Imperius.co
Video Editing as a Subscription
Now that the trial period is over I feel comfortable sharing here. It was quite a journey.
I mentioned in an earlier post about my plan to apply for video editing positions as an extension of outreach and one of those positions would be an opening to integrate Ali Abdaal's team as a long-form video editor. Well, I did the test for the application and, unfortunately, I didn't get in. But Ali's head of video liked my editing nevertheless and sent me an email asking if I'd be up for a second trial. In between the application and this email I actually got the client I told you guys about in my last update so I explained that I'd be focusing more on short-form content from now on, then he said they also needed a short-form editor, and asked me if I'd be up for a trial for that, to which I said hell yeah.
I did the test, got in, finished my first real video and now I officially edit for Ali Abdaal. Keep an eye out for Ali's shorts 'cause some of them will be edited by me. I know it may seem like a sidetrack from the plan looking from the outside, but I had to know my place. I have the chance here to make way more impact than I was able to so far while working with some amazing people. I couldn't reject it simply because it was not exactly in the model that I wanted to. Over time I'll think about a cross-sell but for now, I'm just thrilled for the opportunity.
As for my next steps, I said earlier that the goal of the first spots was basically to sell out and work on the product — the quality of the editing — as much as possible. So that's what I will do forward, it'll be a little less exciting than what I've done so far with marketing and promoting but I believe it's the right course of action. I'm also outsourcing my first videos and training someone to help me with them, I believe my next challenges will involve more talent acquisition and nurturing than the editing itself. I'm looking forward to this new level =D
It has been a convoluted month, but i’m going to breakdown the progress for you guys here.
Firing my first client
I mentioned in an earlier post about my second client, we will call him James. James got to me through Fiverr on late October and after a couple freelance gigs we scheduled a call.
On our intro call I explained that my prices were heavily discounted on Fiverr because I wanted to grow my gigs there and that my main thing was video editing as a subscription. After checking the price tag on the packages he pondered for a moment and said “yeah I think the subscription is going to be better for me”.
I hesitated because by my calculations he could get a better deal out of the Fiverr gig than the package he was interested in, but I was so excited about selling that I shrugged it off and ran his card.
Ps: at about the same time I messaged @houstonkold (the branding guy I mentioned on an earlier post) on Instagram looking for consulting to raise my prices. He was actually looking for a video editor and we verbally agreed that he could basically guarantee me a client on the new price ($1k/month) in a couple of weeks.
About 9 days went by and James and I produced 3 videos together (1 video each 3 days, exactly what was specified on the package). James messaged me that he was a little unhappy with the turnaround time and that his new content plan would involve producing about 3 videos/day through the subscription. I laughed in real life but messaged back explaining that would be totally out of the picture for the basic package he had, he seemed disappointed, almost angry, saying things like “I just want what was promised to be delivered, the stipulated turnaround time is 3-days”, at that moment it clicked for me: James thought he could add 30 videos to the backlog and they would be edited in 3 days, and, unfortunately, that was kind of on me.
Knowing that I had a client that could pay me more than 2x what James was paying and honestly feeling kind of offended after this conversation, I offered him a refund for the unused 21 days and we broke it off there. It was nothing animus, but it didn’t feel great either.
Lessons learned
Unlimited may not be all that cool for videos
I was having doubts with the “unlimited” value proposition for a while. In fact, a couple months ago I did a post about that that you can check here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/unlimited-x-specific-number-of-deliverables-in-productized-services-e79efc4b5f
That was the last straw for me, after this experience I completely repackaged everything to be very clear on deliverables. Maybe when I reach more premium prices I can go back to some sort of unlimited offer but cheap prices + unlimited proposition is a recipe for chaos.
”Solve rich people problems, charge rich people prices” - Alex Hormozi
Video editing is a service like any other, if I position myself at the top and the prices reflect that, I won’t even have to worry again about bad customers because they will be screened in the initial stages.
Selling a new one
As I said earlier, I only had the confidence to get rid of James because I had an alternative. About two days after refunding James I’ve closed a new one on the new pricing model (which at the time was $1k/month). Add that to a client that I got this week and the packages are officially sold out, I paused selling on the landing page and Fiverr.
We are currently at $1400/mo and I estimate December will be my first $2k because of that new client, I’ll talk more about him in the future, stay tuned.
Client Acquisition
Screw emails. I've found the process of prospecting, organizing a hitlist, and sending them consistently to be too time-consuming, making it not worth it with my current pricing. So I will double down on the freelancing websites. Currently I am just on Fiverr, so I'll get everywhere (Workana, Upwork you name it), and kind of brute force the first orders through the clients that I already have freelancing that currently pay me elsewhere (PayPal, Wire Transfer, etc). I also advanced to a new level in Fiverr, so now I can have my portfolio inside my profile and show off my clients under my gigs, I am going to do that today.
