It’s always nerve wracking when you offer a service for a certain time period. You never know what could happen. I mean if you get hired to do a voiceover… you have your script, your record, you send it, you get paid, you are done!
rinse, repeat.
The Voiceover Pavilion (http://www.vopavilion.com) for all my readers who might not be aware is my Voiceover Professionals Directory. It’s a paid service. IF you have a website then you chose one of 4 tiers of membership and you join. Depending on the tier you choose you get a certain number of perks.
The idea for the Pavilion came about after writing a series of articles called Taji’s Frankenstein Monster where I tried to bring together all the features I like about the different Voiceover Marketplaces (Bodalgo.com , Voice123.com, Voices.com) and mesh them all together to get a Frankenstein Monster site that would make almost everyone that joined it happy.
I realized that that was not possible. The more I thought about it… the more I figured that the best service I got from those sites was being listed in their directories. It was all about their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) they had it in spades because they’ve been around for a while and their sites are optimized for visibility.
But I had very little success with their auditioning and casting services… and the Escrow service… forgetaboutit
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I am not a friend of “Forwarded Emails” in fact I pretty much have them sent to spam the moment I get them. Which is why my wife was the one who brought this forwarded email to my attention.
The story starts out as a description of a touristic coffee shop in the middle of Italy. Where it is located or what they specialize in doesnt matter. It is not relevant to the story… suffice it to say that they make coffee.
The Person telling the story is sitting enjoy their coffee when a customer walks into the store sits down and starts reading the newspaper waiting for the waiter to acknowledge him.
The Waiter comes to take the man’s order and the man says “I would like a cappuccino and one for the wall” the waiter nods his head and goes to bring the man’s coffee. He serves the man his cappuccino and then takes out a booklet from his back pocket. Tears off a sheet and sticks it on the wall.
The paper says… 1 coffee from the wall.
The man finishes his cappuccino and leaves paying for 2 coffees. The story continues that a couple walk in… each orders their preferred version of the java bean beverage and then order “One for the wall”.
They get their orders and a paper gets stuck to the wall saying 1 coffee from the wall. They drink their coffees, pay for 3 beverages and leave.
At this point the person telling the story is confused and they days go by. Since this coffee shop is close to his/her hotel they frequent it often and one day while they are sitting drinking their coffee… a man walks in… he is obviously not a wealthy man. In fact he is someone who is down on his luck and possibly homeless.
The man sits at a table and waits for the waiter. The waiter comes to take the gentleman’s order which the down-on-his-luck gentleman say is “A coffee from the wall”.
The waiter nods his head goes to the wall… takes down one of the paper notes on it and goes to bring the needy man his coffee. The man drinks his coffee thanks the waiter and leaves.
The story teller is amazed at the simple and to the point system where people can help someone in need without causing that person embarrassment or discomfort.
End of Story
In The Back of My Head
So people give out hundreds and thousands of dollars to charity. So how can I use this “One For The Wall” system to help the Voiceover Community.
And we are a community. We should have a way to help people who are down on their luck. We should be trying to make our fellow VOs lives better. So I sat and thought about it. What do most voice actors have missing?
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Wow … so no one had any insight what so ever to add in the comment section of my last post. Honestly I thought people would be dying to inundate us with their twitter gained experience and little birdie tips and tricks.
Its not like twitter is a new technology… its been around for a while now and I figured that the best way to get insights about using twitter was from voice actors who had tried and true methods.
So here is what I’ll do.. I’ll do the research and compile a list of articles on how to generate money using Twitter and include them in this post… and if this post gets beefy enough (has tons of sources) then I’ll add it as a permanent resource page for everyone.
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The truth is that I have a love / hate relationship with twitter. I can see that it has the potential to boost my work load but I just don’t like the restrictions set by the twitter software. I don’t like following people just for the sake of getting more followers. If I follow someone I want to benefit from them… or at least have known them for a while so that I can use twitter as a chit chat medium instead of a microblogging service.
One of the things that bother me about it is that some of my tweeps are chattier than others, they tweet about their nose hairs, birds in the sky, poop in the garden… pretty much anything and everything.
And I can’t filter that out without unfollowing them. Maybe I don’t have the right tools. Maybe there are ways to make the twitter feed more like the facebook feed. Controllable.
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Just wanted to think out loud here for a bit and ask you guys a question while I’m at it. Some people send their rate card to their clients and some people post their rates on their website. Some people work with their prospective client’s budgets and some vary their rates depending on where the work is coming from (what region or country).
I once had a client from China email me and ask me to cut my fees to 20% of what I asked because they were from a poor region of the world. hehe Well I live in the Middle East in what some would consider a third world country. I just declined the job … and that is a different subject for a different time… but for now the question is:
When is it a good time to rework your rate card?
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