Almost every type of comment is welcome on my blog. The only remarks I filter out are those of spammers and of people who are downright rude and insulting. If my writings left you hoping to hear more, my mission was -in part- accomplished.

Different bloggers have different publishing cycles. Some write a few posts a day. I tend to publish one blog a week. In these days of instant messaging, twitter and hour-by-hour facebook updates, I realize that some of my readers would like me to write more often.

The issue of audition results has obviously hit some nerves here and there, and some pay-to-play sites need some more time to respond.

You’ll also find that I try mix the professional with the personal and that some of my posts have more questions than answers. I’m not attempting to write the book on “getting results on the internet”, but I will pass along what I have found as I was researching this topic.

There’s a whole new field out there called “conversion marketing”, and what those who specialize in it are doing, can’t be summarized in one or two articles. All I can hope for is that the readers who are interested in getting more web exposure, stick with me and join me on my search for answers. I won’t always spoon-feed them. Things are much more likely to stick when people make their own discoveries.

As others have stated here, you have posed some valuable questions.

If I may be permitted to make what might be seen as a rather contrarian or unpopular comment on the subject of your goal for this blog; namely your desire for readers to take action and engage with you, thereby increasing your exposure to the market, it is very important that you engage your reader by providing solutions (or means to solutions) in a short time after presenting rapid-fire questions. I have read a couple of your blogs, but I have not seen you follow up yet with answers.

I have often heard the opinion that when providing a good or service, the customer should always feel that they are getting greater value than what they have paid for.

As a reader, (and fellow voice-actor), to be honest I am not compelled to return to this blog because though I would give you all credit for raising valid points, you, as the acting expert in this case, have presented a problem but not given your reader a means to a solution.

On the subject of P2P voice talent sites;
Most of these sites probably don’t even have a clue as to how to find or provide information about conversion rates, nor do I believe that they would be easily forthcoming with that information if they had it. I have worked with a few similar sites in the music sector, and they make most of their income on talent memberships. They are not really motivated to acquire or provide conversion information because they don’t really need to.

I mean no ill-will in these comments; I do believe that in order to learn and grow, we must be willing discuss varying perspectives in an opened forum.

Kind Regards,
Eva

I look forward to hearing your solution.

Jamee

Recently I emailed V123 suggesting that if the prospective talent buyers get to rate talent – even if they don’t hire them – then talent should get to rate voice seekers. As an extension of your article, V123 ought to put the site’s conversion rate and the individual talent’s conversion rate on each talent’s home page.

Great article…but I think you may be missing one valuable point. Any time I’ve ever used any of the p2p sites to hire talent, I’ve always contacted the talent directly after hearing the “right” voice…so any stats you see on the p2p sites are skewed by that fact. There will be many producers who simply want to deal direct with the talent, and bypass the clunky p2p site email systems, the extra escrow fees involved, etc. If those producers don’t “rate” the talent, nor go through a particular site’s escrow or “job completion” process, then the job isn’t officially “closed.” This does not, however, mean that talent hasn’t already been chosen, booked, and paid.

As a voice talent, any time I’m tempted to dump the one site everyone complains about, I always book a job that more than pays for the service…so for me, it’s been worth it.

Still, though, a great article…thanks for sharing it!

-Craig

Thank you for this blog… it is fantastic. These are definitely things we should all consider. Looking forward to Part II with ALL the answers. LOL!

Caryn

I guess we’ll split the copy (and pay) 14 ways!