Is this the best business model for motion designers in 2025? | Q&A

[00:00:00] Hayley: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Motion Hatch podcast. In this episode, I am answering your questions that you’ve been submitting over social media. Thank you everyone who submitted their questions. And if you would like to submit your question for a future podcast episode or YouTube video, you can go to motionhatch.

[00:00:18] com. forward slash questions. So in today’s episodes, I share my thoughts on how you could run a successful subscription based motion design business. I also talk about my opinions on charging for project files, and I talk about how much time you should actually be spending on outreach. So just before we jump into this episode, I do want to share a little disclaimer.

[00:00:41] Everything that we share in this episode should not be considered legal or financial advice. Transcribed and is for educational purposes only. I also share what we have coming up in 2025 for Motionhatch and some exciting opportunities that you could get involved with. So let’s get into this episode. So the first question is how to sell how long motion design takes to do and how can you justify the time that motion design takes to a client?

[00:01:12] I think this is a wonderful question because I think it is quite hard to justify it because not all of your clients really understand what motion design is. And especially if it’s a direct client and they haven’t worked with motion design before, they might not really understand the process and how long it takes.

[00:01:30] And I think this is really where case studies and behind the scenes come in. So if I was you and I’m trying to justify How long motion sign takes or often the price of it as well. I would really think about how you’re presenting your process online. So obviously you can do case studies on your website.

[00:01:51] You can share them on social media. You can share behind the scenes. And I think it’s a really, really good idea to do this because one, it showcases you as an expert, but two, it also. Also helps you to justify how long it takes and also the price and really to help your clients to understand your process.

[00:02:10] And I think that also you could do this in the onboarding of your clients. So you could take them through your process when you onboard them. And that can be part of the onboarding process. So this is really how I would probably tackle this. And I think there’s lots of ideas in there that you can start to implement, but I think the most important thing is have a system that you stick to and to really make this easy and repeatable.

[00:02:36] So if you’re going to add this to your onboarding process for each client, Then make sure you have an onboarding process system so that you remember to do it every time. And then this will save you a lot of headaches later. Also, what I recommend is definitely going through the scope of work with your client, making sure you have terms and conditions alongside that, so that the client is really clear and understands how you work.

[00:03:04] And. exactly what the process is. And if you’re doing the process, the schedule, and you’re setting a project fee, you should absolutely be sending them a schedule and saying, this is when I’m going to deliver to you, this is when you should submit your revisions to me, and then this is When the deadline is for the revisions and so on, because I think that’s really important, especially when a client hasn’t worked on an animation before.

[00:03:32] So the easier you can make it for them, the better, really. So try and develop your own process and take your client through it at the beginning. Make sure you have a scope of work and a contract in place. And a lot of these things will really, really help you. But in terms of promotion of how long it takes, I think you can do case studies and behind the scenes on social media and all of that type of thing as well.

[00:03:56] And the final thing I think that I would add to this question is when you’re working with direct clients that don’t have a lot of experience with animation, I would definitely think about charging a bit more of a buffer on your project fee, because. You’re more likely to go over and I think you need to add a little bit of contingency and a little bit of extra in there because you’re most likely going to have to use that.

[00:04:21] So maybe you add a few extra days or something like that to account for that. You should be doing this anyway because you are obviously managing the whole project and being the producer. And all that kind of stuff, but I think adding an extra, you know, let’s say 20 percent or something like that would really, really help you to make sure that the project is going to come in scope and is going to be profitable for you.

[00:04:46] So the next question that we got was around What makes a client go for me as an individual rather than an agency? So I believe this person is um, a motion designer just doing animation by the sounds of it. So if you’re only doing the design part or you’re only doing the animation part or maybe you’re just an editor, rather than being able to do all of the illustration, all of the design, all of their animation, all of the editing, that kind of thing.

[00:05:19] So I think this is where the question is coming from. So the main question is, if I feel like I’m not doing everything from designing to motion to sound, what really is my edge? Now, I think this is a really interesting question because it sounds like this person believes that. To have an edge you need to be able to do a whole project, which I don’t think is necessarily true.

