VO Pro: The Business of Voice Over and Voice Acting

One of the biggest pains for freelancers and voice actors who work directly with clients is getting paid on time. It seems everyone I know has outstanding past due invoices, or worse yet, has been completely stiffed by a client. It’s rare, but it happens. Today we’re going to talk about how to manage your billing so that you minimize risk, maintain a positive relationship with your clients, and ge...

Today, we talk with Robert Sciglimpaglia, noted VO attorney and voice actor, who warns us how to avoid bad voice over contracts regarding AI, text to speech, synthetic voices, and more.  We recently told the story of one voice actor who’s own voice she discovered on an AI voices website without her knowledge. Rob explains how Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google have been building voice databases...

There are lots of coaches here on YouTube, one in particular, and even Voices.com who will tell you how to make your own DIY voice over demo, and I’m here to tell you in your best interest, ESPECIALLY if you’re a beginner, DO NOT make your own demo. Today, I’m going to tell you exactly why, in no uncertain terms, making your own VO demo reel is an awful idea and can significantly damage your voice...

One of the scariest aspects of being a voice actor in modern times is AI, artificial intelligence, synthetic voice, and text to speech. Most of the discussion has been around the question of, Well, what happens when AI steals our work?  The scarier question to me is what happens when A.I. steals your voice?  Joining us from Dublin is the Irish voice actor and author Remie Michelle Clarke with her...

The biggest event in voiceover is coming up. VO Atlanta 2023, new this year, March 23rd through 26th at the Hilton Atlanta Airport, the traditional venue. But this year, under the new direction of new owners J Michael and Anna Collins.  Also, the 10th-Anniversary edition of VO Atlanta. I got a chance to sit down with J Michael this week and talk about the improvements, both in the creature comfort...

Today, we’re going to go over Voices' new rate guide and compare it to the GVAA so that you’ll know exactly the differences between the 2 guides, where exactly Voices' rates are substandard and stick around because we’ll also show you where they’re actually above standard. For years, the voice acting community has been begging Voices dot com to take solid steps to protect voice actors fr...

One of the most common marketing questions I get from voice actors is, “How do I differentiate myself? How do I set myself apart? How do I make myself different?” We’re going to start by flipping that question around and asking, “How do you not look like everyone else?” So here are 7 of the most common marketing mistakes in voice over _____________________________ ▶️ Watch this video next: https:/...

What you are about to hear is an actual call about an exploitative practice that is too common in our business. It is a prime example of a tiny number of producers who purposefully seek out younger and/or less experienced talent and knowingly exploit them for the benefit of their own organizations. This call is shocking in its brazen self-awareness. The following is a clip of a call I recently had...

Welcome to 7 TRUTHS U MUST Know B4 You Get Started in Voice Acting. If you’re wondering how to get into voice acting, today’s video is essentially all the stuff I wish I had known when I was starting out in voice over, and the stuff that you should know even before you get into voice over. My goal and hope is that I can help you avoid some of the mistakes I made and learn some of the lessons I lea...

How do you provide an exceptional customer experience? So good that it drives loyalty among your customers and generates repeat business? It all starts with understanding and identifying customer needs. Today, we’re going to talk about understanding customer needs at each level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and how it applies to the business of voice over. Voice over is, at its best, a business...

What if we could really change how the P2Ps work? What if we could have a real dialogue with the people that matter, the decision makers, the policy makers, at the online casting sites? What if we could make actual recommendations directly to those people at the very top of the pay 2 plays? It’s one thing to have an online monologue to someone in such a position, as we did to David Ciccarelli of V...

So I thought the first video of the new year would be a good time to lay out the voice over conference 2023 calendar for you, including the big ones like VO Atlanta but also some smaller boutique conferences like MAVO.  Now, if you’ve never been to a voiceover conference before, let’s start with the central question: Why? Why go to a voiceover conference? Why spend all the time and money, why take...

In my last video, I Offended Voices.com and Here’s How , David Ciccarelli, the Founder and CEO of Voices, asked me to lay out the facts of my assertion that they put profit before talent. I laid out five facts that detail their history of disregard for transparency when it comes to fees, taking egregious cuts of project budgets, and others. The reaction was, to say the least, just nuts. Unpreceden...

