My second shooter starts Monday and I still haven't decided how she's paid

The part that jumped out at me is that you're keeping all the editing. At 50 minutes a shoot and 34 shoots you're already at 28 hours a month of editing before she adds any. If she brings 15 more, you're at 40 plus hours of just sitting at a screen, and that's the job you said you were trying to get out of. I'd sort out who edits before I sorted out how she's paid, because the pay number depends on it. If she ever takes editing over the flat fee has to go up and you'll be renegotiating in eight weeks.

I pay two part time people on the management side and the thing that actually caused me trouble wasn't the rate, it was the reshoot. First time a seller says the light was wrong or the agent wants the kitchen from the other side, who drives back out and does that trip get paid? On a flat fee she'll assume it's covered and you'll assume it isn't, and you find out on a Saturday. Write the reshoot rule into the same message as the number. Also solder's size band is right but I'd draw it on shooting time rather than square feet, because a 1,400 foot house with six outbuildings takes longer than a 3,000 foot townhouse.

Disagree with thicket a little. Keeping the editing for now is defensible because your edit is the thing clients recognize and handing it over in week one is how you lose a client without knowing why. But he's right that the math breaks. What I did when I added my second person was flat per shoot plus a separate editing rate she could opt into once she cleared a quality bar I wrote down, three sample sets I approved. Took her about four months to get there and I got 22 hours a month back.

On the number itself, $85 against a $310 invoice is 27 percent of revenue for maybe 55 percent of the field labor. That's fine while you edit. It stops being fine the moment she edits too, so decide the second number tonight as well even if it doesn't turn on yet.

And get the contractor question answered properly. The tests turn on how much you control her schedule and methods, and they vary by state, so that's a call with someone licensed in your state rather than a forum answer.