A new year, a new start, a new begin…. blah, blah, blahbiddy blah blah. This time it’s serious, and I’m pretty sure I’m not fooling around…
You’re a writer – you know how it is. You reach another mark on the calendar and decide, by billie-jinkers this time I’m gonna start that new book, or article, or, well, you get the idea.
So, I’d threatened to hang out my voice over shingle once the new year began. And, quite by accident, I seem to have done so.
I was just testing the water, seeing if it was even possible to so do, and I signed up with Fiverr. You know about them? They’re like a broker – you provide the talent and they provide the seeker of said talent, hopefully with talents in their pocketses.
Anyway, you don’t just sign up with Fiverr. Everything leads you from one step to the next, until you find yourself actively marketing with them.
Now I have what they call a “gig,” which is kind of like your landing page/standing commercial kind of thing. For my gig as a voice over artist, I felt the urge to make a video. Sadly, it’s here:
So, with this thing, now, see, I’ve got a new voice over thing sort of a thing that I have to figure out. You know what I mean?
Just by the happenstance, I put this video together using DaVinci Resolve, really cool and free open-source video compositing software. It takes a minute to figure out, but it’s really nifty. Not only that, but the animations in this video were made using Crazy Talk 8 – another free piece of excellent animation software. But wait, the snarly old lady’s head is a 3D model I made in BforArtists, another free piece of software, this one a GUI for Blender. There. Is that enough plugs for other people’s stuff? All these things are F-R-E-E, which kinda fits my budget.
Funnily enough, I thought it best to plug my own stuff within the voice over demo video, and set about making a promo for my How-To site, Skippity Whistles. The site was in such a shambles that first I had to revise it before I could make a promo. I got all tangled up in the Fiverr thing and forgot all about the promo. Now I’ve got the Fiverr thing, and Skippity Whistles promo, and the Skippity Whistles site revamp to worry about.
And you may have noticed that this site is new, new, totally new! I decided to part with the talents to buy the JohnDReinhart.com domain. Should a prospective client come to call, they will assume that I am a whole and normal person by visiting this, the site upon which your eyes currently feast.
And so here we are. It all comes around full circle.
And here you are, my dear friend, reading this seemingly mindless ramble, something which I do truly appreciate. I truly do.
And it’s not really mindless. Do you remember my Gorilla Marketing scheme? Do almost nothing and get tons of results?
I did one thing. Just one tiny, little thing by signing up with Fiverr, and look what has happened!
If you do one thing in this new year, I hope it turns into a whopping success right away, so that you don’t find yourself like me, piecing together bits and pieces of pieces and bits to make yourself seem reasonable. Which I may seem to be.
Oh, and happy new year.
John D Reinhart 