possibly a full toast edit
and any other full longer length edits that you want to give them.
A portion of those same couples are also going to want the option
to be able to relive every single moment of their wedding day.
Some of these couples are going to want to sit down and watch every single clip
that you filmed.
And even if you think it's incredibly boring, they're going to love it.
Alternatively, you're also going to have couples
that just want to have an archive of their wedding film and to know that
they will always have all of the footage from their wedding day.
By all means, they still want the wedding film you edited, but
these couples also want everything else you can give them to.
Regardless of the couple's reasoning for wanting raw footage, though,
the fact remains that if the couple wants to pay you for it,
this is an incredibly easy way for you to make some extra money now.
How do you offer raw footage?
Let's talk specifics because here's where you need to be careful.
First, depending on the type of wedding videographer that you are
and how talkative you are on the wedding day, which could be a lot.
If you are like me,
you need to be careful and make sure there isn't any colorful language
or anything offensive in the audio from this raw footage.
This means that if you curse occasionally,
make sure that you go through your footage and check the audio
to make sure the couple isn't getting any footage that has you cursing in it.
Likewise, even if you do not curse film weddings long enough
and I'm sure you are going to have
a wedding where someone or something gets on your nerves at the wedding,
say the photographer gets in your shot and you aren't really getting along
or things are really behind schedule on the wedding day
and it's causing you a lot of stress.
Really, anything negative that you may make a comment about,
you need to make sure that you're not giving that audio to the couple either
because they're most likely going to hear it
and not be happy to hear you trashing their wedding
or one of the other vendors, etc.
Otherwise, no other than this sanitizing of your footage.
The second thing
you need to be careful about is that you're not charging too little
for your footage.
You do not want to put yourself in a situation
where a couple can book your cheapest package
and then look over and say,
Oh wow, they're offering raw footage for like $300 extra
instead of me needing to buy a bigger package to get more of the wedding day
instead I could just pay 300 bucks for the raw footage.
Well, that's a bummer.
So to avoid having a couple take advantage of your pricing
in this way, I would make sure that you charge more for your raw footage
than you do for the cost of upgrading to one of your larger packages.
This way
a couple is going to be more likely to want to spend money
on upgrading their package instead of just trying to get the raw footage
so for example, if you're charging $500 more for a higher package,
I would make sure that you charge 600 or $700 more for the raw footage.
This way you won't be taken advantage of by couples that are looking
for more ways to save money, regardless of how you charge, though.
The reason that offering raw footage is such a great way to make more money
is because of the low amount of effort that's going to take on your part
to offer it.
Ideally, when you're editing, you're already going through all of your footage,
so you already know
if there's anything inappropriate that you do not want to include
in the raw footage.
And then giving the couples
the raw footage is as simple as copying of your clips to a hard drive
and then delivering it to them whenever you give them their wedding film.
Or heck,
just giving them a Dropbox or Google drive down the link
to download their footage directly to their computer.
No matter how you do it
this way, you're making a lot more money without having to do much at all.
Wrapping things up now in conclusion.
Those are some ways you can make more money as a wedding
filmmaker by raising your prices, offering and charging
for add ons like a full ceremony at it and offering your couples raw footage.
These are all great ways you can give your couples exactly what they want
while also making more money from the wedding filmmaking process.
It's all win.
I want to leave you with one final thing, though, and that is a helpful guide
that I've put together that will help you level up your wedding films.
If you want to improve the quality of your films and potentially get more
bookings, I would love if you would check out this free guide.
It is linked down in the video description.
Also, I would love to know
what you think of these techniques I share in this video.
Have you tried some of them? Do you need to raise your prices?
Please leave me a comment below and let me know what you think
and if you want to see more videos like this in the future.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day