People I stand corrected. Voice123 don’t just want to take advantage of you in New York. They want to take advantage of you in Colombia as well as your home town (if you qualify).

I’ll go through my post and update it with this new and even more interesting information.

-You will have to relocate to New York so you can work on this project.

-So the guy slaves for a year for no money.. relocates to New York to use your resources….

-but we aren’t moving to frikkin New York and slaving for 8 hours a day for a year for nothing.

-Come to think of it… how much does it take to live for a year without having a proper job or an income… in New York.

-Honestly… if I was an entrepreneur who had enough money to live in New York for a year and work for v123 for free…

Please correct your post. You’ve convinced people that moving to NY is a requirement–they are re posting this false information you started spreading–but that is not in fact what the original post says in fact.

Anyway, back to the issue of competition and (im)partiality. When I sent my entry to Stephanie, I told her that the incentive was nice, but that I would have written this story anyway because it was a reflection of my (subjective) experience. To put it bluntly, I didn’t do it for the money, but since it happened to come my way, I am going to enjoy my award to the fullest. It also came at a perfect moment in time, because I was about to launch my new company and website.

The bigger issue of a blogger being linked to certain companies and how this might possibly color his or her opinion, is an interesting one. Your story illustrates that the extent to which it might affect an author, is ultimately based on past experience and personal integrity. Fortunately, all of us can control our integrity. What we can’t control is the way others perceive us. We can try to influence that, but -as I always tell my 7-year old daughter- “different people do different things for different reasons”. To refer to one of my previous posts: some will see the number nine and others will insist that it’s a six. It’s all a matter of perspective.

I wish you and your family happy travels. So far, you’ve been a truly amazing tour guide in the voice over world. What I particularly appreciate is the fact that you don’t hesitate to go off the beaten track and show us things we’ve never seen before. May you enjoy some well-deserved rest and relaxation, and come back refreshed and ready to continuously surprise us!

So their system is relatively effective. There is room for improvement… and I see them completely dominating the industry with a few tweaks here and there. But what they have been consistent in since I joined is dilly dallying… in procrastinating… thankfully they are charming about it and have a sweet tongue… unlike v123… but still that doesnt negate the fact that they could do so much more for their clients (the voice over professional) and they don’t.

With all that I’ve said so far lets recap:
1. I’ve been a member with them a little longer than you (so far its been 9 months since last November) in that time I’ve noticed a few issues and mentioned them in my blog. My first contact with the owners of voices.com came through stephanie when she asked me to remove certain sensitive info from my blog that pretained to a program of theirs. I complied… Then after running a few posts about them and contacting them about comments … they answered once… then stopped answering my questions all together. My comments come out of knowledge as opposed to someone on the outside looking in. I am a voice over artist who sees room for improvement and I find that my suggestions are not heeded so I bring this to the attention of my peers through my blog.
2. Your winning the competition is a credit to your writing talent. Your writing talent is not related to your voice over talent… except that it is part of your arsenal of talents. The fact that you won this competition does not put you squarely in their camp… but for someone as critical as myself if I where to be in your position it might seem to others a whole different issue. That means that you have a little more freedom to act than I do. I chose this for myself. I would love to participate in competitions and get my name plastered all over the interweb’s press… but it would seem like I was being bought… and I cannot afford to do that.
3. Paul you know me… if I wanted to tell you that you are a sell out… I’ll just call you a sell out… I don’t beat around the bush or insinuate. I don’t think you sold out… I think you saw an opportunity to make some money, to get some publicity and you took it and it paid off. I’m happy for you… I wish they had given you more money and that is part of the issue that I have with them… Voices.com are cheap… they don’t pay well for competitions.

thats it for now… I gotta go start packing… my vacation starts day after tomorrow… going to Jordan for a couple of weeks inshallah (God Willing)

As a former journalist who has worked for numerous international news outlets, the issue of objectivity is very dear to me. Can one be on an organizations payroll and still be objective about that organization? Can criticism and feedback only come from an outside source in order to be trustworthy and legitimate? Can we assume that comments from an insider are automatically biased? Should we automatically discredit and disregard any remarks coming from people who have been paid by that organization?

First off, I firmly believe that complete objectivity is a myth. Everything is perception and perception is everything (keep that in mind for the confirmation hearings of Sotomayor!). Secondly, just because someone has received payment from an organization, doesn’t mean that their opinion has been bought. Third, I believe that there’s a place for valid criticism coming from an informed insider or a whistle blower. People with a vested interest in a business and a good knowledge of that business, can have leverage to initiate change from the inside.