In my last video, My (No Gear) Voice Over Christmas Wish List, one of my wishes was this:  “I wish all of the pay-to-plays were ethical, but the chief offender here, of course, is Voices.com, but they're certainly not the only ones that put profit before talent and clients. These companies control a huge amount of work globally in the voiceover business, and it's a travesty to me that ra...

Christmas is right around the corner and of course this is the time of year voice actors get the steamy undies for all kinds of gear on their Voice Over Christmas Wish List – mics, interfaces, pop filters, cables, headphones, preamps, compressors, limiters, you name it, we as a group want it. But I think in this season of gratitude and giving, I’m more about a different kind of VO Christmas wish l...

Crisis management in voice over is crucial to the continuity of your business. I was seven months into my full-time voiceover career and I lost my biggest and best client, one of the ones that helped me make the leap to full-time voice over. With that phone call, 50% of my income evaporated instantly. In most cases, if you’re paying attention, you can see it coming. I was and I didn’t.  Hence, I w...

I was in a dark place. I had been through a series of jobs for about a year each. I had largely failed at each one of them. I was a single Dad. I was paying my bills but just barely, living paycheck to paycheck.  Near the end I was working for people I didn’t respect. I didn’t believe in the company. I wasn’t enjoying any success at that job I was sure I was going to be fired in a year. I was appr...

So, you’ve decided you want to get into voice acting and learn to do voiceovers and maybe even become a professional voice actor one day. Great! As the song says, yes, there are two paths you can go by. First, maybe you just want to make a few bucks, have some fun and maybe make voiceover a hobby. You can jump on Fiverr or Upwork and find a ton of jobs to audition for and that’s great.  But if you...

Voices affiliate program, in a new all-time low, now has the unmitigated brazenness to ask you to refer clients, the ones you’ve not gotten from their platform, the ones you’ve worked so hard to earn in the first place, the ones you’ve developed relationships with, and leads you’ve yet to even develop into a profitable relationship - over to them. So that they can now take 25-80% of the budget fro...

I am staunchly against relying on voiceover casting websites as a long-term strategy for growing your business. Note, I said relying on. If the lion’s share of your business is coming from the casting websites, you’re likely not developing your own relationships and you’re leaving your business and yourself vulnerable. But I do believe that there are certain times and circumstances where websites...

MAVO, the mid-Atlantic Voice Over conference is coming up Friday, November 11th through Sunday, November 13th, at the Westin Dulles in the Washington, D.C. area. MAVO was my first conference, and it's very special to me. And so today we're going to do a little preview of MAVO 2022, the faces you can expect to see what you can expect to hear, why MAVO is different than certainly the 800-p...

Here’s my first prediction for 2023. 2023 will be your year! But only if you have a solid voice over business plan, including a voice over marketing plan. In this video, I’ll give you the three most effective steps to building a rock solid 2023 action plan for your voice over business. And at the end, I’ll reveal the real secret sauce to success in 2023 and beyond. The old saying, “Failing to plan...

There are tons of voice over websites where you can find voice over jobs for beginners, voice over work for pros, and everything in between. Everyone is trying to make money online and voice over websites have become a popular way to voice over job opportunities.  Today, I’m going to give you 5 red flags to look for on the voice over jobs websites. Chapters: 0:00 - 0:35 Welcome to Voice Over Jobs...

George Addair famously said, “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” So true for voice actors. When I spoke to almost 70 voice actors, failure was by far the biggest fear we have. That one root fear permeates everything we do... fear of rejection, fear of auditioning, fear of reaching out to clients, fear of annoying people, fear of standing up for our worth, fear of pushing...

It’s a cold hard fact: A Voice Over Marketing Plan Is Critical to Your Voiceover Business. Marketing for voice actors is a fraught subject. And most voice actors don’t have a voice over marketing strategy, email marketing strategy, or even any faint direction in their voice over email marketing. Most voice over artists are petrified at worst or nauseated at best when it comes to marketing for voic...