corporate

A small warning…

… for my fellow VO colleagues. In the realm of online voice-overs, not every client works for the mutual best-interest of all. As I have discovered this week, and a couple of times in the past, you cannot always be prepared, when sending in a piece of VO work, to get fairly paid for it.

Take this week\’s experience: a local video agency lady contacts me by email, saying she has seen my site, likes the sound of my voice and wants to possibly hire me for a corporate project. She leaves her number and I call her back.

We discuss the project. It\’s an internet advertisement for their video services and she describes the approach and the kind of voiceover she wants. We agree a price and she sends me the full script. She asks me to record three approaches, different timbres, so they can choose which is the more suitable. I do this and return it, edited and breaths removed, within 24 hours.

On return of email, she thanks me for my recordings, but she NOW SAYS she only wanted a demo recording, and she has two other candidates in mind for the job. Under no circumstances did she ever specify that I do a demo first in our phone call the day before.

Perhaps I should have recorded our phone conversation (for \”quality\” and \”training\” purposes, know what I mean)…

Lessons learned

ALWAYS make sure there is some written commitment, before going ahead and doing the full voiceover job.

And when there is no commitment:

ALWAYS send a demo first, to make sure what you are doing satisfies the client before going ahead and doing the whole job. Then MAKE SURE you get a written commitment to pay your agreed fee before you begin.

Unfortunately, there ARE a few slippery customers in this business, I\’ve found, and this kind of customer is proof of that. Make sure you\’ve done everything to commit your customer to a fee before you send anything. 

Stay sharp.
Take care.

Craig.