So, your business is finally in a spot where it’s ready to hire a full-time, salaried video editor. You hop online and see mid-level salaries ranging from $50k to $70k.
Seems pretty good. You can fit that into the marketing budget, right?
Hold on. The true cost of hiring a full-time video editor is way higher than the salary alone. In fact, it’s often closer to 2x the base pay once you factor in everything that comes with a W-2 employee.
There are a lot of hidden costs to adding a full-time video editor to your team and that’s exactly what we’re breaking down in this article.
Full-Time Video Editor Salary
Let’s assume a base salary of $60,000.
Now add the unavoidable extras: payroll taxes, retirement contributions, health insurance, and other benefits. While this varies from business to business, a good rule of thumb is to multiply the salary by 1.2x to 1.4x to get the real cost. This is the “true cost’ of a salary.
Using a conservative 1.3x multiplier, that brings your total salary-related costs to $78,000/year.
That’s before they’ve even touched a computer.
Video Editor Equipment Costs
A good video editor isn’t working on a $700 laptop. They need horsepower and lots of storage. Don't forget professional software, and licensed creative assets. Here’s a bare minimum setup for most editors:
- Computer Equipment – $3,500 (one-time, but expect upgrades every 3–4 years)
- Storage – $500/year
- Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription – $720/year
- Stock Footage + Music Subscriptions – $600/year
- Other Misc. Software/Plugins – $300/year
- Office Equipment (desk, monitor, etc.) – $500
Total annualized equipment/software cost: ~$5,620/year
Video Editor Management
Even the best editors need onboarding, feedback, and oversight. Unless you’re hiring someone highly experienced (and paying for it), you’ll be investing your own time or a manager’s time to get them fully aligned with your brand, your workflow, and your marketing strategy.
Hard to put a precise number on this, but a reasonable estimate is $10,000/year in lost productivity from you or your team.
Total Costs
When you factor in salary, benefits, equipment/software, and management time, your “$60k” video editor actually looks more $93k or more.
- Base Salary - $60,000
- Payroll Taxes & Benefits - $18,000
- Equipment & Software - $5,620
- Management Time- $10,000
- Annual Cost - $93,620 per video editor.
Is Your Business Ready?
Maybe your business is ready to make the jump to full-time. But even then, there’s still a gamble:
- Skill gap risk: A lot of editors can make flashy edits, but struggle when it comes to creating content that actually markets and sells.
- Communication risk: Video editing is as much about understanding the strategy as it is about cutting clips — and not every editor has that skillset.
A Proven Alternative
If you want a proven, ready-to-go solution without the risk (and without the $90k+/year price tag), our EDIT-ONLY subscription video editing plan is built specifically for marketing teams.
We give you an easy-to-use client portal where you upload your video assets, provide a bit of direction, and we deliver fully edited, plug-and-play videos in as little as 48 hours.
Businesses like Tangent Golf, Bulb Digital, and HireEZ use our service to save over 50% on their video editing costs without sacrificing quality or turnaround time. Read the case study.
Pricing starts at $1,950/month. That’s only $23,400/year for a full team of experienced marketing-focused editors, all without the hiring headache.
