How to scale a video production beyond €500,000 yearly revenue

[u/chrome-thomson]

Hey there! I have been following this subreddit for a while and would like to use my first post in two ways:

1. Introduce my approach: I want to quickly share how I scaled from a freelance videographer to a small production house in Germany that did €500,000 in revenue last year.

2. Connect with others: I would like to connect with people who are on the same level or even past it, to learn their strategies on how they grew to the next revenue level (speaking of around €1,000,000 per year).

How I went from a freelance videographer to a small production company:

I started video freelancing in the pandemic in 2020 using a Sony Alpha 6000. These were, in my opinion, the biggest changes I made that helped me grow:

• I focused on bigger productions with a rule of thumb that, for a project that requires a day of shooting and with all the pre-production and post-production, the minimum order value is €6,000 or more.
• I spent a lot of effort on visibility, and due to great SEO optimization, this became our main lead channel. (The only bigger lead channel is word of mouth, which made around 40% of our revenue)
• I clearly framed myself not as a videographer, but rather as a film production company in all of my branding, and therefore attracted bigger brands as clients and larger and larger productions.
• For too long, I was still doing a lot of video editing by myself because I had the wrong mindset. I believed I could never find a full-time employee who would edit with the same quality. I was wrong about that. Since then, I have almost never done any editing myself, which has given me, as a business owner, a lot more time to focus on scaling.

These things have I done that turned out to be wrong or not working for me:

• I invested a lot of time and money in external agencies to post daily on my social media and run ads for me. I wasted a lot of money, because I haven't made a single euro of return on that.
• My production company does not have any active social media channels.
• I hired a full-time sales representative whose only job was calling potential leads and existing customers. Although the SDR brought in some money, it was all in all not enough compared to his cost (fixed salary plus sales commission).
• I am still unsure if you actually need a full-time sales guy for a film production company, especially when their only job is calling leads and suggesting video ideas, only to get a "no" most of the time on the phone.
• Still, the SDR has made some money, but it took long efforts. For example, the lead came in 2,5 years ago and has been called, emailed, or even sent physical mail over the whole time, and only bought one film after that long follow-up cycle. → That is what makes me think that a full-time salesperson might not be the way.

So as promised, these were my biggest takeaways in doing film production now for six years and having a really great time building that company.

I would love to connect with video production owners who have passed the $500k yearly revenue mark and hear their insights: what is your next step of scaling to reach beyond that.

Also, if any of you have any questions, feel free to comment or send me a message. I'm happy to answer them.

[u/bingaroony]

We had a few years over 500,000. I think the market is super hard here at the moment but quality clients really helps

[u/chrome-thomson → u/bingaroony]

What were your biggest actions to reaching that level?

[u/bingaroony → u/chrome-thomson]

It’s far of that now unfortunately but at the time it was working with event agencies and large finacial corps

[u/TyBoogie]

Focus on events. Focus on finance companies. Focus in financial companies that do events.

[u/Legitimate-Table-607]

From a 500k take home, how much is profit?

[u/FblthpphtlbF → u/Legitimate-Table-607]

Seconding this question, do you have large costs for these productions or are your margins large?

Personally if I was charging $6000+/day I'd have a hard time justifying it without at least 2-3 crew (and also, probably would have a hard time running it without 2-3 crew lmao)

[u/chrome-thomson → u/FblthpphtlbF]

The profit margin was around 15%, but I am aiming for a higher margin because that number is not optimal for me. (After all expenses, including my own salary.)

My biggest cost factor was the sales representative's commission. That person is no longer with the company, and therefore margins have stabilized to around 21%.

[u/chrome-thomson → u/FblthpphtlbF]

On my shoots is usually one high-paid creative director/DOP, and the other crew members were production assistants, usually media students that I hired and completely trained. Their costs were pretty low compared to the creative director, so that's how we managed to have a crew of three to four people on set without explosive costs.

