Hey all!
Now that I have passed my 107 and have my LLC. I am finishing up my website and building my portfolio.
I have a few critical questions that I would love to hear your opinions/answers on.. thank you in advance and best wishes to you!
1)
- How do you take payments?
- When do they pay?
- How do I create a receipt?
2)
- Do your clients sign a contract?
- What should I include in the contract?
3)
- Do I keep my water mark on pictures/video I give to my clients?
4)
- How do you give the customer the final product? (youtube, google drive, etc.)
- Do you downsize to 1080p for final product or keep @ 4K?
5)
- Copyright- anything I need to know?
- Do I keep the rights to the image or should my customers claim it as theirs,
- Can I still show it of on my portfolio (assuming I give them the rights to the image)
6)
- Taxation: Since I am selling my drone work as service, not product, I do not have to charge tax in FL?
- If I sell a canvas print, I have to charge tax?
Thank you all for your input. It is greatly appreciated!
Congratulations on passing your 107. That should open up some doors for you.
You have posted some great questions. Let me try and give you some sound advice.
1) You can research venders like Leaders, Cayan, Paypal, Square Up and others to find the best and cheapest cell phone credit card point of sale system. It will generate an invoice, take the credit card payment and email a receipt. Be selective when you pick a service that fits all of your needs.
The customer needs to make a commitment to you or they are wasting your time. So 25% up front fee is very reasonable. The balance due upon delivery. Without up front money the customer is not serious.
2) You must develop a contract for customer to sign when they pay you the 25% up front. The contract legally commits them to your service, but more importantly it protects you by describing what product you are going to provide the customer. Performance criteria to include:
Time of day for the shoot. Morning, full sun, cloudy day, evening shoot with lights on, full parking lot, empty parking lot. Length of video. You get the idea.
But without a signed contract you really have no idea what the customer wants.
3) Don't have an answer for this one.
4) This should be decided on the contract. If they want to have the production given to them on a memory stick you can include that in the price.
Size of video. Again this is to be determined by the customer with your recommendations.
As I understand 4K is better for future editing but you are only going to view it at a 1080 resolution. Let the customer decide. Major impact on file size.
5) Copyright. I can not help you on the copyright issue.
Can you show it on your portfolio? You can include in the small print of your contract that you have permission to use all your videos in the promotion of your company. It is better to have it printed on the back side of every contract than to make an issue of it during every signing.
6) Taxes. As the previous post mentioned. Contact a one person accounting firm. When you do have them set you up with a SIMPLE ledger for keeping track of your expenses and income. DO NOT rely on software for this. It will bite you in the butt. IMHO
Best of luck to you.
