How I made ₹50 Lakhs as a Freelance Video Editor In India

Can you please tell me how much you used to charge from Dhruv Rathee? How much does a good video editor earn in India? And these comments goes on and on and on.

And that's why I decided to make, a dedicated video on this topic. In this video, the salaries of all my jobs, And the honest amount of all my freelance work, I am simply going to share with you. With which you will get a very good idea, That, in this creative digital industry, How much you can grow financially as an artist.

I will clear this thing on the basis of my experience of the last 10 years. And I will also share the current market rates of the same jobs. So before starting this video, I want to tell you that, I have no motive to show off behind making this video.

The main motive of this video is only one. And that motive is to give you an idea that in this creative industry, As a digital artist What is the maximum amount of money you can earn. Also, in this video, I am not going to explain the earnings of my YouTube journey.

Because the art of earning from YouTube, I have just started learning it. And it is very different from job and freelancing. So now we will explore these two aspects.

And I will mostly talk about, The way I actually made money. That is, if I have not earned money by working in the visual effects line till now. then I am not going to talk about it.

So now if I start from the beginning, So, in the beginning of my career, I have done 4 years of job, in around 7 different companies. And for the remaining 6 years, I have been doing freelancing. But let me make this clear, that changing 7 jobs in 4 years, is not a good thing.

But I and my employers had our own reasons, which I will briefly cover in this video. So I started video editing for the first time in 2015. I used to shoot with my phone and used Sony Vegas Pro software in my brother's laptop for editing.

This software was very much like Premiere Pro. And at that time, I used to learn editing from YouTube and used to make some such videos. You can see these videos on my Instagram even today.

And after seeing these videos, A relative of mine offered me my first internship. In an interior designing company. Which was not paid.

But that internship of 3 months, taught me to run Photoshop and Illustrator well. Actually, what happens with an internship, is that the seniors there, at every point, solve all your problems like this. This makes it very easy for me to learn anything.

So after 3 months of internship, this company offered me a full-time job, as a graphic designer. Where I used to design magazines and brochures in Photoshop and Illustrator. And here my salary was 7000 rupees per month.

Now do note that this salary was offered to me without any professional degree. But today if you join anywhere as a fresher, then your starting salary can be 15 to 25 thousand rupees. In metro cities.

And obviously, if you get a chance to do an internship related to your favorite field, then just do it. Whether it is paid or not. Because you will learn a lot there.

You will not learn as much from any institute, as you will learn there. So here I did job for another 6 months. And under the guidance of my seniors, I also started exploring after effects software.

And when I left this company, then the basics of these 4 softwares were absolutely clear to me. After this, my next job took place in a billboard company. As a full-time graphic designer only.

Here this company used to put billboards of big clients like Adani Billmart in the whole of India. But my job was not to design those billboards. I basically used to adapt the artwork of those billboards in the ratio of different sizes.

So that the same artwork, can be put on different sizes of billboards. This job was obviously quite boring. But I was told in the interview, that this job will only last for 5 to 7 days in a month.

And the rest of the time I was free to do anything in that office. So here in my free time, I watched all the tutorials of after-vacs on YouTube. But I think at that time also there was very limited content on YouTube.

And I wanted to learn more and in-depth. So I started watching professional courses, on platforms like Udemy and Skillshare. These platforms were obviously paid.

But it was all worth it. And in this office, my salary was, 12,000 rupees per month. Now in this office, I learned only after effects for the first 4 months.

And from the 5th month, I started doing freelance work on LinkedIn. Which I used to complete and deliver in my office hours from the PC of my office. And this is some of the work that I did in that office.

You can see these projects on my Behance portfolio. And then after working in this company for a total of 6 months, I told my boss that actually I want to make videos. And the client I was working for as a freelancer, he hired me as a full-time video editor.

My boss was supportive about this. And after serving a 15-day notice period, I switched to my third job. Where I was offered a salary of 25,000 rupees.

But this was not an actual company. I was working with a professional photographer. Who used to work alone.

But because now he also had a video project besides photos. So he had to hire a video editor. And that was me.

And there I was doing a lot of other things besides video editing. Like going to shoots. Directing videos of influencers.

Directing couples in pre-wedding shoots. And so much more. So there I grabbed a lot of skills in pre-production and production.

Like scripting. Location scouting. DSLR camera operation.

Lighting. Sounds. Direction.

And so much more. Because here I used to do a lot of different things. But then in the third month, when we covered a big wedding.

And then when I started editing it. So I realized that I am not enjoying doing this wedding work. It was simply not for me.

There was a lot of money in this line. Obviously there is today too. But by covering only one wedding, I understood that this is not for me.

And because my boss was thinking of expanding in this line. So I had to leave that office in the fourth month. And then after this, all the jobs that I took.

My salary was between 25,000 to 30,000. But if I talk about today. So in today's date, the salary of a video editor.

I have seen a maximum of 1,25,000 per month. Obviously if I had stayed in any company for years. Then maybe today my salary would have been good.

