"Rate On Request" Is a Bad Answer: What I Charge Instead
Answers video editor rate on request
"Rate on request" is the default on nearly every editor's site, and it is there for an understandable reason. Publishing a rate invites comparison with editors who are cheaper, and the reflex is to keep the conversation going long enough to justify a higher number.
It does not work, and the cost is real.
What the phrase actually communicates
To a buyer, "rate on request" reads as one of three things, and none of them is "premium":
- the number is high enough that they will be embarrassed by it
- the number does not exist yet, and will be invented once they describe the job
- the editor has not done enough of this to have a band
The first is sometimes true and is not a problem. The second and third are the ones that lose work, because a buyer with a deadline is not shopping for a conversation. They are looking for someone who can be ruled in or out in thirty seconds.
The asymmetry nobody mentions
An editor with a published band gets enquiries that are already qualified. Someone who saw "from X" and wrote anyway has decided the band is affordable. The enquiries are fewer and almost all of them are real.
An editor with no published band gets more enquiries, most of which die at the first reply, and each one costs a written explanation. That is the worse trade for anyone whose time is the product.
What to publish instead of nothing
You do not have to publish a single number. You have to publish a *shape*. Three things do it:
A starting point. "Most brand films land between A and B." A range with a floor is information. "On request" is not.
What moves it. The four factors that change the price, stated plainly. This is the part that pays for itself: a buyer who understands that four hours of unscripted footage costs more than two hours of planned shots will bring you planned shots.
A minimum. A floor below which the work is not worth taking. Stating it is a filter, not an insult, and it removes the enquiries that were never going anywhere.
The version I use
This site says "rate on request" on the services cards, which is a compromise, and the honest reason is that the numbers depend on the four factors badly enough that any single figure would be a lie. What the cards do instead is name what moves the number, so the reply to a serious enquiry is a figure with the assumptions attached rather than a negotiation.
That is the workable middle. Not a price list, and not a wall.
If you are an editor reading this: publish a floor and the three things that move it. If you are a buyer reading this and a quote came back as a range so wide it told you nothing, ask which of the four factors is uncertain. That question usually gets a real number.