Every single promotional piece you send out is auditioning for you when you’re not there: so any and all promotion is an opportunity to make yourself that much more accessible to the work. The more traffic you drive to your site with postcards and emails and links the greater your opportunity for auditions and bookings.

Yet you’ll find, as you continue on your merry way, many very well-meaning professionals quick to offer you their two cents as to why postcard mailings and demo web sites, “…aren’t at all necessary”. They doubt the effectiveness of direct mailings and will attempt to discourage you from doing the same.

At Sound Advice, we have extensively surveyed scores of your target market audience and produced literally thousands of demos to date. What we’ve discovered is: the Talent who consistently mass promote work the most. The talent who don’t do so usually have a much tougher time establishing themselves in this field and maintaining steady work.

This is elementary for ANY business to succeed. It’s Marketing 101.

We highly recommend you promote yourself repeatedly to industry professionals, region by region, no less than four to six times a year.

The postcards promote the site, the site promotes the demos. The more you promote, the more accessible you’ll be to the work, the more you’ll make your name known, the more likely you’ll see a return on your initial investment by securing steady work in this business.

That in essence is the job, beyond maintaining your skills.

It’s important to note that your web address and your web hosting are two distinctly separate entities. (If you are somewhat web savvy, please pardon the simplification here, but it’s important to clarify the following for those less informed.) Far too often as many of our technologically green, albeit enthusiastic Sound Advice clients report as we begin their demo production process that they’ve “already secured my web site. I’ve got my name already! It was cheap! It only cost me $10!” Unfortunately, far too often this poses a problem when it’s time to establish their web hosting. Here’s why: Your web address is NOT your web page, nor is it the location where your page will ultimately reside. It is simply a name that points TO your site, it ISN’T the site itself. In fact, you can have numerous web addresses all directing toward the very same site. For example, we have numerous addresses such as voiceoverinfo.com and voiceoverdemos.com that all lead directly to our Sound Advice site.

Once your site is created, it will then be hosted at a virtual location on the Internet, such as Dreamhost, Pair or Go-Daddy (all web servers). That hosting is typically secured for a year at a time.

However, if you have secured your web address (your domain name) for only a year at a time, as many people do, and you have done so four to six months prior to establishing your hosting, then your address will expire four to six months in advance of your hosting–rendering your site completely inaccessible with that specific address once it has expired. It will appear to you your site has simply vanished. It still exists on the Internet at the location it’s hosted, however without that all-important web address, it will not be readily accessible.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Why don’t I just renew my web address for $10 again?” If only it were that simple.

You should be aware that you are always contacted a good 30 days in advance of the expiration of your web address. (You always have the option of placing your hosting on an auto-renewal basis.) That said, so many allow these things to lapse, figuring it’s such a small fee to pay to renew. However, there’s a far greater problem that’s about to rear its ugly head.

There are groups in various locations throughout the world whose entire mission is to snatch up random addresses once they expire. This is an existing underground business that is a very real threat. You may be thinking, “What would they want with my own private web name? That doesn’t seem very likely.” I’m afraid this is more common than not. These forces are extremely aggressive. Their entire objective is that once try to renew your web address they will hold your name hostage and opt to charge you an exorbitant fee in order to get your name back, often as much $1000 or more. These “cyber-squatters”, as they’re called, often utilize programs, or ‘bots’, to snatch up domain names the very moment they become available. This places innocent small business owners, such as yourself, in a rather precarious position and with very little recourse because, unfortunately, you will have likely had this web address included on all of your promo, which is now rendered useless.

An entirely new web address would have to be secured to effectively access your site again. This would also require re-writing the code on your site to accommodate the change that would ultimately impact your email address. Most email addresses are typically edited into the flash element on your site making them a hyperlink, which requires a professional web designer to alter, costing you even more. In other words, none of this is a quick and easy fix. But wait—lest we forget to mention the necessity of reissuing all of your promo to reflect the new web address AND your new email! Well, so much for a quick and cheap “web address”, eh?

Our suggestion: when and wherever possible, secure your web address and hosting AT THE SAME TIME, rather than months apart, which is precisely what we do at Sound Advice! And whenever possible, do so for a good ten years at a time to avoid any interruption of service or promotion as it is likely you are only just getting started in this field.

If you’re pursuing jobs on-camera while furthering your voice-over career, keep in mind it’s important to keep these two websites independent of each other. We discovered this fact from extensive surveying. The reason being: those most likely to hire you for voice-over want to simply IMAGINE what you look like. Therefore, we suggest you have a link to your voice-over web page from your on-camera web site, if you have one, but NOT the other way around

To illustrate this point, have you ever seen what George Jetson or Fred Flintstone looks like in real life? Unless you know them personally, this would likely be a dramatic departure from your reality. If you saw Ronald McDonald out of costume and make-up, you’d be disappointed. The fact is voice-over create an images in the listeners imagination. The objective of your web site is to maintain this illusion by keeping the on-camera web site independent of the voice-over ONLY site. Combining their purpose only confuses the issue.