But I think at that time, having a good salary, was not my priority. And it's not like I was employed in any company every time. There were times where I have been sitting at home for months.

And I tried to apply in different companies. Because I used to get fired as well. So in those unexpected scenarios, I used to be jobless.

And obviously the number of jobs I have done. I have been rejected more than 10 times. But what I am trying to conclude here is.

That I was clear from the beginning. That I don't want to do a job. I was doing a job to learn.

And why I don't want to do a job. There is a big reason behind this. That most of the time in a job, The creative decision making power, is with your employer.

In job culture, they treat you like a tool. Which can be replaced at any time. And this is what I personally feel.

I am sure there must be a lot of jobs out there. Where you get a lot of creative freedom. But as per my experience.

I figured that I have more creative freedom. In the freelance world. So in the end of 2019.

I decided to become a full time freelancer. At that time I already had a client. Which was a digital marketing company in Jaipur.

And for them I regularly. I used to add motion in the invitations of different night clubs. Something like this.

I have explained the whole workflow of this work in this video. So do check it out after this video. So at that time in a month.

I used to get 20-25 art work. And to add motion in one art work. I used to charge 1500 rupees.

To complete one. It used to take me around 5-7 hours. Where I used to have complete creative freedom.

And by doing this. My average income of a month used to be, Around 32000 rupees. But in today's date by doing the same work.

You can easily charge 3000-5000 rupees per art work. Depending upon the frequency of the work. That means if the work is regular.

Then you can charge 3000 rupees per art work. And if the work is occasional. Then you can charge even more.

So I did such projects for around 3-4 months. And then in 2020. Because of Covid.

Almost all the things stopped. Only one thing was going on. And that was YouTube content creation.

And at that time I used to watch Dhruv Rathee as well. And then in some of their videos. I noticed some spelling mistakes.

Like I thought maybe there is an intern. Who edits these videos. So I emailed him this.

Where I explained my services. And shared my Behance portfolio. His reply was, Right now I won't be able to hire professionals.

Because it is not commercially viable for me. So because of Covid. I didn't have anything to do.

So in response I said. I will do it in return for some exposure. That means if my name is in the end or description of your videos.

Then that is enough. I will edit your videos for free. But I didn't receive any response.

So in that free time. I started learning more advanced things. Like I learned the basics of Cinema 4D software.

Obviously from the paid courses. Like from this paid course. I learned to make realistic french fries.

And this is what I came up with. I was using the free version of Octane Render. Because of which you can see the lines here.

And also I was experimenting with a lot of other stuff as well. But then in October 2020. Dhruv makes a reply on that email, In which he writes, Hello Manav.

Now I have a lot of videos on both my channels. So I would like to know more about the cost of your video rating services. For both of these channels.

So I wrote ₹1500 rupees per minute for the main channel. And ₹1000 rupees per minute for the vlog. At that time Dhruv had around 4 million subscribers.

Around 3-4 videos a month. Whose average length was 12-15 minutes. So after the negotiation.

The final rate was 10,000 rupees per video for both channels. That means 10,000 rupees for the personal vlogs. And 10,000 rupees for the main channel videos.

Obviously these numbers change according to the per minute. But still after Dhruv came. My earnings increased a lot.

Earlier I was earning around 30-40 thousand per month. Here in this excel sheets, You can see this number. And then in November after Dhruv came.

These numbers doubled and tripled. In January 2021, I started editing DW vlogs for Dhruv. And in February, when Dhruv had 5 million subscribers.

So to celebrate that Dhruv announced a new series. It was called Basics by Dhruv Rathee. And its production value was kept quite high.

So for that project, I charged 2000 rupees per minute. And in those videos, I gave the best I could at that time. And it was a great hit too.

Because in every other comment of that video, it was talking about the quality of that video. And this is what Dhruv posted on his Facebook as well. So everything was going great.

By the way, if you provide quality like Dhruv to anyone today. Then you can easily charge him 2-3000 rupees per minute. After that Dhruv also offered me to edit another new series.

Which was called Jobs Zara Hutke. Its production value was also more than the basic series. But for some reasons, I could never start editing his videos.

And then later when the frequency of the videos increased. So Dhruv hired more editors. And to deliver the videos faster, We started dividing one video into two editors.

That is, in a 10-minute video, I am editing the first 5 minutes. And the other 5 minutes are edited by another editor. So in this scenario, my per minute costing was 1000 rupees.

After that, when Dhruv's Shorts channel started. So I was also editing that. In total, I have edited the first 150 shots.

And I was charging 2000 rupees to edit one shot. Which was very less if I compare it with the long-form content, on his main channel. Which I used to complete in one day for 6-8 minutes.

But I kept doing it because I was enjoying making shorts. It was like accepting a new challenge every day. And above everything, I was enjoying the 100% creative freedom on all forms of content.

That is, how to visually explain any topic of Dhruv. I used to decide all this myself. By the way, today you can provide similar quality.

And easily charge 4000-7000 rupees for each shot. So at this point, I was editing the videos of 4 different channels of my same client. Which was quite difficult after a while.