Here's the blueprint I'd give myself if I could go back in time to when I first started this:
- Take a Fiverr course or watch some YouTube videos about the basics of Fiverr;
- Apply the lessons;
- do whatever you can to get the first TRUE couple of orders very early—ask an acquaintance, ask a client, ask a family member, or whoever is easier for you;
- Overdeliver to maximize your 5-star ratings at the beginning.
Becoming a better editor
I mentioned earlier that I applied to 2 editing positions and got replies from none so far, that could have several implications but chances are I'm just not that good at editing, mainly long videos I guess. I thought of two approaches, one would be to hire a very good editor, but chances are he'd cost more than I can afford, so I went with approach number two: becoming a better editor. I started taking some time every day to analyze my most recent video and study what I could've done better. Is hard to self-analyze like that so I am comparing my videos to those of some top creators and perceiving the differences.
Charging more
"What could I do to charge 5x what I currently am charging?".
This question has been hovering over my head the past couple of weeks and I believe there's a lot of use to thinking about that. For reference, one of the big players in the editing market currently charges $7000 for their version of unlimited video editing. One word has repeatedly come to my mind while reflecting on that: branding.
After seeing a reel by @Houstonkold on IG I understood that the money on what I make is not on image insertions, cool subtitles, or timing, but how that is packaged consistently in a way that is branded and tailored to the client's audience. When I have a framework to do that consistently for anyone, I'll have offers worth $2k or $5k instead of $400 and $1k. I started creating SOPs — how I edit their audios, presets for animations, presets for colors, and alike — for my current subscription clients in order to achieve that standard.
In practice nothing will change regarding goals, I still want to sell out all spots available for the current packages. What changed was that those clients will receive more value overall while being my test subjects for frameworks, techniques, and communication to set the best practices the team will use futurely.
Two things I am considering doing are:
- Opening a company in the US to instantly get an authority boost
- Opening an Instagram (I know I said it would be a mistake in the future but given that freelancing platforms are somewhat "passive" In bringing me clients, it seems reasonable)
Boy, I am very happy about this one. Let me tell you how he found us.
About 6 months ago when I first had the idea for Imperius I drafted a few options for marketing channels:
(it's prohibited to judge my icon-drawing skills)
I chose Fiverr 'cause I heard good things about the platform, took a course on how to set up a gig, and published this: https://www.fiverr.com/imperiusfilms/edit-the-most-engaging-tiktoks-reels-and-youtube-shorts. However, after a few months without orders, I sort of gave up and went with email.
Ironically, a couple of weeks after I started sending emails, a client who already worked with me put an order through Fiverr and my gig got a little bit of traffic (even though he forgot to post a public review); so I got two orders there. Both buyers were very happy with the videos. One of them in particular saw my profile, searched my username (@imperiusfilms), landed on the website, set a meeting and after introducing him to the subscription method, he signed. It's almost as if he had access to my draft of 6 months ago.
Anyway, I'm thrilled. I feel like this sale validated a lot of stuff that I put in place during this journey. Only 1 spot left for the basic package.
I'm going to break down my next steps in a future post as well as what I'd do differently if I wanted to acquire this client sooner. Stay tuned.
It's been a while since I posted here so here's a summary of the past 10 days.
In the past 10 days, I sent 35 emails. But I can explain.
In the past, I said I was applying for video editor positions as an extension of the outreach strategy and that I wasn't gonna apply to Ali Abdaal's position because it paid too little. Upon further thinking, I understood that this was just me protecting my ego. I was afraid to send the application and be rejected. Now don't get me wrong, $2500/month for a full-time job is not a lot, but it is equivalent to 2,5x my most expensive package and has similar deliverables so I changed my mind and applied to the position anyways. The application required editing a sample video so between that, videos for actual clients and midterms I was left with no time to search channels and send emails.
Now about the ones I was able to send, as you can see in the image above the stats are pretty good, I was able to get such high open and reply rates by using the following strategy:
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Commenting something valuable on a video of the channel I was trying to contact;
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Saving the subject that the video was about in my hitlist (google spreadsheet);
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Using the video subject in email like so:
SUBJECT LINE: Quick question about your video on [Video Subject]
Hey [First_Name],
Your video on [Video Subject] is fire! No wonder you crossed the [Subscriber count] subs mark. As a growing channel, I was wondering, was that video edited by you?
This step of the process is a major time-consumer that can prevent you from focusing on what truly matters to you — finding your voice and connecting with your audience.
