How to Sustainably Grow as a Freelance Videographer

With the turn of the year, you may be in a position where you’re thinking about making a big change in your life and taking the jump to becoming a fully fledged freelance videographer.

But how do you actually go about making that jump and how will you know when the time is right?

The first and most boring thing to say is, you should only be making that jump if you have some cash put aside to get you through those slow months. The reality of being freelance means you can have some incredibly busy periods, but also some very quiet spells and when you’re just starting out it’s more than likely you will endure periods without work. With that in mind, it’s vital to have some contingency.

Boring stuff aside, let’s talk about how you can actually start making great work!

I think there will likely come a point where you’re either employed in a video role within a business and find you’re getting clients of your own, or you may simply do video as a hobby outside of your non-video related 9-5 and have started to notice people actually enquiring to work with you. When that happens, that’s when you know your work is strong enough to attract clients.

It’s then a question of making sure you can do enough work to justify doing it as a full-time occupation.

In order to do that you need to know a lot of people - it’s that classic saying of ‘your network is your net worth.’ In some cases my work has attracted clients singlehandedly, but a lot of the time clients have worked with me based off a referral. And there’s zero shame in that, it’s how 95% of businesses grow! You can meet potential clients at networking events, by posting on LinkedIn and Instagram or by doing work for free - this is the option that a lot of people turn their noses up at, but building a portfolio to begin with by doing work pro-bono for local businesses is a great way of getting your videos out there. You just want to make sure enquiries that come off the back of that are paid gigs and that you’re not seen as the person that makes amazing videos for nothing!

Once you have a strong portfolio of work you’ll want to build a website and this is the one thing videographers are not doing enough. If you want to go down the route of eventually being perceived as a business, you need more than just an Instagram page - you NEED a website. You might not get any enquiries directly, but I can guarantee clients will look at your website when it comes to deciding to work with you or not - if you have a well put together landing page and a selection of varied case studies then that is really useful for prospects to find out more about you.

It’s also really advantageous to build a Google Business page and collect reviews from clients where you can. Not only does this make you more visible online, but if you have evidence of positive reviews from genuine clients then that can help to build trust with new ones.

In terms of keeping revenue ticking over, there’s a lot of emphasis on retainers. Having run FOSTER Studios for over 4 years now, we’ve never had a single official retainer with any client - we have businesses we regularly work with, but for the most part everything is project based. You’ll find that some clients will keep coming back several times a year, whereas some businesses you may work with once and never again. Most importantly, it’s really key to keep checking in with clients every so often, even if you’ve only worked together once. You never know where a catch up email might lead to!

Once you’ve got that first year under your belt and you’ve worked with several different types of businesses, you’ll find that things naturally evolve as your network expands. There will still be quiet periods, but that is inevitable. In order to combat that it might be useful to connect with other videographers and larger production companies or agencies that may benefit from having you on their freelancers roster - this isn’t always appealing if you want to work direct to client, but sometimes picking up a day rate for simply filming or editing can be a useful and relatively easy way to keep money coming in.

So, that’s more or less it! Riding the freelance wave can be daunting at times, but if your work is strong enough, you’re easy to collaborate with and you provide a professional service, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to make a success of it.

Most importantly, stick with it!