OMG.. I just made the connection. You sent me a friend request and I accepted it because I saw we had a mutual friend (also saw you have some Carver gear
).. I think you have convinced me to join Twitter.. I was half thinking of it because I'm a bird (parrots) --uhh... servant of the parrots--I have two of them--and tweeting on twitter just seems so in vogue with the bird things I do in life. But it can't hurt.
I have been on LinkedIn for about a year. No new business from that, yet. Actually, the only thing that got me some new business 2 years ago was running a 6 month Google AdWords campaign. I spent about $1000 on AdWords and I got one new client and made about $1500 shooting instructional video for him that year. I get inquiries, mostly for weddings, but 95% of them go elsewhere after I give them the price list. The age of the $600 wedding video has undercut me severely. I did a couple of one-time corporate videos, mostly because someone couldn't find a videographer for a particular date and started looking up Google. But after that, it's back to their regular provider. I got a gig with a local hospital, but very soon after, then instituted a requirement that everyone be vetted by VendorMate. Right after that, they suddenly had no more work for me. (think they checked my credit report and didn't like the back taxes situation with my house). Right now, I'm doing some CG work for a client, who is also a close friend, who landed a big client last fall and needs a good CG department to add value to the shooting and editing he does for them.
For 13 years, I worked for a certain symphony orchestra as their webmaster, then in 2005, I tried to talk them into do recordings. After 2 years of pestering them, they finally let me make one archival recording for them. I made 75 copies for the orchestra and stage crew. It was a 'volunteer' project, but they paid me a $600 'honorarium'. Gradually, certain soloist performers wanted recordings of their performances, so I became the go-to guy for that, charging $2500 per concert for a 4 camera shoot with surround sound audio, produced to DVD with production quality menus and graphics/packaging. (I was a typesetter in the 80s and graphic designer in early 90s.) Last year, the director retired and a new, young person took over. Things looked good, as he was having me record every concert. Then one day, he informs me that they aren't going to be using my services anymore and that they are going with a 'does all' company that will handle their market, web presence and recordings. Down the drain goes 13 years of devotion and dedication because of one ambitious fellow from El Paso. Oh well..
So that's my sob-story. Anyway, I am expanding to Boston, Philadelphia and New York for larger orchestra recording sessions. I've been swimming with the small fish for too long. My stuff looks and sounds orders of magnitude better than the stuff they produce in Europe, like the EuroArts blu-ray discs of the Mahler concerts, or the Herbert von Karajan Memorial concert that I saw on blu-ray recently. All of that looked pretty poor, had flat, depthless soundstage and was done on probably 20-30 times my budget. If I had fifty grand to do a concert recording, I could do something stunning. So my goal now is to get work with the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra. I've sent them all demo reels a few years back. Maybe it's time to send them a followup.
The thing about webinars and conferences is that many folks have figured out they can do the audio themselves--that they don't need a company to do it and charge them a premium price. With the advent of the web cam, even politicians are using webcams instead of pro video service providers to to their vlogging. I'm concerned that I'm in a dying market there. And the quality of what I shoot and record is lost on 99% of the clientelle, who'll be watching it on 17" black plastic Daewoo televisions. This is the MP3 / iPod generation. They don't care about a motion picture-grade video or audiophile sound that would please Peter Aczel. They only want 'now' and 'easy/convenient'. That's the sort of thing I'm up against.
