I haven't been active in the community; instead, I’ve focused primarily on editing. Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve secured $7,500 worth of deals, not one-offs, but retainers. The best advice I can give for achieving this is to build a personal brand. Film yourself and share your insights and your work. This generates inbound leads, and your outreach becomes much more effective when people check out your profile.

Thank you, Artem! That video was pretty tough but this experience is for sure one of the best

In January 2024, I made $3,930. That was my best month by far. But I hated every bit of it. I had 4 clients running at the same time. That was my max. And with every single one, I had zero certainty. I'd open the raw footage with no real plan, cut what felt right in the moment, throw some graphics on, and pray the client would accept the video. Some weeks it worked out okay. A lot of weeks it didn't. But drowning in revisions wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was this: The 10th video for the client wasn't much better & faster than the 1st. Every new video felt like starting from scratch. Then, one of my client's lead editor mentioned something that would change my career forever: "Yeah, usually before starting on the video, I plan it out first. Like label all the footage and add structure." (see pic 1) I didn't think much of it, but decided to give it a try. I'll be honest – at first, it wasn't a complete game changer. But I finally had something that worked, so I started building upon it... Every video started being a bit better than the last, not because I got smarter overnight, but because I wasn't starting from zero. I wasn't reinventing my process every Monday morning. I was sharpening an existing one. Videos that used to take a full week started taking five days, then three... All while getting better. Before this, I thought speed and quality were a trade-off. Turns out, that's only true when you don't have a system. A few months later, I got my first zero-revision video. That doubled my rate $1k → $2k per vid. And a few months later I hit my first $10k month. But the real win wasn't even the money. It's that I was building something long-term, something that actually compounded, client after client, video after video. I still use that exact workflow today for every video, 3 years later. And it's the first thing I help every editor who joins FTE set up (see pics 2 and 3) Because it's the difference between a $3,930 month that burns you out and a $10k month that doesn't.

Yessssir, my highest paid video ever. This dude has been my dream client for a long time, been watching him since I was a lazy gamer kid in 2020-2021. Jumped out of my chair when he semt the footage amd the script over to start the first video.

Thanks Mr. Artem for your services 🙏🏻 Honestly super greatful for this this is awesome