VO HUSTLE

Tips on Where to Find Work, 2018 Edition

VOICE OVER ADVICE, VOICE OVER MARKETING, VOICE OVER RESOURCES

Boy howdy did the voiceover landscape change since I got started! Voicebank was swallowed whole by Voices.com, curated audio became all the rage, more and more (and more and more) P2P sites cropped up, and it seems like everyone and their brother wants to get in on the action. I recently started cutting proto demos with a couple of friends getting into the field, when the question on my mind all day every day popped up: “Where do you find work?”

It’s a complicated question, and frankly there are more qualified people out there you should be asking. But since you’re here, I’ll give you a few quick tips on things I did to establish myself. In fact, I shall give you three of them.

Internet Presence is Key

To get in the game, you need a website. And I don’t mean a profile on Voices.com masquerading as your “website”. Get a Squarespace account and build a real site. Then maybe get a professional to build you a real real site, once you know you’re in this to win it. Along with that, find every P2P that will let you have a free profile and make one. Google VO casting sites and have a ball. You’ll learn a lot about what’s expected of you across a broad spectrum of places, which range from….I’m not gonna lie to you, most casting sites out there look kinda crummy. Some don’t; I actually really like a couple systems out there, but they’re pretty few and far between. Not to say they’re not effective; I mean, the jury’s gonna be out on that regardless. But! Every site helps to grow your name, your demos’ presence, and your overall online searchability. So get your name there everywhere you can stick it.

Same goes for making content and posting it. Blogs, videos, podcasts, anything you can create within the purview of your brand, help boost your visibility. Also, social media yadda yadda yadda. You probably don’t need me to tell you how Twitter works. Hell, I don’t even have a Twitter account anymore. Maybe I’m a curmudgeonly old man, but operating pretty much any social media account as a business felt really forced for me. Maybe I’ll get back into it one day.

I suppose this falls more into letting work find you than you finding work, but to that effect, lemme tell ya…getting work to find you is far more preferable.

Anyway.

VO is a Hustle – Hit the Pavement

Beyond the P2P’s and the casting databases are the folks you’ll be working for. And the folks they work for. And sometimes, the folks they work for. There’s a pretty layered infrastructure out there, and a lot of your time will be spent navigating the various production houses, b2b marketing companies, advertising and marketing firms, and all the other various levels you can try to penetrate. Direct-to-client is the best, but a lot of work ends up coming my way via third party studios as well. Google around, poke through the internet, get numbers and email addresses, and suss out the truffles of leads that may or may not be there.

Word of Mouth Will Grow Your Business

The internet is great and all, but your community is the best place to build your business. Find friends, friends of friends, associates of friends of friends, anyone who has a position that may be need voiceover work, and hook up with them. Once your reputation grows and people know you for what you do, you’ll be off to the races.

Hope this helps!

Rex

In Voice Over, Persistence (Potentially) Pays off

VOICE OVER ADVICE

I turned a job down last week. It didn’t meet the rates that I had been honing for the last three years, the turnaround was too quick, the script too long, the subject too boring, so I just…turned it down. It felt really good, as I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that with a voiceover job before.

Pause the Hustle and Take Care of Yourself

I’ve also taken a vacation recently for the first time in years (that didn’t involve a convention in some capacity). Another one’s planned for November. Work’s been coming in practically on its own all year, mostly from repeat clients I’ve built up campaigns with for the last year or two. Marketing is more for fishing for new clients rather than an urgent desire to survive; I even rejoined VDC, mostly out of boredom (plus they offered a huge discount at the time).

Oh, and I bought a new car when our old one died a couple week ago. I’ve never even bought a car before. My one steady gig isn’t exactly what I’d call stellar work, but hell, I know I’m not going to starve. And after doing it for a year, the benefit of having a baseline has prevented me from ever having to get a side gig to make ends meet.

It took years of determination and focus to get to this point. And damn does it feel good.

Living The Good Voice Over Life

Life is good. And all it took was ten years of research, two moves across the country, and becoming increasingly unemployable for years to get me to start on this path. It took my friends in Baltimore building a theater company to get me to consider trying out acting at 27. It took the love and support of my wife and our family and friends, to keep us afloat as we readjusted to living in Baltimore again. It took a credit score I don’t know how I earned to buy my first studio setup (which is due to be fully paid off sometime in the 2030’s) when I decided I’d rather be homeless than work in an office ever again.

Well, I guess my home studio is basically an office, but I only have one office mate and he rules.

It was years of risk, and hell, it could still all evaporate next week and I’d have to start over again. Not from the bottom per se, but this isn’t exactly a stable industry.

How to Get Into Voice Over

A lot of people ask me how to get into voice over. Giving advice is not one of my fortes, and also I’m pretty insular and shy/a jerk sometimes, so if you’ve tried getting in touch with me and I haven’t responded, I apologize. But also, this blog is basically the answer to that question, so…you know, start here.

I’m going to take another swing at hewing down my advice into a logline:

Do your research, buy a mic, get good, find work. Continue ad nauseum until it works.

Rex

Review: Voices.com One Month Subscription

PAY TO PLAYS, VOICE OVER REVIEWS

I did a fair amount of research into to Pay-to-play type sites available out there and VDC consistently came out atop its competitors. There is quite a lot of trepidation about the P2P model in general, and I can totally understand why. The idea of paying for leads, basically for the privilege of contacting clients, can feel a little unfair at first glance. However, I’ve come around on my thinking of the model and decided that it is worth the cost of admission.

