Your website is brand new, you've created a few demos and you're pretty happy with them, but are you sure you're ready to get started in this business ?
Before you start a career as a home studio voiceover talent, Follow these 10 tips, because beware, you can get burned out in this business.
Know how much to sell your voice for
Don't lie to your clients
learn the names of the reference voice actors
Ask your clients the right questions
be confident in yourself
1 - Put all the necessary information on your website
Take care of your home page, it must be attractive, this way the customer will understand right away that he is on a voice-over site.
More than 80% of Internet users use mobile, think about responsive.
Your demos should sound professional and showcase you.
As for your form, it must be clear, no more than 3 or 4 questions maximum.
2 - Deliver your voice recordings on time
When prospecting, if the client wants to receive demos in return, send them quickly so they don't go elsewhere.
Maybe you already have a job or are thinking of becoming a full-time voiceover talent ?
If you want, for example, to learn about local radio advertising (it's a very good training contrary to what many people think, but poorly paid I grant you), you must be available and respond quickly to their request.
Rare are the radio pros who ask for a recording for the next day.
Choose honesty over lies.
If you are new to the radio business and want to take it easy at first, just say so and we will be grateful. For a good collaboration, openness is the key. But be careful that it doesn't last too long, because whatever the specialty, your client needs results and not in 2 years. If you present yourself as a professional, you will have to prove it.
A potential client sends you a request for voice services, respond within the hour. You can't afford to lose them when you start out as a freelancer,
(Don't forget that he is your ally, he will call on your services again and will even recommend you to other professionals if everything goes well.
If for any reason you have to be away, consider creating an automatic reply: "Thank you for your message, currently being recorded, I'll be sure to reply as soon as...time".
The customer is in a hurry, stressed, he needs to be reassured.
He leaves you a phone message, call him back as soon as possible.
3 - Know how to use your home studio equipment
The particularity of the voice-over job in home studio is that you are left to your own devices. You are both a voice-over artist AND a "sound engineer", which is a big word, but if you don't know how to manage the volume of the sound, the cutting, the mouth noises, exporting in the required format (wav, mp3, aiff...) it could be a problem.
Have you optimized your acoustics ?
Do some tests with your friends or a sound engineer (he will do it for free) to get an opinion on the quality of your acoustics. Join facebook groups, you will always find someone to advise you.
4 - Know how much to sell your voice for
It took a lot of time and financial investment to train you, you now know the value of your work, you are a professional now. So don't neglect this essential point which is the rate at which you will sell your services from your home.
I will give you my point of view, you are free to accept it or not. Don't sign up on low cost platforms. In my opinion, it is not a service to the profession and even less to yourself.
Nothing prevents you from doing it anonymously, but low cost for a profession as beautiful as ours, it still hurts.
The subject of voiceover pricing is...how shall I put it...THE BIG SICRÈTE🙂.
Voices.com is a great place to start to help you, over time you will create your own pricing schedule to suit you, while staying within the price range of other voiceovers to stay fair, even though there is currently no law governing our rates.
5 - Learn the basics of voice-over vocabulary
The client must be sure that he is dealing with a professional. If they ask you to send them your portfolio and you have no idea what it is...ouch! Above all, don't make the mistake of asking him what it means, you won't get an answer and you'll never hear from him again.
Help yourself to my article, it will be regularly updated.
6 - Don't lie to your clients
Don't pretend to know how to do what you don't know how to do
Several companies have already asked me if I could edit their video. I am a voice-over talent and my job is to interpret, not to edit or mix. Don't lie about your skills, the client is not fooled.
The same goes for specialties in which you are not yet comfortable, if you are approached for audiobooks and you are not yet ready, be frank.
Only prospect where you are good, if you are good at everything, then... GO AHEAD !
7 - learn the names of the reference voice actors
You're on a skype connection, zooming in... with a client who asks you for a Françoise Cadol interpretation, come on, without thinking, do you know who it is?
He won't hold it against you, but that won't stop him from thinking that you don't even have any references for a professional voice-over.
Not good for your ego either.
8 -Ask your clients the right questions
Let's say your client asks you "Hi, we are the blah blah blah company and would like to use your services for our video project, could you send us a quote"? Pretty vague question, isn't it ?
Don't send him a quote until you ask him about :
The specialty
The distribution medium(s)
The duration of the broadcast
The length of the script...
All the essential information that you should not neglect.
9 - You must know how to make estimates and invoices
The administrative part is my least favorite part, but you have to go through it.
There are plenty of free online platforms to help you :
Paypal is also a very good compromise if you have a pro account
Finally, a very important question.
10 - be confident in yourself
Why wouldn't you have confidence in yourself?
You have taken many steps.
You didn't hesitate to practice every day in your little acoustic booth, to question yourself, and even for some of you, to go into the artistic world when you wouldn't have even thought of it 6 months ago. You need to be confident in yourself to do all that.
The more you work, the better you will get.
The better you get, the better you will be at interpreting.
The better you are at interpreting, the more confident you will be