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How to Make a Great Living Working Mainly From Home As a Professional Voice Actor

The internet has completely changed the fortunes of professional voiceovers – for the better. These days, we can forget driving round radio stations and recording studios in the desperate hope of finding the odd suitable advert script in the production department’s “in-tray” to record; dismiss to the past a day lost travelling to the city to audition for a single line of a TV advert voiceover where you rarely hear back. Your client base can now be based in an area bigger than your region or even your country. In fact, there are clients all round the world who may feel your voice is perfect for their projects.

You don’t need to physically meet the clients, or even use their recording studios. You can record in your own “home studio” and send them broadcast quality audio files via a file transfer service such as WeTransfer.com. Sometimes clients will want to direct you over your headphones while you record the script, using Skype, ipDTL, ISDN, or one of many other systems available that are quite inexpensive and reliant on just a decent internet connection. But usually, you’re left on your own to record the script sent to you with instructions as to timing, voice style, pauses etc., then you’re expected to edit out your mistakes, optimise the levels and to then simply send the file (s) in the technical format requested. You then wait for any retakes required, then you can send in your invoice; job done.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of full time “staff” jobs in my time working for both the BBC and ITV as producer, director, and I even ran a TV channel once. (Granada Men and Motors if you’re interested, and I gave Richard Hammond his first TV job for my sins!) But for the last 10 years, I have been a full-time freelance voiceover, and apart from a handful of trips to London studios each month, I work from my little studio at home and have never earned so much money in my life, for doing such little “work”. I’m totally independent and I don’t have an agent, so regularly I have to work on the “Search Engine Optimisation ” of my websites, and email or call potential new customers and expand my client base, but if you don’t want to do that, then choose the agent route. They’ll do all this for a % of your fee. Both ways are valid. It’s just that I like to be in full control of my success, but, hey, we’re all different.

There are so many uses for voiceovers, and there is honestly plenty of work out there for voice styles of all types and ages. As well as the obvious TV and radio commercials, the easy low hanging fruit comes from recording corporate promo videos or museum narrations. They may be deadly boring to record, and you need to look up the odd Polish word or acronym, but it’s quite an art to sound enthused about a grommet manufacturing plant in Gdansk! Also, there are telephone prompts for various organisations that regularly need renewing, saying things like: “your call IS important to us… !” and so on.

Also, don’t forget awards ceremony voiceovers that are either recorded or you do them live, so you can adlib when a winner doesn’t tip up… or when a winner literally tips up on the edge of the stage. But the real fun to be had is acting in video games. My voice is now on many video games and trailers playing a wide variety of characters. The top-end games still insist on the voice actors being physically in the studio, and that’s after a rigorous auditioning process.

But for every high profile game, there are hundreds of projects lower down in the pecking order, that still pay decent money and once you record a few samples of your character(s), the games studio just ask you do 3 takes of each line and you just send them one big wav file for them to select the best takes and chop up into smaller files for the coding. It really is quite easy money, as many of the lower end games feature stereotypical character voices and accents that are not hard to manage to any actor worth their salt, and the recording can be much fun to do, especially if you have to do a barrel load of “non-vocal” takes of random mumbling or “dying” sounds and fight grunts.

You won’t just get clients from English-speaking countries. English is an international language, and every country has companies and organisations where videos would need an English soundtrack version as well as one recorded in the home language. You may just get sent a Word or PDF document and asked to record it in the style of one of your showreels. Or you may need to record the English version in the style of a video they provide to you with the original language. Don’t worry if you don’t speak the original language, you’ll be able to get the timing and mood required from watching this, and that’s all you need.

In the week of writing, I’ve recorded such sessions from Germany, Spain, Denmark, Italy and UAE. You’ll get a link to view the “foreign” language version on Vimeo or YouTube, to ascertain the timings and the style of the VO. Then you’ll get a script which should sync approximately to the non-English version. If you can offer a full syncing service as well, where you’d chop up your VO on a video timeline to exactly match the non-English paragraphs, fine, but usually they do this detailed editing at their end.

It is perfectly possible to create a good business over about 6- 12 months from scratch. Life is very flexible, and you’d look to your email “in-box” for your daily income. You’d build up your client base to an extent that statistically you KNOW that each morning there’ll be a good day’s work in the offing, even if you have closed off all jobs the night before. The best thing about being a VO is the variety. Doing silly voices, characters for video games, audio books and training video scripts where you learn so much, plus commercials where every split-second counts, means no two days or indeed jobs are the same.

