How To Start Your Voice Over Career, Part 1
Have you always had a love for the sound of your own voice? Are you passionate about reading, but have no idea how to get started? Well, congrats! You're in luck because VoiceBunny is a company that hires professional voice actors to provide your narration needs. With VoiceBunny's help, you can start your very own voice-over journey with little work. You can find scripts that are just right for you, and since so many clients are seeking out on-demand narrations rather than audio books or ebooks for their projects a Voice Bunny will earn more than what anyone might expect from an audiobook or an eBook project. Keep reading to find out more about getting started with this exciting career.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a voice artist made an average income of $28.92 per hour. Now if you work full time that's about $58,000 a year or $27,000 per month. If your lucky and you get asked to do only projects you really enjoy such as Audiobooks, Commercials, Ebooks, Cartoons or Video Games the pay is a little higher at around $40-$60 an hour. It really all depends on what you choose to do in the voice acting field.
The downside to the average $28 an hour is that it takes years to get anywhere near that number. Most of your first jobs will be under $10 an hour and if you're not established within a year or two it might be hard to catch up with all the new people who are just getting started with VoiceBunny like you. The other thing that needs to be considered is that this is only the average pay rate which means there are way less people who are making more than they should or less than they can get away with. This does not include all the extras you could get paid for like sign language or voice acting classes or voice over for another artist.
If you're an experienced voice actor and can offer skills that are in demand, you'll be able to make a lot more money than most beginners. There are many different projects out there that hire two people to do narration and then they use the studio that has the better quality audio feed. So therefore you could be making a decent amount of money by doing moderation work for other artists.
With over 100,000 voice actors also looking to get their big break, you can imagine that you'll have to work very hard in order to be recognized as an amazing voice actor. So how do you make yourself stand out in this extremely competitive field? Well, there are a few ways. First off, you have to make sure your audio quality is always on point. Remember that since most of these projects are done over the phone the client is only going to accept audio quality that sounds like it's being recorded inside of a professional studio. If your audio sounds tinny or has a lot of background noise it will be immediately dismissed by the client and it might even hurt your chances at future jobs from them as well. That's because the best voice actors aren't always right for every project, but if the worst voice actor gets the job it could reflect badly on that project and the client. So your audio quality is important, but don't feel like you need to be a professional studio to get started in this field. There are a lot of professional studios that offer home recording and editing packages so that you can record at home with no background noise at all.
Another way to stand out from the crowd is by making sure you have multiple projects on your account so that clients can view your other work and see if they like it or not. You might even want to consider recording short videos of yourself narrating just to include with your account. You could possibly include a video audition or a demo reel or something like that.
You can also stand out by making sure your voice acting skills are on point and that you have lots of experience in different types of narration for different types of projects, like ebooks, audiobooks, video games, cartoons and such. There are many more things that you can do as well to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Your goal should be to get noticed by potential employers so that you'll be able to obtain jobs that pay a lot more than the typical beginner jobs will pay you.
We have a very informative blog that can give you loads of tips, tricks, and facts about voice acting. It's called "The Voice Over Point". Here you can learn everything there is to know about the voice over industry so check it out if you're interested.
So with all that being said, what are the things you should do when you first start out? Well, your first step would be to create an account on VoiceBunny. There will be a set-up process for your account and during this time you'll have to record some of your samples in order to upload them to your account. You can get around this by just uploading your voice over samples to a Dropbox or Google Drive account. You can then share this account with others if you wish, so that they can use your sample files as well. The one thing to remember is that you'll have to be careful with this because VoiceBunny will send out periodic emails letting the clients know when their projects are ready for delivery. So be sure the you don't share your account with other artists who want to undercut the cost of your services or you could get blacklisted from VoiceBunny and therefore lose access to all of those great voice over gigs.
Once your account is all set up and you're ready to start doing voice over work you should sign up to get VoiceBunny's email newsletter. This way you'll be notified when new gigs are posted that need people with your voice over expertise. The only thing missing now will be the projects themselves, so let's talk about how to find them.
There are many ways you can find the right jobs for your business. You can search the site by state or country as well as looking for specific types of narration such as audiobook, commercial or cartoon. If you have a talent for accents there is a huge crowd of clients who need voice actors with those kinds of accents.
You can also search for a job you might be interested in by checking out the client's portfolio to see if your the type of person they are looking for. This will save you from wasting time and money on projects that you're not going have any interest in. You can check out a potential client's portfolio by going to VoiceBunny and searching their name or username in the top right corner then clicking on their profile. This is how you'll find out if they have any projects available for voice over work.
Once you've found a potential job, you'll want to read through the description carefully, because there is often text included in there that will tell you what exactly they need done.
Conclusion
That's all I have for you right now but I will continue to update this article over time. If you have any tips that you'd like to add to this article feel free to leave them in the comments below and I'll be sure to add them.
Also, if you're interested in having your demo reviewed by me, or if you just want a second opinion on the quality of your voice over business, then please check out my voice over services page.
Thank You!
Thank you so much for reading this article on how to be a freelance voice actor.