What I used to see two years back has completely changed. People becoming freelance video editors have exponentially gone high, making it hard for newcomers. Clients have a lot of choices to choose from.
For anyone who knows, what could be some newer fields to get into before it gets too saturated?
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Everybody on TikTok and YouTube is a Video Editor so what does that tell you?
I was selling my sony alpha to a young man. He showed my his event videos which were decent and told me he is doing it entirely for free to get experience… you can’t beat that competition.
Do you guys typically offer your service on sites like Upwork or what? I would just be curious to see the different rates among competitors.
I used to be one of the top AVID freelancers and online editors in my city. I was working 7 days a week and many times I was so busy I would double shift (2 edit shifts in 1 day). Now, I’m essentially too expensive and my work is all NDA-guarded. I have chats with lots of potential new clients but they’ve basically generated nothing for the past few years. Even with high level credits and 25 years in postproduction. So I’m a living example of what you’re discovering!
Been editing for 8 years - niche down hard if you want to freelance. I started off editing daily vlogs for $50 a pop.
Now I create very specific videos for marketing agencies and my prices start at about $1800 and go up from there.
This takes time of course - but it’s achievable.
Everything in the freelance world is going to get saturated. More people are leaving the 9-5 to work for themselves. The creator economy is only getting started!
This is not a bad thing though. Competition will always exist.
Everyone will need to find ways to set themselves apart. Find where you can compete.
Often these services become commoditized. Video Editing is a commodity. Anyone can do that from a phone.
What do YOU do better than anyone else?
Don’t try to compete on price, it is a race to the bottom. Compete by being super specific about the audience you serve, providing superior quality, or combining skillsets.
Example:
- Do video editing ONLY for other digital nomads. Focus specifically on that audience. You know the lifestyle, you know what they should show, focus on them.
- Go the extra mile in how you provide your service. Add your own custom tracks, b-roll, make splash screens, add animations ,etc. Be the best quality.
- Combine video editing and copywriting. Write the copy for the captions or descriptions of these videos.
I have seen many waves of new competition into a freelance field. I started as a freelance developer in 2012. I survived the builders, and AI, and all the other “web dev is dead”. The reason was that I didn’t just develop websites. I created a scalable platform that would increase your revenue. Others only built websites and for some businesses that was ok.
Now I am focused on growing my newsletter for freelancers. I talk about a lot of this stuff over there if you want to check it out!
I don’t know; I’d argue it’s a bad thing. Whenever a field gets super saturated it pushes out people with potential. Not everybody is built for extreme grind, and that’s not part of the job description—or rather, it never used to be. This dynamic only benefits corporations who want to underpay people. But people who just want to get a stable job, make decent money, have room to learn and grow on the job, have upward mobility, etc are out of luck these days. Those jobs are scarce because now people can hire randos who will work for basically free—if not actually free—because they want “experience.”
That churn dynamic is not healthy. Yes there are freedoms that come with it, but I genuinely think it’s a bad thing overall. I’ve seen so many industries decimated by this dynamic.