So are you already an actor or actress? Do you already “do” voices? That’s fine. Recording voiceovers is very similar in that you get into a character voice and stay in character. That character may be of a certain age from a certain part of the world with a certain social status, etc. etc. It’s your job to look at the script and think of the character in your head, even down to what they look like and what they would be wearing.

Many of the scripts may not really be characters as such, but “narrator” voices, but even here, you still need to create a type of person that you are playing. If you are given a script for, say, the tourist board of Romania aimed at future visitors, you imagine you are a professor at the University of Bucharest, proud of your country and its history. You have written many books about Romania and enjoy walking and cycling in the forests at weekends. There… have you a picture in your head?

You may have an industrial safety video to provide the voiceover for. So you imagine that you are the head of health and safety who has just taken to hospital a person seriously injured after ignoring the safety rules at the factory. You want to stop others having to go through the same trauma. You now have the passion and the fire in your belly and this will come across in the words that you read.

Yes – you are giving performances. A different one for every script that you are given, but they are still performances, and you need to be able to snap into one of many characters very quickly and sustain the feeling, the voice, the stance, the reason why you are speaking.

Of course, you could attend acting classes to understand all this much more fully, but you need to crack this technique yourself first. If you playback your recordings and it sounds like you are merely reading a script, then you must tackle this problem as soon as possible. Often I am asked to record TV or radio commercials where I need to sound enthusiastic. In real life, I may not care at all about the silly product that is being featured, but I would SOUND like I really genuinely cared!

So how do you learn this technique? Well, it’s all down to the melody of the “song” in the voice, the timing of the words, the words that are emphasised, the little gaps, the breathing, the slight imperfections that make speech sounds natural and not merely read off a script. The best way to “get” this performance technique is to find a recording of a professional experienced voiceover which you admire, ideally with a voice style similar to your own. Then transcribe the voiceover or find the script. Play a few words and pause. Now you read the script yourself – repeat the way the words are said, find the “tune” of the words, the way they go up and down, the pauses, the words that are emphasized – every little nuance. Now play the next section and repeat till the end. Go back to the start and do this again, mimicking the voiceover as closely as you can.

Now forget the recording and YOU read the script again and record yourself. Are you now communicating the energy, passion, the feeling, the character of the original voiceover? If not, try to picture the original voiceover – what would they be dressed in? Would they be holding the product they are enthusing about delivering to a TV camera, or musing out of an open window on a summer’s day? Get the picture.

The idea is that you “get inside the head” of the original voiceover; after all they got the lucrative gig to voice that national commercial and you didn’t. So, you’d copy them as best you can, do this for other voiceovers and actors that you admire and then with the knowledge in your head, and the ability to use “mental pre-sets” to snap into various characters, you then develop a personal style of your own and you’ll get to know your strengths and weaknesses in vocal acting.

1) STUDIO & SET UP

Buy the best microphone you can afford – but it needs to be right for your voice. You need to go to a well stocked audio or music shop in a city, try some out in your price range and record your voice using a top of the range “pop” filter hoop on each… essential for every voice artist. Ask for playback through decent HiFi speakers in a quiet room. Don’t just listen through headphones live, that won’t give you any useful feedback to the quality of the microphones you are testing.

So what are you listening for on playback? Well, you need a microphone that picks out all the “nice” harmonics in your voice and diminishes the “bad” elements. I personally use a Neumann U87 and Neumann TLM 103, as they seem to suit my deep bass voice. It gives my voice resonance and authority while keeping top end (treble) clarity. Years ago, when testing microphones, I found Electovoice microphones made my voice muffled for some reason, and AKG ones were thin and lifeless when recording my voice. Yet I know VO people who love these and other microphones, so you have to see what is right for your own voice and the way you use the microphone.

You’ll find USB microphones at really good prices, (like the Rode NT or the Audio Technica AT2020) but I suggest you avoid these. For the best quality, you really need a traditional large condenser microphone with an XLR audio socket, not a USB digital socket. There are boring technical reasons why this is the case, feel free to Google if you really need to know! As a rule of thumb, you’d be looking to spend at least £500 / $650 on a microphone, and you may be lucky and find a cared for used one on the net for a big discount on the new price. In the microphone shop, you’d also buy a good quality pop filter (double filter ones are usually the best) and a quality anglepoise type mike stand so you can position the microphone exactly right, plus a cage or sprung mount for the microphone so it doesn’t pick up vibrations from the desk.

