How To Get Into Voice Acting
My goal with this website was help do your homework for you so that you can more easily become a productive, working VO artist at a fraction of the cost usually recommended by “experts.”Voice over narration for corporate training videos, audio books, foreign language films, and web videos is rapidly gaining on traditional radio and TV announcing. And online video and audio content will continue growing because they are proven to cause better audience engagement.
Something amazing happens in our brains when audio and visuals are combined. The cognitive load becomes less and our brains process information faster. This is called the “dual-channel hypothesis” and has been the subject of rigorous research in multimedia learning. It’s another reason the demand for voice talent will continue to grow.
If you want to break into this rapidly growing field, even if you’re not that great or creative with your voice, you can. The necessary skills can be learned and honed and the work is there.
Voices dot com, a leading marketplace for vocal talent, says that voice actors have earned over $39 million from its platform alone, averaging about $250 per job. The company also stated in its 2013 industry report that “the average fee per job has increased by 10%.
Upon hearing this, many people get very excited and some spend small fortunes on equipment and training only to be disappointed when they don’t even make their money back. Truthfully, the high paying union work and television cartoon work does exist, but it’s tough to get into as there are lots of people with ability who are well known in the industry.
But, if you are willing to cultivate your voice skills with hard work, practice, honest self-criticism and have the drive to deliver an exceptionally service rapidly, landing the beginner jobs is possible along with a decent income can be earned without leaving home. It is time consuming at first to find work as you will have to constantly scan the ads for work that has just been posted. But like any other business, repeat customers will begin to reach out to you and eventually a flow will start.
And once you have a couple of the smaller jobs under your belt, the bigger and more exciting jobs are somewhat more likely.
There is nothing more discouraging than the voice over studio coach (read salesperson) telling you that you need more training ($150 per hour} in their sound proof isolation booth ($150 per hour). You probably will get to a point where you need a pro coach to evaluate your voiceover techniques. You may also decide to have the help of an agency or pay the fees to the VO jobsites for better work. Save it for later.
The goal here is to get you setup with experience, skill and a system to start making money in voiceover at home while spending minimal money.
Once you are a master of the basics and have some paying jobs, you can focus more on the big ones. It takes quite a bit of time and effort to become good enough to start booking lucrative gigs.
When I began to pursue my interest in voiceover work, it suddenly seemed as if it was an impossibility. What I read and was told made it seem out of the reach of the ordinary person with bills and a regular job.
It appeared that you needed to spend thousands on training and equipment with no real likelihood of success. I began to suspect that the bulk of the money was being made in training and sound studio rentals. Not having thousands of dollars to piddle away, I just bought some cheap equipment, some acoustical insulation, and began practicing away.
The truth is that all those things are desirable, but with a degree of hands on experimentation you can manage to get started inexpensively. If you are in radio and have access to top notch equipment, that’s great, just don’t forget that you need to be prepared when it’s gone. Now there’s nothing wrong and a lot good about going to a free introductory lesson, or even a $100 beginner seminar just for the experience. Just remember, they are there to sell you a program. Don’t spend your money.
