I got an e-mail from a local studio (I assume it was a bulk mailing) offering to put together demos for $150. While I am perfectly capable of assembling my own demo I decided to take him up on his offer for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it's a lot of work I didn't feel like doing.
More importantly, I wanted a different set of ears besides my own to give me a unique perspective. This guy's former boss had been after me for a number of years to update my demo to make it more useful for him to include in casting calls. By the time I finally got around to it, his health took a turn for the worse and he went out of business -- while he had some of my material in his possession. The new guy had apparently picked up the ball and retained most of the former studio's clients.
I figured that having this guy do my demo would put me directly onto his radar screen and, since he had a stake in my success, might cause him to promote me more actively to his big-time clients.
As it turns out, I think he did a pretty good job with my demos (
Lee's Demo Page) and he almost immediately called me to read for a nice AV project. I read the entire script for him but the client ended up going with a female voice, so I didn't get that gig, but on the other hand, the studio guy never charged me for doing the demo, so I guess it was a wash. However, I have subsequently been asked by him to audition for a number of big projects and I recently landed one of them, so the experience has more than paid off for me.