The microphone needs to plug in using a thick quality screened XLR cable into very good quality preamp such as a Focusrite Scarlett or Steinberg UR22 that then plugs into a USB port of a computer. (Note this is not the same as a “USB” microphone plugged in direct; this route just described gives better quality) Aim for total silence in both the microphone and recording chain and also the room or voice booth you are recording in. Unless you want to just record “shouty” hard-sell scripts, there will be occasions where the slightest small bit of interference or hum will ruin what is called the “noise floor” of your recording. Once you have found a quiet room, the walls and ceiling need to be treated with foam acoustic tiles. This has to done to create a “dead” recording zone with no acoustic reflections. Until you can afford professional acoustic tiles, it’s amazing how old duvets on the walls and ceiling plus thick carpet do the trick.

You may not want to record your audio directly on your computer. I don’t, apart from quick demos. I prefer to plug my microphone into a stand-alone solid-state recorder, one of my trusty old Marantz PMD 661 machines. It gives me more flexibility to pop the SD card out to edit the audio on train journeys, and I like the confidence that the stand-alone recorder with its whisper quiet and high-quality pre-amp is doing its job 100% of the time and that no computer programs are interfering.

So, what about the location where you are going to record your voiceovers? At home, ideally, you’d have a big room or even a garage with a professional voice booth built in, but they are very expensive, at least £3,000 / $4,000. These booths are very heavy, and they get delivered in a huge box in a kit form. They are basically a big box that you step inside via a door and there is usually a triple glazed window. Inside will be a desk and chair plus your screen microphone, keyboard and mouse.

If you can’t afford or have the space for a voice booth, you’d probably start with a small room that you’d adapt. Remember you want the nasty noisy computer with its fans OUTSIDE the room you are in, next door with wires and appropriate USB amplifiers leading to your keyboard, mouse and screen in front of your microphone set up. Or if you have a soundproofed cupboard that offers ventilation for the computer, that could work as well. If you can afford it, buy a “Silent PC” or one with SSD memory rather than spinning hard disks that make a pesky whirring noise. The audio output leads also need to come to your amp and loudspeakers and audio meters (ideally sensitive professional PPM meters) in your studio that will have a headphone socket for directed sessions by phone or Skype, or any of the systems like ipDTL that are very high quality “record at their end” set ups.

On the computer, you’ll need audio editing software, (I use Adobe Audition) Skype, Word, PDF reader and that’s about it, apart from the email system that you’ll use to receive jobs.

2) WEBSITE

Then you’ll need a superb website with very good SEO built in. If you don’t know what you’re doing, hire a pro who does. It needs to look clean, professional and with lots of voice samples that can be downloaded as mp3 files. As well as a main “greatest hits” showreel, you’ll need showreels for subjects and voice styles, such as “Corporate”, “Training”, “Hard sell”, “Soft sell” etc. Look at my own site if you like for examples of the very many styles you’ll need. ( http://www.theenglishvoiceover.com ) Variety is very important. If you are a client looking to record a medical script and you have showreels from two great quality voices, one is reading a medical script with complex medical terms and one a furniture store commercial, who would you choose? So, yes, do a “Medical showreel”. Good at a “forlorn, arty” sound? Record a showreel. Great at a Santa voice? Go for it.

3) ONCE SET UP… HOW TO BE SUCCESFUL

No, you don’t really need an agent, unless you have a guaranteed excellent hard-working one who wants you and believes in you. For the last couple of years I have earned a healthy full-time income without one, unless you count freelance sites like Voices.com, Voice123.com, Envato, etc. who take a cut; no, you just need to network. Email production companies, studios, ad agencies, make some calls, audition for everything that’s suitable and soon one great job leads to another and your empire will grow. For me, it was about a year to build up slowly a great client base which is at a size so I know it is statistically realistic to get some good jobs sent each and every day, 7 days a week. You’d create a “rate card” – usually longer scripts are charged more.

Broadcast use is charged more than non-broadcast. In an day, you may be sent a variety of small scripts, and they may be low budget projects, but still add up to $300 / $400 for the day. Other days, as well some small scripts will come some more lucrative projects with broadcast use. Last month I recorded a set of TV commercials for a $250 “session” or recording fee. Then I was contacted to be told they were to be used on air in Australia and was offered a further $2000 for the usage there. Yes, extra money for absolutely no extra work on my part, and I wouldn’t have known if they had been used elsewhere! Such is the crazy world of the voiceover.

4) YOU NEED TO BE PROFESSIONAL AND RESPOND FAST

The world of media is a fast moving one. Most of the people who will hire you will be production companies who have their own clients they want to look efficient to. So, you need to respond fast to any communication and ideally record speedily too. This is so very, very important. I know for a fact that many of my regular clients use me, not because I am the absolute best voice for the job or even the cheapest, but they KNOW that they will get a fast turnaround so they can add the voiceover to their video and impress their client.

