Video as a new agency revenue stream: the actual numbers
What one video costs, what it sells for, and what the month looks like at 5, 20 and 50 videos.
Agencies add services all the time and most of them quietly lose money, because the new thing needs a new hire. Video does not. The production cost of a 60-second animated explainer on AutoScribble is under £5 at Pro-plan rates. Everything above that is margin against your time. Here is the arithmetic laid out honestly, including the parts that cost you something.
Cost per video
100 credits is one finished minute. What that costs depends on your plan.
| Plan | Monthly | Credits | Cost per 30s | Cost per 60s | Cost per 120s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-off pack | £9 | 100 | £4.50 | £9.00 | £18.00 |
| Starter | £19 | 300 | £3.17 | £6.33 | £12.67 |
| Pro | £49 | 1,000 | £2.45 | £4.90 | £9.80 |
| Business | £99 | 2,500 | £1.98 | £3.96 | £7.92 |
| Studio | £299 | 10,000 | £1.50 | £2.99 | £5.98 |
Three months, three volumes
Assume a £350 sale price for a single 60-second explainer — deliberately conservative against studio quotes of £2,000 and up.
| Videos a month | Plan needed | Credit cost | Revenue at £350 | Gross margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Starter £19 | £19 | £1,750 | £1,731 |
| 20 | Pro £49 + top-up | £98 | £7,000 | £6,902 |
| 50 | Business £99 x2 | £198 | £17,500 | £17,302 |
The cost that is not on the invoice
Your time. Expect 30 to 60 minutes per video once you are practised: twenty minutes on the brief and script, a few minutes setting the brand, a watch-through, one revision. At 20 videos a month that is roughly two days of someone''s time for £7,000 of revenue. That ratio — not the credit cost — is what makes this worth doing.
The second revenue line: selling to cold leads
The same tooling lets you make a video for a company that has never heard of you and send it with a price on it. They watch a watermarked version, pay in one click, and the file unlocks. Payment goes to your own Stripe account; AutoScribble keeps 5% to cover card processing. A single-digit conversion rate on a list of a hundred still pays for itself many times over, because each attempt costs you under £5.
When this does not work
Be honest with yourself about two cases. If your clients need live-action footage of real people or places, this is the wrong tool. And if you sell on production hours rather than outcomes, a deliverable that takes forty minutes will cannibalise your own rate card — price it as an asset, flat fee, or it will feel like a pay cut.
Getting the first pound in
Your first 100 credits are free — one finished minute. Spend it on a real prospect rather than a test, and the experiment either pays for the year or tells you quickly that it will not.
Work out your own numbers
Free to write and rewrite. Credits are only used when you generate.
Common questions
- What margin should I expect?
- At a £350 sale price and a Pro-plan production cost of £4.90, the credit margin is over 98%. Your real margin is set by how long you spend on the script.
- Do unused credits expire?
- Credits bought in one-off packs never expire. Welcome credits never expire either.
- What if a video comes back shorter than I ordered?
- You are billed on the actual finished length and the difference is refunded to your balance.
- Is there a commission on work I do for my own clients?
- No. Commission only applies to a video bought directly by a cold lead through the payment page, and it is 5%.
- How many videos before this pays for itself?
- One. A single £350 sale covers several months of the Pro plan.
- Can I bill in dollars?
- Yes — UK accounts are billed in GBP, US accounts in USD, and you set your own prices to leads in either.