There are only a handful of exceptions to this rule:

- Children and Young Adults (under 18 years of age);

- If you are over 70 years of age, and sound like it;

- If you are already established as a talent and known for your on-camera personae; such as Seth MacFarlane (creator of ‘The Family Guy’), Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson as well as many assorted, well-known animated characters), or you happen to be known film stars like Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy or Cameron Diaz, to name a few.

Your voice-over web site should be a single-page site, featuring:

- Your voice-over demos (mp3s ONLY);

- Your graphic logo, that furthers your name as a brand (which may be repeated on your on-camera website, again if applicable);

- Your contact information, and that’s it!

No bios, please. You will spend hours of time on these and only your family and very few of your friends will actually read them. Your resume is required ONLY if you’re pursuing stage or on-camera work, rather than voice-over. No resumés on the voice-over web page. Producers have absolutely NO need for a voice-over resumé. (Over the years I’ve only known of ONE talent agent who has required a resume and that was strictly for their in office reference and that’s it. Hardly seems worth the time and effort, now doesn’t it?) Let your demos speak for themselves.

Also, please avoid random cross-referencing other interests or professions such as painting, the fact that you offer scuba diving classes, writing, or even your NASCAR affiliations, for instance. We’re only interested in your performance related information.

Further, on your voice-over demo site, your demo tracks should be available only in the form of MP3s. Not as AIFF or WAV files—just MP3.

Also, avoid photos or using illustrations of yourself on your demo site. Here’s why: if your image is serious and your demo light-hearted (or vice versa), your image would contradict the effect you’ve set out to create with the demo track. So suffice it to say, we advise against it. Devote your theatrical pursuits (film and television) to your on-camera site ONLY.

Any promotional plan, in order to be effective, must be a single-minded approach. Don’t try to accomplish a zillion things with a single site.

By Kate McClanaghan www.voiceoverinfo.com

As SOUND ADVICE we field an awful lot of questions regarding your career and how and when to adapt your promo, namely your headshots, reels, voiceover demos, and web sites, to include material you may have recently booked.

For instance, here’s a very good question from one of our SA clients recent experiences you may relate to:

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by Kate McClanaghan www.voiceoverinfo.com

Everything requires a certain protocol: marketing, voiceover demos and you should never break up with anyone over email or text. It’s just bad form. Well, FACEBOOK is no different.

At SOUND ADVICE we really like what John Eberhard has to say about just about anything dealing with the Internet and marketing. Here’s what he says about FACEBOOK… great stuff! http://realwebmarketing.net

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By Kate McClanaghan, www.voiceoverinfo.com

You may prefer to play the lead in Hamlet or one of the classics, but you may be far better suited to play the sidekick on That ‘70s Show.  That would be a conflict, now wouldn’t it? Imagine pursuing your cultured ways playing King Lear while turning up your nose and taking a pass on accepting a remarkable opportunity.  People do it every day by not making themselves available to the talent agents, not developing their skills, or failing to promote themselves to opportunities that would allow them to subsidize their greater aesthetic sense.

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Much like how we go through life…we are not always all that self-aware.

You may have glimpses of blinding clarity, but most of the time, we’re too busy getting on with living our lives to stop and introvert into that thought for very long without going completely nuts.  Besides, you’d never come up with the whole picture no matter how hard you tried.  There would still be so much missing from the equation because we’re simply too close to it.

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By Kate McClanaghan, www.voiceoverinfo.com

The same performance energy, the same uninhibited imagination and full-on creativity—all the same performance goals are required of you at the audition as on the job itself. In some respects, imagination and creativity are even more vital at the audition than on the session, because at the audition, you have to make a great leap of faith as to what the production may look like. Therefore, it’s imperative you’re very decisive and specific in your choices.

The truth is the only real difference between the job (session or booking) and the audition is the number of takes expected from you.

On an audition, it’s extremely rare you’d be given more than three or four attempts to deliver the audition you wish to submit. Again, you’re expected to be decisive and creative very quickly.  (more…)

Okay! WE got it! Finances are tough and unpredictable. Got it. 

You can’t turn on the tube for even five minutes without being pummeled with it.

Obama has his work cut out for him! But, even with all that’s gone on this year—somehow… there’s hope.

It can’t hurt mentioning when FDR first took office in 1933, a couple years into the Great Depression, 13-15 million people were out of work.

At that time, he said, “The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. But above all, try something!”

Certainly words of wisdom in today’s uncertain times because it still holds true.

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