genuine legal way to make some good money

04-01-2024, 11:31 PM

I might be a bit late to this but i'll try to provide as much i know from my own experience beeing an editor myself.
Not knowing your current skill level and amount of experience, I will give this advice assuming that this is someone that recently started,

(even if you are experienced just in order to include as much as possible for anyone that might read this).

For someone just starting I'd recomend working on their skills first, even though most of the time it does not correlate to more clients but i believe that it can increase the quality of your clients rather than the frequency of how often you get commissions, and trust me sometimes its more important to have a few good clients instead of many random ones.
Personally I see sloppy editing on videos all the time, especially in the last 1-2 years that fast paced and attention grabbing editing with many effects is what most people want, this is usually because creators try to be cheap with who they commission but at the same time want top level quality.

After getting more comfortable in your abilities, its important to pick a category of editing and specialize in it, some that come to my mind are (VFX / Compositing / 3D / Motion Graphics) and even those are pretty general categorizations and you will also need to intergrate these in the type of editing you do for example using 3D in Music Videos or Motion Graphics in Content editing. In the meanwhile its very important to keep working on personal projects and pushing yourself to become better, also try staying active and post your projects on major social media like Instagram, Twitter (X), Youtube not only for clients to find you but maybe more importantly for other editors to get in contact with you because most of the time you could get recomended to clients through your connections. Discord is also a great place to find communities and ask for help from more experienced editors thats mostly what i use for networking. Obviously its better to not look at every person you find as a business opportunity but just as another friend with a similar interest in video editing.

Its always good if you experiment with your abilities to create your own distinctive style because there is always someone that comes to your mind for a very specific style they do, like an old videogame graphics 3d style, glitch art and the list goes on. Basically you need to try and connect your name with the style that you do as much as possible, I've heard many times people refering to a certain style of editing by using an editor's name (or in some rare cases if a creator chooses a certain style they name it that). You probably know this one already but its always important to have a portfolio or at least some type of portfolio, even a playlist with the type of work you offer because clients wont always come to you, and you should be ready to start searching for them or just to apply for a video editor position. Posts like "i need an editor", are quite common and you will need to provide your previous work then.

I tried to include everything i could think of right now, I dont make insane money from editing at the momment, i couldnt even live off of it but thats the conclusion ive made through my own experience and by asking the same question that you do here and hearing from others.

[also something that i forgot, its very common in the beginning for people to lowball themselves in order to get a client, you will end up doing slave work if u do that and you wont gain any better clients through that, even worse u might become known for being cheap so its gonna be hard to increase your price after. Deffinitely dont start with insanely high prices but dont accept some 5$ for a video type deal. Personally i even avoid work that seems easy but its totally not something that would help me get better clients or help me reach the right network, for example i was asked to make some stupid lego builds compilation once for a faceless yt channel, while im currently trying to work on VFX and music videos.]

Also if you try editing content videos, its very common for creators to ask for "free trial videos" in order to hire you and usually they ghost you right after and pick someone cheaper, at least if u dont want to reject that, ask to be paid for the trial video.