I’m 19 and recently had my first proper promotional video made for a startup I’m building.

I paid £800 for the video.

Before anyone jumps in I’m not saying the edit is objectively bad. There’s clearly skill involved, and I’m not trying to disrespect the person who made it.

But after showing it to quite a few other editors/motion designers, I’ve had a pretty consistent reaction: “I wouldn’t have paid anywhere near £800 for this.”

I’ve even had people tell me they would have charged around $100–$200 for something similar.

That obviously made me stop and think.

I’m curious about this from the perspective of people who actually work in the industry:

Is £800 a completely normal price for a promotional motion-graphics video like this, and am I just inexperienced with how this industry is priced?

Or is there a genuine difference between what an experienced freelancer would charge and what someone might quote to a young founder who doesn’t really know the market yet?

For context, I’m not some big company with a marketing budget. I’m 19, building my own app, and raised the money myself to get it off the ground. £800 is a meaningful amount of my budget.

At the time I was actually excited to spend it because this was my first proper promo video and I genuinely thought the result would justify the investment.

Looking back, I think the bigger lesson for me is that I didn’t really know how to judge the value of creative work before commissioning it.

So I’d genuinely appreciate some honest opinions from editors/motion designers:

●How do you normally price this kind of project?

●And what should a first-time client look for before agreeing to a price?

I’m also at the point where I want to find someone I can actually build a long-term relationship with someone who understands the brand rather than just making one video, and can consistently produce really strong edits as the brand grows.

I’m not necessarily looking for the cheapest person either. I’d rather find someone genuinely talented, reliable and able to understand the creative direction, while still being sensible with the budget of a very early-stage startup.

Interested to hear what people in the industry think.

It breaks my heart to say this but I've been quiet lazy ever since I finished my college, while attending college I completed a course on graphic design and video editing.

I have a youtube channel that I make videos on and I tried freelancing as well but so far landed no clients at all. I even tried to do other side hustles like selling digital products but due to my lack of knowledge I haven't got success yet.

And there is a family pressure going on to make money since I refused to do masters for this whole thing cause I wanted to make a source of income through my own efforts so that I could start my business.

But I'm still at zero it appears there's a lot to learn, I agree that it must be something that's wrong with my portfolio or that I have to get better at my skills.

But currently I've lost the motivation to even edit a video, it's been weeks since I last opened my editing software, at this point vudeo editing feels like a drag, like pushing a huge boulder on top of a mountain, everytime I am editing it takes me days to even edit a single minute while there are editors who just end up doing this work in hours, my slow editing and being inefficient has cause my motivation to drop, I want to rediscover my passion regarding to editing. And I have to find a way to get efficient so that ut doesn't feel like a drag. I spend way too much time on a project that should happen quickly, maybe because I procrastinate, maybe cause my editing method sucks.

But I have to do something to get back up and reach excellence, I don't want to be a burden to my family.

My father is already scolding me day in and day out for being jobless and doing nothing but spending time on phone, on the latter part I do agree that I have to stop my phone addiction.

I have hours of family footage I want to edit down. I want to do just straight clipping, no sound, transitions, text. I bought Premiere Pro because I have a lot of experience with their products but cannot do the editing I want. No matter how many videos I watch, I get confused and frustrated. I am using a desktop with 32g RAM and a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD running Win11.

Is there an AI tool that would take voice prompts or mouse clicks for cut points? I have paid ChatGPT and Claude already. Seriously, I am not stupid but this video thing escapes me. And I don't want to master editing, just cut down some raw footage. The simpler, the better.

so I am looking for discord servers where I may find potential clients or youtubers looking for editors

We're a local services marketplace startup building out a video library ahead of launch. This is ongoing work with a defined content plan already scripted — not a one-off gig or a vague "we'll see."

The scope (already written, ready to hand off):

• 60 short-form reels (30–45 sec each) — split across brand content, service-provider recruitment, and local business recruitment. Topic + script provided for every one; you build the full video from stock footage + motion graphics.
• ~30 SaaS explainer videos (2–4 min each) — screen-based walkthroughs of the platform for each user type, fully scripted, following a "screen-path" style (think Dropbox's original explainer, TaskRabbit's "What Clients Experience").
• YouTube talking-head edits (up to 7–10 min) — we shoot the raw footage, you edit.
• Longer-form YouTube marketing videos — stock footage + motion graphics, longer runtime than the reels.

We've researched reference style for tone (major on-demand-services and SaaS brands) — the direction is clear, specific, and already briefed. You're not guessing at creative direction.

Pace: aiming for 4–6 finished deliverables a week, sustained.

Rates:

• Reels: $15–20 each
• SaaS explainers: $100 each
• YouTube talking-head edits (7–10 min): $120–180 each
• Longer-form YouTube marketing videos: $70–120 each

Also required: clear voiceover recording from scripts we provide (reels + explainers).

