New Business Development Feature
By Liz Raphael Helgesen

Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in. --Marjorie Moore

While I am always willing to lend a helping hand, I’m quite self-critical about not donating enough of my time to a particular cause. There are so many important charities, some that have even touched members of my own family. But, I wonder how I can add one more thing to my list of commitments. How can I decide where to devote my time? I often pray diligently and ask, “How can I best direct my resources to contribute to our community, our world.”.....More

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Welcome to Sound Ideas

Glen Campbell welcomes all CV Newsletter subscribers and readers with an exciting exclusive offer that you will not find anywhere else. Simply submit your name, mailing address. phone number and email address to Glen monthly...that's all there is to it. First he will offer to send you a Sound Ideas Sampler of many of their terrific products and you will also be eligible to win one of two great Production CD's, Captain Audio (450 sfx) or Mzzz Muzic (200 music tracks). Just click on Glen's name to submit. I have been dealing with Glen at Sound-Ideas for many years both in radio and in VO. He is very knowledgeable and professional about his business and is not a sales-hound if you know what I mean. Give Glen a call anytime at 1-800-665-3000 (within Canada) or 1-800-387-3030 (USA), 905-886-5000 (International). Check out their Blue Plate Specials every month for amazing deals!

Welcome to Sound Ideas Online The world's largest publisher of professional sound effects, royalty free music, and your source for a comprehensive selection of production music and production element libraries.Buy direct from Sound Ideas - our e-commerce Web site offers secure online purchasing of more than 200 different sound effects and stock music products for broadcast, post-production, multimedia, game development and other wireless and entertainment applications.

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The next VO frontier.....by Rick Gordon

This should come as no surprise, E-Learning. This could possibly take the #1 spot over Corporate Narrations, for VO talents in the foreseeable future. The boundaries are limitless and more and more companies and countries....yes countries..... are getting into the biz.

Recent research indicates that this is a $50 BILLION industry and it still has a long way to go and grow. This is now the #1 category for work for many VO talents and hopefully you have a demo on the subject. This is a highly competitive business among the producers and creators. Just a few creative and well produced e-learning courses can yield multi thousands for the owners.

VO pricing for these projects are varied and can be quite mind-boggling. One has to seriously take into consideration the many script changes and rewrites involved as the educational project evolves. Then there is the situation where multi-voices will be requested.

Go ahead and check things out and if there is any interest in this topic we will pursue pricing and its various pros and cons next month

Here is some dated material on the subject from Wikipedia

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The Funnies

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MIC and Me.......Protect Yourself From Fraud.....Deb Munro

Fraud seems to be everywhere these days – even in the voice biz. This month I want to help to keep you from getting scammed.

Over most of my career in this business I’ve been fortunate. It’s rare to not be paid for a project I’ve completed. In the past seven years it’s happened to me only twice, for a total loss of $700.00. Sure, it hurt, but it was tuition for an important learning experience. Apart from those two incidents, things have gone extremely well. Until recently.

I was contacted via email by a client who called himself Gregory Alfonso. He claimed he was referred via a very reputable site – one that I would never think to question. He offered an extremely high rate (Red Flag No. 1) of $1,900 to voice a two page message on hold. I thought it was odd to be offered such a high rate, but I trusted the source, so I voiced the project and delivered it.........More

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Attention Audiobook VO talents
Here is a copy of an email just received from a company looking for audiobook VO talents. It is self explanatory........see below

____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Mr Gordon,

I have set up a company and website for the recording, publishing and selling of downloadable audiobooks.

I have recorded two of my own books as audiobooks with trained actors and am planning on doing so with several others. I am also encouraging other writers to do likewise, using our website to host their audiobooks. The company is based in the UK, but the website is hosted in the US and we will be operating internationally.

We have listed the actors who have worked on our audiobooks, but in order to help other writers find actors in their areas, we are encouraging actors who do voice over work - and websites that serve them - to cross-link with our site.

Please take a look at the site
http://bookstolistento.com/index.php?main_page=page_3 and if you would like to exchange cross-listings with us, please contact us.

Best regards,

David Kessler
Managing Director

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Website Maintenance....Mark Pelisek

So you went out and got yourself a great looking website with all the bells and whistles. You figure you can sit back now and wait for the phone calls and the money to come pooring in. Not so fast, there are many things you still have to do to ensure that your website is seen by your potential client base.

The first thing to do is to ensure that your website has been properly optimized for search engines. By adding the property meta information to your site and taking care of the little things like complete title tags and reciprocal linking strategies, you will be well on your way to having a lot of new eyes looking at your website.

Othe strategies to consider are to ensure that all images in your website have been named. These are called your Alt tags. Search engines cannot read images, but if you name them they can. Site maps are also crucial to search engine success. Site maps provide links to all pages of your website and are generally text allowing search engines to capture them.

Try to stay away from images in your navigation as well. If you properly implement style sheets into your website and use text for your navigation, you will have great success in creating higher rankings in google. Lastly, do not try to spam a search engine. By adding white text to your website on a white background and filling it with keywords is a big no no. Your site will be blacklisted and you will not be given any ranking at all. By playing by the rules and taking advantage of a few of these tips, you will be well on your way to a successful web presence.

For more information about website maintenance or information about creating a web presence specifically tailored to the VO industry, please call at 613-822-6905.
Our goal is to make the web work for you!

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