We are cowed by the perception that doing voice-overs is easy.
How
many of us have been approached by people who say, “How can I get into
voice-over? I’ve always wanted to do it.” I always try to be helpful,
and take the time to answer questions and point people to the
information they want. Sometimes, though, it can be frustrating, when
the person asking for help thinks it’s just a matter of signing up
somewhere. At a party a few months ago a man took up a lot of my time
telling me how great his wife would be at voice-over and trying to get
information from me about how she could do it. At the same time, he was
telling me that she was just starting a career in psychology. If she
had been present, I’m sure it would have been clear that she wasn’t
even interested – nobody starting a new career is going to have the
passion for voice-over that is needed to be successful.
It’s
important to remember that if a potential client questions your rates,
they are probably new to the business themselves and don’t understand
what is involved. Maybe even you need to be reminded, yourself, about
your investment in your career in both money and time to get you where
you are today. Let’s think about it.
The Cost of Running a Voice-over Business.
Training.
Most of us have paid for workshops and private coaching. Most of us
continue to pay for workshops and private coaching in order to stay
current and hone our skills. This can run from $100 for a workshop of a
few hours duration, to $2000 or more for a several-day workshop, and
$50 to $250 an hour for private coaching. Regardless of how much we
spend on training, we work independently to keep the voice and our
acting skills in top shape. I routinely take college courses in acting
as well as in foreign languages since I am starting to offer VO in
German and Spanish. I am extremely fortunate to be able to audit these
courses so I am not paying for them, but I spend every bit as much time
on the work as if I were paying, and take every exam and make every
presentation that the other students are doing. This is a significant
investment of time and intellectual energy. Many of us read voraciously
about voice-over and about marketing. I try to get as many books from
the library as possible but whether the books are purchased or
borrowed, they are an investment of time if not money.
Karen Commins has compiled an
Amazon reading list of voice-over reference books that is valuable indeed.
Demo production.
Most of us have paid to have at least our first demos professionally
produced. Even if we produce our own, there is a tremendous amount of
time and work involved, and the royalty-free music libraries from which
we are choosing the background for our voice are not cheap. I've
written a couple of posts about demo production in the last few years
if you need further information on this topic (
here and
here).Demos
need to be updated every few years, at least. Many production companies
and ad agencies still request CDs, so the cost of CD duplication and
design and printing of CD art work must be taken into account.
Recording studio.
Having your own studio is absolutely essential to make it in the
national and global voice-over market. The investment here is likely to
be significant. Microphone, preamp, computer(s), good sound card,
recording software, soundproofing and acoustic treatments for the
recording space, microphone stand, second monitor and mouse for the
recording space, headphones. Eventually we may invest in a
Whisper Room or the materials to build a soundproof
recording booth from scratch, and possibly in significant renovation of home or commercial space for a studio. We may also decide to install an
ISDN line
to enable remote recording sessions if we have clients who require
this. Very expensive to purchase, install and maintain! For most of us,
recording equipment is in flux - as we learn more about our voice and
about audio equipment, we upgrade (I've lost track of how many
microphones I've been through before settling on my current two). Basic
office equipment may include a second computer, printer, scanner,
business phone (and monthly bill), desk. Software for managing your
database of contacts and for invoicing clients. Office supplies include
paper, printer ink, mailing labels (preferably with your logo on them),
postage, CD mailers – and now we’re starting to overlap with the
expense of marketing materials.
Marketing time and materials.
A great deal of our time as voice artists is spent marketing. Once we
have put in the time to train our voices and learn about copy
interpretation, acting, and all the other elements of excellence in the
craft of voice-over, and produced the demo and done the art work and
got the CDs made, what happens next? Unfortunately, the mere fact of
having developed the ability is not enough – we have to tell everybody
who might need our services that we’re available. How?
Website.
You need a website, a place for clients to hear your demos and learn
about you and your work history. A gallery, in effect. Domain
registration, web hosting, possibly extra for an ftp server so you can
upload large files for clients, web design and maintenance and search
engine optimisation all cost money and time. Even if you do the design
and maintenance yourself – how did you acquire the skills to do it? In
my case - I took several courses in HTML and Dreamweaver. Time and
money.
Internet access. Dial-up is dead – there is no
chance of survival in this business without broadband internet access.
Significant monthly fee for that. With this service you will spend
endless hours on the web, searching for companies that might need your
services, studying their websites and deciding if they and you are a
good fit. Then you call them and/or email them.
Telephone.
You need to call people who might need your services, ask if they use
voice talent and keep a talent roster and if you can send them a CD or
a link to your demos online. This is very time-intensive, especially if
you get somebody who is interested in chatting (fun and pleasant, but
still time-consuming). It also costs money if you don’t have unlimited
long distance calling in your monthly telephone plan - and of course
you still have a monthly phone bill to pay; probably two phone bills if
you also have a cell phone so you don’t miss important calls when
you’re on the road.
Postcards. This is an important
part of a voice talent’s marketing plan. Many people prefer to be
contacted this way, and it’s an excellent way to make an impression, to
remind people that you exist. If you have landed a really important
gig, you will want to get postcards printed that showcase that gig. It
will cost around $25 to print 100 large postcards and $41 to mail them.
But you don’t just have 100 people in your database. You may even have
a thousand or more. And you will want to do several mailings per year,
at least.
