How to price a faceless channel

On the Starter plan ViewMade charges $0.58 per finished Short on the monthly tier, measured from its live pricing page on 22 August 2026. That number is a floor you can check your own quotes against. This page walks through how to set a price for a faceless channel when a client asks for one.

The short answer

Price the output first. Find what one video actually costs you in tools and voiceover, add your review time as an hourly rate, add a margin, then attach a revision limit so the number holds. If you are selling the whole channel rather than individual videos, price it on projected output per month instead of per video, because the client is buying a schedule, not files.

The steps

1. Decide what you are selling: the channel, the output, or your time

A channel sale means the client pays for a publishing schedule and expects topics, uploads and consistency handled without asking them each week. An output sale means they pay per video and decide the topics themselves. A time sale means they pay hourly for edits, research or fixes on footage they already have. These three produce different invoices for identical work, so name which one you are doing before quoting anything.

The output of this step is a one-line statement of what the invoice covers.

2. Price the output from cost upward

List every recurring cost that touches one video: tool subscription divided by videos produced that month, voiceover if it is billed separately, stock or archive licensing, music licensing. Divide the monthly subscription by the realistic video count, not the maximum the plan allows. Then add your review pass as hours times your rate. Add a margin last, once the cost base is honest.

For reference, ViewMade's Starter plan works out to $0.58 per Short at 50 renders per month, measured 22 August 2026, which shows what a tool-only cost floor looks like before any of your own time is added.

The output of this step is a per-video cost figure with every component named.

3. Price your time separately from the machine's

A generation tool produces a finished draft in minutes; your review of that draft still takes real minutes. If you fold both into one blended rate, a faster tool silently cuts your income instead of cutting your workload. Track the actual minutes you spend reviewing, fixing captions and checking sources on three consecutive videos, convert that to an hourly equivalent, and bill it as a separate line or build it into the per-video rate explicitly.

The output of this step is a documented review-time figure per video.

4. Put a revision limit in the number

Unlimited revisions means the client can reopen the project indefinitely at zero additional cost, so the revision policy is part of the price whether you write it down or not. State a fixed number of revision rounds in the quote, define what counts as a round, and quote the rate for rounds beyond it. Two rounds is a common starting point; the exact number matters less than having it written before the first delivery.

The output of this step is a written revision clause attached to the quote.

5. Re-price when the volume changes, not when the client asks

Per-video pricing breaks at volume changes in both directions. Doubling the monthly output usually lowers your true cost per video because fixed subscriptions spread thinner, so a flat rate now overcharges. Halving it does the opposite. Set review points tied to output milestones, for example every time monthly volume crosses a defined threshold, and recompute the cost base from step 2 rather than negotiating from the old number.

The output of this step is a re-pricing trigger written into the agreement.

What this will not fix

This method gives you a defensible floor, not a market rate. We have no measurement of what faceless channels or individual Shorts sell for on the open market, and we will not invent an average to fill that gap. Client budgets vary too much for any single figure to be safe anyway. What the method does fix is the failure mode where a quote collapses because nobody accounted for review time or revisions. It does not tell you whether a specific client will pay the resulting number, and no page can.

Where to go next

If the cost base from step 2 came out higher than you expected, /guides/how-to-cut-production-cost-per-short covers reducing the per-video figure itself before you raise the client's price. For the current ViewMade plans and per-render rates referenced in step 2, see /pricing.

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Frequently asked questions

Should I charge per video or a flat monthly retainer?

Charge a retainer when the client wants a guaranteed publishing schedule, because they are buying consistency and you are carrying the risk of topic selection and upload cadence. Charge per video when they supply topics themselves and volume varies month to month. If volume is stable, the two converge; pick whichever makes the invoice simpler to explain.

How do I handle a client who wants unlimited revisions?

Quote a higher base price that assumes heavy revision load, or hold the lower price and cap revisions explicitly. The worst outcome is a low price with an unstated assumption, because the client treats it as unlimited and every extra round is unpaid work. Put the cap in writing before the first delivery, not after the third round.

Does cheaper tooling mean I should cut my price?

Not automatically. Lower tool cost raises your margin at the same price, which is the correct outcome unless you are losing deals specifically on price. Recompute the cost base when your stack changes so you know the new floor, then decide deliberately whether to keep the margin or compete on rate.

What if I have no past videos to estimate my review time from?

Run the estimate forward instead. Time yourself across the next three videos, note the minutes per video, and treat the first client quote as provisional with a stated review point after the third delivery. This is slower than guessing but produces a number you can defend, whereas a guess becomes a permanent anchor the moment you say it.