Business – Page 8 – Connie Terwilliger

In Between Sessions

I wish I could say that I was so busy that I had back to back sessions every day and had to squeeze in the bookkeeping, marketing and plant watering. Well, I’m busy enough that I make a living doing this voiceover stuff without the back-to-back sessions. And even if I don’t have projects stacked up waiting, I still have a hard time getting all the other stuff done. But there is simply no way I can actually organize a day with any strict rules on when I am going to do anything.

The day started out like a typical Tuesday. Walk down to the coffee shop for my 7-8 AM solve the world’s problems group, but the phone rang and I had to race back home to get the car to drive out to my mom’s Assisted Living Community to call off the Paramedics. You would think after 7 months […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00March 6th, 2012|Categories: Business, Marketing, Musings|Tags: Connie Terwilliger, museum narration, narrator, voiceover, voiceover work|

The P2P Balancing Act – Do they pay off?

Some questions were raised recently on one of the social networking sites in my chain about the Pay to Play sites and if they are worth it. I think Online Voiceover Casting Sites are still evolving and will be part of our permanent way of doing things, so figuring out how to make them work is probably a good idea.

Do these sites really produce money for the talent? Well, your mileage may vary, but yes, there is money in them thar electrons. I get work.

I pay for a few of them at this point. Voice123 and eLearning Voices would be the ones that seem to work best for me. Voice 123 is the broad brush and eLearning Voices is the precision instrument.

I have more than several repeat clients now from P2P sites. But, I will say that I am very very picky about what I will audition for. It is […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00February 2nd, 2012|Categories: Auditioning, Business, Marketing|Tags: e_learning voices, p2p, Voice 123, voiceover auditioning|

Back to School!

While I work as a voice talent full-time – and have been this time around for the past dozen years or so – I do manage to carve out enough time in the Spring and Fall to teach one class at San Diego City College.

The reason I say “this time around” – is that I started out making a full-time living doing announcing and voiceover work, while also working in my spare time as a producer/writer. I actually gave up my free-lance voiceover work for several years while I worked full-time in a video and film department where I wore lots of hats. Eventually, I chose to stop producing and put the writing on the back burner as well, moving back into voicework full-time. I actually consider those years as “post” post-graduate school for my voiceover work.

Back to the class. It is a basic introduction to voiceover. If you are interested in what goes on […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00January 22nd, 2012|Categories: Business, Teaching|Tags: san diego city college, voiceover work|

Nurturing the Garden

In my part of the world, the climate allows me to have a garden all year long. Right now I have lettuce, an eggplant, some tomatoes and a perpetual red Swiss Chard that has been growing for about 2 years now.

But a winter garden requires more attention than a summer garden. In fact, it is a mess right now! The lettuce is starting to get a little nibbled and brown at the edges and has never really grown to expectations. For some reason the little purple flowers on the eggplant have not produced anything. It is sturdy, but barren. The tomato vine is brown and the actual fruit gets to a certain redness and then stops. The Swiss Chard seems to bounce back with just a little water…but the size of the leaves get smaller and smaller. Don’t even look at my banana trees, it is simply not banana tree […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00January 15th, 2012|Categories: Business, Marketing, Musings|Tags: lessons learned, nurture the garden, voiceover business|

The Cost of Doing Business

They say you have to spend money to make money. I would agree with that. Unless you dig clay from the earth, use your hands to form a pot, grind rocks to make paint, gather wood to build the fire to bake the pot and then stand by the side of the road to sell the pot, you probably have to spend at least a little money to be in business.

I had a chance to meet Esteban Valdez at his family compound just outside San Miguel de Allende Mexico a few years ago. He does just that. At his age though, other people are helping him gather the materials, so he probably has to pay out a bit in payroll these days in order to make his pots.

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00January 8th, 2012|Categories: Announcements, Business|Tags: education, FaffCon, unconference, Ventura Beach CA, voiceover conference|

What will the future bring for video?

Humans frequently predict the future. It helps us plan for a rainy day. We think it helps us know what should we look out for that will ensure we keep moving forward toward our ultimate goals – whatever they may be.

