Voices.com - More Voice Over Work Choices

Recently, I wrote about voice over work as an unusual way to earn online. That post is fairly general but it referred to Voice123.com, one of many sites that act as a portal for voice over talent and talent seekers. After that post, Stephanie from Voices.com let me know about that portal. So I signed up for a guest account and am giving you a quick synopsis. I’ll do it as a comparison to Voice123.

Voices.com recently changed their from interactivevoices (or was that voicesinteractive) and has been doing a marketing push. But despite the fact that Voices.com and Voice123.com are both voice over talent portals, they are quite different in approach. I don’t want you to think that I’m favouring one over the other because I’m a (guest) member of both, but while I like Voice123.com, I really like voices.com. I haven’t paid for membership on either site yet, but I’m probably going to sign up for Preferred membership, at US$99/year. There’s also the Premium membership at Voices.com, which is $199/yr. Voice123.com only has a free “guest” membership and a US$199/yr membership.

For both sites, guest members can look for work and be contacted by talent seekers (anonymously). But guest will be unable to contact seekers. For that you pay a membership fee. Neither site represents talent on a commission basis. As I understand it, laws stipulate that an agency choose either a commission structure or amembership structure.

Voice123.com sends job postings via email to all members (guest included) on a frequent basis. I get up to 20 job postings in a single day. I can turn them off but don’t want to. All enticements I guess, as I actually ran out during a thunderstorm mid-week to buy a mini-studio setup (M-audio’s Fast Track USB unit and a Behringer starter microphone. More about setting up a studio in a future post.), in anticipation of creating several demo readings. But as I cannot apply to jobs for either site, I’ll have to spend the time doing demos and promoting myself on my Sound Alchemy Online website (no promo there yet).

Voices.com on the other hand has only sent a single email with a few jobs listed. I’m not sure why that is. Still, this site offers several very inexpensive e-book resources, including a collection of sample scripts for your demos and a 150 page guide to voice over success. They’re only US$9.95 each, and you can also pay with Paypal (without a credit card-backed account, which I really like). Oddly, these resources are extremely hard to find from the home page. I had a hard time going back to find them. But they’re more than worth the $9.95 each, and I’m in the process of reading them. As for Voice123.com, I don’t know if they offer similar ebooks, but I didn’t see any.

Both sites have a blog, which keep you up to date on new job postings, industry news, and all sorts of tips for your success. I’ve subscribed to both (Vox Daily, Voice123 Blog) using Bloglines (an RSS/ Atom web/news feed aggregator) and plan to start reading them regularly. One bit of advice to Voice123: show a larger excerpt of each blog post on the blog home page. You’ll improve your readership of those who do not use Bloglines or similar subscription tools. By contrast, Vox Daily has more posts and far more tips for your success in voice over work.

Conclusion: I’m going to fence-sit on this, but if I was forced to choose a paid membership, I’d pick Voices.com’s Preferred membership for US$99/year. Still, if you are interested in this kind of work here is my suggestion, in stepwise form:

• (1) Sign up for guest memberships on both sites.
• (2) Write up a profile for yourself, using the instructions given. You can look at mine as guidelines: Voices.com, Voice123.com. They are almost identical, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (I’m also going to be writing about voice over work, etc., at Sound Alchemy Online, as a way to promote my skills outside of either portal. If you are serious, I suggest you do something similar.)
• (3) Use job search feature (or email alert feature) to browse the kind of jobs there are. If you find a lot of work that interests you, consider getting a membership. Remember that there is competition for certain types of work, and the more unusual voices you can do, the less competition you’ll have. (My friend John, for example, can do pretty  darn good Liverpudlian accents a la John Lennon and the Beatles.)
• (4) If you are pretty serious about doing voice over work as a supplement to your income, and seriously think you’ll get enough work, consider putting together a small recording studio. You really don’t have to spend a lot (<$200), and your profit margin will be higher than if you had to go to a studio each time you bagged a gig. I’ll tak about the basics of a voice over studio in a near future post over at my Sound Alchemy site, and will have a link from somewhere on this site.
• (5) Whether or not you buy some audio gear, you should come up with several demos. While their quality doesn’t have to be equal to a finished piece, if your dogs are talking trash to your kids in the background, don’t even bother posting that demo. On the other hand, if you have a talking dog, maybe s/he can get voice over work themself.

I don’t want this website to end up being only about voice over work, so henceforth, such discussions will be over at Sound Alchemy Online. Keep an eye out over there.

« Previous Post | Next Post »

3 Comments to “Voices.com - More Voice Over Work Choices”

Leave a Comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>