_{4. Do I need a demo?}

Yeah, the demo is important if you don’t have any of the previous three things, don’t even go there.  If you do, read the FAQ on DEMOS.  Now, if you have these four things, what do you need to be successful?  Time, an income until you make money for yourself, resilience, punctuality, a good work ethic, following through, being kind, over delivering, manners, good communication skills, some idea about marketing and self promotion, a solid internet connection, an unquenchable desire to make it and the will power to come back to the mic every day.  Period.  If your customer service skills are lacking or you aren’t generally super polite and punctual, save yourself a ton of heartache and put your gear on craigslist because this industry is full of mediocre part timers that think the client owes them something.  

_{5. Can I do VO on my phone?}

No.  No you can’t.  I mean, maybe if you were just sending in a sample of your voice when asked for to check an accent, or maybe you’re an electronic genius and you are using your phone as your interface and recorder somehow, but using your phone… like the microphone built into your phone…  no.  So, yeah, you can record your voice on your phone, but that’s not the same thing as doing voice over for money, unless maybe you are deep in a developing country and happy to get paid $5 for an hour of content.  With that said, I’m sure you can find some poor soul on a FB room somewhere that did the voiceover for a shitty youtube channel or his cousins furniture store with their iPhone and he/she “thinks it sounds pretty good”.  If you would like to go that route, go for it, but the answer for all intents and purposes is no.  

_{6. I have a Blue Yeti and bitchin’ sound card on my PC, is that good enough to do voiceover?}

     Yes, for clients that can’t hear the difference.  You can roll with that for a while, but there’s a lot of us who really pay attention to sound quality and we can tell if you are using a pirated version of RX9 or not.So, while the Blue Yeti (and it's ilk) are fantastic for USB mics and are perfectly suitable for compressed material like on tiktok, FB and other social channels where hardly anyone is doing critical listening. Also, if you're main thing will be podcasting, there's really nothing terribly wrong with a USB mic, especially one as good as the Yeti. The problem comes when you want to put your samples and reels up on sites next to other artists who really have their sound together, own industry standard equipment and, more importantly, know how to use it. At that point, your best delivery of copy won't save you because everyone else will simply sound better, clearer, more open, more present than you will be able to, no matter what plug ins you think sound great. And finally, at the "adult's" table, the people listening to your samples/demos/reels are seasoned professionals that can hear things in recordings that take years to even perceive for non-professionals.As a beginner you can't hear or understand what they are hearing or listening for in a recording (which is why you should probably leave your demos and mastering to an actual engineer whenever possible) and because they've heard thousands of hours of program material critically on state of the art speakers in a specially tuned room, any blemishes or over processing will stick out like a hard-on in the kiddie pool. That about covers it. The Blue Yeti (and I love the Blue company, or at least did before logitech bought them) is a quality mic, but I stand by everything I said above.