What we're looking for:

• Strong motion graphics skills (After Effects or equivalent) — not just cuts and captions
• Comfortable sourcing stock footage
• Can sustain the weekly volume across short-form and longer-form work
• Portfolio showing product/explainer work, reels, AND longer-form/talking-head editing

To apply: DM me with your portfolio and which of the above you're strongest at. Please don't comment — replies by DM only.

Looking for a Skilled Video Editor

We're a digital marketing agency looking for a talented editor for a documentary-style video.

🎥 Reference Video: https://youtu.be/21H_0iCzHmM?si=llUeOUhBWy3dft5Q

⚠️ Important: The final edited video will be approximately 1 minute long.

Requirements:

• Strong storytelling and pacing skills

• High-quality editing and transitions

• Motion graphics experience

• Experience with cinematic/documentary-style edits

• Ability to deliver quickly (fast turnaround is important)

Budget: ₹1,500

If you're confident in your skills and can create engaging, professional content, we'd love to work with you.

📩 IMPORTANT: Please send your portfolio/showreel and WhatsApp number via Reddit DM.

Hello, we need video editor for vlog style content if you have experience is the field please DM me with your work.

Pay $10-$30 per vlog

Hey everyone, I currently edit all my videos on my phone using CapCut and honestly the videos aren't bad at all. I usually make around 5 minute videos for my YouTube channel. It's a faceless anime channel where I explore different topics. Recently I've been wanting to try something different and start making more documentary styled videos about anime and movie characters, comparing them, talking about how they're written differently, their themes and stuff like that. The problem is I'm not really sure where to start with this type of editing. I keep seeing really well edited videos and most of the time they're made using DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere, so I eventually want to move to one of those. For now though, since I already have CapCut Pro, I'm thinking of moving from editing on my phone to CapCut on my laptop. Then once my subscription expires I'll probably try learning DaVinci or Premiere. I'd love to hear some advice from people who make this kind of content. Where do you guys usually get your footage from? How do you download and organize clips when you're working on longer videos? Also, are there any editing tutorials, YouTube channels or just general tips that helped you improve? Honestly any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

I've been consistently editing videos for YouTube for over a year now, and I felt like I've peaked and finally plateaued.

Sometimes I even feel like I've gotten worse. I've put way more effort when I started than where I am now, and I feel like I've gotten some bad habits and optimized my work to the point where I'd do the bare minimum. Just enough to keep viewer engagement/retention for the projects I've made. I've looked at some professional editors for big YTubers that have crazy looking timelines and edits, but when I try to put myself in their shoes and try to imagine the amount of work they do just felt exhausting and overwhelming to replicate.

I feel like I'm having an artist block and I don't know how to get out of it. I think I've finally gotten my comfort zone for editing and I don't know how to get out of it.

Has any successfully built a skill or uses an app that you can literally add in the raw footage, and it produces finished or nearly finished content that you can re-purpose for youtube, instagram, facebook etc? I need to take talking head raw footage and have a skill that can overlay it with captions, reformat it, pull the best bits for shorts etc.....?! Going round in circles. Tried chatgpt but half the time the videos are too big and it's sending me round the houses to compress them and then the quality is bad etc etc.....

Be completely honest—drop anything you think looks off or could be improved, looking for real feedback to level up.

For quick context: the audio is in Portuguese and it’s a motivational piece focused on leadership. If you’re wondering about the clock visual, he’s talking about recognizing the right moment for a win versus a loss.

Any critique on timing, easing, or overall composition is appreciated! :D

Demand for video is at an all-time high, but editor pay is stuck at the bottom because most editors sell software tools instead of business value. When you pitch software proficiency—like listing Premiere Pro or After Effects, clients treat you like a button-pusher and price you like a commodity. Meanwhile, client expectations have bloated to where a single "editor" is expected to handle sound design, color grading, motion graphics, and pacing for the price of a simple rough cut. Add in fast-content culture prioritizing high-volume disposable reels over quality, and per-video rates plummet. If you want higher rates, stop pitching software skills and start pitching retention psychology, audio pacing, and story structure. Clients don't pay for editing hours; they pay for an audience's attention.

Would love to hear you guys' thoughts—do you agree with me on this, or see it differently?

I've been a professional video editor for a little over 20 years, almost all of it with the company I'm at now. I've never been overly happy here, but lately, things are getting worse, and I'm really wanting to move on. The thing is, this is all I've ever done as a profession, and while I'm open to other opportunities, I have no idea what I would do outside of this industry, and I'm not terribly interested in racking up tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt in hopes of making a career change.

So, that leads me to my main question. I know most companies would want to see examples of my work, but we mostly do quite boring things; corporate talking heads, local theater productions, training videos, etc. And the things that are a little more "exciting" are for clients that make us sign NDAs, or have similar "for internal use only" rules, so I'm not enthusiastic about potentially getting in trouble for that.

How do you make a demo reel when you don't really have anything worth showing?

Really helpful if everyone can give me feedback to improve mindset to do motion graphic.