[00:05:46] I don’t know whether I really believe that to be true. I think that you can be excellent at a certain part of a project and really get hired for that a lot. So I would say Tell this person to think about maybe what do you really think you can offer to the project? Like, what are your best skills? What types of clients do you work with that you enjoy the most?

[00:06:11] And really think about how am I helping to solve my client’s problems? And it might take a little bit of time, but you might be able to figure out really where you’re showing your clients the most value. And then It’s more about how you position yourself in the industry to really explain that to clients and to clearly market that.

[00:06:30] So I think you can do this with any type of skill or certain type of client, but I think that it’s not necessarily about if you’re doing the whole project, that’s going to give you the edge because there’s lots of motion designers actually out there who can take a project from start to finish and do it.

[00:06:48] Sometimes that’s not what people want, you know, they just want an animator who’s an amazing animator, or they just want an illustrator who’s an incredible illustrator. And I think, thinking that we can all be the best at every single part of the project is kind of unrealistic, and I think it would be better to be You know, the best animator at doing frame by frame stuff or the best character illustrator or something like that, you know, then you’re gonna have more of an edge because you’re really, really excellent at one thing and that’s what people hire you for.

[00:07:24] So the next question then comes from Sam, and Sam says, Do you have any content or advice on whether or not to charge a client for your After Effects files or working files? And if so, how much to charge? It seems like everyone has a different take on this. So yeah, I think this is a great question. I think it’s That charging for working files, the best thing you can do, you must, must bring this up at the beginning of the project.

[00:07:52] And you don’t necessarily have to have a really obvious conversation about it, like saying on the call, Oh, I’m going to charge you for project files, by the way. But I think that you absolutely need to discuss your process with the client. You should be putting it in a contract at the start and having them sign that, so they know.

[00:08:10] From the start that this is how much it’s going to cost. And you can discuss it with them. I’ve heard all sorts of things around like how much to charge from, you know, 20%, I think is what we originally had in our contract bundles when we were selling those all the way up to like the whole of the project fee.

[00:08:28] And I really think that it depends on the project and really how much of your own IP is in there as well, which it kind of comes into a different issue. We’ll get onto that. But if I’m thinking about charging for my working files, it’s how much of, you know, am I doing in there that is really something that I’ve created.

[00:08:50] So if for example, you’re creating a lot of illustrations, the original and things like that, you probably want to charge more. Then if you’re creating a project where they’ve given you a lot of the assets, because then there isn’t as much of an issue around copyright and things like that. If you are giving someone your working files and they use it for something else that is outside the scope, then technically they could be slightly infringing on your copyright, unless you have assigned the copyright and the IP to the client through a contract.

[00:09:23] So it’s just a few things to be aware of around this. So, make sure that you are charging an appropriate amount. You know, I think I would probably go for somewhere between 20 and 50 percent, but it really does depend on the project. And this is why I think there’s lots of different takes on this. And I would really treat it on a project per project basis.

[00:09:44] I just think the main point here is just to be wary about the potential copyright issue for your client and make sure that if you are giving them the working files, that they also, you know, you’re giving them that IP and that copyright so that they can actually use that in. Anyway, they want all the way that you’ve defined in the scope.

[00:10:05] It’s a little bit of a tricky thing, but I hope that that does answer your question, Sam. So the next question is how can I start a subscription based motion design studio? And what do you think would be a reasonable price point and offering? So I think this is a really interesting question. And I think that this subscription model is going to start popping up more and into 2025, 2026.

[00:10:32] So one of my students, Joe Walker, actually started a subscription. So I highly recommend following him on LinkedIn. He does posts about this and how he does that. But when I was working with him inside my course, Balanced Business Bootcamp, he was working on this subscription based model. So I think he would be a really awesome person to, um, Check out and to reach out about this, but basically, if I was thinking about starting a subscription, I would think about how can I really make it so I’m putting a lot of boundaries in place.

[00:11:09] So, for example, with Joe’s subscription, what he does is he has a queue, so you can only bring in one animation at a time into the kind of active animation queue and then you can have as many in the backlog as you want, which helps him because then he can actually see what’s coming up from his clients and he can say, Hey, I saw that you had this project in the backlog.

