From time to time Philip Banks backs up his Brinks Truck of insight and unloads a great pile of it at the VO-BB. Today was one of those days. Since he has previously given me blanket permission to quote him, I will do so here. And thank you, Philip, for these very thought provoking comments, buried as they are on page 5 of this thread.
I’m a $20 per month member of Voices.com and a $195 member of Voice123. My membership of both sites has helped me spend part of my marketing budget; it remains to be seen how effective this exercise will prove.
For several months I’ve been looking for value in my marketing spend and this has proved increasingly difficult to find. In order to connect with business people I joined ecademy.com at a cost of $20 per month. Most of the members are entrepreneurs (Bilkopedia = between bankruptcies) who talk the talk but do not walk the walk.
Never before have I encountered so many bedroom based CEOs. Why do so many business people spend time networking online, going to local, regional and national networking meetings? Because they have nothing better to do, in other words NO BUSINESS. My final test for ecademy was to place an ad in the so-called Marketplace offering the service of a Voice Over. I didn’t expect a response but did expect to see another ad to appear offering the services of a Voice Over. No disrespect to the other Voice Over, it just confirmed that ecademy was not the place for me.
I was taught a long time ago to test everything I do in marketing and to establish the £ (or dollar) value. As law student I was also taught that the most important question to ask is always the second one because people seldom answer the first. if you combine these two disciplines you will have a powerful marketing philosopy.
We need to be sure why we are doing something, is it business or is it pleasure? Guess what. VO-BB is of no commercial value to me at all!“OUCH! How VERY dare you, Sir. I spurn you as I would spurn a rabid dog!”
Over 1500 posts, each has been a pleasure. I’m delighted to be in your company and I chose to spend the time I’ve spent thus far on here because I enjoy it.
Having placed the above on record there are sites like voices.com that work the voices but do not work for voices – Here’s what you do. Use the site to fit in with your agenda, never let things work the other way. Do you have a minimum session fee? Do you audition for jobs below your minimum session fee? When someone asks for a custom audition send them a note requesting that they listen to you demo’s and if they feel it’s appropriate get in touch for a custom piece of audio. You feel this may be heavy handed? What if you don’t get the job? There was only a 100-1 chance you were going to get it any way so you’re not losing much.Pay to play sites – You pay them to get you work, you do not pay them to allow people to collect free auditions.
Agents – The job of an agent is to represent your interests and to help promote your career. An email that reads “do this audition” should always be followed up with a request as to why the client wanted an audition from you in particular. You would be amazed how many agents work on the “mud sticks” principle, that is not in your interest. If you honestly believe it is the following may be of use – You would be amazed how many agents work on the “mud sticks” principle, that is not in your interest
When I moved up to Scotland a journey of over 600 miles I was contacted by an agent. Would I go to a TV studio to audition for character voices for a new puppet TV series ? Qualifier was very important as the audition day was my moving day – “Why does the director and producer want to see me?”
The agent lost her temper, she snapped that she was very busy and this was a good opportunity. I asked the same question again – Keep asking your question until you get the answer. It turned out that the production team were seeing anyone from any agency. I was going to allow 6 people on salaries plus expenses to waste my time, fuel and not pay me a penny. Was it going to be an investment? 100-1 chance or over? No, I doubt it. Did I upset the agent? Yes. If someone took from you (or tried to) around $500, stopped you from doing something more productive and all for no good reason would you mind upsetting them?The two great motivators in this business are vanity and fear, beat those and your career will go into orbit. Most people never manage to beat either, let alone both.