Voice-Over Talent

If your ideal job entails working eight to 10 hours a week, making about $100,000 per year, then being a voice-over artist might be right for you.

If, that is, you have a unique voice or talent.

Jeannie Stith broke into the business through a friend.

“He was doing voice-over work and spoke to our theater class about it. I was interested and wanted to try and he got me my first job and it snowballed from there,” she says.

Stith markets herself to recording studios and ad agencies and works through an agent.

“For commercial work, I have a demo that is made up of clips of commercials that have all the sounds I can do well. And then they hire me for a job and I go to the studio. A lot of times I don’t even know what I’m doing until I get there,” she says.

“I’m my own boss, so I don’t have to take the job if I don’t want to. It’s very competitive, but if you have something unique, then there is always room for someone who is excellent,” Stith says.

- story from bankrate.com

Being a voice-over talent could be a great part-time gig and even lucrative full-time if you’ve proven to be big talent in this industry.  Many voice-over artists have the ability to work from home with computers today, you could get some necessary professional grade equipment to produce quality voice recordings and submit them to online marketplaces specifically for voice talents and/or submit them to an agent.   No need to go into studios to record anymore since editing software can be used at home to efficiently record, edit, and deliver finished work through emails.

Besides a good working computer and voice recording software package, you’ll first need a condenser microphone, which is a powered microphone that produces high quality sound.  You’ll find these at music stores and not at your local computer stores.  Then you’ll need a microphone preamp to boost the signal of the mike so the computer’s sound card can accept the sound sufficiently.  Then you’ll need a high quality sound card.  All this could cost in the range of the upper hundreds of dollars and over $2000, depending how much you need to obtain and quality.

Voice professional, Colin Campbell, states you can earn $50 or so doing a one page text upwards to hundreds of dollars for a multi-page project.

Some links to get you started:

How To Become a Voice Over Artist – article from an artist giving detailed advice on equipment needed for home recordings

Dan Levine – YouTube video from Dan Levine giving tips as an artist

Voices.com - Voice over community where you can list samples of your work and earn gigs from voice over artist seekers

www.voice123.com – voice over talent marketplace