Electronic newsletter. This is not for
everyone, but some people use them. I do. It takes me, at a minimum, 4
hours to write one and find the photos and other art work I need. I use
Constant Contact
to mail them out, which costs $30 per month. I have probably lost some
people to whom I used to send individual emails, but I was spending all
my time writing emails which became untenable. Regardless of how we
stay in touch, database management is a constant investment as we need
to keep track of whom we contact and what kind of response or lack
thereof we are getting from them. That always entails frequent returns
to websites or other means of updating contact information, and
frequent additions to the database in the form of notes about
communications from our clients and other contacts. Back to newsletters
- my own newsletter includes a regular column about Avian Bloopers –
mistakes that sound designers make when choosing bird song for their
sound tracks. This is not something that every voice artist must
include in their marketing materials, obviously, but it is an area of
expertise that I have that took me years to acquire.
Podcasting.
I haven’t tried this yet, but one of my newsletter subscribers wrote me
yesterday suggesting it. He said he would like to be able to download
an mp3 version of my newsletter to his computer and listen while he did
other things. So I need to give serious thought to this. More time and
possibly even money, because I will probably be tempted to hire
somebody to compose theme music for it.
Promotional materials.
Business cards, company pens, letterhead, thank-you notes, return
address labels, all the usual stuff that business people need, printed
with your logo that you probably paid somebody to design.
Memberships. Chamber of Commerce, Ad Club,
M-CAI,
whatever you decide to join both for networking purposes and for giving
back to your community, it costs money. Many people also join
Voice 123 or
Voices.com or other online services that connect talent with talent seekers. Each of these costs money as well.
The actual voice-over of Voice-over.
You
are contacted by a potential client, who says you sound like a great
voice for their project but they would like to hear what you do with
their script before they commit to hiring you. Many clients skip the
audition, they’re convinced you’re right for the job based on your
demos, air checks on your website, or the word of other clients who
have hired you in the past. If they do want an audition, then you have
all the work of an actual gig, with no promise of getting anything for
it. Making the time for the audition, formatting and printing the
script (unless you have a monitor in your recording booth and the
client has already taken the trouble of formatting the script for you
rather than just sending it in the body of an email), studying the
script, interpreting the copy, in many cases creating a character for
the script, recording the piece, editing it, possibly watermarking it
if you do that (if you don’t know the person requesting the audition,
you don’t know for sure that this person will not just take your
audition, tell you it won’t work and they will look for somebody else,
and then use your work without compensating you. That’s why adding an
auditory watermark may be a good idea).
Once you’ve sent off the
audition, you may then be asked for another interpretation of the copy.
This is not unusual if the audition is taking place in the agency or
production company or casting director’s studio and there is an audio
engineer taking care of the recording. I have learned the hard way that
if a client starts asking for additional takes of an audition copy, one
needs to proceed with caution. Much better to do that sort of audition
in person or over the phone, so you are not wasting time editing and
uploading auditions when the client may not end up hiring you. In my
case, I have one computer for recording and editing, and one with
internet access for doing everything else. I move audio files back and
forth between them with a jump drive. It is time consuming although I
consider it important to keep my recording functions protected from the
internet. So, additional takes add more time. At any rate, if a client
wants additional recorded takes after I’ve sent an audition, they need
to either commit to hiring me, or find someone else, since it is
usually the case that multiple auditions of the same copy do not lead
to a paying gig.
If you are hired, then you do all that work and
more. Often the copy is simply too long for the required time – a 30
second commercial with 40 seconds or more of copy for example. So there
is back and forth communication with the client and the client’s
client. Sometimes the voice talent is called upon to contribute editing
skills. Sometimes the script writer’s English is imperfect and you end
up helping them rewrite it. Maybe you are even asked your opinion about
the script itself. So now you are voice talent, recording engineer,
sound editor, copy editor and “creative”. Then you must prepare
invoices and send them out, and follow up if you don’t get paid within
30 days. So you are also the accounts manager and bookkeeper.
Now
that we have reviewed the skills, equipment, materials and other
resources required to make a voice-over business a success, let’s
consider several other crucial points.
A 30 second commercial
takes much, much longer than 30 seconds to complete. The job may
include: email correspondence, telephone consultation, copy rewrites,
actual recording, editing, file upload, more email or telephone
exchanges to approve the style of delivery, then final recording,
editing, file upload, email or telephone communications, possible
script changes and more recording, editing, file upload and
communications. And finally, invoicing (and writing a thank-you note
after you get paid). And of course, remember all the marketing you had
to do to get that 30 second commercial gig in the first place? You need
to charge enough to cover all of that, marketing included, and a
reasonable amount of profit. You need to charge enough so that you can
make a decent living at voice-over, so that you are available the next
time somebody needs you to do a voice-over for them. Don’t ever let
somebody tell you that charging X amount of money for a 30 second
commercial means you are making a preposterous hourly rate. It just
doesn’t work that way. Nobody does 120 30-second commercials per hour,
8 hours a day anyway. It simply isn’t possible. If it were, and I
charged the market rate for my area, I’d be making $144,000 per day.
Obviously we have to charge a rate that takes into consideration the
investment we have made in our skills, talents and business, the volume
of work that we get on a daily basis, and our cost of living plus a
reasonable profit. Whatever the appropriate rate is for you, you need
to have some degree of flexibility, but only up to a point. If you’re
working for a fee that is below what you consider fair, you will not
perform to your best abilities, you will not value your own work
sufficiently, and chances are your client won’t either.
Despite
having written a near-novella on the subject, I’m still not finished. I
will save my thoughts on perceived value for another post [
N.B. this is now published].
In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment, because I’m sure I’ve
left out plenty of important points about setting rates for voice-overs
and would welcome your thoughts. Also, if you know of other information
on this topic that you would like to link to this post or that could be
included in
my upcoming monolith on perceived value, please get in touch.
Setting rates in the voice-over business
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