Mike: I made that shift from amateur to getting paid this past winter. One of my professional colleagues who liked the look of my videos asked me if I would do some for his business which would pay me. I told him sure, I would use the same equipment, methods, approach, etc., and the results would be about the same as what he has seen and likes. He could pay my usual rate of $700/day and we'd see how much it costs. I knew how long it usually takes me to do my videos, so we used that as a planning figure. We've done the first two, he likes them and he wants more. The 4 to 10 minute videos took me about 8 to 15 hours each including preproduction (planning), acquisition (shooting), and post production (editing, uploading, backup copies on discs, etc.) Total costs were about $1000 to $1500 each, so he has used those figures to set a budget in his business to do a few more.
You can see the video I do for myself here: http://www.historichomeworks.com/hhw/video/rftf.htm and the videos I did for pay here: http://conservepoxy.com/videos.htm The key for me moving into getting paid and being comfortable about it was to say to him, "this is what I do, this is the result, if that is what you want, then I can do it. Let's do the first one or two by the hour and see how much it costs. By the way, they really will be like what you see here, and they will not be like a Hollywood movie, nor like television, nor what you would get by hiring a video production company." John by hammer and hand great works do stand by cam and light he shoots it right