You have got be absolutely dedicated in this. I personally make myself available 06:30 – 22:00 UK time, 7 days a week. No, that’s not working all the time, (in total, we’re talking 6 hours max of actual work) but that’s to catch all the countries working hours, that when you should be checking emails and texts. Ideally you’d be near or in your studio so as soon as an urgent job comes in, you’d fly in front of the microphone, scan the script and instructions and hit record. You’d get it recorded and uploaded right away. If you’re not near your studio, respond right away and give a realistic time when you CAN deliver. Make it sound that you’re in the middle of a big TV commercial session or something, not that you’re collecting the laundry… you get the picture! UNDER promise and OVER deliver, every time. Clients always love voiceovers going the extra mile. For short scripts I often give 3 takes in different styles so they can choose the best, unless they give strict instructions to the contrary.

5) A TYPICAL JOB

You’ll get an email from a client who has found your website and likes your samples. If they haven’t given this detail with the script you need to ask them the following:

1) STYLE What voice style do you want… is there a showreel you like?

2) PACE What speed? Does it need to fit into 2m25s for example?

3) CHALLENGING WORDS How do you pronounce certain words or acronyms? Ideally they’d send you an audio file saying challenging words very slowly and also at normal speed. Don’t just rely on forvo.com, or howjsay.com. For non-English words, Google Translate gives you a good idea sometimes if you click the right language, but don’t rely on it! For unusual non-English company names, you may find a video on YouTube that mentioned how to say the word you are looking for.

4) FILE TYPE What file type do they need? WAV? AIF? mp3? What data and bit rate? For example, even though most modern digital recorders capture at 32bit 48KHz, San Francisco’s Voice Bunny insists on files that are WAV but 16 bit and 44.1KHz. ACX or Audible audio books need files that are mp3 files, 192Kb/sec and normalised to -3dB, plus with 0.5 second mute at the head (start).

After you have all the information, you’d record, peaking between “4” and “6” on your calibrated PPM meters or equivalent if you are using VU meters.

5) FILE EDITING & PROCESSING

You can’t send the raw audio to the client, although some studios insist as they want to deal with waveforms without any processing. At the very least you need to delete your mistakes, after all you’re a professional that doesn’t make mistakes, aren’t you?! Here’s the order I personally process files. I can do this very quickly as I have keyboard presets on Adobe Audition, which saves so much time. (Use ALT + K if you have Audition!)

– Open the waveform

– Chop off the rubbish at the start and end

– Cut out mistakes. A good technique during recording is to leave a 5 second or so gap when you mess up. You won’t be wasting this time, you’d be re-reading the script to ensure you don’t flub, or you can sip some water. When you see the waveform later, you’ll instantly see the gaps that need attention. Don’t listen to people who say you need to play back up to the mistake and “punch in record”, this technique takes too long and is unreliable if you get the timing slightly wrong.

– Deal with “spikes” – these are nasty sounds that show up as high lines on the waveform. They can be treated with an electronic pop filter or if too bad, it may need a retake.

– Add 0.5 second of silence at the start of the file. Add 2 seconds at the end of the file.

– Deal with breaths. A natural sounding read will usually be fine with breaths left in, but for a fast reading commercial, you may need to spend time carefully cutting out breaths in a desperate attempt to save milliseconds!

– I normalise the waveform to 100%, then add light limiting – 9Db – to give the waveform a “haircut”, then “Normalise” the file to -3Db, before saving.

Never ever attach files to emails, even small ones add up to clog your send box. It’s far more professional to email a link from a file transfer service. If your client does not ask for specific file types, send a 32 bit wav and a small email copy which is useful in case the production company need to email it to their clients. If you use WeTransfer, for a small fee the “splash page” where the download link is can be an advert for your services!

7) FEEDBACK

I recommend that you offer “unlimited” retakes, like I do. In other words, if the client wants any changes, you don’t penalise them in any way. For no extra charge, you will re-record the sections required or even the whole lot if they want it. In my experience, unless you really haven’t understood the brief you’d been given, most people will be fully happy first time or just want a few retakes in the style and speed of the original that they can “patch” over the original recording.

8) INVOICING

It’s rude and desperate to send invoices right away; it’s usually good form to wait a few days at least! Unless you are happy with your own accounts system, I recommend Xero, the system that I use. It’s great because it’s a cloud-based system, no installation, so you can reconcile your accounts on your phone, tablet or any computer anywhere. You can set up multiple currencies in PayPal, a must for an international voiceover. My Xero is set up with GB Pounds, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars and Euros. It works out currency conversions as well. But the killer application is that the system securely “sniffs” your bank and PayPal accounts once a day so you don’t have to enter anything. You just need to match your invoices with the payments that Xero has sniffed out and everything is fine. As Xero is cloud based, your accountant can log in as well, so you don’t need to waste time doing the yearly account submission with a carrier bag of invoices or receipts as you’ve already done it all!

