As a professional video creator you’ll find yourself facing this question sooner or later: How to hire a YouTube video editor. (Hint: The faster your channel grows, the sooner it will be!)
As YouTubers expand their audience and scale up their content production, it becomes essential for them to outsource time-consuming routine tasks like graphic design, channel analytics, or video editing.
But how exactly do you hire a video editor for YouTube? What are the key benefits? And what mistakes should you avoid?
Here’s everything you need to know!
Contents
Why hire a YouTube video editor?
Before we go into how to hire a YouTube video editor, let’s take a closer look at the WHY.
It’s an open secret in the video creation community that professional YouTubers rarely do their own editing.
The number one reason for that is that it takes mind-numbing amounts of time, even for someone who has spent years honing their editing skills. Statistics show that professional video editors take between 30 and 60 minutes to edit one minute of finished video. For people just getting to grips with editing software, it takes far longer.
As a result, outsourcing video editing to a professional YouTube editor helps creators save significant amounts of time. Instead of worrying about cuts, transitions, and VFX, they can channel their creative energy into generating amazing content ideas, filming footage, interacting with their audience, or negotiating brand deals.
Overall, this means that creators who hire YouTube video editors can produce more content and at a consistently higher quality. Not only do they benefit from the professional skills editors have spent years perfecting. They can also rely on a solid creative partner with guaranteed turnaround times. This makes scheduling content creation easier, allows them to scale up their output, and grow faster.
It’s not all about productivity, though. Hiring a YouTube video editor also helps creators avoid burnout. According to a study by Tasty Edits, conducted among over 29,000 respondents, a whopping 79% of them have faced creator burnout in the past. One of their top strategies to avoid going through it in the future? Delegation! 63% of creators say that handing off routine tasks to editors, graphic designers, or channel managers helps them maintain their mental health and long-term balance.
What to look for in a YouTube video editor?
Once you’ve decided to hire a YouTube video editor, the next question is what to look for. What particular skills and qualities make great YouTube editors stand out?
To start with, make sure that the editors you’re looking at have experience editing YouTube content. This may sound like a no-brainer, but many video editors out there are specialized in different genres. Some may only have experience editing wedding videos. Others may focus on platforms such as TikTok or Instagram Reels, which leaves them ill-prepared to edit a long-form video essay, for example.
Similarly, you should verify that an editor is well-versed in your content niche. No matter if it’s coding tutorials, try-on hauls, cooking content, history deep-dives, or action videos – verify that they have edited the type of content you’re aiming to produce.
The best way of checking this is by looking at an editor’s portfolio. This will give you in-depth insights into the type of videos they have edited in the past, as well as their flexibility in terms of style. Some editors are chameleons and can adopt any creators’ individual brand voice. Others tend to be more consistent in their style and add their own twist to the content they edit. Depending on where you are in your journey as a creator, either could be a great match for you!
Another essential element to look out for are testimonials and reviews by past – and current! – clients. Before you hire a YouTube video editor, it’s critical to see what others have said about working with them. Are they responsive, punctual, and transparent? What are their turnaround times? How do they incorporate creator feedback into their edits? Reviews can help you answer all of these questions.
How to pick the best YouTube video editing service
That said, how do you actually pick the best service to hire a YouTube video editor?
As for video editors in general, it’s important to verify that a video editing company has experience in your niche. While most video editing services have a varied team of editors, some specialize in particular content types, such as travel or marketing content. Once again, checking a company’s example videos is a great way of getting a feeling for the types of videos they edit.
Next, you’ll need to take a closer look at the different pricing models YouTube video editing services offer.
Some companies work on a subscription basis – they usually style themselves “unlimited” video editing services. In return for a monthly fee, you get to submit as many video orders as you like. However, these services typically only work on one project at a time, no matter how long your queue of orders is. When you factor in turnaround times and revisions, this usually imposes a realistic limit of 4-5 videos per month. Especially for creators batch-producing content, this can be a serious issue.
Other video editing services work with project-based pricing. Here, you pay a set rate per video, though some services charge extra if your raw footage is particularly long. The advantage is that you can have several orders edited in parallel. For creators facing a tight deadline, this can be a life-saver! Plus, it makes budgeting easier in the long run. Instead of having to do mental math acrobatics and trying to calculate turnaround times, you know exactly how much you will pay for each video. Many video editing companies who work with this pricing model also offer batch discounts if you pay up front for multiple projects.
Finally, before you pick the best YouTube video editing service for your needs, you should check out testimonials, case studies, and reviews. Platforms like Trustpilot and Google Business are great places to start. Their star ratings and short reviews give you a solid initial impression of what it’s like to work with each video editing agency, and what creators’ overall satisfaction is.
To dive deeper, you can check out the longer testimonials and case studies video editing services typically feature on their websites. Here, you can hear from creators directly and get details on how their channel growth has changed since they’ve started working with editors.
Conclusion: This is how to hire a YouTube video editor
Overall, it absolutely pays off to work with a video editor. How to hire a YouTube video editor depends on your individual needs as a creator, though typically outsourcing to a video editing service is the best option.
Make sure to check out portfolios, reviews, and pricing models before you make your final choice, and verify that a video editor matches your unique style as a creator. With a reliable creative partner at your back, there is no limit to what you can achieve, or how far you can grow your channel!
