What 7,056 video editing orders placed with Mark Studios from January 2023 to September 2026 show about delivery windows, what people outsource, how much footage they send, how often they come back and whether there is a busy season, set beside figures from Fiverr and Upwork filings, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew, Nielsen, IAB and marketer surveys, each linked to the organization that produced it.
The median standalone order was due 6 days after it was placed, and 73.1% were due within a week. (Mark Studios order data)See details
Thumbnails were due fastest, with a median of 3 days; long-form edits had a median of 6 days. (Mark Studios order data)See details
55.1% of order lines were long-form or standard video edits, the largest category by far. (Mark Studios order data)See details
77.4% of order lines with a recorded length involved 10 minutes of raw footage or less. (Mark Studios order data)See details
24.7% of clients came back on a later date, and they placed 59.8% of all orders. (Mark Studios order data)See details
63% of repeat clients placed their second order within 30 days of the first. (Mark Studios order data)See details
There was no reliable busy season: monthly orders ranged from 77% to 137% of trend, and no month beat the trend every year. (Mark Studios order data)See details
59% of video marketers in Wyzowl's 2026 survey made video in house; 10% used only outside vendors and 32% a mix. (Wyzowl)See details
Self-employed workers held 35.5% of U.S. film and video editor jobs in 2025. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)See details
Fiverr's annual active buyers fell to 2,676 thousand at June 30, 2026, from 3,425 thousand a year earlier. (Fiverr International Ltd.)See details
Original analysis by Mark Studios. The first seven sections below come from our own order records: 7,646 order lines, grouped into 7,056 orders from 3,717 clients, placed between January 1, 2023 and September 22, 2026. They describe one agency's orders, most of them bought through a freelance marketplace, not the whole market. The method, the classification rule and the exclusions are in How we analyzed the orders, and every charted number is in the benchmarks CSV. The later sections set these numbers beside figures from other publishers, each linked to its source.
How long does an outsourced video edit take?
The median completed standalone order at Mark Studios was due 6 days after it was placed, and 73.1% were due within a week. Nine in ten were due within 15 days. These are scheduled delivery windows: the days between the order date and the delivery date recorded on the order, which is the due date the client sees. They are not stopwatch measurements of editing time, and a revision can move the recorded date later.
How many days after ordering each edit was dueCompleted standalone orders placed Jan 2023 to Sep 2026, n = 6,358. Median: 6 days.Show the numbers
Due within
Share of orders
Orders
0-1 days
6.8%
435
2-3 days
14.7%
933
4-7 days
51.6%
3,281
8-14 days
16.7%
1,061
15-30 days
7.1%
450
Over 30 days
3.1%
198
What is being made moves the window more than anything else. A thumbnail is a single design; a long-form edit involves cutting, sound and graphics.
What do people outsource: long-form edits, shorts or thumbnails?
Long-form edits dominate. 55.1% of order lines were long-form or standard video edits, 17.7% were thumbnails, 16.1% were short-form or social video edits, 4% were intros, outros or logo animations, and 7% were other work such as consultations, channel strategy, design, voiceover or SEO.
Thumbnails have grown as a share of the work, from 15% of lines in 2023 to 22% in 2025.
This is one agency's mix, shaped by the services it lists and the clients who find it. It is not a market share. Short-form is widespread in marketing: HubSpot says over 60% of companies use short-form video in their content strategy (HubSpot). Short clips bought together with a long-form edit are counted under that edit's line (see the add-ons below), so our records undercount short-form work.
Which add-ons ride along with a long-form edit?
Of the long-form video lines, 13.8% also named a thumbnail, 8.6% named footage or stock-footage research, 2.8% named a short-form cut or vertical version, and 2.2% named express delivery of 24, 48 or 72 hours. These count only add-ons written on the same line as the edit; an add-on bought as its own line is not counted, so each figure is a floor.
How much raw footage goes into an outsourced edit?
Usually a few minutes. Across Mark Studios order lines placed from January 2023 to September 2026, the median line recorded 5 minutes of raw footage, and 77.4% of lines with a recorded length involved 10 minutes of footage or less. Only 3.6% involved more than 30 minutes, so hour-long shoots are the exception, not the typical outsourced edit.
Raw footage recorded per order lineOrder lines with a recorded footage length, n = 5,239 (68.5% of lines). Median: 5 minutes.Show the numbers
Raw footage
Share of lines
Lines
5 min or less
56.8%
2,974
6-10 min
20.6%
1,081
11-20 min
14.4%
752
21-30 min
4.7%
244
31-60 min
2.9%
150
Over 60 min
0.7%
38
Read this with its caveat. Only 68.5% of order lines record a footage length at all, and 5 minutes is the smallest footage allowance on Mark Studios' marketplace listings, so a line that reads 5 minutes can mean 5 minutes or less. The median of the footage clients actually supplied may be lower than 5 minutes.
