Beginnings are hard, let’s all agree on that. There, now that we’ve gotten past that nastiness, we can proceed, right? The problem is, that’s really not much of a beginning. I mean, all I did was express a questionable opinion, then try to force you to agree with me. Hardly a compelling start, now, is it?

The best commercial I saw recently was 6 seconds long. I was watching some conspiracy video on YouTube that was two hours long and my feed was interrupted by a spot, which is always infuriating. The voice on the spot asked “what does ambiguous mean?” then the Google logo appeared and it was done. The commercial was over before I could hit “Skip Ad”. It was effective, short, and it came and went so fast I remembered everything.

These days when I’m not writing, I spend most of my time doing voice work for radio stations all over the world. They all are English speaking stations and since that is my ‘mother’ tongue, I do pretty OK, 95 percent of the time. The leftover 5 percent can be troublesome. 

Clickbait – intriguing headlines that lead us to click on a link. They’ve been used for generations…long before we were clicking.

The R.A.P. Q It Up Panel takes on this question on the keys to VO success: Q It Up: Whether you’re doing voiceover full-time or supplement your income with VO on the side, what are the things you’ve done that have contributed the most to growing your voice-over business?