What to charge as a short-form editor, and when to stop charging per video

Most editors in the VALORAE Cast server pick their first rate by reading a Reddit thread and halving it.

Then they stay on that number for a year, get busier, and earn the same.

The rate is rarely the problem. What gets priced is the problem, and per-video pricing hides the part that eats the money.

1. Price your turnaround, not the market

You cannot look up your rate, because the number depends on how fast you work and nobody publishing a rate guide knows that.

So do this instead. Time yourself on three finished clips, including the revision round, from raw file to delivered. Not the editing session. The whole job.

Decide what an hour of your working time has to earn for this to be worth doing. Multiply.

That is your floor. It will feel low the first time and it will be more defensible than anything you found online, because you can explain where it came from.

2. The complication: revisions are the actual price

Here is where the first ten jobs go wrong, and it went wrong for plenty of people in the server before they caught it.

An editor quotes a flat rate per clip. The client asks for a change. Then another. Then a fourth round because someone else on their team has opinions.

The clip is now four hours of work at a one-hour price. The rate was fine. The scope was infinite.

A price with no revision limit attached is not a price. Two rounds included, further rounds billed, stated in the quote. That single line does more for your income than any rate increase.

3. Define what counts as a revision

The limit only works if the word is defined, which took most of us an embarrassing number of jobs to learn.

A revision is a change to work you delivered against the brief. A new brief is a new job.

"Make the hook punchier" is a revision. "Use a different section of the episode" is a recut, and that is new work with a new price.

Write both examples into your terms. Clients are not usually trying to get free work, they genuinely do not know where the line is, and an editor who never draws it gets treated as though there isn't one.

4. Raise every fifth client until you hear no

Your rate is too low if every prospect says yes immediately.

So raise it on client six, then client eleven, then sixteen. Not on your existing clients yet. On the next new one.

Somewhere in there a prospect will hesitate or walk. That is the information you were buying. Stop one increment below it and hold.

This feels reckless and it is arithmetic. Losing one prospect in five at a 30 percent higher rate leaves you ahead.

5. The three signals to move to a retainer

Per-video pricing caps you at your hours. A retainer does not, because getting faster starts benefiting you.

Move when all three of these are true.

The client's volume is predictable month to month. You have worked together long enough to know their taste and their revision habits. And you are turning down other work to stay available for them.

If volume is still erratic, stay per video. A retainer against unpredictable demand means you eat the busy months and feel guilty in the quiet ones.

6. How to price the retainer without guessing

Take your per-video rate, multiply by the monthly volume, then take 10 to 15 percent off.

That discount is what the client is paying for, and you are buying guaranteed volume and one invoice instead of twelve. Both sides gain something real.

Then band it. Up to a stated number of videos a month, with anything beyond that billed at the per-video rate. An unbanded retainer is a per-video job with no ceiling, which is the trap you were leaving.

Volume, turnaround, revision limit. Same three things, in writing, same as the per-video quote.

7. What not to compete on

Do not compete on price against people using AI tools to cut clips in minutes. You will lose and the win would be worse.

Compete on judgement. Which moment to cut, which hook opens it, what to leave out. That is the part the client cannot check quickly and cannot automate yet, and it is what a retainer is really buying.

We went into that at length in will AI take video editing jobs. The pricing consequence is simple: if your pitch is that you operate the software, your rate has a ceiling and it is coming down.

The short version

• Time three real jobs end to end and price from your own turnaround.
• Put a revision limit in every quote and define what counts as a revision.
• Quote nothing before you know volume, turnaround and revision limit.
• Raise your rate every fifth new client until someone hesitates, then hold.
• Move to a retainer only when volume is predictable and you are turning work away.
• Band the retainer and bill overflow at your per-video rate.
• Compete on judgement, because operating the software is the part with a falling ceiling.

Rate conversations happen out loud in the VALORAE Cast server, with real numbers, which is the only way anyone finds out theirs was low.