Do you really need to have a website dedicated to your voice-over business? That's a question that was recently sent in.
How do you know if it’s time to have a website?
My suggestion is to ask yourself how are currently getting voice-over work and how are you planning to get work?
Here’s what I mean…
If you're just getting work from third-party platforms - maybe that's a freelancing website, or a voice-over casting website, then odds are you're only communicating with clients through the platform - which have their own messaging systems, the platform probably requires all communication to be through their platform.
If that's all you're doing - then no, you don't need a website. Everything is going to go through that 3rd party middleman.
But if you're planning on working with clients directly, which I think is the smarter way to do it so that you have more control, if you're building your voice-over business through 1-on-1 relationships - then you definitely need to have a website.
This way when you reach out to prospects or people that could potentially hire you, you have a website where you can send them for demos and more information, it's going to make you look more professional and more credible, it's the home for your business online and then with that website domain that you have, you'll be contacting them from a professional looking email address - so you’re not sending from a gmail, or outlook or AOL address, instead it's yourwebsite.com.
So again, it comes down to how you want to get work.
And If you happen to be just getting started in voice-over, a website isn't the first step I recommend, in fact, in my 5 steps to VO success guide, a website doesn't even come into play until step 5 when you're starting to market your business.
That's because the website is a marketing tool, and you aren’t ready for it until step 5.
But when you’re ready, you’ll use your website to promote your business.
Picture yourself out somewhere and someone learns that you do voice-over, they have an idea where they could use your voice, your website is where you send people so they can listen to your demos and contact you.
What if you already have a website that isn’t related to voice-over, can you just add a voice-over section to it?
For me, it would really depend on what the current website is for, and whether or not it’s somewhat related to voice-over.
For example if you're a model or an actor and you have a website for that work, you could just add a voice-over section, but if it’s completely unrelated, I wouldn’t combine them.
Of course, just having a website isn't going to do much for you if no one goes to it, so once you have it, then you need to promote it in order to drive traffic to it. There are several ways to do that with things like ads, email marketing, social media and seo.
I'll cover more on websites in future posts, but let me know if you have a specific question about voice-over websites.
If you already know you need a website but you aren't technical or don't want to waste time setting one up - or maybe you have one but it just isn't doing what you want it to do or it's outdated or broken, you can get the voice-over website template that I use on my own website,
It's a done for your website template - made for voice-over, and optimized to look great on mobile.
It comes with a free customizable demo player built to quickly load voice-over demos, plus website and email hosting are included, to see everything and get more info, go here.
And if you aren't ready for a website yet, maybe you aren’t working with clients directly yet but you want to - make sure that you grab the getting started guide that leads you through the 5 steps to voice-over success.
