Vourly rates at a glance:
- iPhone 4K filming: $100 per hour, 1 hour minimum
- Professional cinema cameras: $200 per hour, 2 hour minimum
- Editing: $75 per hour, billed separately from filming
- Add-ons per shoot: drone video $150, drone photos $125, professional lighting $150, second camera $150, photo add-on $250
- All raw footage included, plus one free revision round on your edited video
Small business video production has a budget problem that is really a sequencing problem. The usual advice is to commission one polished brand film, which absorbs the entire budget before anyone knows what their audience responds to. A better first move is cheaper, faster, and produces enough material to learn from. This is what that actually costs at published Seattle rates.
Why the one big video approach fails small budgets
A single expensive brand film has three problems for a business without a marketing department:
- It is one bet. If the message is wrong, there is no budget left to correct it.
- It ages badly. A hero film dates the moment the office, team, or offer changes.
- It does not feed anything. A 2 minute film cannot fill a social calendar, and social is where most small businesses actually reach people.
The alternative is to buy filming hours rather than a film, and to leave the first shoot with several short pieces instead of one long one.
This is not an argument for cheap work. It is an argument about order. Once you know which message makes people stop scrolling and which one makes them call, a larger production has something to be built around. Commissioning that production first means paying for the polish before you know what it should say, and polish applied to the wrong message is the most expensive thing a small marketing budget can buy.
What a realistic first shoot costs
The rate card is published, so this can be costed exactly:
- iPhone 4K filming: $100 per hour, 1 hour minimum, 1080p raw files.
- Professional cinema cameras: $200 per hour, 2 hour minimum, 4K raw files.
- Editing: $75 per hour, about 1.5 hours per short social cut.
A first shoot that works for most businesses: 2 hours on iPhone 4K at $200, plus three edited reels at about 1.5 hours each, $225 of editing. That is $425 all in, and it is roughly a month of short form content.
If the goal is a website hero video or a paid ad rather than organic social, the professional tier is the right call: a 2 hour shoot at $400 plus a 2 hour edit at $150 is $550 for one polished piece.
Which camera tier to actually book
This decision is usually overthought. A stabilised iPhone 4K rig is genuinely enough for anything watched on a phone, which is most of what a small business publishes. The honest split:
- Book iPhone 4K for social reels, walkthroughs, founder segments, quick product demos, and anything testing a message for the first time.
- Book professional for the video at the top of your homepage, anything running as paid media, and anything that needs shallow depth of field or low light performance.
Spending the professional rate on content that will be watched at 400 pixels wide on a phone is the most common small business overspend.
Getting a month of content out of one visit
The cost driver is editing hours, not filming hours, so the way to get more out of a shoot is to film more setups rather than to book more time. A 2 hour visit with a prepared list comfortably covers:
- A founder answering the three questions customers ask most.
- The product, service, or space, shot cleanly enough to reuse.
- Two or three short vertical clips framed for social.
- Cutaway footage of ordinary work happening, which is what makes the other pieces feel real.
Arrive with the list written down. The single biggest determinant of how much usable content comes out of a small shoot is whether anyone decided in advance what it was for.
Turning one shoot into a 90 day plan
Three edited reels is not three posts, it is a starting library. A workable 90 day plan off a single $425 shoot:
- Weeks 1 to 4: publish the three edited cuts, one every ten days or so, and watch which one holds attention longest.
- Weeks 5 to 8: commission two more cuts from the same raw footage, built around whatever the first three suggested works. Two extra reels is about 3 hours of editing, so $225 with no new shoot.
- Weeks 9 to 12: book the second shoot, now with evidence about what to film more of.
The reason this works is that you own the raw files. A second round of cuts costs editing time only, which is why the first shoot should over film rather than over polish.
Three related pieces if you are still costing this out: video production packages, cost per minute and why it misleads, and videographer day rates.
Knowing whether it actually worked
Set the measure before the shoot, because deciding afterwards guarantees a flattering answer. For most small businesses one of these is enough:
- Watch time, not views. A reel that holds people past three seconds is doing its job. Raw view counts mostly measure the algorithm.
- Profile visits or site clicks in the week after posting, compared against a week with no video.
- Whether anyone mentions it. Unscientific and genuinely informative. Customers referencing a video is the clearest signal it landed.
What is not a useful measure is whether the video looks expensive. That is the metric most small businesses accidentally optimise for, and it is the one their customers care about least.
What to skip on a first shoot
Every flat add-on is a real cost on a small budget, so add them deliberately rather than by default. Drone video is $150 per shoot and drone photos are $125, which are worth it for a property, a site, or an exterior and pointless for a founder interview. Professional lighting at $150 and a second camera at $150 both earn their place on a seated interview and neither is needed for walk and talk social content. The photo add-on at $250 makes sense when you also need stills for a website refresh.
No retainer, revisions, and what you keep
There is no retainer and no package to commit to. Book two hours, see what the content does, and decide from there.
Every booking includes one free revision round on the edited video, and further editing is the same $75 per hour, so you only pay for the cuts you ask for. All raw footage is included and yours to keep, unedited and unwatermarked, with full commercial rights, delivered through a secure client portal within 24 to 48 hours. That last point matters most for a small business: owning the files means a future edit never requires paying for the shoot again.
Local zone travel is included, out of zone travel is $1 per mile, and Washington sales tax is added at 10.5%.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small business spend on video?
A realistic first shoot is $425: 2 hours of iPhone 4K filming at $200 plus three edited reels at about $225 of editing. That produces roughly a month of short form content. Spending several thousand dollars on one brand film before you know what performs is the most common way small budgets get wasted.
Is iPhone footage good enough for a small business?
For social content, walkthroughs, and founder segments, yes. The $100 per hour iPhone 4K tier delivers 1080p raw files and is genuinely sufficient for anything that will be watched on a phone. Step up to the $200 per hour professional tier for a website hero video or a paid ad.
Do I need a monthly retainer?
No. Vourly bills hourly with no retainer and no package commitment, so you can book a single 2 hour shoot, see how the content performs, and decide from there. Filming is $100 or $200 per hour depending on tier and editing is $75 per hour.
How many videos can one shoot produce?
More than most people expect. A focused 2 hour visit with a shot list usually yields three to five short cuts, because the same footage recombines. The limit is editing hours at $75 each, not filming time.