VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Scott Pollak

This is the year I will finally let my V123 subscription lapse when it expires in Sept, after something like 14 years on the site. Over the past few years I've auditioned almost none and long ago lost interest in "the game", along with abysmal budgets and so on.

It has been so long since I've even logged in there that today I thought I'd take a gander, for giggles. Instead, I nearly suffered a heart attack:

"We have a series of academic articles, ebooks and manuscripts that we'd like to have professionally narrated. The topics are Biological and Health Sciences so a knowledge of scientific/medical terminology is necessary for proper narration.

We would like the tone to be authoritative/instructive as if you're teaching the content. To be considered, please send a custom demo reading the provided sample text.

The scripts are of varying length but total around 500K words. The budget and your bid would be for reading all 500K words."

A half-million words. At 150 wpm, that is about 55 HOURS of narration.
With their FIRM budget of $3750, that comes to $68/hour. IF you didn't have to (of course) edit and provide clean audio in individual files. So add in an absolute minimum of another 3 hours each for that, or - if you're really good, and lucky and fast - then about 220 hours of work. So now you're making, maybe, $17/hour.

So far, nearly 80 people have responded. Wowza!
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 2:44 pm Post subject:

Wow, that's a whopping $72 per finished hour.

Even at Union minimums this job should be paying around $12k
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

I would have more fun and make more money working at a fast food restaurant. At least I could work my way up in the company.
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Philip Banks · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 3:37 pm Post subject:

Yep! 4 years and you'd be on to fries and that's when the big bucks roll in

DougVox · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 3:49 pm Post subject:

$17 an hour? That's more than a 13% pay raise from this fabulous VO opportunity, and their "limitless fiction ebook supply"!
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Doug Turkel (tur-KELL)
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Heh, their limitless ebook supply is fiction.
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

Lizden

Karyn OBryant · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:07 am Post subject:

Bonus points to Philip for quoting "Coming to America."
Bonus points to Liz for schooling the client.
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Lee Gordon

Lizden · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:21 am Post subject:

Exactly!!!!
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DenaliDave · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:29 am Post subject:

Welcome to the new paradigm, the "Walmart" world. Where quality suffers, and the bottom line is the only thing that matters.

For some people, paying peanuts for a sub-par product is fine. More for less.

Some people can't justify spending two or three times as much for something, and are perfectly happy settling for something not as good for a lower price.

There's always been people like that...but I've noticed that the trend is growing in ALL economic sectors -- not just VO.

The problem then becomes... what if low quality/price then becomes acceptable as the new standard? Will it become harder and harder to convince people to pay more for quality when their budgets are crunched?

As globalization continues to intertwine our countries and economies together, competition is going to only increase. These issues are not exclusive to VO, but apply to anyone trying to make a career from any kind of talent/service.

It'll be interesting to see where we are at in 50 years, that's for sure.
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Deirdre · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:56 am Post subject:

We hashed this out before, as I recall.

http://www.vo-bb.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18668
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Scott Pollak · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 12:42 pm Post subject:

Deirdre · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 12:57 pm Post subject:

Perhaps now, all the kids have seen it. Smile

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paulstefano · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 4:23 pm Post subject:

I for one kind of like seeing all the instances. Its eye opening each time
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