Starting a video side business from nothing
No camera, no animator, no studio. A first month you can actually follow.
You do not need a studio to sell video. You need the ability to write a clear sixty seconds and somewhere to send it. The production cost of your first ten videos is under £50, and your first hundred credits are free. This is the month laid out plainly, including the parts that are work.
Week one: set up and make two videos
Create an account and choose Agency when you sign up, so the client and lead tools are switched on. Then make two videos before you talk to anyone.
- One about your own service — it becomes your pitch.
- One for a company you genuinely want as a client.
- Set up payouts in Settings so you can take money the moment somebody says yes.
Week two: choose ten companies
Ten, not a hundred. Pick businesses whose website struggles to explain what they do, in an industry you understand well enough to write about. Write down, for each one, the single sentence their homepage should say and does not — that sentence is your script''s opening line.
Week three: send and follow up
Make and send one video a day. Each one costs you under £5 and about forty minutes. You will see who opens, who watches to the end and who comes back, and the follow-up writes itself from that.
| Week | Activity | Cost | Realistic outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Setup, two videos | £0 with welcome credits | A portfolio of two |
| 2 | Research ten prospects | £0 | Ten scripts drafted |
| 3 | Send ten videos | £49 Pro plan | Six opens, three replies |
| 4 | Follow up and close | £0 | One or two sales at £250-£450 |
Week four: turn a sale into a repeat
A first sale is worth far less than the conversation after it. Ask what else they explain badly, propose three videos, and price it monthly. One repeat client at £450 a month is a better outcome from month one than four one-off sales.
What to charge at the start
Do not open at £99. Cheap work attracts clients who argue and signals that the output is disposable. Start at £250 to £350 for a 60-second video, include one round of changes, and raise it once three people have said yes without hesitating.
What will actually go wrong
Two things, and neither is the software. You will write scripts that start with the company instead of the customer, and you will chase people who never opened the email. Fix the first by rewriting the opening ten seconds; fix the second by choosing better prospects rather than sending more.
What it costs to run
£49 a month on the Pro plan covers ten finished minutes — around ten 60-second videos. If you are selling more than that, you are earning enough for the next plan up to be irrelevant to the decision.
Make your first video
Free to write and rewrite. Credits are only used when you generate.
Common questions
- Do I need a company to start?
- No, but you need somewhere for the money to go — payouts run through Stripe, which you set up in your Agency settings.
- How much do I need to spend to begin?
- Nothing to make your first video: new accounts get 100 free credits, which is one finished minute.
- Do I need to be able to draw or edit?
- No. You write the words; the drawing, the timing and the narration are produced for you.
- How long does one video take me?
- Around forty minutes once you are practised, most of it on the script.
- Can I do this alongside a job?
- Yes — that is what most people do first. Ten videos a month is roughly one evening a week.
- When do I get paid?
- When a lead buys a video, the payment goes straight into your own Stripe account, minus a 5% platform fee covering card processing.