Advice wanted: charging for services

[HYHYBT]

I have what amounts to sort of a part time job for a specific person, doing odds and ends. Now, stuff like painting a porch or pressure washing a walkway, it makes sense to charge strictly by how long it takes to do. That's simple. But one item, and one I intend to interleave with the others because it's both enjoyable a bit at a time and very long overall, is turning old home videotapes into DVDs.

The way I do that is as follows: play the whole tape into EyeTV; cut out bad or blank spots, if any; separate material from different events if applicable; export resulting file(s); reassemble and set up menus in iDVD; create disc image; burn however many discs are wanted; file away disc image in case more are wanted later, along with the files used to make it in case they're ever useful after DVD's are obsolete.

Obviously, this takes a good bit longer than just watching the tape. On the other hand, for much of that time, I'm not actually *doing* anything. During the recording step, I have to be able to notice if anything goes wrong, but otherwise don't have to pay attention and can do other things (like, for instance, going to Fratching for advice.) During the export and image creation steps, the computer is working as hard as it can, and especially with the image, tends to mess up if I try to do much else with it at the same time, but at the same time it doesn't even need monitoring like it does during recording.

So what counts as work? It doesn't seem fair to try to charge the whole time, and anyway that would result in getting to do a lot less of this particular task which I enjoy. On the other hand, I don't want to shortchange myself either.

[crashhelmet]

Pick a rate that establishes a "Set up fee." This covers everything needed up until you start to do the majority of the work. Things to remember as well, while you may not be doing actual work, your devices are. They also require electricity and possibly materials.

Costs for a product include more than time and materials.

[Andara Bledin]

Do some research on what professional services of similar scope charge.

Then figure out how much time, on average, it takes to move a single tape to digital; split that up into monitored and automated - but don't short-change yourself on the automated; while it doesn't require you to pay that much attention to it, it still prevents you from doing many other things.

Figure out how much your professional labor is worth (this is a skilled process, after all), compare it to what the pros charge, then make adjustments based on how much you like the person involved and maybe to keep it in line with what you charge for the other services you render.

Hope that helps a bit.

^-.-^

[Nyoibo]

Most places I've seen that offer that sort of service tend to charge a set fee per tape.

[HYHYBT]

Thanks, guys.

A set fee per tape seems to me the least fair way to do it; many tapes will have less than an hour, while some may have eight. I'll figure something out. And thanks fir the wear snd tear reminder; while blank discs and sleeves are cheap, and I have several low mileage VCRs sitting around otherwise unused, this does get my aging laptop hotter and for longer than anyhing else, and that may shorten its life.


I'd make a regular business out of this sort of thing if I knew how, particularly how to get a regular supply of customers... maybe someday.

[Andara Bledin]

Since the tapes are of differing lengths, you could make a set of fees based on tape length. Less than 30 minutes is $X, 30-60 minutes is $Y, etc.

^-.-^

[gremcint]

My store started offering conversion services. We purchased a combo unit that lets you burn a disc from the VCR directly. We do zero editing or anything we just play and record and we leave it going.

We charge 20 dollars a tape, 10 dollars for an extra of the same disc.

We sell a lot of this actually.

I would reccomend different levels of service. some people just want an unaltered copy so you could do a cheap fee for that done on a second machine in the background while you do a higher service for other customers.

[Nekojin]

We charge 20 dollars a tape, 10 dollars for an extra of the same disc.

And since the second (and further) discs take only a few minutes in a burner, as opposed to the much greater time of format conversion, you can make bank by selling multiple copies in this fashion.

[HYHYBT]

Not a bad idea... I don't have anything that would do it all in one go, but if I ever get anything going with this it might be worth investing some of the proceeds in more appropriate equipment.