how not to start a pay to play web site

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I’ve never started a pay to play voice-over web site for many reasons, the first of which is I think they each completely discredit the voice-over industry.

My second reason is I believe the only persons who truly profits from these sites are the owners. The overall crumbs that are intermittently handed out to some voice talents pale in comparison to the consistent fees these owners generally bring in from their sites.

Last but not least some (not all) of these owners strike me as crooks.

Again, these are just my personal opinions, your milage may vary and if you disagree with me you’re probably wrong ;).

Yet even though I have not myself started a pay to play voice-over web site and am therefore hardly an expert, I think I have found two surefire ways NOT to start a pay to play voice-over web site.

Note please that in the 30+ years of running this and other businesses, I have never made a mistake and my record for perfection has been recognized by Guinness World Records for it’s, um…perfection. So from from high atop Know It All Mountain, here goes:

Way #1 NOT to start a pay to play voice-over web site:

Recommend, in writing, a voice-over talent pay structure so disrespectful to voice-over talents and oblivious to real market factors and with pricing so biased towards bottom feeding clients that there is a near voice-over rebellion on-line when the talents (who are going to be the potential fuel for the pay to play web site’s engine) see the following:

voicegarden_pricing

No word yet on whether said site will be offering a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) coupon for voice talents in the near future. This site’s opening after Thanksgiving so they couldn’t offer any Black Friday voice-over specials, if in fact they wanted to.

Way #2 NOT to start a pay to play voice-over web site:

Name your pay to play voice-over web site with a moniker extremely similar to a well-respected, established site run by a well-spoken voice talent like Jonathan Tilley. Then watch your yet to be launched pay to play voice-over web site (and you as the owner) get your corporate ass publicly handed to you with fact after knock out fact showing that you, as the pay to play web site owner, have acted in what might be considered (at least by this observer) as thoughtless…to say the least.

The web video beating was so bad to my viewing I half expected to hear Howard Cosell again in his famous ringside boxing call.

So in summary, those are the two things I would NOT do if I were ever going to start up a pay to play web site.

Which I won’t, cause what do I know anyway.

2 Responses to “how not to start a pay to play web site”

  1. […] I’ve never started a pay to play voice-over web site for many reasons, the first of which is I think they each completely discredit the voice-over industry.  […]

  2. […] as most voice talents know runs the Voice Over Garden (not to be confused with Voice Garden…which is full of poison ivy and the like) so he does coaching and business planning etc in […]