Account Inactivity?
I have been logging in to my VB account every other day or so the last several weeks. Yesterday when I logged in I received the message banner asking me to confirm if I am still interested in receiving jobs from VB clients. Of course, I confirmed that I still do, but the frustrating part is I haven't received a single job in 30+ days. If you want account activity, VB, then step it up with sending work to voice talent. My stats are good and my rates are at the rock bottom lowest I will accept for my services. Don't send me notes asking me if I am still interested in receiving work when I have no control over whether work is distributed to me or other talents.
And just as a side note I am not the only experiencing a drought in work from this site. The most recent posts underneath mine are referring to the same slow down that I have experienced.
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Hi Trey,
Thank you for sharing your case with us.
I reviewed your stats, and I saw that there may be other Bunny Pros that the algorithms consider to be better. Out of the 9 Speedies you've submitted, 8 have been approved which is not too bad. However, out of all the auditions you've submitted, none has been chosen as the winner. This all impacts your ranking.
I can also see that you only have 5 samples. Considering that just in your category we have around 500 Pros, only having 5 samples is not enough to give you the best exposure. Be sure to keep your profile with several high-quality samples and in categories where you don't see many. We recommend you to have 50 samples across the categories you have chosen where you have at least 1 per purpose. This should give you have a better chance at matching our clients' search parameters.
Now, you could consider lowering your rates until you've improved your stats. Usually, most of our regular Bunny Pros have started with low rates to make sure they can start building a good reputation within the system. Once that has happened, you will be able to gradually increase your rates. For Speedies and contests, note that the reward amounts are different for each Bunny Pro and calculated automatically based on stats, history and your rates among other factors. Also, keep in mind that the reward amount will increase the longer a project remains unfulfilled.
I hope all this info helps you!
Hey Angela - (Sorry for the long post)
Thank you for your reply, however, this doesn't fully address the issue. My post was more about why am I being asked to confirm if I still want to participate in VB? The banner specifically addressed account inactivity. Am I to assume that simply logging in to my VB account is not considered account activity? Was it actually stating that I haven't uploaded or participated in anything that was sent to me?
If that is the case, then that would bring us back to another topic I, and a multitude of other talents, have spoken about and that is talent being able to set work hours or business hours. I have received project notifications, but they are being delivered at 2,3,4 in the morning. I understand that VB is an international entity and has clients from around the world. VB has stated that it is going to overhaul the website from the ground up, but this seems like it is a desperately needed feature to your platform in its current form. Tangentially, I have a six-month-old child and a spouse that is owning partner in her consulting firm. If I were to set my phone on the loudest possible tone (as suggested in a tutorial) to wake me up whenever I received a VB project this family of three would quickly end up a twosome.
To address your response:
I went back to my projects panel and reviewed the projects I have completed up to this point. You indicated that I participated in nine Speedy's eight of which were approved. The ninth Speedy states the reason for rejection is "Voice Over Not Needed" and that the project expired or was cancelled.
Are you saying that if a client cancels a project that is a hit against the talent's stats?
As for none of my auditions being selected as the winner are you referring to Speedys or Contests? I was under the impression unless it was totally rejected by the client by me responding to that Speedy I was the winner of that project, is this incorrect?
If you are referring to Contests only, then I have participated in two Contests; one Contest was cancelled by the client or expired and the other I was not chosen as the winner. Again I ask if a client cancels a project is that counted against the talent?
As you commented above, the longer a project sits on the open market the higher the compensation becomes. Clearly, by upping the ante on the project, you are trying to entice more talents to participate. You don't have to be genius to realize that at a certain dollar amount talents who may not completely fit the bill are going to apply. They are applying because they see no one else is, yet if they aren't selected as the winner that will be held against their stats. If that's the case then why would I, or any talent, ever want to participate in a contest?
In reference to the setting the rates, VB constantly takes the position that we as talents get to set our rates:
What rates should Pros charge?
We want Pros to work for rates they deem fair. As a global company, what is considered fair in one country may be very different from others, so we refrain from suggesting Pros exactly what they should charge us.
We prefer to work with Pros that give us a good combination of pricing, speed, quality, and reliability. Pro’s rates tend to be a reflection of their industry experience, their equipment and their response time. "
Yet, whenever talents post in the community about not receiving many project invitations it is frequently suggested, as mentioned in your response to me, that we should consider lowering our rates. My rates are lower than I would ever set independently of this site but VB's suggestion is that I consider lowering them even more. This seems very contradictory to me.
Lastly, You want talents to upload 50 samples one in each category. Okay - I can do that however, that seems more like a numbers game to me. Upload a ton of samples and of course, I'll show up in someone's search eventually.
I apologize if my response appears argumentative, I'm simply trying to balance the equation of what VB states to Pros versus the reality of the system.
Hi Trey
I'm sorry for my late reply here. We've been getting many requests lately. Let me go ahead and reply to each question separately.
1. In regards to the inactivity email, this is being sent when you haven't logged in to VoiceBunny in 30 days. We send this as a friendly reminder so you don't forget that your account is there. I understand how the wording can be harsh so I'm going to review how we can make the wording friendlier.
2. About the speedy stats, please keep in mind that all the projects count for your stats except for Backup projects that don't get a winner. If you consider the rejection is unfair, you can share the project with us so we can review if we can ignore it from your stats. Our Quality Control team will review the case and let me know if we can, indeed, take the impact off. For this purpose, please share the project's link or ID with me so I can ask our team if we can make the exception.
When I mentioned that you weren't chosen as the winner, I was referring to Contests. I understand your point in this regard, but please keep in mind that we also expect you to be selective of the contests to which you participate. To avoid not being chosen as the winner of a contest, it's important for you to read the remarks and script before accepting the project to ensure your voice would go well with what's being requested. This way, you are participating only to projects where your voice is a good fit and your chances of being chosen are much higher than if you participate in all the contests that come your way.
We understand contests are subjective as the client can have a different perspective as we can, but we trust your judgement as well to choose which projects your voice would go the best.
3. Lowering your rates is just a suggestion we make to increase your project invitations. However, it's not mandatory in any way nor we expect you to work for a fee you don't consider appropriate. We will never make you modify your rates to make them lower if you don't want to and we just mention that lower rates may help because that's what we've seen as a trend from our highest ranking Pros. Most of them started with lower rates and increased them over time, but you don't have to do this if you don't consider it fair. We won't penalize you for your rates in any way.
4. Now, in regards to the samples, we suggest 50 because it's the number we've seen has given our Pros good visibility. Of course, this will depend a lot on the category you're in and I know it sounds like a big number. However, please also understand that just in Male - Middle age and Male - Young Adult we have over 1,000 Pros. We want to showcase all of your samples and will always share all them in our Search, but of course, having too little samples will impact the visibility you can get within all the other Pros we have. We hope you can understand that we don't provide this estimated number of samples just because or that we're just wanting to make this a race against numbers. We just want to give you the most accurate advice to help you maximize you chances of being found in the system.