9) GROWING THE BUSINESS

Update your website once a month at least, keeping in mind SEO. Pepper your site with varieties of of words that are similar to “voiceover” or “voice actor”, such as commentator, audio recordings, audio studio, audio talent, etc. Don’t forget featuring keywords of your specialties such as “medical voiceovers, medical narration, pharmaceutical narration, etc. Ensure the “id” and “Alt tag” of your photos and illustrations isn’t some random number but something that search engines can read.

Each day do at least 20 minutes of marketing, even if you are busy. Find new production companies and look up their websites then email them with a short, professional message offering your services. Target a country per week if you like. Mandy.com have a superb international directory of production companies that is free to access. LinkedIn is great too if you use it properly. Ask these sorts of people to join your network: Production managers, Creative Directors, Producers, any video production company, audio production companies, etc. Don’t forget that when they accept your invite, you will be sent an email. Don’t ignore this as you’ll get a link (in small blue writing – don’t miss it!) saying “Send a message”. This is gold-dust as you can send a direct message including your contact details without buying any “in-mails” from LinkedIn.

Consider signing up to voiceover websites where clients post auditions and you send in your best shot. These so called “pay to play” sites have had loads of criticism, but usually from voiceovers who don’t use the sites properly, and therefore don’t get much work from them. Some sites you pay a subscription and then they also take a % of the fee, but they offer a voiceover access to some very high profile clients. The most professional and active sites are in my opinion: voices.com; voice123.com, the voicerealm.com then voicebunny.com, and bodalgo.com. Don’t forget the general freelance sites where you can post your voiceover services… People Per Hour, UpWork etc. Fiverr is also a great money spinner, but don’t sell VO’s for just one $5 gig, that’s crazy… use the Fiverr package options to include loads of perceived “extras” that people will generally need anyway, such as fast delivery, wav file and so on. Using this technique my actual minimum fee on Fiverr is $50 which is worth reading something for!

Can You Really Make A Living From Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business model which lets anyone benefit financially by using other people’s products on the internet. It’s a kind of referral based marketing in which affiliates are rewarded for sending website traffic to various products and services online.

Amazon is probably the best known website for selling products on the internet. They have a program which allows anyone to refer customers to them, for a commission on the sales.

Anyone can become an affiliate marketer. However, the truth is that affiliate marketing is no quick fix. It does work yes, but depending on which direction you choose to set sail with your affiliate marketing business, you can be very disappointed, as I was, many times!

But, if you stick with it, and find a path which both works you and your working style, the rewards can be fantastic. It’s taken me a while to get to the point of the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m definitely sold on affiliate marketing now!

Before I found a community and direction which I could trust in and believe in, I jumped from one strategy to another. Having a mentor helped immensely because not knowing whether what you’re doing will work is incredibly difficult.

A lot of what I did when I started simply got me nowhere. I build various websites and my initial tactic was to get my content ranked on Google. This is incredibly difficult, even if your content is unique and offers huge value. You need to keep plugging away and sharing your content. You simply can’t rely on Google to rank your content to get it seen.

Then I faced an AdWords account shut down shortly after one of my biggest breakthroughs. This hit me hard and I gave up for a while. What kept me going was the idea of affiliate marketing which I never let go of. My ‘why’ was that affiliate marketing was a way out of low paid work and grumpy bosses! It also offered a potential income which far outweighed what I could possibly earn by trading my time for money.

Granted, I wasn’t earning anything for a number of years. But it was the thought of escaping my difficult circumstances which kept me going.

I eventually discovered subscription products which paid ongoing commissions for previous sales. When I noticed that the subscriptions were coming in, month after month, my eyes really lit up! It wasn’t a huge amount at first, just a few $20 commissions which were steadily coming in regardless of the sales I made that month.

Over time this adds up. Combined with high commission affiliate programs which offer up-sells and in-house sales teams who close sales for you, I thought I had finally found the holy grail of affiliate marketing success!

I wouldn’t say my affiliate business is a “living” just yet. But I’m now confident that I’m on the right path and taking the right action steps towards that as a real possibility. That for me was the goal; to find my way. For years I struggled for a number of reasons. Scepticism keeps you from making decisions. I got burned with a number of systems and spend months on building content and websites which got me nowhere.

