In today’s economy, content creation is becoming a more and more valuable skill set. So, heading into 2024, you might be thinking about becoming a content creator or a video editor yourself and making money from this.
This article is meant to be a blueprint for you on how to become a full-time video editor step by step. Let’s dive straight into it.
Firstly, you will need to have a computer that you can edit on. Now, I assume a lot of you guys are already reading this from your laptops, so if you have one that is capable of running software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, then you are probably good to go on that part.
The second requirement is you need to know how to edit. Now this is something that I believe can be learned well in around six months. YouTube has a ton of videos about how to edit, so go ahead, and check those out.
The third requirement is you will need to have access to video editing software. So whether you are going to be using Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve, it doesn’t matter. All of these are amazing software and you can create amazing content with all of them. but you know, you got to start learning one of them at least. I recommend starting with Premiere Pro because it’s one of the most widely used. Later on, I shifted to Final Cut Pro. But I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about DaVinci Resolve as well.
The fourth requirement is learning basic business principles. You need to understand invoicing, finding prospects, reaching out to them, participating in sales calls, and converting potential clients into paying customers. It’s crucial to not only be a skilled editor but also to know how to sell your services. This is super important because there are a lot of freelance editors out there who create a profile on Fiverr and they wonder why they are not getting any clients. Especially not any high-paying clients. This is the thing. It’s not enough to be a good editor nowadays. You need to also learn how to sell your service.
Let’s touch on the pros and cons of becoming a freelance video editor.
Some of the significant pros include:
Location Freedom: You get location freedom, you are not tied down to one location. You don’t have to go into a 9 to 5 job. So that is something that a lot of people will enjoy.
Flexible Hours: You get to choose your hours. You don’t have a boss who’s telling you you have to come in at this exact time and leave at this exact time. So if you prefer to work late into the night, you can do that, or if you prefer to get all your work done by noon and then do, whatever you want the rest of the day. You also get to do that so you get a lot of freedom and flexibility in becoming a freelancer.
Income Potential: There is no sealing on your income as long as you keep raising your prices and becoming better and better, or as long as you transition into a creative agency and decide to build an actual business where your earning potential is not directly tied to your time.
Moving on to the cons:
Self-discipline: You have to discipline yourself. This is something that most people are going to struggle with immensely because it’s very hard to do something when there isn’t someone who’s going to be shouting at you that you need to do it and get it done on time. It’s very hard to discipline yourself, to do outreach, to get clients, and also to get projects done on time. So if you are not the kind of person who can discipline theirself this might not be the thing for you.
Overworking: It’s easy to overwork yourself and not have any free time left if you are not disciplined. It’s very hard to stay productive and get things done on time. Again, it kind of ties back to point number one. But if you can’t get yourself to do things on time, then you might find yourself not having any free time and work just keeps piling up.
Client Acquisition: Finding clients is your responsibility, unlike a 9-to-5 job where a fixed salary is guaranteed, You have to find your clients. You have to go and hunt for the money that you make.
Now you can smartly do these things and get clients on monthly retainers, so you have a lot more stability in your income. But in general, it’s a lot more unstable than just having a 9 to 5 job.
If I were to just start right, let’s assume that I already have a good base knowledge of editing and that I can already create very good work.
The number one thing I would do is I would choose a niche that I’m going to be selling to. What most editors do is they just try to appeal to every single person out there, and they try to work with basically whoever is willing to give them money. Although I understand this approach and why you would go about it this way, this is not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to choose a specific group of people who you want to help and become a specialist that only helps them.
You are going to be able to charge a lot more for your services, and also people are going to trust you a lot more because you are a specialist that only helps their problems. For example, if you wanted, you could just be helping YouTubers edit their videos, or you could be just helping little restaurants grow their business and create content for them. You could be working just with beverage companies, with just e-commerce brands, and creating ads for them, editing ads for them.
There are so many directions you can go in. You could work with real estate agents, but if you just specialize in one of them, then you are going to be able to build an amazing portfolio a lot faster also with your messaging and your website and everything, you can cater toward just that group of people so you can speak their language and they are going to trust you a lot more immediately.
The second thing I would do is I would create a specific offer that has a guarantee behind it that includes video editing, and I would make maybe a couple of different packages and tiers based on how much content and how much video editing they want each month.
Now, the thing you want to focus on is, let’s say if you are selling video editing and also some social media services around that, maybe to a business, you want to hit all the main pain points that they have and offer solutions for them. So for example, if they don’t know what to make videos on, you can give them research video ideas. You will do the editing for them. You can do the uploading for them. You will do the SEO for them. Whatever you can think of that could be a potential problem that takes the time to do. You could provide that in your service. In terms of your guarantee, you could offer an unlimited revision guarantee to make sure that they’re going to be happy with whatever content they are getting. You could guarantee them that until they get X amount of views from your content or X amount of followers they can get a refund or you will keep working with them for free.
There are so many ways to use structure guarantees as well. This could be a whole video on its own, but I would create an offer, specifically for this group of people that I would be selling to them. After this, I would go and start doing outreach.
First I would start finding people who could be good potential fits for my service and then once I have a list of at least 100 to 500 people, I would start sending out 30 to 50 outreaches a day. With these outreach messages, whether that be through email, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, my main goal would be to get on a one-on-one meeting with them, where I could explain how I could help them and eventually try to close them on my services.
Now, I would also follow up with all these people. So since not everybody is going to respond to your emails and messages for those people who didn’t respond, I would keep sending them more and more emails, until they either tell me that they don’t want to work with me or until they decide to get on a call with me.
Once you send out a ton of these messages, you are eventually going to start getting some meetings. These meetings will usually take place through Zoom on the Internet. You will try to sell them on your service on this call. You can take payment from them through Stripe or PayPal or anything like that. That could be your first 500 thousand dollars.
So if you have been thinking about becoming a freelance editor, and learning content creation, there is no better time to do it than now. If you are going to be on this journey, I wish you all the best, my friend. If you want to see more content about how to do video editing or how to get clients for it, be connected with our blog. I will try my best to bring you as much value through this blog as possible. I wish you guys all the best and see you in the next one.
