He’s also a practicing attorney as well as a seasoned voice-actor.

His compelling argument against a (ahem) certain P2P site is the kind of stuff that belongs in a voice-over primer (if there was one).

You can find his article almost everywhere today, but I’ll recommend you go to John Florian’s VoiceOverXtra to read it.

BTW, he doesn’t name the service he dissects, but I will:  VOICEJOCKEYS.com

CourVO

It’s called Voice Over Pavilion.

Taji wrote me to say:

“The Directory is a no frills straight forward place where casting agencies and advertising firms can come and search for voiceover artist for any upcoming project.  Submitting a listing is not for free… the packages range from $5 per year to $52.49 per year but they don’t go beyond that.”

Cruise on over to the VoiceOver Pavilion and give it a look-see…like Michael Minetree’s site mentioned below, the exposure may well be worth it, even more so with Taji’s site if you’d like a bit more international exposure.

Nice job, Taj!

CourVO

Again, PieHole is a service matching voice actors with mostly European clients and studios, based on the relationships they’ve engendered through their script writers.  I don’t think that’s being done here in the US in any organized way.  PieHole is expanding into the UK and Canada, with hopes to put an office here in the US eventually.  As far as I know they’re always considering new talent for their service.

Click HERE to see me waxing eloquent on all sorts of topics related to voice-over.

CourVO

The woman was an early adopter of Social Media, and continues to lead the pack among her VO peers.

Now, she’s got a boffo idea that she’s parlayed into something of substance….well,virtual substance anyway.

Visit VOICETWEET.COM now and sign-up.  The site is intuitive, simple, accessible, and …well….purple!

Check it out, and be sure to let Trish know if you find something wonky with the site.  She claims it’s just a little side business, but I think it’s got legs!

Thanks, Trish!

CourVO

Anybody know who first coined that term: “PIEHOLE”? (usually associated with the phrase “Shut your PieHole!”)

Regardless….in this case, PieHole is asking you to open yours….uh, your piehole, that is.

OK, wait-a-minute. PIEHOLE is the name of a company based in Ireland, that among other things, seeks to match voice talent with clients. 

Here’s the unique link, though: PieHole makes the connection through copywriters…not that uncommon in Europe, I understand.

It’s an idea that’s working.  Here’s the operative quote:  “…we stalk and harass advertising agencies to hire our voiceovers…”

PieHole is a fixture in the European ad market…expanding now into the UK and Canada, and – yes – they are seeking North American talent.

I was so intrigued, that I asked the founders – Priscilla Groves and James Kennedy – to offer a few quick answers to some pointed questions.

The result is below.  Click on the pic above to go to their site.

CourVO

Piehole brands itself as a voiceover site built by a copywriter for copywriters.  How old is Piehole?…and who DID start it?

3 years old and a bit.  Started by myself, Priscilla Groves and James Kennedy.  I was working as a copywriter in McCann Erickson Dublin at the time, and James is a Computer Nerd Extraordinaire.  So it was a match made in geeky heaven.

How successful has this business model been so far?  Where is the revenue?…from the voice-seekers, or the voice-talent?

So far so good.  The model is basically: we stalk and harass advertising agencies to hire our voiceovers.  The voiceover in turn pays us a subscription fee to be listed on our site. 

Does Piehole charge a percentage?

No, we charge a subscription fee to be listed on the site.  75% of our guys get work, and on average they make their money back 16 times. 

Do your copywriters actively match their clients with voice talent, or are jobs opened-up for anyone to audition for them?

In Ireland and the UK the copywriters tend to take quite an active approach.  They listen to the demos, make shortlists, and often get voiceovers in for paid auditions.  We’ve just launched phone auditions, which means a voiceover can do an audition using telephone technology.  It’s pretty sweet, since many European voiceovers don’t have home studios,  unlike the guys in the States.

Is Piehole an agency, then?…or just another pay-to-play subscription site (for free).

Do we have bad hair and wear cheap suits?  No. We’re not an agent.  It’s a subscription site for people who want work in commercials.

You are HQ’d in Ireland, but now in Canada.  So PieHole is expending into other areas?  Will Piehole choose to settle in the USA eventually?

Yeah, we’re multiplying like rabbits these days.    www.piehole.co.uk and www.piehole.ca is steaming ahead.  But we’re always looking for partners who are in the advertising industry (who have lots of juicy contacts in the big ad firms) to partner up with us.  USA? Yeah!!

