VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Jen Gosnell

I know Kafer and I think Bish do these, but there must be others of you who do them also - so I figured I'd throw some questions to the brain trust at large. Smile

This is an area that I'm considering marketing myself in, and I'm just wanting to ask the right questions to help me decide if/how to approach it. I have an RE agent friend who is willing to arrange for me to pitch my services to her principal, but I want to have all my bases covered before taking any such step. Based on this thread, I'm not even sure that's the right way to get this sort of work.

If you do it, how'd you start? Pitch yourself directly to a production company; work directly with an RE group; land it via P2P?

Would you describe the workflow you typically encounter? I am thinking of things like but not limited to typical lead/required turnaround time, script writing or editing, revisions, etc.

Do any of you do all the production on the videos? Seems that too much production time would make this kind of work impractical, unless maybe you were on the retainer model or a production whiz (which I don't consider myself to be).

Would love to hear current rate and volume examples; you're welcome to email me if you'd rather not publish them.

What else am I neglecting to ask? Anything gonna come back to bite me if I don't have a plan for it up front?

Thanks, you guys. Kiss

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Bish · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:12 am Post subject:

My realtor stuff is sporadic. I have a couple of clients who come to me when they what something up-scale or the client really wants a Brit. Both of these clients originally came from P2P wins.

With both clients, I simply bang out the script and send it back. It's usually being done at the same time the video is being produced, so more often than not, I'm working with no video... the video editor does all the editing. Usually the "production house" is the guy in the realtor's office that has some camera skills.

I should push myself harder in this area. Both my clients only get a small number of Brit requirements, so there's no real quantity. The business model should be to get five or more in one shot and bang them out for $50 a pop. A quick $250 for an hour's work.

Jeff may be able to speak to this better than I. It hasn't really panned out that way for me as it's too sporadic.

I don't know if you can use iMovie (or whatever) but if you're thinking of targeting a specific realtor, find one of their existing (sucky) videos, re-voice it, and send it back to them as a YouTube private link.... or at least have it available when you're pitching.
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Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:54 am Post subject:

First, it must be said that realtors are the cheapest people in the world. They do not want to pay for ANYTHING.

Knowing this, I do about 10 real estate narrations per day from one video producer. He's got a unique model in that he doesn't shoot the video himself, he edits the video that the realtor shoots on their iphone or camcorder. He charges about $50 to do this. So you can imagine how much of that I get. Why does he charge so little? Because he would lose all his customers if he raised prices even a bit (refer to the opening statement regarding the frugality of realtors). This is one of those "make money in bulk" clients. He is my only real estate client and this is not a segment I'm further marketing to.

Honestly, Jen, I don't think this is a market you should focus on. With housing prices the way they are, realtors just don't want to pay any extra, certainly not anything close to market rate. They are quite happy narrating it themselves, having no narration, or even using one of the Text-to-speech engines out there.

You can talk them blue in the face, but they won't pony up more than $50 for it.
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heyguido · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:25 am Post subject:

Having tried this avenue myself, I can concur fully with what Jeff said.

Fiver territory. More trouble than it's worth.
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"Wait.... They wanna PAY me for this?"

Jan Anderson · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:43 pm Post subject:

Hi Jen - I do a fair amout of this kind of work too, and I also completely agree with what Jeffery said. It's very low pay, at least for the company that I do it for. The only reason that I do it, is that like Jeffrey again, it comes regularly to me but I wouldn't go out-of-my-way to market to these types of companies. Good luck! Smile

Limerick Lane Audio · Contributore Level V Joined: 13 Jan 2012 Posts: 151

Jen Gosnell · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:05 pm Post subject:

Wow, as bad as all that, eh? Shocked

I will have to rethink. Low pay in trade for volume might work for me given where I am at with time constraints right now, but sounds like it would only be worth it if the work were pretty darned easy to get. And I'm guessing that there are plenty of folks out there trolling for it given current market conditions.

Thanks PB, Jeff, Don, Jan, and Michael - really appreciate you sharing your experiences with this.
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chuckweis · Contributor IV Joined: 27 Feb 2008 Posts: 136

Let me chime in and say that this IS a consistent thing w/all (well at least most) real estate video producers. As stated, RE agents are notoriously cheap people when it comes to investing money in tours. As Jeffrey said, they really don't see the value. They figure anything more than about 40-50 bucks a tour is just too much...yes, even on multi-million dollar homes!

The most I've seen someone pay was $25 a tour. All in all, not a bad rate for this kind of work, as all you do is read the narration and shoot them the mp3, but even with that guy, he only paid $25 no matter if the tour was 2:00 or 7:00 long....hardly fair.

The only way I figure you could make really good cash on tours is to actually be a one stop shop....shooting your own HD video, doing the VO, editing everything, and only doing high end properties, but then again, that'd be a full-time gig in itself!

Drew · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:08 pm Post subject:

I do work for a guy in Canada. I got him up to $35 for a half page of text. He insists on having a conference call with each script...which is getting old, as they turn out to be 20 minute BS sessions. Just give me the pronunciations I'm not clear about and let's get it done.

Then, with each payment comes a critique Shocked

He knows just enough about audio to be dangerous. I politely thank him and then move on to my real work. It's steady, pays the water bill, but hardly worth the ROI in terms of an all-out marketing effort.

Now, Jen, if you're reeeeeeeeeeeeealy interested in this type of work, I can put you in touch with a gal in Utah who pays forty cents a tour. You can puke out "well appointed master baths and fine Italian marble breakfast bars" to your heart's content for about seven bucks an hour.

I might add, that real estate agents, by law (in most states) have to work under a broker who charges them for office space, marketing, affiliation, toilet paper, etc. Add the price of gasoline, time and effort...and well, they have to hustle as hard, or harder than we do. So, they have to be cheap, especially in this booming market.
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DougVox · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:18 am Post subject:

melissa eX · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:34 pm Post subject:

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:31 pm Post subject:

It's a tradeoff. You can market yourself to the multi-million dollar homes knowing that there aren't very many of those and they sell slowly. You'll get a trickle of gigs, if any, at maybe $50 a pop. Or you can market to the 5 buck chuck crowd and hopefully get a faster trickle.

But honestly, I see no reason why you'd want to spend your marketing time and dollars trying to get water from a rock, or whatever the expression is.
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
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Jen Gosnell · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:43 am Post subject:

I believe the term you want is "blood from a stone", Jeff! Wink

Drew, ouch! Forty cents per tour is painful to contemplate! At that level of pay they probably would get better results from a computerized voice! Sticking out Tongue

Lee Gordon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 1:48 am Post subject:

Many years ago (late 70s or early 80s) my then roommate and I came up with an idea for "talking real estate signs." The concept was to use a carrier current AM radio transmitter and some sort of continuous loop tape player to broadcast a professionally recorded (by us) description of a for sale home that a prospective buyer could listen to on his or her car radio while parked outside the subject house. But we never pursued it.
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Bruce · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 4:49 am Post subject: