The Value of a Voiceover

Just what does it take to be successful as a voice talent in 2012? Treat it like a business. (This of course, assumes that you have some talent to start with.)

The Internet has changed what we do in many significant ways. It has 1) increased the number of people offering their services as voice talent (whether they should be or not), 2) cut out the middle man in casting (the people who know the value of voiceover), and because of a lack of truly understanding that this is a business like any other business it has 3) driven rates down down down.

Many people just getting started fail to see the big picture. Sure, the come on for so many of the endless voiceover classes screams “make $300 an hour,” but … can you live on one hour every few months?

One recent discussion centered on whether $25 per hour was a “good rate.”

Hey, if you are doing something 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 50 weeks a year with a 2-week vacation and paid holidays, then $25 an hour will pay the mortgage and put food on the table – depending on where you live, it could buy you a bass boat too. But the reality of the voiceover business is that you will not be recording 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, etc., etc.

If you are a working voiceover professional, you are more likely actually voicing (and possibly editing) for an hour or two a day, but that $25 you will make for that hour must also cover the initial rate negotiation, the subsequent invoicing, the  maintenance of your equipment, that new software, the marketing plan and execution, etc., etc., etc. (There are a lot of etcetera’s in this business!)

There will be weeks where you will voice many more hours and simply not have time to do the bookkeeping and then there will be the weeks where you will not voice a single project and spend hours troubleshooting a corrupted driver issue, sorting through your email folders and catching up on marketing (or the laundry). This is not a job for people who must have a steady pay check. It is your own business.

And as it becomes easier and cheaper to acquire opportunities and tools, there is an ever increasing group of people who have simply skipped over the business part and fail to see that what they do actually has value.

Spread the word! Think about usage!

One of my favorite enewsletters comes from the plethora of enewsletters published each day by MediaPost. If I subscribed to them all, I would probably go mad.

This one is called Online Video Daily and today the top story was a VidBlog by Daisy Whitney titled:

Managing Online Video and TV Campaigns: Tips from Production to Talent Rights

The part of that headline that caught my eye and prompted me to click through was the “…to Talent Rights” part.

As we struggle each day to keep rates to a level where we can continue to make a living in this business, it is refreshing to see people advocating for payment for additional usage. Of course, the resource for the article is Extreme Reach, a group that specializes in all things related to delivering and managing video advertising and is used to using Union Talent.

Make sure you know whether a TV ad can run online. “Commercial talent and third-party rights are often restricted on specific ads. Some are not allowed to run on the Web. Some are for Web only. Most ads have rights expiration dates. When an ad runs where or when it is not allowed to, those terms are violated. As a result, agencies and brands can incur significant fines and additional unexpected costs,” Robert Haskitt, CMO of Extreme Reach said.

The advice offered by Extreme Reach may not be enforceable outside of a union contract, but the bottom line is something we should all remind ourselves and the people we are working with – usage counts.

Be Picky!

I pay to play on Voice123. And as each month passes, I am more and more picky about the time I spend auditioning. And yet, I am still auditioning a bit more than all Voice123 Premium Subscribers that also speak English – North American.

I just counted up the auditions I’ve done in the past 6 months…63 auditions. I think I’ve had 2 bookings – could be more, I’d have to do a little database research. A lot of Finalist rankings, but the phone hasn’t rung yet with the gig – and maybe never will. Too soon to tell on some of them and relationships are bubbling I am sure.

Frankly I would be thrilled to have 10 auditions a month from my agents. I’m up to about 8 per month with one agent and the others? Not even close. Of course, I do get booked through agents without auditioning, which is the ideal situation. And for that I am grateful.

But times have changed, online casting is here to stay. You can’t un-ring this bell. But I think we need to do some analysis on our personal ROI when it comes to the P2P sites. For some it pencils out nicely, for others, their time may be better spent elsewhere.

The advice from Voice123 about being picky is really good advice. Our agents used to do this part of the process. They didn’t send all of us out for everything. Of course this led to the occasional call as to WHY we didn’t get sent out.