How often do video editing clients come back?
About one in four. Of the 3,717 clients who ordered from Mark Studios between January 2023 and September 2026, 24.7% ordered on two or more separate dates, and those repeat clients placed 59.8% of all orders. A minority of clients generates most of the work.
Repeat clients are a quarter of clients and most of the orders3,717 clients, Jan 2023 to Sep 2026.
Repeat clients (ordered on 2+ dates)
One-time clients
Show the numbers
Orders placed
Share of clients
Clients
1 order
74.5%
2,769
2 orders
13%
483
3-5 orders
8.4%
314
6-10 orders
2.7%
99
11+ orders
1.4%
52
Clients who come back tend to do it quickly. The median repeat client placed a second order 19 days after the first; 63% did so within 30 days and 84% within 90 days. Across all of their orders, the median gap between one order date and the next was 15 days, about two weeks.
Volume is concentrated. 74.5% of clients placed exactly one order and 1.4% placed 11 or more. The 10% of clients who ordered most placed 43.1% of all orders. Most returning clients came back within a month of their first order; our first-30-days onboarding plan covers that stretch.
Is there a busy season for video editing?
Not a reliable one. After removing the multi-year trend, monthly orders ranged from 77% to 137% of trend between July 2023 and February 2026, but no calendar month ran above trend in every year, and the biggest spike, in August 2024, was followed by a below-trend August in 2025. November came closest to a pattern: it averaged 90% of trend and sat below trend in each of the three years observed.
Each month's orders against the underlying trend100 = the month's orders equal its centred 12-month moving average. Months from Jul 2023 to Feb 2026; two or three observations per month.
Average across years
Lowest to highest year
Show the numbers
Month
Average
Lowest
Highest
By year
Jan
102
95
106
2024: 106, 2025: 95, 2026: 106
Feb
100
79
116
2024: 104, 2025: 79, 2026: 116
Mar
103
91
115
2024: 91, 2025: 115
Apr
110
94
125
2024: 94, 2025: 125
May
100
93
106
2024: 106, 2025: 93
Jun
98
96
99
2024: 96, 2025: 99
Jul
101
92
112
2023: 92, 2024: 98, 2025: 112
Aug
107
90
137
2023: 94, 2024: 137, 2025: 90
Sep
94
82
104
2023: 95, 2024: 82, 2025: 104
Oct
102
94
111
2023: 102, 2024: 111, 2025: 94
Nov
90
77
98
2023: 95, 2024: 98, 2025: 77
Dec
90
82
104
2023: 104, 2024: 83, 2025: 82
A plain month-by-month count mixes the season with longer-term changes in total volume. Measured against the trend, the calendar explains little of the variation.
Where do buyers hire video editors?
Marketplaces carry much of this work. At Mark Studios, 16.3% of completed Fiverr orders included a tip, and 1.27% of order lines were refunded or cancelled.
The two largest freelance marketplaces have been losing buyers. Fiverr reported 3,135 thousand annual active buyers at the end of 2025, down from 3,630 thousand a year earlier, and 2,676 thousand at June 30, 2026, down from 3,425 thousand a year before (Fiverr International Ltd., SEC filing). Upwork reported 785 thousand active clients at the end of 2025, down 6% (Upwork Inc., Form 10-K). Neither company breaks out video editing.
The two largest freelance marketplaces report their size in their SEC filings. Neither reports video editing separately, and each measures its own flows differently:
Much of the editing workforce sits outside payroll data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 25,610 film and video editor jobs in May 2025, not counting the self-employed, with a median annual wage of $75,420 (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics). Its Employment Projections show self-employed workers held 35.5% of film and video editor jobs in 2025 (BLS). Across all occupations, Upwork's research arm estimated that 64 million Americans did freelance work in 2023 (Upwork Research Institute, Freelance Forward 2023). We compare the three ways of hiring in agency vs freelancer vs in-house editor.
How many businesses outsource video production?
