Friday, January 02, 2009

Best year ever?

It doesn't necessarily feel like it, but the numbers don't lie, I suppose.

In 2008, I had 103 commercial auditions, topping last year's 86 (which was a very good year and doubled the number of auditions I'd had in each of the past three years).

From those, I had 15 commercial bookings (4 commercials, 7 print, 4 industrials). That total had been stuck around 11 a year since I've been doing this.

And down to brass tax, I made more money this year from commercial work than I have in the five years I've been doing it. More money both in total, eclipsing my previous best by a full 20%, and as a percentage of total income. It's still not close enough to live on, but it's a respectable supplement.

Most importantly, I've gotten some good quality work -- SAG work, the rewards for which should extend into the new year.

I met 3 of my 5 goals for the year -- choosier with the theater opportunities (I only did 3 shows!), better quality commercial work and another great summer. The other two relate to writing, which I didn't keep up with. Another big accomplishment that has been nagging at me for a couple of years and promised to be such an ordeal that I didn't even bother to make it a goal was to revamp the website.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the year. I have no idea what the year ahead will hold, but I'm working on some major changes. We'll just see how that goes.

1 comments:

Jill Elaine Hughes said...

A 15% acceptance rate on auditions is very good. Way beats the standard acceptance rate in professional publishing, which hovers between 0.5% and 1%.

And go SAG, if you haven't already! I had an opportunity to do it years ago, didn't do it (mostly b/c I was too broke to pay the fee), and the opportunity has never arisen again. Sigh.