In this article, you’re going to learn my proven system to land YouTuber clients with millions of subscribers for my video editing services 100% on demand. You want to become a freelance video editor, and the only thing stopping you from doing that is finding clients. I see 99.9% of video editors do this completely wrong, and for months and months, they struggle to land a single client because of it. The other month, I sent a single piece of outreach to a YouTuber I’d like to edit for, and this snowballed, and I got over 20 responses from large YouTubers with hundreds of thousands and millions of subscribers messaging me, wanting me to work on their videos. And that was because of this exact system that I’m going to show you within this article.
I’ve created a seven-step action plan so that by the end of this article, you’ll be able to get your first video editing client with just a few hours of work. Most video editors send low-quality emails begging to work for their favorite YouTuber, and they never, ever hear anything back. In fact, it’s unlikely that their emails even get seen by anyone. This is what you shouldn’t do. This is low value, low-quality outreach, and the way to land these high-paying clients on demand is with high-value, high-quality outreach. Let’s start from the beginning, and I’ll show you exactly how to execute this high-value outreach.
Choosing Your Editing Niche
The main two paths that you can take are either long-form editing or short-form editing. You can, of course, do both of these, but I’d recommend niching down and choosing just one area, preferably the one you are most familiar with and watch the most often. Now we’ve got our offering sorted. What’s next?
Setting Up Your Professional Image
The setup before landing these large deals with the millionaire or the massive media business behind these big YouTube channels, you’re going to want to get on their level. Make sure that all of your social media profile pictures and posts are looking smart. Even your Gmail profile picture, which a lot of people forget to be paid these higher sums of money. You need to look the part. And if that means getting rid of the silly email address and deleting the Fortnite posts or the anime profile picture, then so be it. You can even create a website showcasing your editing work and skills. I built mine on Squarespace and it should tell clients why they should work with you, what you have done in the past, and what you can do for them. Next is the hit list.
Creating Your Hit List
Have a think about what type of content you consume the most gaming videos, news, TikToks, business videos, gym videos, whatever it is, these are the channels you’re going to want to edit for when you’re truly passionate about the content that you’re editing, you get a unique opportunity to really sink time and effort into making the best content possible. You’re also aware of what the competition are doing, and it’s all around more fulfilling. Former hit list of YouTubers or influencers you’d love to edit for. This is what we’re going to work through with our outreach. If you’re unsure of where exactly to find these creators, I’d recommend having a look through your YouTube history and seeing which creators you watch the most. You could also do a bit of networking on Twitter, have a look on listing sites like IT jobs, and even join communities like creator now. Now we’ve got our hit list of dream clients. How do we reach these incredibly busy people?
Creating Sample Videos
Having worked alongside large YouTubers in this space, I’ve seen it first hand. YouTubers and influencers get their DMs and emails absolutely flooded with people asking to work with them. As well as this, they’re normally incredibly busy, so the best method of standing out from the crowd of editors flocking to them is to show your work with a free sample video. Now, the goal is for the creators on your hate list to see your work and think, it’s so good and you’ve put so much effort in that they simply have to hire you. Here’s exactly how we can do this. Firstly, find some, preferably unedited footage of these dream clients, for example on a podcast or an older video. Download it by adding py into the URL. Just like this. Drag it into your editing software. Re-edit it better by adding emotive music effects, B-roll, title cards, whatever it is to improve the video and showcase your editing skills. Aim to match their existing brand and style of visuals, music, font, storytelling, and tone, and they’ll recognize you’ve done this and are more likely to enjoy your video and then choose to hire you now.
Investing in Sample Videos
This is where a lot of people turn to me and say, hold on, why would I invest hours and hours of time into something that might not even pay off? They might not even hire me? Well, welcome to business. Don’t be afraid to invest a lot of time into these sample videos. If you want to be just like the rest and have a very low chance of landing clients, then go ahead. Continue with very low-quality outreach. But the key here is high-value outreach. With this type of outreach, you’re going to get a high response rate as the creator is going to recognize the effort and hard work you’re willing to put into working with them. And in the next step, I’ll show you how. My conversion rate with sending out these sample videos is 100, 200, 300, 500%.
Executing Outreach
At this stage, you’ve ticked off the first creator on your hit list and you’ve finished the sample video for them. Do not underestimate the importance of this next part, or this proven method might not work as well for you. You’re going to want to type out a professional email stating why you’d love to work with them, what you can do to help, and how they can contact you. I tend to title the email something grabby like the name of their channel in all capitals, and then the words sample video. Right about this point, we could send across our finished sample video in this email, but it’s likely to get missed amongst the thousands and thousands of other emails in their inbox. So what we’re going to do is tweet and DM them the video as well. This gives your sample video the opportunity to be seen by tons and tons of other creators, too, as Twitter seems to be where a lot of these creators hang out online.
Negotiating and Pricing
Now, maybe you’re chatting with the creators you’ve sent these sample videos to in direct messages or over email, and you’re at the stage when you’re going to tell them your pricing. It’s super important for you to charge properly for your time. There is, of course, the strategy of undercharging at first to get your foot in the door. And this is exactly what I did when I was first starting. I was lucky that the client I landed at that low price point saw the value in what I had to offer, and opportunities arose for me to start charging more and more and more. But this can sometimes lead to burnout and never being paid what you’re worth. I tend to price my services per video or per month, but many editors out there charge per hour or per day for larger projects, for example. Ultimately, choose whichever works best for you and the video projects you’d like to work on. The best way to go about this is to have a think about how long the project will take you, and then charge accordingly, and factor in things like the return on investment the client will see from the video, and how confident you are that you can make a fantastic video.
