The HQvoice guide to being paid to talk.

Based entirely on my own experience, your experience may vary, rates may go down as well as up, yourhomeisatriskifyoudonotkeepuprepaymentsorotherloansecuredonit.

“People say I’ve got a nice voice and I should do voiceovers.”

Well yes. You probably do. You probably should. But there’s so much more to it than having a nice voice. Being able to wire a plug doesn’t mean you’re an Electrician. Being able to talk doesn’t mean you’re a Voiceover.

There’s a good chance that if you got chatting to a professional voice artist in a pub you wouldn’t think there’s anything particularly special about their voice. That’s generally because it’s not how their voice sounds, it’s how they use it and all of the associated skills that go with it.

Types of Voiceover Artist

If you’re an actor, it’s likely that you’ve dabbled in voiceovers as part of your training or experience and if you’re represented then you can become very much a “show and go” voiceover. Your agent calls, you turn up at your session, read the script and disappear into the night and some time later you get paid and the commercial, promo, documentary etc is aired. This is the traditional voiceover’s life and is generally the most lucrative as large agencies and production companies will source their VO’s via an agent.

But not exclusively.

There are a lot of full-time Voiceovers and Producers who work from their own studios either at home or elsewhere and will voice anything from a voicemail message for a few pounds to national TV commercials for thousands.  These are the people (like me) who started in radio or TV production, maybe did some presenting, audio or music production –  But they’ve mostly learned on the job. They manage their own websites, work out their own rates, pitch for jobs, cut their own demos (or other people’s), work daily on selling themselves via social networks and online directories. They may have agents; they may not. They will often do other related audio work from their home studios as well as renting their own spaces out. It’s this type of setup that I’ll guide you through in part 2….