[00:11:33] Is this something that you want to be working on right now? So if, for example, There isn’t anything in the active project section. He can start asking his clients about the backlog and kind of bringing more projects in there. So this will help you obviously to have more regular work. But I would really think about how much could be done.

[00:11:53] Let’s say it’s a monthly subscription. So how much can be done each month, and how are you really setting the boundaries around that? So, are you setting them based on it’s up to a certain length, for example, or it’s up to a certain price, you know, value worth, for example? So, sometimes that might actually, your subscription might actually be a little bit lower.

[00:12:16] then the total value of the boundary. So let’s say, for example, your subscription was 4k a month. You might say, okay, we can make animations every month for you, for, that are up to the value of 5 or 6k, for example, because if you’re doing a subscription, you want to show, that there’s a benefit for them to have the subscription.

[00:12:39] So some times you might have times where you’re going a little bit over that, but then there’s often hopefully going to be times where you’re under that and that’s kind of how it works from a financial point of view. But I think there isn’t really like one reasonable price point in offering. It really depends on, you know, who your clients are, what kind Kind of problems you’re solving for them and what you’re really offering them.

[00:13:02] So you could kind of think of it as more, a bit more like a productized service, for example. So productized service is where you’re making it more of a product. So it has to be constrained by time. So, you know, how long are you spending on it? has to be constrained also by price and then also by scope. So if I was thinking about, okay, I’m going to create motion graphics for a YouTube channel, for example, maybe the YouTube channel, they do a weekly video.

[00:13:33] So you could do a subscription service for that because you really understand what the scope is. of the project’s going to be. Their YouTube videos are maybe usually 12 minutes long, roughly, and they usually have like five segments that are animated or something like that. So therefore you could make it more of a productized service because you understand, okay, usually we’re going to do between three and five animated segments in this YouTube video.

[00:14:00] There’s going to be four of them a month. So I’m going to charge whatever price. For those outputs. And then you can make that more into a product tie service, which has a subscription model attached to it. So I think something like that would be a really great example, but in terms of costs, it, it could be anything really, like it’s the same as your custom work, but the subscription model is always going to be the same cost, but it’s still dependent on what you’re doing and the output to the client.

[00:14:27] And you really need to think about how can I put lots of boundaries on that? Yeah. because that’s where I think that it really works well. And I think if you’re starting to do a subscription, but you don’t have a lot of boundaries on it, you could potentially be running into issues where you’re doing a lot of work for not a lot of money.

[00:14:46] So I think there’s just a lot of caveats around there, but like I said, definitely check out Joe Walker’s LinkedIn. We’ll put the link in the show notes of this podcast. And I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to anyone about how he’s doing his subscription. Thanks for listening to this episode so far. We’ve got a few more questions coming up.

[00:15:05] We’ve got one around finding time and motivation to work on business tasks. We’ve got another one about getting better at copywriting for LinkedIn. And And we also have one about how much time to spend each week or month on outreach. So let’s get to the next question then, which is how to find more time and motivation to work on the business tasks instead of project work.

[00:15:28] So I think as creatives, sometimes we find the business side of things difficult because we’re unfamiliar. with it. So hopefully everyone listening to this podcast right now has benefited from some of our podcasts and our videos talking all about the business side of motion design. But I think this is a really good question.

[00:15:46] Like, how do we find time and motivation to work on this stuff? Well, one thing that I do that I think is really, really helpful is actually to set goals and then break them down into small and actionable steps. So for example, in my course Balance Business Bootcamp, we do a yearly planning workshop every single year.

[00:16:05] And what we do is we set our yearly goals. So I usually limit this to three because I feel like if you have more than three, you usually can’t achieve them. Um, so there’ll be kind of like three top line goals. So one might be around revenue, one might be around the types of clients that you want to work with.

[00:16:23] And then usually there’s another one that doesn’t have to be three, but I figure three works pretty well for me and it seems to work pretty well for other people as well. So then what we do is we break those goals up into quarterly goals. So you’ve got Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 Usually. It’s difficult to break your goals down so much after kind of Q2, Q3, and I find that my Q4 goals for next year tend to be a little bit more loose for now, and then we review them as we go along in the year.

