Over the last couple of decades the industry has moved out of the big studios in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and London and into professional studios in voice actors' homes, in cities and small towns everywhere. The internet did the rest. Online marketplaces put voice over within reach of every business, big or small, anywhere in the world, and they gave professional voice actors access to clients on every continent.
Now there are a lot of these sites, and they compete not only for clients but, especially, for voice actors. They differ on membership, rates, how and when you get paid, who they let in and what they push on you. Before you join any of them, it's worth knowing how to compare.
Two kinds of site
Pay to playAnyone who pays
- Free tier to be listed, a yearly subscription to be seen.
- Actors quote their own rate, or bid against a budget.
- Amateurs and professionals in the same line-up.
- Marketing aimed at signing up more actors.
Professionals onlyScreened in, nothing to pay
- Submit a demo, get accepted, get listed. No subscription.
- One published rate card. Nobody haggles, nobody bids.
- Every profile equal in search. No pay-for-ranking.
- Marketing aimed at bringing in clients.
Membership
Some sites run tiers. Join free and you can post a demo, but you'll only be invited to audition now and then. Pay a yearly subscription, typically several hundred dollars and rising, and you get the job notices, the private auditions and a better position in the search. These sites are open to anyone willing to pay, amateur or professional.
Other sites don't let you create a profile on the spot. You submit a demo and some details, and if you're accepted, then you build your profile and upload demos by category. There's nothing to pay to be listed. Castings come to you based on what the client asked for, plus private auditions and direct bookings. Only working professionals get in.
Rates
Some sites publish a standard rate card that's fair to the client and competitive for the actor. That takes the guesswork out of pricing, which historically was done by agents, producers and casting directors, and it means the actor never has to haggle.
Others provide a rate sheet as a guide and leave the actual quote to you. Those guide rates usually exclude production, editing, character loading, translation and the rest, so the final figure depends on how each actor chooses to charge. And some sites that let actors set their own fees add a sizeable platform cut on top, which the client sees and the actor doesn't always.
Payments
The reputable sites hold the client's money in escrow: once you're booked, the payment is received and verified and held until the job is done, then released to you. Not every site does this. It should be one of your first questions, because a site without payment protection can't and won't help when a client vanishes with the files.
Payout timing varies too. Some sites pay within days of a job closing. Others hold everything until the 1st or the 15th of the following month. Some quote an average of two or three weeks from booking to money in your account. Ask, and ask what happens when a client is slow to approve.
What you're getting
On the tiered sites, what you get depends on what you pay. Free: a searchable profile, a handful of demos, auditions by direct invitation only. Paid: a higher position in search, unlimited demos, invitations from matching job posts as well as direct ones, payment protection and support.
On the professionals-only sites, everyone gets the same thing: a searchable profile with no pay-for-ranking, unlimited demos, notices for matching castings, private auditions, direct bookings, payment protection and support, usually with messaging and invoicing built in so you never chase a client for paperwork.
How a booking flows on a rate-card site
It helps to picture the whole thing before you join anywhere. On a professionals-only, rate-card site, a job moves like this.
- A casting is postedThe client gives a script, a style, a deadline and picks the kind of voice they want. The fee is set by the rate card before anyone auditions.
- You're invitedActors whose profile matches get a notice. You record a short audition of the real script in your own studio, usually within hours. It costs you nothing.
- The client booksThey listen, pick a voice and pay. The money is held in escrow from that moment, so you're never chasing an invoice.
- You record and deliverThe full read, cleaned and delivered in the format asked for, by the deadline. Sometimes the client listens in and directs live.
- Pickups if neededA changed line, a mispronounced name. Quick, and included.
- Approval and payoutThe client signs off and the fee is released to you on the site's payout schedule. Messaging, invoicing and the paperwork all happen on the site.
Other things worth knowing
Average job value
What does a typical booking on the site pay? Sites that publish this are telling you what kind of work flows through. A platform where the average job is a few hundred dollars is attracting proper corporate, e-learning and broadcast work. One where most jobs are under fifty is a different business, however many jobs it has.
Quality of clients
Marketplaces opened voice over up to small and medium businesses that would never have called an agency, and that's a good thing. The best sites have a healthy mix: the small businesses alongside household names, agencies and production companies. What you want is a site that keeps a steady flow of decent clients coming and keeps the difficult ones away from you.
How many people you're competing with
Every site has a matching system that decides which actors get told about which jobs. A huge membership sounds impressive until you realise it means competing with thousands of people whose profile looks like yours, some of whom will quote a fraction of a professional rate. It's worth asking any site, plainly, how many actors with your profile you'd be up against. The honest ones will tell you.
What to look out for
Three red flags
- Reverse auctionsActors bidding under the client's budget, then under each other. Rates only ever go one way, and the site cheers it on.
- Anyone who pays gets inYou compete with untrained voices in untreated rooms, and the site keeps trying to sell you the upgrade.
- Recruiting, not promotingIf the marketing chases actors rather than clients, the subscriptions are the business and you're the customer, not the talent.
Reverse auctions
Also known as low-balling. On sites where the client names a budget and actors bid, some actors bid under it, and on flexible budgets, some bid the floor. Sites that encourage this are pushing the whole industry's rates down, one job at a time. The general freelance platforms are worse still, with voice work going for the price of a sandwich. And it's bad for you personally: if you're visible on a professional site at a professional rate and on a bidding site at a third of it, guess which one the client books you through.
Amateurs versus pros
On a pay-to-join site, it isn't only professionals paying for the premium tier. Plenty of enthusiastic beginners will pay several hundred dollars to get started, and honestly, it's cheaper than training. You have to start somewhere. But should professionals have to compete with them? Many pros don't think so, and they don't love sites that will list anyone, regardless of skill or the sound of their studio, as long as the subscription clears.
You want a site that treats an established professional with the respect that's earned. That means not competing against untrained voices, and not being treated as a beginner yourself, bombarded with offers of books, courses and upgrades. How a site treats its actors tells you a lot about the clients it's able to attract.
Membership versus promotion
Look at where a site spends its marketing effort. If it's all aimed at signing up more actors rather than bringing in clients and promoting the actors it has, walk away. More members means more competition for the same jobs. Those sites live on subscription income, so they need a steady stream of paying actors to keep the lights on, and your premium fee is partly paying for the free listings of the people you're competing with.
Questions to ask before you join
- Is there a subscription, and what does it actually buy?Visibility you should have anyway, or real access to castings?
- Who sets the rate: the site, the client, or a bidding war?The answer tells you which way your income trends over five years.
- Is client money held in escrow once you're booked?If not, who chases the invoice? (You do.)
- How many actors with my profile are on the site?Ask plainly. The honest ones tell you.
- What's the typical job worth, and who are the clients?A few hundred dollars and real companies, or twenty dollars and mystery accounts?
- What happens when a client is difficult or vanishes?Is there a person, and do they take your side when you're right?
Compete with amateurs on price, or with professionals on quality. Sites are built around one or the other. Choose on purpose.
Every platform has its merits and its drawbacks. You can market yourself alongside anyone who paid, which guarantees clients only a minimum standard, or on a site that screens its actors and guarantees clients a high one every time. You can bid against a client's budget or work to a published rate. In the end it comes down to where you're comfortable, where you'll get the most real opportunities, and where you can be competitive without giving away the value of your experience.
If our model sounds like yours, here's how voice over jobs work at The Voice Realm.
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