When the Goals Go Marching on!
This is probably quite obvious, but I have to say to one of the bonuses to doing these monthly updates is there is a lot less to catch you all up on.
Last month I started to touch on the concern of how many auditions one needs to do, typically, to land a gig. An average target is ~100 auditions. At the time of my last post I had completed 58 auditions on voices.com, alone (it’s the only site I’m currently on that keeps a running tally). I had also submitted a handful on Backstage.com and ACX as well. Right now on voices.com I’m at 107 auditions, and I have also done a few auditions for backstage.com and ACX in the past month. Meaning in the last month I put in over 50 auditions. I have not been awarded any gigs yet. An author on ACX did respond with a contract, but I responded with some terms to negotiate and I have not heard back in the week since. Thus, I am growing skeptical of many things. The 100 auditions target (I will grant, it is an average, I could be an outlier) being one, my voice quality and if I’m describing myself correctly being another.
Fortunately, a few motivating opportunities presented themselves. The author of the first audiobook I published early last year reached out notifying me that she was changing the title of the book and needed help uploading new opening/closing credits -It is now Sparks in Montana, if you’d like to check it out- this renewed communication allotted me a shameless plug opportunity, which was well received and my psyche regained some stamina. The next opportunity was from the wonderful social media group that helped me connect with the author of my most recently published audiobook. This lovely group has daily prompts to help group members in their careers or pursuit of a career. One such prompt is to do some market research. Which encourages group members to ask fellow members some focus group or general survey questions. I must say this whole entrepreneurship thing I’m doing really pushes the boundaries of my introverted nature, since I welcomed folks to this site and asked they openly and honestly tell me what they think of voice. What adjectives would they use to describe it along with what did they think of this site? I only received one reply, but it was positive and helpful. Another win for my psyche.
The positive reply said many things, but one in particular struck an idea. They stated if they heard my voice come on the radio they’d be inclined to listen, at least a little while depending on the content (totally fair). I know I have stated in the last two posts that I have a goal of landing a commercial gig by the end Q2. Being paid for it rather than paying for one was the idea, but as my own blurb next to my demos states name recognition is essential to any business. With that in mind and my copy essentially already written I have recorded two commercials for myself and emailed my local news/radio station about audio specs and air time costs. Now I have emailed them before as a cold email seeing they had need for a local VO artist, which I’m sure went straight to spam. I am set to have a chat with a representative tomorrow. If all goes well next month’s post will have some special updates. It will also bring to question the number of auditions idea and provide an opportunity to compare it to plain ol’ marketing tactics.
I cannot wait to meet my goals in order to bring you all a new post with fresh goals to discuss. In case you were wondering, though, there have been positive reviews on Women with ADHD, nothing directly quotable about my sound just yet (which is totally fine and fair) but I’ll keep my out. Until then all I have is that I have also made some tantalizing progress on a podcast script. Given that I made mention of such an idea back in November and the sloth’s pace I’ve made on it please do not hold your breath waiting for that to come to fruition.
Cait O.