How much should I be charging?

Hi there all, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this but I have struggled to find answers in other places.
I'm guessing a good chunk of you do Videography/Cinematography for a living. I Currently run my own music video production company which I started just over a year ago, but have worked my way quite quickly into the industry.

People I know say my Prices are way too cheap but obviously I'm worried about losing business by increasing my prices. I am planning on Purchasing the BMCC tomorrow and as such think it would be a good time to increase my prices.
The truth is I have no idea what the going rate is for my line of work.

What I do:
I film, Edit, Grade all the footage and also do all the Green screen work and visual FX.

Here is my showreel so you can see what level My work is at.

Can anyone help me ?

I find this quite hard to establish myself, however recently I've read a great blog post from Vincent Laforet on the subject.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2013/08/ ... r-c-o-d-b/

It's about the C.O.D.B.

C.O.D.B stands for "Cost of Doing Business." Basically it’s a number that represents what it costs you to operate your business for every day that you work.

Which should allow you to establish a minimum of what you should charge to survive.

He even offers a tool to calculate it for yourself

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulw0n15vnw0rsfo/CODB.xls

I find this quite hard to establish myself, however recently I've read a great blog post from Vincent Laforet on the subject.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2013/08/ ... r-c-o-d-b/

It's about the C.O.D.B.

C.O.D.B stands for "Cost of Doing Business." Basically it’s a number that represents what it costs you to operate your business for every day that you work.

Which should allow you to establish a minimum of what you should charge to survive.

He even offers a tool to calculate it for yourself

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulw0n15vnw0rsfo/CODB.xls

This looks like a good article.
I think its harder tho coz my clients don't want a per day rate, they want a per project rate, which includes extra days if things go wrong or for further edits.
I guess the best thing is for me to make a gestimate obout how many days it will take me to complete the project.

It should indeed be easy to work out the hours it takes for one 'shoot day' and get a minimum hour rate out of that. Then you can use something like https://www.toggl.com/ to find out the hours projects normally take for yourself and apply that to the hour rate you calculated.

Suppose you then know how much you should be charging. If that's too much for your clients, I suppose you could work out where you spend too much time or spend too much money and tweak there. Or get more work in quantity (if that even fits into the hours a week has )

I tend to separate my time and expertise from the kit.

Kit rate is based on what it costs me to pay it off and maintain it. This is a fixed cost. If the client does not want it they can hire their own kit for the shoot.

My rate is than based on a similar formula as Vincent's CODB.

If you are charging a project fee (I do this on some jobs) then use the above to costs multiply it by the estimated days you think you'll need to complete the project and you have your project fee.

Sorry, OT: great showreel!

Sorry, OT: great showreel!

Thanks! what does OT mean?

I guess raising your rate comes naturally when you have so many jobs available that you can't do them all... it will work out as a filter to balance your schedule

I film, Edit, Grade all the footage and also do all the Green screen work and visual FX.

You seem to be doing it all! I wish I knew more about VFX.

Thanks! what does OT mean?

OT = Off Topic

I guess raising your rate comes naturally when you have so many jobs available that you can't do them all... it will work out as a filter to balance your schedule

Thanks,

That's kinda how u e been doing it so far.