This blog is a little different, as it is focused on working with a content creating team, or even working with a freelancer or someone you’ve hired to make your content who isn’t you. And this can also apply to staff if you have someone in house who creates your content for you.
As you start to look at collaborating with a content creator or a marketing agency, or if you’re working in these fields, you might see a big gap in the volume of revisions available when completing an edit or a graphic or other work.
First, what is a revision?
A revision is when work is submitted as a proposed final draft, and notes are given to revise it further. This could be something simple like “can we make the lettering hot pink” or something that seems simple like “can you cut out that one clip of the turtle” or something that is obviously a lot of work such as “can we redo the voiceover and recut the first 30 seconds to include these other 5 clips that weren’t included on the first edit.”
Now, in a perfect world, when a content request is given, it is given with full notes and direction of what is wanted. For example, if you know you don’t want to use the clip of the turtle, but the turtle is included in the footage being turned over to be edited, a note would be given to not use the turtle clip. Or if you have specific colors that are wanted to be used, that would be outlined at the outset. Or even if there is a specific message for the content such as “we want people to feel energized and inspired when they watch this.”
That said, sometimes even the best laid plans change once everything is laid out, and maybe something that was speculated as a good idea, doesn’t quite work when you’re looking at it in front of you.
This is why we always include at least one round of revisions. Because while we’re usually able to get into a working rhythm with clients after the first few graphics or video edits, there always is space for “that seemed like a good idea but now that I’m looking at it… maybe not.”
Why don’t we include unlimited revisions?
Let’s break it down!
Every approval submission includes us exporting the file, uploading it for review, the client getting notified that it is ready for review, stopping what they are doing and downloading it or otherwise access the file, opening it, watching the video (which usually average about 90 seconds) or looking over the graphic, re-watching parts if they want to review it again, making notes of the changes they want, and sending us the changes.
That process will usually take no less than 5 minutes (and that’s being generous, it could easily take 10-15 minutes, or more).
Do that 10 times and that’s about an hour on average (again, being generous).
A month of content could take you up to 40 hours in revision work (an actual full-time work week) doing nothing other than reviewing and approving content and sending notes. Doesn’t matter if the person doing the revisions is your staff member or an outside freelancer or hired company, that can add up to a full time job every few weeks.
And none of that time includes the downloading and reviewing the new file once the revisions are done.
On the creator side, each revision means locating and re-opening the project file, loading the project file, going in and executing the changes (and for video edits, sometimes moving even just 1 image is a huge change and requires reworking the whole edit to get it to stay flowing smoothly), re-exporting the file, re-uploading the file, and depending on the platform being used to share the file, sometimes re-notifying the client that the new file is ready to review. That’s usually not going to take less than at least 10 minutes even for the simplest change.
So why limit revisions?
Because the time you spend reviewing and giving feedback on content should not be equal to a full-time job every so many weeks.
We charge for additional revisions in an effort to discourage them, while also ensuring we’re at least covered for our time if additional changes are decidedly needed. To be clear, if there is something like a typo or a technical glitch, that’s on us and of course we fix that at no charge!
But if you know going into it that you have one revision, the goal is to start with clear requests of what is needed, build a working relationship where we know what you’re looking for and understand enough to be able to deliver that to you, and limit the tweaks and revisions needed. And yes, we’ve built relationships where we turnover 30+ videos a month to clients with 0 revisions, with maybe an occasional 1 revision here or there every few months.
That should be the goal, and you should be able to say “I need X, Y, and Z” and then get it without hours of endless back and forth, because that protects your time too!
Content creators that promise unlimited revisions, or clients who ask for unlimited revisions, often don’t realize the work involved with the back and forth even on the client end. It might seem beneficial to just be tweaking it forever, but it actually can burn a lot of time that could be used for literally anything else which is probably more productive.
It is truly in everyone’s best interest to limit revisions to as few as possible, and just work to streamline the process to support the best submissions the first time around!