Catalog companies are in the business of attracting customers to their web sites and catalogs. That means two things: 1) They spend money to attract customers (a cost they pass on to you by charging you 50% or more of the retail income from sales); 2) They focus more attention and advertising dollars on those products they think are most likely to interest customers. In other words, the big name artists.

Of course, a sale where you make 50% the income is better than no sale at all, and any exposure is priceless, so it is beneficial to be listed in as many catalogs as you can reasonably maintain a relationship with, just as it is a good idea to have product in the racks of your local record stores.

But what about your own web site? You work hard getting your fans to visit your site. You'd like to be able to accept credit cards on your site, but if you link your page to those catalog companies, you're doing the marketing instead of them, and they're still taking their 50%. And once your fans leave your web site and go to a catalog site, they might be tempted to buy the catalog's featured album instead of yours!

Instead, why not hire a service that puts the order buttons on your own web site where there is no competition, and only charges you for the secure credit card order processing and fulfillment?

Virtual Voices is that service. We aren't a catalog company, we're an order processing and fulfillment center.

We take orders from your web site, keep a supply of your products in our fulfillment center, ship the orders to your fans, and only charge 33% of each sale. It's a simple, secure, and cost-effective way to give the chore of taking and shipping orders to someone else. You'd rather be focusing on your music, anyway.

So by all means, keep your CD available at every catalog site you want to work with. But when someone comes to your web site, let the order be taken and fulfilled by the company that charges you less: Virtual Voices.

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