Few outsource all of it; a large minority outsource some. In Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 59% of video marketers made their video in house, 10% used only outside vendors and 32% used a mix of both (Wyzowl). Three surveys asked three different questions, so their answers should be read side by side, not averaged:
900+ professionals, B2B-leaning; field dates not published
Most make video in house; around a quarter also outsource to freelancers or agencies
In-house capacity is growing too. Wistia says the share of companies with in-house video teams rose from 36% to 54% in two years (Wistia). Asked about all marketing, not only video, 19% of B2B marketers named agencies or outsourcing among their top three areas for more investment in 2026 (Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs). Wyzowl sells video production and Wistia sells video software, so both have an interest in the demand they measure.
How much video do businesses make?
Most make some, and many make it every month. 91% of businesses in Wyzowl's 2026 survey used video as a marketing tool, and 69% of video marketers had made social media videos, the most common use (Wyzowl). 41% of marketers had paid for video ads in the past year, up from 36% (Wyzowl). In Wistia's 2026 survey, 76% of companies made at least one video a month, and almost 40% spent under $5,000 producing video in 2025 (Wistia).
Budgets are moving toward video. 61% of B2B marketers expected their organization to increase investment in video in 2025, the top content investment area in the Content Marketing Institute's survey (CMI), and 48.6% of marketers put short-form video in their top three formats for return on investment (HubSpot). On the advertising side, U.S. digital video advertising revenue grew 25.4% to $78 billion in 2025 (IAB and PwC), and IAB projects U.S. digital video ad spending to pass $80B in 2026 (IAB). The first figure is revenue reported by ad sellers and the second is a buyer-side projection, so the two are not the same measure.
How big is the creator economy that buys editing?
It depends on what is counted. Goldman Sachs Research forecast in April 2023 that the creator economy's total addressable market could roughly double to $480 billion by 2027, from $250 billion at the time (Goldman Sachs). IAB, counting only the money U.S. brands put into creators, projected $37 billion of creator ad spend in 2025 (IAB), up from $29.5 billion in 2024 (IAB).
The platforms report what they pay out. YouTube says it paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the four years to January 2026 (YouTube) and had over 3 million creators in its Partner Program in August 2026 (YouTube). Alphabet reported YouTube ads revenue of $40,367 million for 2025 (Alphabet, Form 10-K). Meta says Facebook paid creators nearly $3 billion in 2025 (Meta), and Patreon says fans have sent $10 billion to creators since 2013 (Patreon). A report YouTube commissioned from Oxford Economics puts the U.S. GDP contribution of YouTube's creative ecosystem at over $60 billion in 2025 and the jobs it supports at more than 540,000 full-time equivalents, and names hiring editors among the ways growing channels become employers (YouTube U.S. Impact Report).
Few creators earn a living from it. Goldman Sachs says about 4% of creators are professionals earning more than $100,000 a year (Goldman Sachs). In Adobe's 2022 survey, six in 10 creators had full-time jobs (Adobe), and in Linktree's 2022 report 12% of full-time creators made more than $50,000 a year (Linktree).
Where sources disagree: how many creators there are. Goldman Sachs estimated 50 million creators worldwide in 2023 (Goldman Sachs). Adobe's 2022 study counted 303 million (Adobe), using a broad definition, anyone monetizing content, goods or services online, extrapolated from a survey in nine markets. The two numbers measure different things; neither is wrong, and they should not be averaged.
Where do audiences watch the videos being edited?
YouTube reaches the most people, and more of its viewing now happens on television screens. 84% of U.S. adults say they use YouTube and 33% visit it several times a day, according to Pew Research Center (Pew, Pew). 37% use TikTok and 24% use it daily (Pew, Pew). Among U.S. teens aged 13 to 17, roughly three-quarters use YouTube every day and 61% go on TikTok daily (Pew).
YouTube was a record 14.2% of all U.S. TV viewing in July 2026 (Nielsen, The Gauge). Alphabet says U.S. viewers watch over 200 million hours of YouTube a day on living-room screens (Alphabet), and YouTube says viewers worldwide watch over one billion hours a day on TVs (YouTube). In the UK, 46% of in-home YouTube viewing was on a TV set in 2025, up from 27% in 2022 (Ofcom). Alphabet reported YouTube advertising revenue of $11,055 million in the second quarter of 2026 (Alphabet).
Short-form runs at enormous scale. YouTube says Shorts average 200 billion daily views, counting every start or replay since March 2025 (YouTube). Meta says Instagram reached 2 billion daily active users (Meta), and that Reels made up 50% of time spent on Instagram in its last stated figure, from April 2024 (Meta). TikTok says more than 200 million Americans use it, without a time window (TikTok).
Which outsourcing and creator numbers need context?
"About a third of marketers outsource their video." Figures near one third come from Wyzowl's "a mix of both" answer: 59% of video marketers work in house, 32% mix in-house and outside help, and 10% use only outside vendors. See the survey comparison.