Even in the business community I now belong to, I was full of scepticism at first. It was very difficult for me to take the necessary steps to get myself into the position I am now in. Lack of money is usually a reason which people have when they come to learn about affiliate marketing. This is a double edged sword. All the years I had no money, I couldn’t afford the more costly business ideas. I only focused on the cheaper ones. It cost me dearly in the time that I wasted.

It’s still no piece of cake building a profitable internet business. Even with a good strategy, a mentor and a community behind you. People will still drop out. But if you keep going, your chances of success are far greater! It took me a long time because I focused on content generation to build my income up. If you can, I would definitely recommend using paid marketing over content generation, but only with the right products.

With high ticket items, subscription products, up-sells and a built in sales team, your return on investment is far greater than with many of the affiliate products you’ll be told to sell.

This was something I didn’t understand at first. I tried to sell digital and physical products without thinking about how much I would actually earn; selling books off Amazon for pennies worth of commission!

Getting the right knowledge from the start is a massive bonus. Without it, you can work really hard in the wrong direction for a number of years, as I did. It’s hard to reconcile affiliate marketing as a legitimate business model if you’ve failed at it for years. But then, giving up after all the work I had put in was worse still!

I’m glad I continued to the point I actually started seeing some results. It’s a place I wanted to be for a long time, and one which I held myself back from because I continued to hang on to my comfort zones while seeking new outcomes.

One of these comfort zones was holding on to the idea of what I wanted to do on a daily basis. I wanted to keep doing what I had always done – blogging! Here I am writing more content. It fitted with my comfort zones but didn’t achieve the result I wanted fast enough. Eventually I started using more paid marketing strategies and this gave me a much faster result. However, it was only after reassessing that my blogging wasn’t getting me anywhere and taking some uncomfortable action steps.

I’ve noticed many affiliates make much faster progress than me by taking the necessary steps I was too fearful to take. Once I started doing what they did, results came much faster. You can make a great living with affiliate marketing. Just don’t expect it to fall in line with your comfortable parameters. Sometimes to get to somewhere where you’ve never been, you need to do things you’ve never done!

Forever Living Products Business Review – Can You Get Wealthy With This Aloe MLM?

If you’re checking out this review, chances are you’re looking for some information on Forever Living Products (FLP). In this simple third party review, I’ll go into some details that will help you make an educated decision about the company and opportunity. I’ll also talk about one of the most important things you need to think about if you’re serious about succeeding with Forever Living Products, should you decide to join.

First, let’s cover some details about the company itself. Forever Living Products is a debt-free company that sells various aloe-based products through a network marketing business model. The company was started in 1978 by CEO and founder Rex Maughan. Since then, the company has been documented in several magazines including Inc 500 magazine, Business Journal and Direct Selling News. While the company is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Forever Living Products operates in over 140 countries and has offices in Japan, the UK, Mexico, Ireland, Vietnam, Scandinavia, Paraguay and Turkey. In addition, the corporate team is made up of seasoned leaders who collectively have over 300 years of experience in network marketing. It’s pretty to see that the company is extremely solid and positioned for future growth.

When it comes to their products, Forever Living Products markets various products made from aloe vera. Experts claim that aloe dates back to 2200 BC and has been used by the ancient civilizations of Egypt, India, Greece, Rome and China. Aloe vera is well known for soothing burns and skin irritations, but it’s also filled with hundreds of nutritional compounds that sustain the body.

Forever Living Products has created various products from aloe vera including aloe vera drinks that fortify the digestive system, weight management products, a complete line of aloe-based supplements, personal care products and a line of cosmetics. From a business perspective, it’s important to know that the products are exclusive and can’t be bought any where else. In addition, since the company controls the entire manufacturing process, they can maintain quality control.

Now, let’s go over the business opportunity. To become a distributor, you’ll have to pay an initial start-up (which mostly pays for your first order of products), and then maintain an autoship order every month thereafter. The compensation plan pays out several ways including retail profits, personal bonuses (similar to rebates), group bonuses, a luxury car bonus and an annual profit sharing bonus. Overall, the company provides the opportunity to make upfront income and long-term residual income, which is great news for distributors.

In closing, Forever Living Products is a documented company with a solid business opportunity. They have a strong corporate team, great products and a generous compensation plan. With that said, it’s important for you to know that while you can certainly build a business by approaching your friends and family, you can significantly increase your chances of success by combining your offline efforts with generating leads online. With the economy spiraling downwards, there are millions of people on the internet that are looking for a network marketing company they can join. By positioning yourself in front of them, it’s not hard to see why it would be possible to generate 20-30+ leads a day for your business.

