Archive for April, 2009
You, A Voice Talent?
Hello Everybody!
As promised, here are 10 startup tips on how to make money as a voice talent:
- If you have a fairly new, decent computer, buy a USB mic, like a Samson C01U
- Learn how to record your voice
- Learn how to use the Sonar LE software that comes with the mic
- Practice reading different types of copy, or print that might be in a commercial, or just a script that wouldn’t be for broadcast (you could just write down and read a commercial you hear on TV or Radio)
- Learn how to put music or sound effects underneath your voice that fits with the script you are reading, which can be done fairly easily in Sonar LE
- If you aren’t ready to do the recording yourself, get a studio or someone you know to do it for you and put together a 3 minute demo showcasing the different styles you can do with your voice. In the end, you will most likely end up specializing in one or two voices that everybody likes. People like to pigeon-hole talent…he’s the announcer voice, he’s the country guy, etc.
- Go to www.voice123 and look around…you can sign up here and record demos for clients looking for your type voice. (a friend of mine makes a living doing just that…once you get a hand full of clients, you should get repeat business if you did a good job and your voice fits for their project.
- It’s easier to get work for training, websites, on-hold messages, and other jobs not for broadcast. Many times broadcast jobs are union, and are much higher budget, although landing a job like that is much more competitive, and probably pays more. These jobs you can get locally by calling on audio and video recording studios, advertising agencies, etc. I know a guy that made a living for years just reading scripts for a really large telephone on-hold company.
- This probably won’t happen over night, so just be patient. Get some feedback on your voice from people that are in the business if possible…if you are good, it wil eventually happen if you are persistant. One this is for sure, if you give up, it won’t happen! If you have any questions, please leave a post.
More ideas later
Good Luck!
Danny Jones
buyprosound.net
creative-digital.net
kwiksounds.com
Make Money As A Voice Talent? Why not?
It is possible to make money as a voice talent! Many people have a great speaking voice just naturally. Some can do character voices..that is, they can annimate their voice to sound like different, but believable character. I owned a professional recording studio for 20+ years, and saw many people work very little to make lots of money just standing in front of a microphone.
Here is one case that even amazed me… We had a friend renting space in our building to book bands. He had been a drummer/singer for years, so he did have some experience being in front of a microphone.
We were working with J Walter Thompson ad agency on some Ford radio and TV commercials at the time, and they needed a voice to put on a musical demo we had just recorded. We asked “Jim” if he would record a demo voice over so they could present the music to the dealer group, to which he replied, “sure, why not?”
To try making a long story short, the dealer group liked his natural, believable voice so much, that he was hired to be the voice talent for the whole campaign, which ran several months! It also had to be a union job, so he got paid scale, which was as much as other professional voice talents were making.
Jim would go to the mailbox everyday just to see how much money would come in the mail! He must have made about $25,000 over the next few months, for very little work. Not bad!
You could be the next discovery in the voice over business…you just never know.
Stay tuned and I’ll give you a few tips on how to get started…
Laser printer for CD duplicators
May 13th, 2008
Hello again everybody!
I have been trying to print inserts for some CDs, and my old Konica 2400w is dying. I decided to just replace it rather than try to repair it, so I started looking around for an inexpensive laser printer.
After looking around on the net for a while, I went to Circuit City and saw the Samsung CLP-300. It was on sale at the clearance price of 167.00, which is almost half of what I had seen it for on the web…I purchased it and guess what…I rang up at $127.00!!!! I got home, hooked it up in minutes, and it works like a champ! So, if you need inexpensive laser printing for your bands CDs, this could be an option for you. Yak later!