Clipping rate calculator

1. Put in your clients and their clips. The clips you make each client a month, or one total for all of them.
2. Time a clip, step by step. Finding the moment, cutting and framing, captions, revisions, and posting if you post for them. Time a few real clips rather than guessing: it's the number that moves the price most.
3. Set the hourly rate you want. Not what you'll quote, but what an hour of your work should pay you. Upwork's tier medians for video editors, $10, $40 and $100 an hour, are a reference.
4. Add your monthly costs. Software, storage, a clipping tool. If you clip with Clyper, pick your plan and it's counted at what it costs you, in the currency our plans show you.
5. Add your fees and margin. The share your payment app or marketplace keeps, and what you want left once everything is paid.
6. Read your price, then check your own. Put a price you charge, or plan to, under “Check a price” and see what it really pays you an hour.

Your time is your clips times the minutes each takes, in hours, at your hourly rate. Add your monthly costs and that's what a month has to pay. Fees and margin are both shares of the price, so: price per clip = (your time + costs) ÷ clips ÷ (1 − fees − margin).

With the numbers the calculator starts on, 2 clients at 30 clips each, 30 minutes a clip, $40 an hour, $30 of costs, 2.9% in fees and a 40% margin: 60 clips take 30 hours, worth $1,200, and with the costs a month has to pay $1,230. That makes $35.90 a clip, or $1,077 a month for each client's package.

The break-even is the same sum with no margin, $21.11 a clip here: below it, you're paying to work. What you really earn an hour is what's left after costs and fees, divided by your hours: $68.72 here, because the margin is yours too.

It's the method of our guide to how much to charge for clipping. Set the fees to 0 and you get its floors, before it rounds them up to the next $5.

Your clients can always hire a freelance editor, so it helps to know what they'd pay. Upwork's page on what video editors cost says they typically cost $6 to $25 an hour, and splits them into three tiers:

Short-form editors often price per video instead. Two listings on Contra start at $40 a video for vertical clips up to 30 seconds, with text overlays, transitions and music, and at $50 a video with captions, the 9:16 format, a hook in the first 3 seconds and up to 2 revisions. They're single listings, not an average, but they're what a client comparing quotes sees.

The calculator lands in the same place: by hand, at 30 minutes a clip and Upwork's $40 mid-tier median, its starting example comes to $35.90 a clip. Clipping a video that already exists takes fewer minutes once a tool finds, cuts and captions the moments, so the same price leaves you more, or a lower price still pays you.

Fees come off the top. In the US, Stripe takes 2.9% plus $0.30 of a card payment, and its invoicing adds 0.4% of each paid invoice; PayPal takes 3.49% plus $0.49 of an invoice paid with PayPal. On a freelance marketplace, put in the fee it shows you.

Per clip is a set price for each clip you deliver. It's simple and suits a one-off job or a paid trial batch, but your income moves every month.

A monthly package is a set number of clips a month for a monthly fee, cheaper per clip as it grows: 30, 60 and 120 clips, say. It's predictable for both of you, and it's what the calculator's monthly package is. Bill it monthly, up front, with a minimum of two or three months: clips take a few weeks to find their audience.

A retainer is a monthly fee to run a client's short-form: finding the moments, the clips, captions, posting and reporting. Price it above a package of the same clips, because you're taking on the account, not only the edit. Once you have results, a bonus for each clip past a number of views can sit on top.

Not by the hour. Your hourly rate is for working out your floor, not for quoting. Charge by the hour and the faster you get, the less you earn, while the client can't tell what a month will cost.

Revisions. Include one or two rounds per clip and price more as extra. Put your average time on changes in the calculator's Revisions step, so the price pays for them.

Posting. Descriptions, posting times and reports turn a delivery into a service. Count the minutes under Posting, or set it to 0 if you only deliver, and sell posting as its own line.

How much video. Ten clips from a 3-hour stream take longer to find than ten from a 20-minute interview. Agree on the hours of video a package covers, and cap them.

Turnaround and style. Clips within a day of an episode going live are worth more than clips a week later, and captions in the client's fonts and colors take longer. Charge for both.

Write it all down in the quote: clips a month, hours of video, turnaround, rounds of changes, caption style, and whether you post. For the creators most likely to say yes, see how to get clipping clients, and for how they see it from the other side, how to hire a clipper.

New clients first. Quote new clients your new price. Once a few say yes without blinking, it's still too low.

Give notice, with results. Give existing clients 30 days' notice, with what you've done for them: the clips, the views, the ones that took off.

Add a tier on top. A package with posting and reporting above your biggest one raises what you earn per client without raising anyone's old price.

Cut your minutes, keep your price. Clients pay for clips, not your hours, so every minute you save per clip is margin. Turn on the calculator's comparison with your own minutes, and read how to clip faster. Running several clients at once is an agency: see how to start a clipping agency.

If your clients are podcasters or streamers, see what Clyper makes of podcast clips and stream clips, and for editing shorts from scratch, short-form video editing. If you post clips on your own accounts for campaigns that pay per view instead, the clipping earnings calculator is the one for you.