What an excellent article. It's the nudge I needed to write a business plan, 4 years after starting my voice-over business! Thank-you so much.

I've heard that the keyword meta tag has become useless due to all the abuse. I've stopped using it and have not noticed any decrease in rank.

This is a terrific discussion, very interesting even for someone not in the business.

I'm wondering what realtors/real estate agents think about real estate video/photo tours. Have you found them to be helpful? The NAR put out a press release (below) about their new strategic partner in making these tours available. I would think they would be a great way to focus a buyer's search and avoid wasting time and fuel driving around to unsuitable properties, but I wondered if realtors find them to be worth the expense.

http://www.realtor.org/pressroom/newsreleases/2008/narstrategicalliancebringsrealestatevideo.html

Thank-you so much for this article. I really needed to be enlightened on how one can bring "analog" (face-to-face) networking and online social networking together and these are stellar suggestions and comments.

Very well sung! Thank-you for a memorable message.

This is such an important idea for those of us selling services! Since I'm a voice-over artist and often "sell" 30 second commercials, I have heard some interesting ways of thinking about pricing, mostly from colleagues who are trying to justify accepting a low bid for a commercial voice-over by thinking of it in terms of an hourly rate. It isn't even possible to do an hour's worth of 30-second commercials in a day (that's 120 commercials, each of which has to be discussed with the client, scripts are often revised, the read has to be approved, sometimes re-done.... each recording requires editing, time to upload, and so on)! My rates are based on the skills I'm offering and the years it took me to develop them. I finally made a list of all the ingredients that go into developing a voice-over business and came up with this:

http://mcmvoices.com/blog/2008/01/setting-rates-in-voice-over-business.html

as well as this:

http://mcmvoices.com/blog/2008/01/perceived-value-in-voice-over.html

Probably every business owner can come up with a comparable list.

Thanks for this post Ilise! It's right on the mark.

This is beautifully written. I'm thinking that the next time winter comes to your business, you should consider writing a book :)

In my business (providing voice-over), there are definitely seasons, but they don't need to overwhelm. The various populations of consumers of voice-over experience seasons themselves, and these are different for the different populations. Broadcast commercials are tied to retail seasons, academic projects are tied to the school calendar and so forth. As long as I maintain a diverse portfolio of clients, my business doesn't need to fluctuate wildly. And there are indeed so many things I have to do to "keep the soil healthy" - marketing, keeping in touch with clients, taking language classes and so on. I think of all the things I do in terms of plantings, which include herbs, shrubs and trees, all requiring different kinds of care and vastly different times to mature. The gardening metaphor is an old and delightful one for life - thank-you for this post.