I can help you out with that! We provide a range of video editing services, from taking your long videos and making them into shorts to editing the long videos themselves, potentially saving you 15+ hours per video and being sure that they will look amazing.
Would you be open to jump on a 15-minute Zoom call to hear more about this?
Best,
Samuel Bitencourt
Founder @ Imperius Films
The replies were mostly "Nos" said in different ways, but there were a couple interested prospects who requested more info and then vanished =/. I guess I don't have enough volume yet to judge if it's working or not so I'll start to send emails again, unless I stumble upon another good opening for video editing.
As said in the earlier post, volume negates luck so, my next step:
Sending a ton of emails
Guiding myself off of Alex Hormozi's rule of 100, I want to get to 100 cold emails a day, but the recommended is only 30 per inbox and I only have one so I'm trying to get to 30 first, here's what I've done so far so you can learn by my many mistakes.
Getting started
My main sources of info were YT videos and the podcast: "Cold Email Outreach With Jeremy & Jack"
But the basics are:
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Buy a domain separate from your own and redirect it to your own (e.g tryimperiusfilms.com directing to imperiusfilms.com)
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Warm it. You can do it for free at mailflow.io
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Create a Google account with it so Gmail users see your profile with a cool picture, like this:
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Set it up in a cold email platform. I use quickmail.io because they have a free fully functional version.
Getting emails
The first method I tried was literally searching a couple of topics on YouTube — I went with Finance and Tech — and getting emails from the "about" section on the Youtubers' channel. As you may imagine, it sucked.
Many YouTubers already had very good editing, then of the ones left many didn't have their email available on their "about "section and I soon hit the 5-per-day limit of emails that YouTube sets per account. After that, I discovered playboard.co, a better YouTube Search Engine that paired with the Email Hunter extension made it much easier to find channels. Still, it took me 4 hours to get a whopping 11 email addresses.
I inputted the prospects into Quickmail, placed my copy in the campaign, and hit send, one email bounced, and when I read the subject line of the bounce notification I couldn't believe my eyes:
I forgot to set the personalized attribute on the subject line, so I basically took those 4 hours and put them in the trash can by making my email look ABSURDLY spammy. I'm still feeling a little bit like an idiot but that's okay.
Applying to video editor positions
As an extension of cold outbound, I'm also applying for video editor positions. They are harder to find but I can be 100% positive that the person who posted the opening actually needs an editor, I just have to be good enough and sort of cross-sell them into the subscription model later, should be fun!
Transparently, the YouTubers with open positions that I am applying to are:
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Ali Abdaal (Applying for his shorts positions because I thought the retainer pay for full-time editors is sort of low ($2500/mo)
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heyDominik
After landing that first client I already thought of opening an Instagram with before/after videos, transitioning to a niche where I can charge more, changing the name to something less corporate, and another 12 different opportunities that aren't cold email. But after listening to Alex's podcast so much it has become clear to me that doing any of those things would be a mistake born out of lack of focus. Alex uses the analogy of the woman in the red dress from Matrix, I've seen like 14 of them and I'm not even at a beginner level in business yet. Anyway, I still haven't figured out how to get emails quicker but if I do I'll let you know, for now, I'll set for my 10/day and see what happens.
"I was never in this for the money. But it turns out that the money was an absolute necessity for me." - Michael Scott
As you may attest by my very fancy now stripe-verified revenue, I got my first client in the subscription model. My current revenue with subscription + freelancing is around $800.
I'm here to share what I've learned and what I intend to do next.
Lessons Learned
01. Giving First
"Give first, without asking or expecting anything in return". - Alex Hormozi
This client in particular got one of the best videos I ever edited completely for free, with no commitment, nothing. He could've very well taken it, said thanks, and left. And that would've been completely ok, but he didn't. This client served to support the idea for me that giving first pays off.
Ps: There were situations where the prospect's response was indeed leaving, and that's alright, it served as practice. I'm now a better editor than I was back then.
02. Networking
This client came as a referral from a client that I have as a freelancer who I also got by 🥁... you guessed it, editing for free. Based on that, I have decided to enforce a very aggressive referral/affiliate program: the referrer gets 50% of the first month of the referred, be it a current client, or a stranger, I don't care. I already put it into practice by getting the referrer $200ish for the subscription of the "Reel Deal" package.
I am a 19-year-old with little experience in anything, the most valuable thing I can provide is editing, so it will be my go-to for connecting with higher-ups in the future.
03. Luck
Although I would really like to say that this client came from all the nights learning how to develop a landing page on Framer, weeks learning how to animate on After Effects, or an entire course on Sound Design. The truth is I got lucky.
From the first minutes of the call, I couldn't believe how much of a coincidence it was. When I asked for references in video production he named Alex Hormozi, my most listened-to podcast on Spotify and most watched YT Channel. Further, learning more about what he does for life, I discovered he travels the world while running a SUBSCRIPTION-BASED coding agency — What were the chances?
Anyway, I avoided the steps of having to convince him that the subscription model works or trying to understand what he wanted to do because I sort of already understood it from watching Alex's videos, I lucked out.
The negative to this is that no client ever will be that simple to close. I may just have "spent" all my luck right here and am looking forward to another 10,000 hours of mining before I get my next gold nugget, which brings me to the first of the next steps: "Volume Negates Luck"
I'll break down my next steps in another post because I just noticed how long this one actually is, my bad, I'm too excited. The next one will be more reasonable, I promise.
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Nice one Samuel, I’m in a similar vein as you and it gives me hope to read a success story like yours.
Will you gradually reduce your affiliate percentage as tinted goes on?
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DAMN your landing page looks amazing, I envy you hahaha
My "churn" as a freelancer is pretty low, if that translates to the productized model I don't think I'll reduce the affiliate percentage anytime soon. If the client sticks he'll be worth far more than the $200 or $400 I'll give away.
I will however increase the prices quite a bit after I sell out the spots available.
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Woah, great writeup Samuel!
Really impressive move with the affiliate program! (Curious what tool you're using to get affiliates/advertise that deal to them. I feel a lot of them would jump on that deal.)The imperius website also looks great, I added it to one of my projects so you should see the backlink show up soon :) Looking forward to more updates! The build in public/provide value first for video editing is genius.
Would love to follow your twitter/tag you into video posts if you have one?
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Man, thank you very much for adding me to your directory! <3 Productized HQ is looking awesome.
I didn't advertise the program anywhere besides the current clients that I have as a freelancer, by not adding it to any platform I am probably leaving money on the table. Thanks for the tip! I'll search for a few options.
I actually don't have any social media yet, I'm still very new to this building in public thing so maybe the next move would be opening a Twitter account?
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I’ve been editing videos for 8 years and making a living out of it for 3, but could never really get a decent MRR in USD given that most of my clients were here in Brazil and the exchange rate is brutal. After editing a few free test videos to random prospects I managed to get a handful of clients abroad and finally hit my first $1000+ months.
Still, having $1000 months and $200 months felt off. I am somewhat risk averse and yearn to make this into something “safer”, so freelancing wasn’t cutting it anymore for me.
So, after watching Starter Story’s video on Brett Williams from DesignJoy, I thought: “Jesus, was this an option all along?”.
So, last month, Imperius Films was born — A subscription for unlimited high-quality video editing services.
The big thing for me is keeping the quality standard high, so I off the top limited the amount of subscriptions available and, in order to garner traction I didn’t price the packages very high, only enough for me to keep working on the product.
If you want to check out more, here is the link to our website:
Feedback is more than welcome. Keep grinding!
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I love your page man, and as another comment stated, your lead magnet is amazing. Would’ve never thought of that. It truly makes you feel as though you’re gaining something even if you don’t choose to get the service from you.
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Thank you very much! That's the idea =D
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It's pretty good to know there are Brazilians like me around here! Let me ask you, how did you develop the website? Looks awesome!
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Thanks, Alamyr! Tem BR em todo lugar haha
It was all done on Framer 🚀
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Congratulations, Samuel!
Some Feedback:
I LOVE your landing page.Why?
It looks different from the other DesignJoy photocopies. It's unique and made with your ideal client in mind.
One thing that also stood out to me was your lead magnet, Viral Hooks. Including a lead magnet like that on your landing page is a brilliant idea.
People who are on the fence can at least get something from you while they think it over.
It's also an opportunity for you to soft-sell them in their inbox.Finally, embedding your scheduling form makes booking a call easy for the prospect. Another tab doesn't have to be opened to get a call scheduled.
Kudos to you, Samuel.
Well done!P.S. If you need someone to write your email sequences and ongoing newsletters to soft-sell your prospects, I'm your girl :)
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You saw right through my thought process while building this whole thing! That's exactly what I had in mind when putting things in place.
Thanks a bunch for the feedback! I just finished writing the copy for my first cold email, but when the inbound email list gets bigger and I need someone to help me with that I'll have you in mind.
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Thanks, Samuel :)
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Good luck! Looks like a great idea.
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Thanks brother =D
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Enjoy the ride! Only uphill from here.
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Ought to be fun!
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Congrats and wish you success
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Thank you very much, Mutale!
Wish you the same with Weblister =D
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