It is very interesting to look back at predictions to see what the soothsayers said and what actually happened. This reading is sobering, amusing, thought provoking and sometimes just plain silly.

I found a website with 20 predictions that we are still waiting for – like the flying car and weather control.

http://www.manolith.com/2009/07/30/pending-future-technologies/

And to me an even more interesting website with 100 predictions from 1900 – including that there will be no C, X or Q in our everyday language.

http://blog.longnow.org/2007/04/18/100-year-old-predictions-from-1900/

So what is next for video – or more specifically video commerce? Justin Foster just posted a piece on MediaPost. He is co-founder and Vice President of Market Development for video commerce […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:18+00:00January 4th, 2012|Categories: Business, Marketing|Tags: interactive video, Marketing, MediaPost, predictions of the future, video trends, voiceover work|

Get a Kick in the Pants! Get the New Edition of “There’s Money Where Your Mouth Is”

I just sort of fell into the voiceover business. I really didn’t have any training. No school of broadcasting. No acting classes (well, none since the 2nd grade). But I had done a bit of radio in college and that led to some staff announcing while I was in grad school. Grad school led to a job in a TV station, first as a director, then, after deciding that was something that I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life, as a staff announcer. A live staff announcer.

A live staff announcer who didn’t sound like a typical announcer – so the door to my little closet-sized booth would open on a regular basis with people handing me commercial copy. After a period of time, I decided that I might need to learn a bit more about this voiceover stuff – and bought my first book –

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:19+00:00December 29th, 2011|Categories: Announcements, Auditioning, Business, Techniques|Tags: Elaine Clark, There's Money Where Your Mouth Is, voiceover book|

Priorities – Fun!

My niece (German-American) moved in with me in October. She wanted to see what life is like in the States. And life as I know it has changed forever. Well, OK that is probably a bit more dramatic than it really is, but things sure have changed around here.

The past couple of years I have been watching the balance of personal time and work time change as my mother’s needs have changed. And despite a dramatic uptick in personal time things are going pretty well with things on the work side.

Now, with a wonderfully wacky and semi-wild adult child living with me, my fun time has increased as well. It could be that the fall is filled with opportunities to party. Opportunities that I simply have not taken advantage of for a while.

Has all of this fun time impacted my business?

Yes. New clients every week. Repeat clients coming back with new […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:19+00:00December 20th, 2011|Categories: Business, Musings|Tags: voiceover business|

Content is a woman, distribution is a man.

While I am not directly involved in content creation as a producer anymore, or on the distribution side of things, this article caught my eye because of my interest in seeing good content.

I’m pretty sure I have posted links to this guy’s article before – Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is CEO of WatchMojo.com, a producer of premium video content.

These two articles talk about online content and exclusivity and include what seems to be an accurate picture of content being a “woman” and distribution, a “man.”

He postulates…

By and large, distribution companies

–        never make any promises,

–        have no-strings-attached offerings,

–        make no commitments,

–        rarely seek exclusivity, and

–        when they do, it’s usually too good to be true.

Content owners, meanwhile,

–        enter distribution deals with expectations,

–        believe the promises they hear,

–        expect a commitment, and

–        want a guarantee.

In his second article on the same subject, he adds a third and fourth element to this […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:19+00:00November 28th, 2011|Categories: Business, Communication, Musings|Tags: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, exclusivity, online video, WatchMojo.com|

Are you still doing voiceover work?

As a long time voiceover talent, I get email from past clients on a regular basis asking me if I am still doing voiceover work. I assure them that I am and their relief is followed by a script.

It begs the question though…how many times do clients return to someone and find that they are no longer in business? As technology and services change and it becomes easier for people to hang out their shingle proclaiming their voiceover prowess, it strikes me that many people who get hired today for a project (and may even do a decent job on that project) may not be able to sustain voiceover as a viable business and simply not be around when the client needs an update.

Their equipment may still be hooked up, but their new day job, the one they had to take to put food on the table and pay the […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:19+00:00November 23rd, 2011|Categories: Business|Tags: repeat clients, staying in business, voice acting, voiceover work|