[00:16:57] And then we break the quarterly goals down into monthly goals, and the monthly goals down into weekly goals. So, You probably aren’t going to get your weekly goals done after Q1 and you probably will do your monthly goals up until about Q2 and then what you will do is you review them as you go through the year and breaking these down really, really helps you to stay consistent and to make sure that you’re.

[00:17:23] Working on the tasks you should be and also working on your priorities. So, I think using this and also making sure your goals are smart. So, smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. So, you can look that up. A smart goal system is a very popular system to use, but I really recommend it.

[00:17:45] So we might put a link in the show notes as well, linking to some helpful resources about planning and probably to our Vivid Vision and maybe to any smart goals resources that we have. So definitely check those out. We’ll put the show notes at motionhatch. com forward slash podcast. You can probably also find the show notes on whichever platform you’re listening to this on, so make sure you check the links out there.

[00:18:09] So in terms of finding, you know, the motivation to do this on maybe a weekly and a daily basis, definitely having those SMART goals in place and reviewing your goals on a monthly and quarterly basis really, really helps because it links what you’re doing on a daily basis to your yearly goals and to your life goals really.

[00:18:30] So for example, if I was thinking about how can I really post more on social media, I’ve seen that it works for me to get clients, but I find it hard to be consistent. Then I would make some goals around posting on social media. And I would regularly review my goals. Which may be to make more money with my business and really link that those up together so that I can see, well, if I post on social media, I’ll get more of this type of project and this type of client, which I enjoy, which will help me to increase my revenue.

[00:19:04] And I think by linking your goals up like that on a yearly quarterly and monthly basis, you’re really, really going to have more motivation to do this stuff. Another thing that’s really helped me is actually blocking times out in my calendar to do this. So I put calendar blocks in, so they might be based on business tasks, they might be based on project work, they might be based on admin.

[00:19:27] And I really do it every week, and I usually do it on the same day, same time. So for example, maybe you think, Okay, on a Tuesday morning at 8am, I’m going to check my CRM, and I’m going to see if there’s any past clients that I need to check in with. And then on a Wednesday lunchtime at 1pm, I’m going to post on social media and comment on other people’s posts.

[00:19:50] So I think by adding these small and actionable tasks in the week and really blocking out time to do those, this will help you to have more time and also motivation to work on your business tasks. So the next question is how to get better at copywriting so that I can make more social media posts on LinkedIn.

[00:20:10] So, because LinkedIn is really kind of almost a text first platform, I think that for a lot of motion designers, actually what’s working really well right now is sharing a lot of animations and a lot of moving stuff. But, as we know, it’s a struggle to post that stuff consistently because you probably don’t have a piece of work or a project to post all the time.

[00:20:33] So one thing I would recommend is definitely checking out our free social media guide. I’ll leave the link in the show notes for you. But, essentially, to get better at copywriting, some things that I’ve done are using apps like Hemingway app, and we’ll leave the links for all the apps as well, and also Grammarly, I think is really, really helpful.

[00:20:52] Grammarly helps you with spelling and grammar, and Hemingway app really helps you with the readability. Because what I tend to do, and what a lot of people do when I’m writing, is I try to make it sound so professional, and it comes out kind of quite a high level of readability. But actually, simple is usually always better in this case.

[00:21:13] So you actually want to make stuff more readable. So it will give you a grade. So it might be grade three, grade four, postgraduate, you know, and I feel like a lot of the times we end up writing in a kind of postgraduate sort of way, but really what’s important is actually the readability of your content, because if you imagine people are scrolling through LinkedIn or wherever really, really quickly, it’s.

[00:21:34] And they need to know what you’re talking about very quickly to stop and actually read. So this is why one, we need to make a great hook, but two, we need to think about the readability. So in terms of making a great hook, you just want to make it really eye catching and really simple to understand straight away.

[00:21:52] So I think Hemingway app is fantastic at this and really, really helpful. So they’re the main two tools that I use, but also I use Speechify sometimes as well. which actually can read out your text to you. Because I’m dyslexic, I find it really hard to read it, and even if I read it out loud, I might kind of miss out words and things like that.