My suggestion is that you use a self branding attraction marketing system and learn the proper marketing techniques that will allow you to generate leads at will. If you can successfully do that, and partner with an experienced and documented leader, you can very well be on your way to building a solid business for yourself and your family.

Big News – Forever Living Products Opportunity Review

Big news and a big product line-up, does this add up to an income opportunity? Aloe Vera nutritional products from Forever Living Products for over 30 years bringing success home. Is this a cool network marketing opportunity or just another in a long line of Herbalife pretenders. This is my review of what this opportunity has to offer.

The founder and CEO of Forever Living Products, Rex Maughan loves helping average ordinary people become millionaires. A prosperous and healthy lifestyle are two major aspirations of this business opportunity. So much of this is common to most all network marketing or multi level marketing companies.

Of course Forever Living Products and their distributors have found some success promoting and selling Aloe Vera and Bee derived natural products. The company is large, doing business in 137 countries around the world and their naturally healthful products can be a fine addition to anybody’s nutritional routine. Forever Giving a charitable foundation dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world is one of the best achievements related to Forever Living Products.

Yes, it is true that for centuries people around the world have used Aloe Vera for it’s health enhancing properties. Also true that Forever Living Products manufactures fine quality products and has garnered the Aloe Science Council Seal of Approval related to product consistency and purity. The product packaging is eye catching and the flavors and nutrients that make up these products are appealing. Overall the company and products do make an attractive presentation on their website.

The bottom line is Forever Living Products offers a genuine opportunity for success. Are the company and it’s products positioned well in an ocean of similar nutritional products? That answer remains to be seen. The key to success in this business will prove to be how well a person can recruit masses of people into the opportunity and in turn help those recruits become successful. Of course the product is essential and people must be enthusiastic about the promotion of these nutritional products. Always be diligent when seeking home business opportunities. Operate your business with a firm belief in developing new skills and marketing ideas in yourself and those with which you share the opportunity. Your business success will rely more on your ability and tremendous effort in promoting yourself as well as mentoring or coaching others into success. Rather than the contents of the product you offer in trade for dollars.

Parkway Vistas, the Address for Lavish Living

Parkway Vistas, a luxurious residential development located at the highly anticipated Dubai Hills Estate, the mixed-use joint mega-project between Meraas Holding and Emaar Properties in Mohammed Bin Rashid City.

Parkway Vistas features an exclusive collection of 61 magnificent villas consisting of spacious six to seven bedrooms layouts. These beautiful villas are available in two sophisticated designs: Modern or Contemporary Arabesque. Residents can experience maximum comfort and convenience with the wide range of exclusive facilities and premium amenities that complement these residences.

Boasting a cutting-edge architecture, an elegant design, and superior finish, the villas display unparalleled class and refinement. Highlighted with top-of-the-line fixtures, natural sunlight flooding through floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and large balconies overlooking the surrounding lush landscapes and private gardens, these marvelous residences create a soothing yet vibrant ambiance.

Cutting-edge architecture, elegant design, superior finish, top-of-the-line fixtures, natural sunlight flooding through floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and large balconies overlooking the surrounding lush landscapes and private gardens are some of details that complete the interiors of these marvelous residences.

Specifically curated for the most discerning buyers, these stunning villas offer expansive indoor and outdoor living spaces that are perfect for family living. Built within a vibrant yet serene environment, these superb homes are a haven for residents to experience a mixture of modern luxury and healthy living through the extensive variety of lifestyle, leisure, and sports amenities available within their reach.

Dubai Hills Estate is one of Dubai’s most spectacular new developments. Situated between the two major thoroughfares of Al Khail Road and Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, Dubai Hills Estate is an extensive residential and lifestyle development comprising villas, low-rise apartments and townhouses. It is the first phase in the massive Mohammed Bin Rashid City project, that has aptly earned the moniker of ‘city within a city’ because of the grand scope of the development.

In addition to the residential projects, Dubai Hills Estate will also contain an 18-hole championship golf course, nature trails, hotels, resorts and the Dubai Hills Mall, which is expected to be on the scale of the massive Mall of the Emirates in the neighboring Al Barsha district.

Dubai Hills Estate is in a prime location, benefiting from quick and easy access to Dubai’s other urban hotspots such as Downtown Dubai and Dubai Marina.

The Lifestyle

With rolling greenery on all sides and tree-lined drives leading to and from the area, Dubai Hills Estate is meant to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. It is a self-sufficient community in its own right, with a variety of residence types that makes it well suited for families and individuals alike.