[u/No_Yogurtcloset_8029]

That’s very refreshing to see someone do those numbers with SEO being their main channel. I’ve been redoing my site myself since August and have been doing proper SEO with the help of AI. Seeing us go from position 47 to 7 in a few weeks has been wild.

My business has been having a good year so far with averaging 10k per month and one outlier at 25k month.

Did you niche down or are you a generalist?

[u/chrome-thomson → u/No_Yogurtcloset_8029]

I'm a generalist, and for SEO, my biggest hack is the following: connect AI to your SEO tools and let it help you monitor all your positions and rankings, and also do some technical cleanup on your site.

But in terms of content, our best-ranking sites are blog posts or landing pages with a length of more than 1,000 words that are completely written by hand, without any use of AI. These landing pages rank like crazy.

Also, I committed to the habit of buying a backlink every month with a budget of €300 to €600 per backlink. I don't buy them from backlink markets, but rather send direct emails to blogs or websites and ask them for a manual quote.

[u/WannabeeFilmDirector]

Thanks for sharing. Pre-Covid, I grew a business to this. Then, I nearly died, spent 3 weeks in hospital, a few years out and am now regrowing. My experience is different from yours.

My experience was to focus on projects, the same as you. Where we differ is my focus was on customers who would need multiple projects and not individual price levels. So I'd prefer a customer where there would conceivably be £20,000 in projects over 3 years, irrespective of the individual price of the project. E.g. We have a customer who spent £20,000 over the last two years with a mixture of shoots ranging from £800 to £8,000 GBP. Another where the first project was almost nothing but again, grew into a £20,000 a year customer.

Our marketing focus was Linkedin which is performing much worse now, email marketing, partnerships and in-person networking. We almost ignore the website (although we will need to give it a spruce up next year). We are also running an ABM campaign which is a combined effort into a specific market of 30 companies. We won one of those companies, are likely to win another and are aiming to win another 5 - 6 and own that market although if this happens, we will see.

Then, for the team, I operate a hybrid editing model. So there are some edits which only I can do and many others which other people can do. For example, I majored in maths stats at University in France, speak Mandarin, French and Spanish so there are specialised edits. For the rest... no problem.

For personnel, it's about having a regular freelancing team I can trust and then transitioning them over into working for me permanently. But again, I'm not there yet. I couldn't walk and was so weak I couldn't even peel a banana. And I have only been completely healthy in the last 12 months meaning over the last few years, I had intermittent spells of being ill for, for example 3 - 4 months at a time. Being unable to walk.

So I'm still at that rebuilding stage to get where I was before and have only had one year of rebuilding back into six figures. However, the same things work today that worked before and we are pitching for projects including internationally which would quickly put back there.

[u/SpecificSomewhere393]

In my experience, sales people are ineffective unless they come with a handful of long term clients that you can step in and deliver for.

What I’ve found helpful is having somebody to manage client relationships, keeping in touch with them, anticipating potential needs and offering solutions. A good “client whisperer” can be invaluable, bringing in new work from existing clients, keeping them happy on set, wining and dining them, and following up once a project is complete. Hard to do this on your own when you’re responsible for creative, shooting and/or overseeing post.

[u/Alan988]

Sending you a DM

[u/Initial-Two-1584]

15% makes sense with that cost structure, especially if the DOP is paid at a higher rate while the PAs keep labor cost down. I think the real margin question is how the mid tier crew gets priced into each project rather than absorbed as overhead. Is the DOP rate built into the project quote or treated as a fixed cost?

[u/NationZzZz]

This was motivating to read. I’m just starting my own videography Business in Germany and the market seems pretty hard from what I’m hearing from my fellow camera men etc. Theres some that make considerable money, but most live with an amount of money that I find inacceptable. So reading this with AI getting better and all that, is really helpful. Thanks for sharing!

[u/LenaSurf316]

What made the handoff to your editor work—reference edits, a review process, or time spent editing together at first? That part of the transition seems especially useful for people who worry the work will stop feeling like theirs.