Seeking advice on how to scale my income

Seeking advice on how to scale my income.
Senior Motion Designer/Video Editor, 14 years exp, currently at an interesting crossroads

Hey everyone, I'd love some outside perspective from people who've been in similar situations. here's where I'm at.
I'm a senior 2D/3D motion designer, video editor and animator with 14 years of experience, mostly in the marketing agency world (social media content, ads, video production, ect..)

Right now I'm working at two marketing agencies at the same time. at the first one I do 2D motion design and video editing, pulling $2,500/month. I know there's room to push that number up,
just need to figure out the right angle.
at the second one I recently joined as a graphic designer. kind of jumped in to test the waters and honestly it's going better than expected, now I'm on full payroll at $2,000/month.

Here's where it gets interesting - Company B has already decided they want me doing motion design on top of the graphic design work in the near future.
so I'll need to put a number on the table for that. freelance I charge minimum $1,200 per motion project, but since this would be ongoing and in-house,
I'm leaning toward proposing a fixed monthly rate instead. just not sure what that number should be...

3D motion and animation is also part of my toolkit, neither company is really tapping into that yet, but both could benefit a lot from it.
so that's sitting there as extra leverage I haven't fully played yet.
Basically I know I have a good position here, I just want to be smart about it.
I love what I do, but I don't want to pile on so much that I burn out in three months. I want sustainable, well-structured income, not just more tasks.

So yeah, any advice is welcome. especially on what monthly number makes sense for adding motion duties at Company B, how to approach the raise conversation at company A,
and whether there's some smarter structure here I'm not seeing - retainers, hybrid arrangements, whatever. Open to anything.

tx in advance!

Zack177 said:

Seeking advice on how to scale my income.
Senior Motion Designer/Video Editor, 14 years exp, currently at an interesting crossroads

Hey everyone, I'd love some outside perspective from people who've been in similar situations. here's where I'm at.
I'm a senior 2D/3D motion designer, video editor and animator with 14 years of experience, mostly in the marketing agency world (social media content, ads, video production, ect..)

Right now I'm working at two marketing agencies at the same time. at the first one I do 2D motion design and video editing, pulling $2,500/month. I know there's room to push that number up,
just need to figure out the right angle.
at the second one I recently joined as a graphic designer. kind of jumped in to test the waters and honestly it's going better than expected, now I'm on full payroll at $2,000/month.

Here's where it gets interesting - Company B has already decided they want me doing motion design on top of the graphic design work in the near future.
so I'll need to put a number on the table for that. freelance I charge minimum $1,200 per motion project, but since this would be ongoing and in-house,
I'm leaning toward proposing a fixed monthly rate instead. just not sure what that number should be...

3D motion and animation is also part of my toolkit, neither company is really tapping into that yet, but both could benefit a lot from it.
so that's sitting there as extra leverage I haven't fully played yet.
Basically I know I have a good position here, I just want to be smart about it.
I love what I do, but I don't want to pile on so much that I burn out in three months. I want sustainable, well-structured income, not just more tasks.

So yeah, any advice is welcome. especially on what monthly number makes sense for adding motion duties at Company B, how to approach the raise conversation at company A,
and whether there's some smarter structure here I'm not seeing - retainers, hybrid arrangements, whatever. Open to anything.

tx in advance!

Click to expand...

Charge company b minimum 3000 monthly for motion plus graphic you have leverage use it at company a ask for 3500 dont burn out protect your time

Charge Company B an extra $1,000-$1,500/month for motion work with a clear scope. Ask Company A to increase to $3,000-$3,500/month based on your impact and added 3D value. Use retainers with defined deliverables, keep 3D as a premium add-on, and limit workload to avoid burnout

stondy said:

Charge Company B an extra $1,000-$1,500/month for motion work with a clear scope. Ask Company A to increase to $3,000-$3,500/month based on your impact and added 3D value. Use retainers with defined deliverables, keep 3D as a premium add-on, and limit workload to avoid burnout

Click to expand...

$1,000-$1,500 is honestly too low if we're talking consistent monthly deliverables for a marketing agency.
At $1,200 per single freelance project, a flat $1,500/month retainer would basically mean working for less than one project's worth.
$3,500 as a fixed monthly rate makes way more sense depending on the expected volume of work.

On the 3D, totally agree, keep it as a premium add-on