when free isn’t free: voice punch
There’s a new pay-to-play site for voice over talents that I was clued into by Dave Courvoisier’s blog.The pay-to-play directory is called Voice Punch and it bills itself as “A Voice Overs Talent and Voiceover Resource Directory.”
I should have heeded my internal warning signal when I saw the grammatically odd, clearly key-worded “Voice Overs Talent”. The industry standard is either “voice over talent” or voice overs”.
As I saw “Find a voice over talent in our free industry directory …” I figured I better get my free listing.
Nope, they fibbed. It ain’t free. You can search it for free but you can’t be in it for free.
Once I registered and they got my contact info, they informed me of the prices. Hmmm, that smells a bit funny too. Their terms of service does not say that would sell my info to a third party BUT it doesn’t say it won’t either (selling mailing lists is another way to make money of these types of sites).
OK, so these kids want to make a buck; I’m a capitalist so I’m fine with that..I think sites like these are a waste of money for voice talents but by and large I am not their target. These guys want to target newbies, I’m guessing people who are just starting to get into voice over and don’t know how to market themselves; people who’ve not been through the pay-to-play ringer.
How do I know? The pricing plan is what I based my opinion on. If you join for $99 you get a year-long listing with no audio demos (kind of useless for a voice talent). At $129, you get one audio upload per year and it kind of goes down hill from there.
The listings are a little light right now but the site is new. There seems to be male voice talents named “Monica” and “Jeanni” in the directory but save for one name, I’ve not seen anyone I’ve known of in the industry listed yet.
My bias against pay-to-play sites has been well documented. I’ve not seen anything on Voice Punch that would encourage me to alter my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
I received an inquiry email from someone who used that site today, 8/23/11, never a peep out of it before and I must have spent the 15 minutes signing up in 2008? I don’t recall being $ent an email asking for payment, but that happens so often.
Anyway, someone in the Middle East (& I don’t mean Iowa) apparently saw my listing and was able to get to my gmail unimpeded. Now of course I could do the work and not get paid which would be worse than the original pay-to-play scenario.