Question

Great answer John.  I've heard that approach from several friends in the VO business.  

I was wondering if you could walk through an example?  Say I wanted to make $100K this year...what calculations would you use?  

Thanks!

Nic

Answer 1

Sure Nic-

$100,000. Let's start off by saying the average number of hours a person works is 2000 hours in a year (40 hours per week X 50 weeks - that gives you at least a 2 week vacation)

You then divide 100,000 by 2000 and that comes out to $50/hour. Now let's assume you won't be rockin and rollin 8 hours a day 5 days a week solid.

When you're not doing the work that makes you the money, you should work on activities that generate the work that makes you the money, i.e. marketing.

You then supplement your hourly rate to make up for those hours you're not "doing" the vo and production.

Let's say you up the rate to $175 per hour. How many hours would you need to be doing VO at that rate?

($100,000 / $175 = 571 hours / 40hrs per wk = 14.3 weeks out of the year)

That number means about 29% of your time each week should be spent doing work at the billable rate of $175/hour.

29% of a 40 hour week is about 11.5 hours a week which is about 2.28 hours each work day.

That's not a lot. Raise your price and see how the numbers change. It gets exciting.

Hope that helps.
John
http://www.JohnMelley.com

Comments

Thanks!  Perfect!  I'm glad you gave me 2 weeks vacation!!