Field Guides / Pricing

How to move from one-off video projects to recurring revenue

Project income and recurring income aren't the same business with different invoices. They're different businesses. The move is to turn a deliverable you already make into a monthly system: package it so the client never has to think about content, price it on a real cost-of-delivery model so it's profitable at the volume you're committing to, and offer it first to a client who already buys it from you. Add one recurring client, then another, and the floor under your month rises.

Why does every month start at zero when the work is project-based?

Project work resets every month because a project ends the day it's delivered, and nothing about it carries forward. The biggest, best project you've ever done still ends, and the day it ends you're back to hunting.

One of the sharper owners I work with priced a filming-only day for a media company that wanted to hire her, then asked straight away how the same work, with editing added, could be sold as a retainer. The company ran a social-media retainer model of its own, and she studied it. Her story is the case study.

With projects, your revenue is a series of disconnected spikes, and the gaps between them are pure anxiety. You're always selling, because you're always about to run out. Growth means more spikes, which means more selling, which means more of you. There's no compounding.

With a recurring base, you start each month already part-way up the hill. Last quarter's selling is still paying you this quarter, you can plan because you can see ahead, and you can hire because the income is predictable.

The owners who feel this most have already done the foundation work. One member, after a solid year, asked me: "I laid the foundations in the last twelve months. How do I know when it's time to focus on growth?" He'd stopped thinking like someone who does jobs and started thinking like someone who runs a business. In the S.C.A.L.E. Method that's Expansion work: scaling into bigger projects with consistent revenue.

How to turn a deliverable you already make into a priced monthly retainer: the method, step by step

The method is to find the repeatable work underneath your projects, package it, price it in the same order as a project quote, set the terms, and offer it to a client who already buys the deliverable. Five steps.

1. Identify the repeatable thing hiding in your work. If your first thought is "my work doesn't suit a retainer, every job is bespoke", look underneath the bespoke jobs. Almost every video business has something repeatable there: social content, internal comms, an ongoing run of case studies. The hero films stay as projects; the retainer covers the steady work underneath them. Write it as a single sentence: "Every month, [client] gets [deliverable]."
2. Package it as a stream the client doesn't have to manage. The owner in the case study didn't invent a new service. She took what she already did, shooting and editing, and shaped it into packages a client could buy on a recurring basis. Another member pitched the same idea to a client as a steady stream of content, so the client wouldn't have to think about video at all. List what's delivered each month and, just as carefully, what isn't.
3. Price it from the same parts as a project, in the same order. Count every day the month costs you: the planning call, the shoot, the edit, the revisions, the delivery and the "can we just" messages. On a retainer all of them recur. Multiply the days by your day rate for the subtotal, add 10 per cent contingency to reach the production cost, then put the production company fee on the production cost as a visible line, towards 15 per cent for retainer and repeat clients. If you don't have a day rate built from your overheads yet, build it first with How to price a video project and the Pricing Calculator.
4. Set the term, the notice period and the review point before you send it. All three have a line in the skeleton below.
5. Offer it first to a client who already buys the deliverable from you. A client who's bought the same work from you as a one-off more than once has already approved it. Start with one client, then another. The email is in the next section.

What to say to an existing client when you propose the move

Propose the retainer as a way to take a recurring job off the client's desk. They've approved this work more than once already, and the email asks them to approve it once more as a standing arrangement.

If the client comes back with "we don't need video every month", this is the line to use.

Does recurring revenue always need a signed retainer?

No. Some of the steadiest recurring work never gets signed as a retainer. Shows, conferences and annual events come round every year. Become the person they always call and you have a retainer of sorts without anyone signing one. Think about the lifetime value of a client as well as the one-off job.

The buyer to aim for is the person inside a company who wants someone they can trust to act as an extension of their department, up to about twenty grand. They don't have to justify it or get three quotes. They call you because you'll get the job done. Ten or twenty clients like that, each spending twenty grand a year, is a business.

You can also make a big project behave like recurring income. Take a third up front, spread the rest over the following twelve months, and roll out the post-production in stages. It's easier for the client to say yes to, and easier on your cash flow.

A worked example

One retainer, in round numbers, built in the house quote order.

An owner has shot a half-day of short-form content for the same client three times this year, each one quoted separately. Her sentence: "Every month, the client gets one half-day shoot and four edited short-form videos." What it costs her each month: half a day to plan, half a day to shoot, two days to edit and deliver. Three days. Her day rate, built from her overheads, is $2,000 (a round number).

Over twelve months that's $91,080. She was selling this work three times a year as one-offs. The retainer is twelve times a year, so it's four times the volume, and the client agrees to it once.

At scale: five one-off projects a year is five sales, five starts from zero, five gaps to survive. Five retainer clients is five sales once, then a base that pays you every month while you sell the sixth. One is a treadmill. The other is a staircase.

The mistakes that undo it

Three mistakes undo a retainer, and each one shows up in the document you send.

• Pricing on a number that feels fair. A retainer priced a day short gives away a day a month, twelve days a year.
• Leaving "not included" blank. The retainer then absorbs every "while you're here", and the margin goes with it.
• No review point. Scope grows month by month and the fee stays where it started.

The rule of thumb for recurring revenue

Put the steady work you already make on retainer, price it in the house quote order so it's profitable at the volume you're committing to, and add one recurring client at a time. The benchmark: delivery days at your day rate, 10 per cent contingency, then a production company fee towards 15 per cent for retainer clients, always as a visible line.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You can write "Every month, [client] gets [deliverable]" for at least one thing you already make.
• Your last retainer price was built from delivery days, contingency and a visible fee line, in that order.
• The retainer document you'd send has a "not included" line, a notice period and a review point.
• You've proposed a monthly arrangement to at least one existing client in the last quarter.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

If you added one retainer client this quarter, just one, what would it change about how next month feels? Identify one thing you already do that a client would happily pay for every month, write the sentence from step 1, and count the days it costs you. That's your first retainer offer.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. The case study, How to price a video project, Pricing Calculator, Client Profitability Calculator, Account expansion, One-client dependency, Know your numbers.