Let’s make it a bit more personal and talk about my voices.com prize. Just because I just won a gift certificate, does not mean that “I will be squarely in their camp and end up never criticizing their actions”. My opinion and integrity is not for sale and it never will be. At the end of the day, I am an independent contractor, with the emphasis on independent. And should I have any future bones to pick, I will not hesitate to pick them as I see them.

Back to you!

The fact that they didn’t mention Arabic is merely insulting. although I’m pretty sure there are more people who speak Chinese than Arabic… there are still more who speak Arabic than German or dutch.

And who’d work eight hours a day for nothing… hey, wait a minute – I pretty much do that now audtioning for their jobs!!!

I see what voices.com is doing and I know why they are doing it and I see how it is targeted to appease its customers as well as cut down on costs. We’re so proud of our slogan… one of our VO artists came up with it. The problem with that is that in the world of marketing and advertising its not a put your hand in the hat and pull out the best sounding slogan… its all about rationale… why am I saying what I am saying… for whom is this targeted and how original is it in comparison to the competition.

As it stands voices.com is heads above voice123 … but that is only because they practice canadian politeness and try to project professional sweetness. They listen to certain things and ignore other suggestions regardless of how often these issues are raised.

I said this before and I’ll say it again in case people think I have something against casting websites. I am here to protect the rights of the voice over artist.. who I see as the main bread and butter for these people and whom I see them mistreating on a regular basis. Voices.com might mistreat you but then sugar coat it and apologize later… Voice123 will mistreat you and then insult you… kick you and quite possibly spit on you. I am not talking literally here of course… I am just saying that their attitudes differ but ultimately what matters to me is that the mistreatment occurs… we are taken for granted and preferential treatment is always given to the casting agents before us.

I do not join these competitions held by voices.com or voice123 for a specific reason… and that is how reliable a source of news and reporting would I be if I involved myself in these competitions and possibly won. How would that seem… would it seem like these sites let me won to pay me off and shut me up? or would it seem like once I win I will be squarely in their camp and end up never criticizing their actions. Without bragging or vanity it is pretty obvious that I can write… in my day job I get paid to write television commercial scripts, radio scripts, if you’ve listend to my english voice over demo I wrote the script for the fast paced NGV script. So yes I can participate… and then lose all credibility to my readers.

So I’ll stand on the sidelines and let you and others who are also able to write win these competitions by these casting sites. I actually would love it if more casting sites started popping up. I like competition.. competition is good for us the voice over artist because it means that the casting sites might eventually start catering to us to keep us interested in them instead of sucking up to the casting agents and advertising companies.

Anyway… its late and I gotta go to sleep. Oh and regarding the testimonials… When I talk about competitions by voices.com I speak of the things related to their advertising… like the slogan competition… not like the testimonials. If a testimonial is to sound authentic then yes people like you… the end user… should write it… but don’t doubt for a second that if a copywriter (not my job) wanted to rewrite one of the vo’s testimonial’s for them… just polish it up… it wouldn’t lessen from the authenticity … but it would make it sound allot better.

night folks

Whether you like it or not, voice123 does generate a considerable amount of work for many in this business, and I firmly believe in competition in the market place. It keeps the various voices.coms on their toes, and -hopefully- it will lead to better services for voice-talents at a lower cost. That’s one reason why I hope that voice123 will survive their own ambition.

We as voice-talents have the power. We ultimately determine whether or not a certain site is a success. If we don’t like what they’re offering or how we’re being treated, there’s always the competition!

It does take a lot of guts, stamina and financial resources to get a new site like Bodalgo off the ground and make it profitable. I admire Armin for his efforts and I wish him nothing but the best. I just hope he’s not operating on borrowed time, as he’s waiting for voice-seekers to come up with the jobs we all want and need.

I don’t agree with your remarks on the voices.com “Competition”. How could I… I just won first prize in one of them!

Regardless, I think voices.com is wise to interact with their members and involve them in all sorts of ways. As a trainer I always believed that my students were my best credentials. Their stories of success were much more authentic and powerful than the scripts written by certain advertising agents, read by people who were clearly hired to pretend they knew what they were talking about.

No offense to you, because I don’t know the work of your ad agency or for that matter, your own work. I believe you’re incredibly talented and you obviously care about this industry and its players. I thoroughly enjoy your blogs and I appreciate your help and support.

It beats reading about tooth whiteners any day!