Highlights

Dubai Hills Mall

The Dubai Hills Mall is a massive retail and entertainment complex being constructed on the northern edge of Hills Estate. It is expected to be larger than the neighboring Mall of the Emirates upon completion, and to become Dubai’s premier shopping destination.

Golf Club

The immense championship golf course will be the centerpiece of Hills Estate, giving residents a place to relax, relieve stress and enjoy some fantastic views of the city skyline.

Success Formula For Dynamic Living

Through the years I have read countless books (at times 2-3 a month) on Personal Development, Motivation, Self Improvement, Entrepreneurship, Autobiographies of Successful Business People, Tapes etc and everyone tells or sells the same or similar advice. I was always inspired and hungry for more knowledge and I soaked up the information and teachings like a sponge but it left me with the question? What is Dynamic Living actually and can we attach a formula to this? The writing of this article is the culmination of all the abovementioned, hours of reading, information and quotes gathered from all these books. I am no expert in all these areas but merely trying to put things into perspective. My sincere wish is for all of you to take some value out of this article.

Before we even try to get to this Magic Formula of Dynamic Living, we need to start at the beginning. The beginning of Planning!

When we go on holiday, what do most people do, we Plan our trip, don’t we! We need to know where we are going and what we are going to do! What do pilots do before they fly? They plan the route. They file a flight plan from point A to B and possibly C and they make sure that they know where they are headed and in which direction they are going, not so? Would you fly with an airline if you knew that the pilots had no clue how to get to your destination? No you would not!

The same Planning applies to our Business Pursuits and our Personal lives. If we Fail To Plan, We certainly Plan to Fail! If you can’t manage yourself properly, you won’t be able to manage all of the necessarily planning and management tasks that we need to do to be successful on a daily basis. Nothing of the above is possible and you will certainly fail if one of the Main Ingredients I. e.: Motivation and the Want to Succeed is not within you!

I have come to the conclusion that the Success Formula for Dynamic Living is: “A Life Filled with Joy, Happiness, Free of Fear, Worry and Directed Positively at Setting Goals and Planning Effectively”.

The Success Formula for Dynamic Living is the following:

DL = GGE + PS x PSI

Dynamic Living = God Given Equipment + Principle of Self x Proper Self Image.

Let’s break each component down and analyze them further:

God Given Equipment:

-It’s a known and medical fact that we only use approx 5% of our potential.

– We are all geniuses! Yes we are! Believe in Yourself!

– By using the art of Positive Programming we can achieve the unimaginable – If we program with Garbage In – We get Garbage Out! If we Program with Positivity In – We get Positivity Out!

– The experts say that it takes approx 28 days to change a bad habit and replace it with a good positive habit. Believe me, this is not difficult to implement and make a drastic change for the positive in your life.

– We all have tremendous natural ability! We just need to use it!

– Well, what are you waiting for!

Principle of Self:

– The Principle of Self – is the art of looking inside oneself and have the courage and will to change and better oneself.

– Principle of Praise – Don’t criticize yourself and everyone around you on a daily basis. Look for the good in everything in your daily life. Positively compliment people and events. You will feel and become a better person by following this advice.

– Principal of Vacuum – Get rid of that vacuum in your head for what you don’t want to make room for what you do want. Get rid of the excess baggage and negativity and replace it with positivity. Talk to yourself, motivate yourself. It is OK to do this, nobody will think your are stupid or crazy. If you constantly reaffirm you can, you will. If you constantly reaffirm you can’t, you won’t. The choice is yours!

– Principal of Creation – Define it, Write down your goals, and Plan your journey. Focus on the Present and the Future. By dwelling in the Past, we are all courting danger and unhappiness.

– Principal of Faith – Believe in Yourself and what you do. Believe in the Higher Hand of our Creator. Trust yourself and your ability. Nothing is impossible to achieve.

Proper Self Image:

– Look at yourself positively.

– Eliminate the inferior complexes.

– It’s about how you view yourself.

– Don’t worry about other people’s perceptions – Focus on your own!

In closing:

Now that you have read the Successful Formula for Dynamic Living, I would like you to do the following:

– Write down on a piece of paper what you dislike, what troubles you have or are faced with, all your worries, all your heart sore and every little thing that bothers you!

– Once you have written them down, read it out loud to yourself or to an audience.

– Take the piece of paper you have written on and make a paper airplane out of it.

– Hold the paper aero plane in your hand, blow with your mouth all the positives into the engine ( back ) of the paper aeroplane, throw and release the paper aero plane and let it keep flying higher and further releasing your troubles and letting your positivity and success soar higher and higher!

YOU CAN DO IT!