Speed Up The Auditioning Process

Over the last three weeks, I’ve adjusted my approach significantly. When my account first activated, I spent hours auditioning, cutting each one together and sending them off one at a time. About ten hours later, I had auditioned for about fifteen different jobs. A couple days in I decided to filter by deadlines, take the ones that were ending that day, and record/edit all the auditions in one go and then send out the auditions. At this point I’d already drafted a cover letter template that I have barely altered since. This cut down the amount of time I spent auditioning dramatically.

Try, Learn, Repeat

After doing some more research, I changed my approach. I turned email alerts back on and auditioned for jobs as soon as they came out. This has definitely improved my ‘listen’ and ‘like’ rate. I’m now sitting at 93 jobs answered, 91 demo listens, 10 likes, and four jobs complete with a fifth one in process. While the money is still firmly in part-time territory, this means I’d earned enough in one month to pay for a yearlong subscription, which includes increased visibility on the site. I also have enough fodder to start cutting together demos specifically geared toward different types of jobs (internet, video games, business, etc). Once I have all of those in place, that should improve to book gigs without having to produce a custom demo for each job.

What is Your Voice Over Strategy?

Worth the price of admission? Well, that’s up to you.

While I was pessimistic about the chances of Voices.com working out originally, it has proven itself to be a great tool for finding VO gigs. I’ve been fortunate enough to garner the attention of a few clients within my wheelhouse, which, turns out, is video games. I’ve already had repeat clients, which is pretty mind-blowing considering I’ve been at this a little longer than three weeks. If you’re able to put the time in and quickly produce quality demos, Voices can absolutely work for you. Just know that it takes a flexible schedule (it is essential that you respond to jobs as quickly as possible, because they fill up fast) and a fair amount of work making auditions. The good news is, after making all those auditions, you can turn around and improve your hard marketing system whether they get you the job or not.

I never thought I could start my VO career with this much momentum. While VDC hasn’t been my only source for work (aiming for 35 different, consistent sources by next winter), it’s certainly been the biggest. It certainly seems like there’s room for growth with this model and I am looking forward to a fruitful year with them.

Rex

Is Voices.com Worth It?

PAY TO PLAYS, VOICE OVER REVIEWS

On Monday, I finally took Voices’ inaugural ten dollar offer for their premium lite membership, which affords me the opportunity to bid on gigs and send custom demos to clients. I’ve done a lot of talking to myself in my padded room since then.

Was it worth it?

Hustling for VO Work

In the last three and a half days, I’ve created 40 custom demos for different types of projects. Some of them are characters for video games, some from motivational or promotional online videos, a ton from commercials that want that somewhat raspy, vocal fry heavy sullenness that’s so popular in car commercials and Apple ads these days. I probably won’t get any work from these. Now, since I’ve literally just started building my career as a voiceover artist, I’m trying not to take issue with how much time I’m putting into these custom demos. The way I figure, I need the experience, and it gives me ample opportunity to nail down what I’m really good at and what I need to improve on (i.e. everything).

The Pay-to-Play Model Needs Work

I take issue with the pay to play model. While it strives to operate as an open market forum where talent and client have equal opportunity to meet and find mutual benefit in one another, it assumes that I, the talent, am willing to extend not only my time to produce a unique demo for every single client, but am also unsure of whether I’m even dealing with a real person. Voices seems to be the most widely respected company in this type of business, but I’ve still heard horror stories of clients taking demos wholesale and using them in their commercials without paying for them, or phishing scams designed only to bilk email addresses from talent.

There’s also an oddly translucent quality to the process. Voices.com wants you to know how many people have submitted a proposal (which can include a custom demo, stock demo, or nothing, but these statistics are not displayed), and where you are in line, as it were. There’s a ranking system based on your profile that will place in line depending on what percentage you “fit” the project. So if you’re a teenage girl submitting for a Tom Waits impersonator, you aren’t likely to be high up on the list.

However, it’s been my experience so far that there are so many people using Voices that even though I’m a 95% match, I’m still in the bottom 5% of the line, because the other 105 people are also 95% matches. This may have to do with the ranking system dependence on a small handful of qualities to discern this percentage. This system could definitely use a little more sophistication before it becomes truly useful.

Does the Rubber Meet the VO Road?

Or is it VO rubber on the…road? Anyway, next, you get an icon next to your proposal if a client has listened to your demo (uh, yes, please do that; I took the time to record a demo just for you, the least you could do is listen to it), and if they ‘like’ it. I’m assuming the like function acts as a sort of bookmarking system for the client, and a nice little pat on the head for me. I’ve gotten three likes out of my 40 demos so far (out of 14 listens), so….yeah. I don’t know what I’m supposed to take away from that.

If nothing else, I will have spent ten dollars to practice a good deal on unique scripts that I didn’t have to bother writing, I’ll have tons of fodder for new demos for my website, and I’ll learn not to check this damned board every ten minutes to validate my sense of self worth. I promised myself that if I didn’t book enough work to cover a year’s subscription then I wouldn’t bother renewing the subscription, as I feel my time would be better spent chasing down more tangible leads that, insanely enough, don’t require me to pay for the privilege to maybe talk to an actual human being. I’ll keep this blog updated with how things turn out.

443.692.7260

voice@rexanderson.com

REX ANDERSON