So to make it easy, I hired some full-time employees. Who used to work in my office on the non-creative aspects of those videos. And now if I think about it, I also as an employer, could not provide 100% creative freedom to my employees.

Now all the editors Dhruv had, were hired for a specific channel. I was the only editor whom Dhruv trusted with all types of content he was creating. And on top of this, I was also uploading his videos, on his YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Now you might say, he is lying here, But it was possible, because you can add anyone as an editor on YouTube and Facebook. And you can decide how much access your account will have to that editor. So obviously I could not see Dhruv's monetization earnings.

Nor could I delete any video. But I had full access to uploading any video, and seeing the statistics of any video. So to upload one video on YouTube and Facebook, Dhruv used to pay me 500 rupees.

my work was simply uploading the video and checking some settings. So it was not that big of a deal. And now if I talk about Instagram, I had full access to that.

So that I could upload the same shots as reels on Instagram. And to do this, Dhruv used to pay me a sum of 5000 rupees per month. So by working on these 4 channels, with 2 full time employees, in these 2.

5 years, my average income was, 1. 2 lakhs per month, after paying all the office expenses and salaries. Now this was not a small amount.

But after some time, I felt that, maybe I have reached my saturation point. That means in these 2 years, I was not able to go above this point. So I decided to work for some other clients as well, who were paying more than Dhruv.

And that's when I started working with CoinDCX. Which is a cryptocurrency buying platform. And here my rate was, 2000 rupees per minute, for the same quality that I was providing to Dhruv.

And because it was double the amount of what Dhruv was paying me, doing so, in that couple of months, I was making 2 lakh rupees per month. But I was able to achieve this amount in just 2-3 months. Because after that, I stopped working for Dhruv.

Because Dhruv had stopped me from doing any other kind of work. After seeing this, Dhruv had stopped giving credit to the editors at the end of his videos. So that, no potential client could directly approach him, after seeing the editors' credits in Dhruv's videos.

So, as a freelancer, I was also feeling this sort of dictatorship of Dhruv. In fact, his decision for me, didn't seem so good to many other team members as well. So, then some people decided to leave Dhruv.

And, I was one of them. And, I'm quite proud of it as well. Because for me, credits are important.

Because, at the end of every movie, all the artists are named, who have made that movie together. This way, the rest of the world knows, how good this specific artist is in his work. They get a recognition.

They get a better job. And, many new opportunities open up in front of them. These credits are so important in an artist's career, that I can make a separate video on it.

And, maybe I will make one. But, end of the day, if you are an artist, and you use your skills, and you make something for someone, then you have a right to be named for that. Obviously, in some scenarios, artists can sell their credits, for some extra money.

But, Dhruv refused to accept this. And, in fact, even after 2 years, there was only 10% of increment that was offered to me, when it was asked. 10% means, 1100 rupees per minute.

So, then instead of working more for Dhruv, I decided to take a break, and start something new. And, that's when I decided to start this YouTube channel. But, now, it's not like, I don't work as a freelance.

I still shoot advertisement videos, for multiple companies, and I love doing it I also do drone shoots. And, in editing, I now prefer taking quality projects only. Like, right now, I'm working on some 3D compositing projects.

This is a completely different thing, which is only in After Effects software. Here, basically, some architectural companies, Like, Don Digital, which is a 3D visualization company, I composite their 3D renders, and enhance them more. Something like this.

This is, again, a completely different skill, which I have learned by myself by working in this field, through the process of hit and try, because I never got a course for this on the internet. And, that's why I'm even planning to release a course on this, in the coming future. So, stay tuned.

Now, if I talk about the commercials of this work, then, in the workflow of this compositing, money is per shot. That is, if there are 30 different shots in a video, then, I charge 2000 rupees for one shot. And, in a day, I composite 5-7 shots, And in 6 days, by working on 30 shots.

I earn around 60,000 rupees. Now, this specific job requires a lot of experience. and a good eye.

That is, you should have knowledge of color correction, and color grading. And there are many other things, which I will explain to you in my course. But, this 3D compositing work, is so far the highest paying gig for me.

That is, if I do only this, then, by working for 25 days a month, I can earn around 2. 5 lakhs. and that too, single-handedly.

Without any employees. So, this was the brief explanation of all the earnings, that I made in this creative journey. I hope, you got a good idea from this video.

that how much you can grow financially in this field. And, obviously, the amount I have told in this video, can be less for many people. But, if you hire employees while working, then, you can multiply this amount a number of times.

Just keep in mind that the one you are hiring, should not be a 6-months guest like me. Lastly, if you are a beginner, then, do check out my course, that is, Getting Started with Adobe After Effects, where I explain Adobe After Effects software from 0 to literally 100. To know more about it, click on the first link in the description below.

And now, I really want you to comment down below, if you want to see more of these kind of videos. I really need your feedback on this. And, do not skip to like, share, and subscribe to this channel.

And, I'll see you in the next one.