You would think that getting an audition in your email would be a good thing, but when it comes to the P2P sites, the first thing I did a while back – a long while back – was shut off the lead emails. I have done the same for Facebook. I have turned off the auto-notifications. I need to do that with LinkedIn, because I get lots of email when a thread is active.

I go to the V123 site when I have the time and scan the open leads. I will immediately delete a lead if the amount is under $300. Despite this rigorous “training of the algorithm” I still get $100 leads. Hope they work that out sometime, or at least allow the ability to simply not receive leads under a certain level. It’s not that I won’t work for less than $300, I do – depends on the project.

I then start looking at the highest dollar leads – or jobs that say Union Rates.

If the lead is for a middle-aged female with ISDN, that is my first priority. If there are too many different ages and both genders specified in the lead and the lead is for a single voice – I’ll delete those. If the lead is riddled with grammatical errors, or the copy is awkward – those get deleted. If the lead is for a national broadcast commercial and the rate is less than $300 – or $500, those get deleted.

If I think I am right for the project and the rate is in the ballpark, I’ll check out the client (as much as possible) and I’ll see how many people have already auditioned and if any of those have been opened. Too many people – delete. No more auditions opened after 6 for 6 hours – delete.

When I do decide to actually turn on the mic and record an audition, I have found myself more frequently ultimately deciding not to submit. Malaise? Insecurity? Good judgment? Not exactly sure, but in retrospect, it takes quite a bit of time to scan the leads, weigh the factors, record, edit, compose a response and then send the audition.

The time I spend on this might actually be put to better use. My contact database is filled with good and happy clients who have been neglected lately!

So, be picky my friends. Only you know what bell will ring in the best ROI for you.

Learn to say NO! Or YES when it is the right thing to do.

You just never know whose eyes will fall upon what is freely posted to the online world. A random search of some odd word combination could pull up my blog and either enhance or destroy my image as a professional.

But sometimes you have to push the envelope. With my sense of decorum that sometimes borders on Pollyanna cast aside momentarily, I have to pass along this very clever, yet somewhat “blue” chart created by Jessica Hische.

She steps you through the Yes and No questions you should ask yourself when deciding whether or not to work for FREE. And don’t we all need to be reminded that our time is valuable!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3514540/workforfree.jpg

There is also a “clean” version – http://shouldiworkforfree.com/clean.html

You start right in the middle with your four basic scenarios of who is doing the asking – a business, a charity or non-profit, your mom or your friend. Then branch out from there until you end up with a YES or a NO.

It’s not that we don’t already know this stuff, it’s just that we forget the logic when someone asks us to work for free. I do anyway. Here’s a taste…

And thanks to my friend Zak Miller for finding this.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Non-union Reuse Fee

One of the things that we love, as professional working voice talent with agents – or other similar working arrangements with production companies - is when said agents/producers are on top of their game and negotiate fairly with the end clients on behalf of us – also their clients.

And one of the nicest ways of knowing that this is happening in the background is when you get the email or phone call telling you that a reuse fee is coming for a job – union or non-union. A nice little bonus came to me recently and two others who provided the voices for a national spot. Thanks to Voice Talent Productions for the chance to audition for this in the first place.

Doesn’t happen with every job, but with non-union broadcast work, you sure do hope that someone is going to bat for you and negotiating additional payment for a spot that runs for more than expected – or originally stated.

I have had this happen with a fair share of non-union spots that ended up having a longer than expected shelf life. And for that I am thankful.

The Free Lance Mindset Helps Bridge the Gap

I have always been risk averse. Never was a dare devil. Never did anything “wrong” when I was growing up. I was a good kid, because I didn’t want to get into trouble. I couldn’t imagine gambling, or playing the stock market. So how did I end up in the kind of job where  you never know from day to day if you are going to earn money?!

It could be due to the fact that I saved the peanuts from the Peanut M&M’s during road trips so I would be able to spread out the goodness for a long time. It could be because of my parent’s example of creative eclectic thriftyness. It could also be due to the number of places I lived while growing up – my stability was in being flexible. The ability to jump in and make things happen in pretty much any situation.