How has Piehole been received by the European VO community?

For the voiceovers, reaching the advertising agencies has always been difficult.  So Piehole has helped to break things open and get their voices in front of the big brands.  So the response has been great.  Except that one guy who sent us hatemail about our gross logo.

Are your leads generated mostly from contacts with European firms?

Yes.  The majority being from advertising agencies and various radio and TV channels. 

How much call do you get for North American accents?

There’s a fair amount.  The North American parts are often when there’s a character in an ad that’s an American.  So the gigs tend to be more fun than the usual hard sell drivel.  Back in the old days, they always got some Irish voiceover to put on an American accent.  But thanks to the wonder of the internet, people can now get the real thing.  And they want it. 

How does PieHole deal with unions?  Does Piehole set rates?  Minimums?

In Ireland and the UK there are standard industry rate cards that the big ad agencies tend to stick to.  They can be downloaded with our E-book – UK and Ireland.

Our clients book the voiceover directly, so many of them negotiate directly with the voiceover’s agent or with the voiceover. 

Do you expect to set limits as to how many voice talents you’ll accept on your site?

For us the problem is normally finding a good palette of suitable voiceovers. "Suitable" meaning either 1) a professional voiceover who has time and availability to go into top sound studios of the advertising agency’s choice to record at short notice, or 2) a professional voiceover with a home studio.  Each of our sites have less than 150 voices, so it’s a reasonable selection, but we’re still looking for more choice.  Ironically, there are so many voiceovers out there, but they aren’t necessarily good enough, available enough, or willing to invest in their voiceover career.

Do you have minimum standards for your voice-talent candidates?

Oh yeah.  Too many people think they can just waltz into voiceovers and be the next voice of Coca-Cola.  We only accept advertising agency quality demos on our site, cut by top sound studios. 

What sort of work typically comes across your desks:  Commercial (Radio/TV) ad copy?  Long-format narrations?  AudioBooks?  E-Learning?

Mainly radio and TV commercials from the big ad agencies.  We also get other stuff, like audiobooks and web videos and that type of jazz.  But we like the commercials.  It’s better paid.  People working in advertising agencies don’t have many virtues. But this is one of them.

Graffitti Studio.

Stuff like this passes out to an email list from time to time.  I hadn’t heard of these guys before, but from the looks of things, I’d say it’s somewhere in the Russian Sphere of Influence…the flag on their website is Bulgarian.

Below is the e-mail verbatim.  Like Bodalgo in Germany, Voice Artistes in India, and others… foreign studios – if their efficacy can be validated – should not be ignored out of hand.  North American English is the voice of choice for many narration and voice projects, and these sites can return some steady work.

Be warned: the international market will not typically pay at the same scale as unions in the US…or even at the same rate that you’re used to quoting for local or national jobs.

CourVO

__________________________

Dear Sir/Madame

My name is Nick Ivanov and I represent Graffitti Studio- the largest European multilingual voice over, dubbing and subtitling company.

Founded in 1994, Graffitti Studio http://www.graffittistudio.com is a professional voice over and dubbing studio, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Working with major TV programs and film companies like Warner Bros, News Corp and Turner, advertising leaders like BBDO and Omnicom, Graffitti Studio localizes broadcasted and non-broadcasted multimedia content, providing professional voice over, dubbing, subtitling and transcription services in 40 languages.

The customers:

Broadcasted: Turner, News Corp, HBO, Wild TV
Non-broadcasted: Microsoft, Nokia, Shell, Volvo, MSD, Phillips, Danone, Deutsche Telecom, HP, Adobe, Burger King, Nokia, Gillette, BMW, Sony, European Commission

What makes Graffitti Studio special?

Graffitti Studio provides a complete media localization solution- from transcription and translation of scripts to personal project management and 24/7 availability for contact, a unique audio production facility, professional native speaking voice over and dubbing talents, large voice bank of 1000+ auditioned voice actors, quality control on each production stage, professional voice over and dubbing recording and production equipment with ISDN connections for live session monitoring, ability to localize large volumes of multimedia content in 40 languages and with very short turnarounds, and a very experienced team of professionals who are able to face complicated tasks with no compromise on deadlines.