[00:22:11] So having someone else read my work to me has really, really helped me to notice when maybe something doesn’t sound quite right, or maybe I missed a word out, or Spelled something wrong or done something like that, um, it’s really, really helped me. So I really recommend checking out Speechify. Obviously, none of the apps I’m talking about are sponsoring this show.

[00:22:31] We may include some of these as affiliate links, but if you go through our links and you start working with Hemingway, Grammarly or Speechify, it just means that we get a little kick back and it doesn’t cost you anything extra either. So if you are on LinkedIn or any of the other social media apps and you found this podcast helpful, please do consider sharing it and let me know what you thought of this show.

[00:22:53] And now I think you can actually add a question or a comment in Spotify. So you can go and comment on this episode and let me know what you think. So, the next question that we have is how much time each week or month should I spend dedicated to outreach? Now, I think this really depends on person to person, but what I would say is I think you really need to be consistent with your outreach.

[00:23:21] So I definitely think, you know, having a weekly or a monthly outreach system is fantastic and what a great place to start. It depends really on how much time you have, um, so what I recommend to my students a lot is to have a kind of, ideally this is how much time I’ll spend on this and this is what tasks I will do, but then if I’m really busy, this is my like, minimal amount that I will spend.

[00:23:46] So you have kind of like the ideal and then when you’re really busy, you have the minimal time you spend on outreach or something like that. And this kind of creates a, you know, variation, which means that you’re actually more likely to do it because you’re like, well, at least when I’m busy, let’s just make this task as easy as possible.

[00:24:05] So maybe normally you just reach out to five people over a week. But then sometimes you’re really busy and you don’t have time to warm them up. You don’t have time to personalize your emails. You don’t have time to comment on the social media posts and do all of that good stuff that you should be doing to warm up your clients before you reach out to them.

[00:24:23] So then maybe you make it only two people a week when you’re busy. So you have that kind of a little bit of variation in there. So you’re not feeling bad when you can’t do the five people. But when you’re not as busy, you can do the five people. And what that means, instead of you kind of doing a big batch of a hundred cold emails, you’re going to have more consistency.

[00:24:45] And even though it’s fluctuating slightly, I think it’s better to email two to five people every week, rather than do like a hundred, one quarter, for example, and then not email anyone for another three months. And then that’s when you get really. Big dips in your work. So what I would say is it doesn’t really matter in how much time, as long as you feel like it’s reasonable enough, that you can actually do what you need to do to get the results that you want.

[00:25:14] Thank you so much for submitting all your questions. If you would like me to answer your question, On a future podcast episode or on our YouTube channel, you can go and submit them at motionhatch. com forward slash questions. Now, I just wanted to give you a quick update into what’s going on a motion hatch, what we have coming up in the new year and in 2025.

[00:25:37] So I’m really, really excited that we are going to be launching a new community membership. So we’re initially only launching this to our alumni, so they will get the first opportunity to join our community membership. It will go into a beta launch, and then we will make sure it’s the best and most awesome membership that it can be for motion designers.

[00:26:02] We’re really excited because we are going to be including these mini business challenges that will actually help you to work on your business tasks and to actually get stuff done so that you can achieve the goals that you have for your motion design business. I’m really excited about this community membership and starting these mini business challenges next year.

[00:26:25] Because the issue that I see with a lot of motion designers isn’t actually knowing what to do to market their motion design business. The biggest issue that I see is really having the accountability to actually do it and actually finding the time to get things done. Like, In our question that was raised today, so I’m really excited about this membership and I would just say keep your eyes and ears peeled next year.

[00:26:52] Make sure that you are on our email list. I’ll leave the link in the show notes to sign up and subscribe for our email list because that is where you are going to hear first about this membership. I hope you have a very wonderful Christmas and a happy new year. I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings you and I would love to hear from you.

[00:27:15] If you have enjoyed this podcast episode, let me know. You can always reach out to us at hello at motionhatch. com. You can tag us on any social media platform at motionhatch. You’ll notice that we are trying some different types of content on our podcast and on our YouTube channel, so any feedback would be appreciated.

[00:27:33] be awesome. I’d love to know what you think of these podcast episodes and what you think of the videos on our channel. And this will help us to really develop some awesome content for you going into 2025. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate you. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I’ll speak to you next year.