"The creator economy is worth $250 billion." That is Goldman Sachs Research's April 2023 estimate of the total addressable market, the starting point for its $480 billion forecast for 2027, not measured spending. See the creator economy figures.
"50 million creators" and "303 million creators." Both circulate, and both are real estimates. Goldman Sachs counted 50 million in 2023 and Adobe 303 million in 2022 because they define a creator differently. See where the sources disagree.
Turnaround quoted in hours. Express delivery in 24 to 72 hours is an option, not the norm, in our records: 73.1% of standalone orders were due within 7 days, the median was 6 days, and fewer than a quarter were due within three days. See the delivery windows.
How we analyzed the orders
Source. Mark Studios keeps one order sheet: a row for every deliverable, with the order date, the delivery date, the status, the raw-footage length, a description of what was bought, the payment channel and the price. We analyzed two read-only exports of it, pulled on September 23, 2026: the current tab (orders from late December 2023) and the earlier 2023 tab. Nothing was edited in the sheet.
Window and exclusions. Orders placed from January 1, 2023 to September 22, 2026. We excluded 98 lines marked refunded, partially refunded or cancelled, lines that only record a tip, 13 lines with no order date and 3 lines from 2022. Orders before 2023 are not in these exports.
Units. An order line is one row: one deliverable, or one batch written as a single line. A 16-video package appears as 16 lines. An order is the set of lines that share a marketplace order number, or, for direct orders, the same sheet ID and client. A client is a marketplace username, or the client name for direct orders; a client who bought both ways counts twice.
Classification. Each line is assigned to the category of the first deliverable its description names. The keyword that appears earliest in the text wins, so a title after the deliverable ("1 thumbnail - My Podcast Video") does not change the category:
Category
Keywords (case-insensitive)
Short-form or social video
social media video, TikTok, reel, short, vertical, IG, Instagram, clip, 60-sec
anything else (consultations, strategy documents, banners, logos, voiceover, SEO); lines that start with "video review" also go here
A line that just says "1 video" counts as long-form or standard. Podcast edits are not a separate category: fewer than ten descriptions mention a podcast, because podcast episodes are usually bought as ordinary video edits.
Delivery windows. Calendar days from the order date to the delivery date recorded on the line, for completed lines. The delivery date is the client-facing due date; it is updated when a revision deadline is set, so it runs later than the first cut. Standalone orders have a single line that is not part of a numbered package, milestone or subscription. We dropped 20 lines whose delivery date was before the order date and 16 whose window exceeded a year, as entry errors.
Raw footage. The footage length written on the line, converted to minutes. Blank, "tbd" and ambiguous entries were left out.
Repeat clients. A client with orders on two or more different dates. Clients whose first order was at least 180 days before the export had the same repeat share (24.6%) as all clients, so recent first-time buyers do not distort the figure. Clients who first ordered before 2023 look new in 2023.
Seasonality. Each full month's orders divided by the centred 12-month moving average around it (a 2×12 average), times 100. That removes the multi-year change in volume, which a plain calendar comparison would mistake for a seasonal dip. It needs six months on each side, so it covers July 2023 to February 2026.
Privacy. We publish aggregates only: no client names, usernames, order numbers, editor names or per-client values, and no revenue totals or prices. No published cell is built from fewer than ten orders. The benchmarks CSV holds every charted number; the analysis scripts reproduce them from the sheet exports, and we rerun them for each quarterly update.
How we built this page
This page holds 95 figures: 36 from Mark Studios' own order records, described in How we analyzed the orders, and 59 from 18 other organizations. For the outside figures we looked for the organization that actually produced each number. Every figure sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it.
On September 23, 2026, every third-party figure was re-fetched from its source on a cleared cache and matched against the recorded wording: 58 of the 59 sourced rows re-verified automatically, and the last, an Internet Archive copy of Upwork's Freelance Forward 2023 report that timed out, was re-opened and checked by hand. Fiverr's and Upwork's figures come from their annual reports on SEC EDGAR, and BLS wage and employment figures from the BLS public data API by series. Pages that block automated requests, including Wyzowl, Ofcom and Upwork's research pages, were read from dated Internet Archive captures of the publisher's own pages. We left out HubSpot's full State of Marketing report and Wistia's exact outsourcing share, which sit behind sign-up forms; IAB chart values that do not extract cleanly from the PDF; and every market-size estimate from a market-research reseller.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
The order figures are Mark Studios' first-party research. They are aggregates computed from our own order sheet, with no client names, usernames, order numbers, prices or revenue, and no cell built from fewer than ten orders. Each has a row in the evidence table, marked first_party, with its definition and sample size.