For more information on our services, please visit www.graffittistudio.com

If you don’t want to recieve more e-mails from Graffitti Studio, please click HERE

Thank you for your attention and I hope you find our services helpful for Your business.

Kind regards,

Nick Ivanov

www.graffittistudio.com

‘A reminder to go back to Taj’s blog where he poses questions about what would be the perfect P2P site. (Taji’s Frankenstein Monster)

I referenced that BLOG a couple of days ago, and the responses have been many and thoughtful.  Be sure to read through the commentss (and not just because I decided to run off at the keyboard).

Be especially sure to click on the link for Paul Strikwerda’s thoughts.
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Sunday is the deadline for early-bird pricing on VOICE2010.  Savings of $100.  Not too shabby.  Click HERE for details.  Click HERE to go to the VOICE2010 website.

_________________________

Bettye Zoller has a birthday this weekend.

Now might be a nice time to call or write her and wish her many more.  ‘Course that might be kinda hard, ‘cause as usual…she’s probably working.  The gal has more energy than most people half her age…

It’s hard to ignore the common-sense approach Bettye has to the business of Voice-Overs.  She’s got the experience, the chutzpah, and the tempered reasoning to be a sought-after coach as well as an active talent.  Her frequent posts on the Yahoo VO Forum are pure gold.

Click HERE to see info on her next class in Houston (she lives in nearby Dallas) instructing on the business of the VO business…i.e. making money.

Have a great weekend!

CourVO

The message he left for me by email this time, though, hints at his latest ambitious project:  brainstorming the perfect Pay-to-Play site.

He calls it Taji’s Frankenstein Monster, and is openly soliciting your input.  I offered mine, even though it was through the haze of a 4am hour.

Click HERE to see the blog article his proposition.  This could be a very edifying exercise if a lot of people chime in…not that it hasn’t been done before, but  maybe we’ll get it right this time.

CourVO

Here’s the catch:  I hate Outlook (and that’s coming from me, Dave, an unabashed Microsoft fan).  Here’s why: Outlook is an incredibly feature-rich program that practically bogs your computer down in excess code.

But I use it when I have to, and since Xobni integrates SO well, I end up using Outlook JUST FOR Xobni.

Case in point:  I began examining WHEN Voices.com and V123 leads came across with e-mail notices, and found an interesting trend.  (Yes, Xobni tells you that kind of information)

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Here’s Xobni’s graph of time-of-day Voices.com e-mail notices.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but it looks like a pretty good spike at 3am PST (6am EST).

The rest of the day is essentially a plateau with maybe a mini-spike at 11am PST (2pm EST).

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Now here’s Xobni’s graph of time-of-day V123 e-mail notices.

I’d say that’s a peak at roughly 10amPST (1pmEST).

The rest of THEIR day is all over the place.

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What’s my sample?  Since October 10th I got a total of 2,863 e-mails on my CourVO@CourVO.com e-mail account.  As you can see, Voices.com and V123 constitute my 2nd and 3rd most prolific incoming mail source.  I say all this to underscore that this is NOT a small sample.

I haven’t quite figured out why Xobni ranks V123 2nd with 64 incoming per day, and Voices.com 3rd with even more emails per day.  I may be reading that wrong, but I stand by my claim that this is a large sample, and a trend that should not be ignored IF you choose to wait by your computer for the hottest leads.

IF you’re doing that…then your leash from the computer is a short one regardless.  If you want to maximize the greatest possible hit-time to check out Voices.com and V123 leads, then, well…there’s your data.

The argument for and against pay-to-play sites rises to the level of Mac v. PC flame wars.

Then the secondary debate about V123 v. Voices.com rises to the level of mules v. elephants.

That’s another conversation.  I just thought this was a novel set of data no one had published before.

CourVO

I’ve never seen a harder-working couple than the Ciccarelli’s (3 C’s, 1 R, 2 L’s).  Stephanie is most prolific in the Social Networks and blogs.  She does a wonderful of job of maintaining a helpful, supportive image of VOICES across most of the major social media sites, not to mention their blog, Vox Daily.

If you haven’t arleady. join their “Voice Acting Hub” on Facebook, and sign-up to get e-mail notices.  That’s how I got the tip to THIS great blog article: 

5 Mistakes Voice Talent Make and How To Avoid Them

CourVO