When it comes to user rights, not every freelancer know much about them leave alone charging clients for the same. It’s ok to use ‘creative user rights‘ as a marketing tool when you are a newbie in the Freelance marketplace. I mean, you can get people buying from you if you are giving them ‘rights‘ to use your work as a discount.
But with time, once you have established yourself, you can introduce a fee for rights to use your work. Again, not every person you serve know or understand anything about rights.
That is why you need to understand the two common rights that every freelance creative in the audio and visual business should know. This same rights apply to graphics design works as well.
Commercial Rights
When you grant your client commercial rights, you allow them to use the audio, video or design you created to market and promote their business, product, or service. They can use it anywhere they choose so long as it is not paid for.
As a client, when you purchase Commercial Rights; in addition to the basic rights, the Seller grants you the license to use the work they produced for any corporate, promotional and non-broadcast purposes.
Corporate, promotional and non-broadcast purposes means any business related use for the creation of, or to promote a for-product profit or service.
This is with the exception of paid marketing channels i.e Explainer videos posted to company websites, social networks or email campaigns, audiobooks, podcast intros, and strictly excludes any illegal, immoral or defamatory purpose.
This is the next level of rights transfer. This is for the Buyer who chooses to use the video or VO recording to promote their product/service for profit but with limited public reach.
Information source: Fiverr Forums
Full Broadcast Rights
According to wikipedia, Broadcasting rights are rights which a broadcasting platforms negotiates with a seller with a commercial concern.
In short, this is the use of ‘work’ produced to promote product or services in a paid platform. It doesn’t matter if the platform is online or offline so long as it is paid for, the buyer need broadcast rights.
By purchasing a Full Broadcast Rights (Buy-Out) with your order, the Seller grants you with a license for full broadcasting, which includes internet, radio, and TV “paid channels” including (by way of example): television commercials, radio commercials, internet radio, and music/video streaming platforms, and strictly excludes any illegal, immoral or defamatory purpose.
This is for companies who profit from the largest type of public reach.
Information source: Fiverr Forums
Why Learning about ‘copyright(s)’ is Important to All Creatives
With above information in mind, you will be well informed and you will be in a better position to educate and inform your clients on why they are paying for the rights ownership separately.
On the other hand, you can also use it to market yourself. e.g You can inform your client that you have commercial rights as a package. Then tell them that you will give them the rights for free on their first order and charge them for the proceeding orders.
This can be another way of growing your income. When you sell commercial rights on top of basic rights, you will be way much better financially.
How Much Should You Charge?
Well, it relies on how much you charge for the service you offer. For example, if you charge $50 per Minute of a video produced or $50 per project, it will be fine to charge the same amount for commercial rights and full broadcast rights.
Note: When charging, have each right(s) priced separately. i.e Commercial rights $50 and Full Broadcast rights $50. This way, if a clients wants both, he/she can purchase them and you will make more from it.
Also, it is important to note that the rights costs are fixed. This means that if you charge $50 per minute and someone orders a production that runs for 5 Mins, you will charge them the same amount of $50.
I have seen people charge 2x the amount they charged for the service they offer. For this to work, you must be very creative and convincing to a buyer. When introducing the rights to them, tell them how having the rights will give them peace of mind.
You can do further research on this topic to learn and understand more. Also seeing the kind of opportunities it presents.
And that’s it from me today.
Until next time, bye bye and take care.
If you need help to create and produce professional screen-cast video tutorials for your website, software or app let me know here.
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