Limitations
The order benchmarks describe one agency. They come from Mark Studios' own records, most of them placed through Fiverr. The mix of work reflects the services Mark Studios lists and the clients who find it. Treat the figures as one well-documented sample, not the market.
Delivery windows are due dates, not editing time. They run from the order date to the client-facing delivery date on record, which moves later when a revision deadline is set. They do not measure how long an editor worked.
Raw-footage lengths are what the order records, not a measurement of the files. Only 68.5% of lines have one, and entries cluster at 5 minutes, the smallest allowance on the marketplace listings.
Categories come from free-text descriptions. The rule is published above and applied mechanically. A line that says only "1 video" counts as long-form, and an add-on bought on its own line is not linked to the edit it belongs to.
Clients are identified by marketplace username. A client who bought on a marketplace and directly counts twice, and clients who first ordered before 2023 look new in 2023, so the repeat figures are conservative.
Order counts are not revenue. We publish no prices or revenue totals, and what an order contains changed over the period.
Most outsourcing surveys are run by vendors. Wyzowl sells video production and Wistia and HubSpot sell software to the people they survey. Wyzowl's 2026 sample is 266 respondents, and none of the three asks the same question.
Platform and marketplace figures are self-reported. YouTube, Meta, TikTok and Patreon state their own milestones; Fiverr and Upwork report their own operating metrics in SEC filings but define buyers, clients and take rates differently and do not break out video editing.
Creator-economy sizes are estimates and forecasts. Goldman Sachs's figures are a forecast of addressable market, IAB's are projections of brand ad spend, and counts of creators depend on the definition.
How to cite this page
For an order benchmark (the figures whose IDs start with ORD), cite Mark Studios and link to this page. For any other figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/video-editing-outsourcing-benchmarks#ORD-010. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Video Editing Outsourcing Benchmarks." Last verified Sep 23, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/video-editing-outsourcing-benchmarks
The order benchmarks, the benchmarks CSV and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We rerun the order analysis and re-verify every outside figure quarterly, and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is December 2026. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Sep 23, 2026: First published with 36 order benchmarks from Mark Studios' records (orders placed January 1, 2023 to September 22, 2026) and 59 figures from 18 other organizations, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to outsource a video edit?
In Mark Studios' order records, the median completed standalone order placed from January 2023 to September 2026 was due 6 days after it was placed, and 73.1% were due within 7 days. Thumbnails had a median of 3 days and long-form edits 6 days. These are scheduled due dates, not measured editing hours; rush options, revisions and bundled deliverables all move them.
What share of businesses outsource video production?
It depends on the question asked. In Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 59% of video marketers made video in house, 10% used only outside vendors and 32% mixed both. In the Content Marketing Institute's 2023 video survey, 21% of marketers mainly outsourced video production. Wistia's 2026 report says around a quarter of companies also outsource video creation. All three are self-selected samples.
How many video editing clients become repeat clients?
In Mark Studios' order records from January 2023 to September 2026, 24.7% of 3,717 clients ordered on two or more separate dates, and those repeat clients placed 59.8% of all orders. 63% of them placed their second order within 30 days of the first, while 74.5% of all clients placed exactly one order.
Is there a best time of year to hire a video editor?
Mark Studios' order records show no reliable season. After removing the multi-year trend, monthly orders ranged from 77% to 137% of trend between July 2023 and February 2026, but no calendar month ran above trend in every year. November came closest to a pattern, averaging 90% of trend. Plan around your own publishing calendar rather than a quiet month.
How much do video editors earn in the U.S.?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median annual wage for film and video editors at $75,420 in May 2025, across 25,610 jobs. That survey covers employees only. BLS Employment Projections show self-employed workers held 35.5% of film and video editor jobs in 2025, so a large share of editing work sits outside payroll data.
How big is the creator economy?
Estimates depend on what is counted. Goldman Sachs Research forecast in April 2023 that the creator economy's total addressable market could reach $480 billion by 2027. IAB projected U.S. creator economy ad spend of $37 billion in 2025. Counts of creators differ even more: Goldman Sachs estimated 50 million in 2023, while Adobe's broader 2022 definition produced 303 million.
How often is this page updated?
Every quarter. We rerun the order analysis on a fresh export of the order sheet with the same scripts and re-check every third-party figure against its original source, and sooner when Fiverr, Upwork or a survey publishes a new edition. The Last verified date changes only after that check, and each change is recorded in the change log.