And due to the moving around, the idea of having to work in an office every day with someone peering over your cubicle wall checking to see if you have arrived was not appealing. Even working at a radio or TV station on the air was ultimately not my cup of joe. Oh, I loved the idea of being a DJ, but you really did have to be there – at least back then in the dark ages.

So, I started to free lance doing lots of different things – eventually ending up  working out of my home studio as voice talent. And there are weeks when things get very slow – no denying that. The key is not to panic – to have a plan to fill in that time with productive work-generating or body-renewing activities.

This summer was a bit slow, so I redoubled my marketing efforts, digging through the old client folders and reconnecting, using my social networks more aggressively, and taking some time for myself.

The result of some of this effort was a fun week of work and bookings. Some of it continuing projects, but most new work from new and repeat clients. Most of the contacts last week did not ask for auditions, they knew my work and were simply contacting me to do their job. Even more positive was that ALL of these jobs were for my usual and expected rates, not the race to the bottom rates that seem to come from many of the leads you get from the P2P sites.

This did not happen overnight of course, but my free-lance mind set and thrifty life style helped me get to this point.

Round and Round and Round She Goes…

The voiceover world is abuzz! Not sure where this ride will stop, but let’s hope a twist on the adage “what goes down, must go up” comes into play.

Less than 10 years ago, a lot of voiceover casting moved to the Internet. The Pay 2 Play sites appeared and suddenly the role of the agent was bypassed and assumed by the talent who entered into a bidding war against other talent – most of it completely blind – with no ability to vet the potential client. Remember the old TV game show “Name That Tune?” That’s what it is like – someone else tells the client that they can do that job for less than you will do the job - much less. Well, at some point we have to be able to say, name that tune and move on.

Is there a bottom to the falling rates? I hope so. And our industry is not the only one being affected by this virtual job market. But because so many people think that what we do is “easy,” we may be affected by this rate slide more than some others. I have not been marketing myself as a writer for many years, but it is my gut feeling that the perceived level of effort for writing seems to be greater than for voiceover work. Am I correct?

Back to how this is affecting the VO biz – many of us received an email to participate in a new P2P website and the VO world started to spin. The contract was so one-sided (favoring the P2P site), the rates (for spot work) so low and the 50% commission (!!!) was unheard of. In my role as a teacher of an introduction to VO class – one class per semester because I work full-time as voice talent – I wanted to understand what, if anything, this site had to offer in order to pass it along to my students, so I signed up.

Technically, the site seems to work pretty well, but the idea of working for HALF of $45 for a radio ro TV spot – with no guarantee of being paid was enough to prompt a phone call to be removed from the site. My vetting was done. About the same time I was poking around – many other voiceover pros were doing the same – including voice actor / attorney Rob Sciglimpaglia Jr. Here is one of a series of articles on the subject on VoiceOverXtra. You might want to sign up to see where this ride ends up.

Fast! Good! Cheap?

You know this adage – Fast, Good, Cheap – Pick any Two? Technological advances are putting this saying to the test – with people wanting (and many times getting) all three. The principal of the “Long Tail” – originally used to describe a retailing concept of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – is another factor in the evolution of this axiom. Apply the long tail to voiceovers and it means creating lots and lots of product that will be seen or heard by fewer and fewer people. Think about the growing number of niche television, radio, YouTube channels. Fewer eyeball and ears? Maybe. Maybe not – considering the population of the world.

So how is this affecting Fast, Good, Cheap?

Fast

When it comes to the voiceover business, particularly at the first stage – voiceover auditions – Fast reigns supreme. With online casting (either through agents or Pay to Play sites), you are expected to get your auditions in as soon as humanly possible. If you work a day job and are trying to pursue VO work on the side, this means that in some cases, the auditions are closed before you even have a chance to sort through them.

You can’t let your email collect during the day and only chose to check it now and then. The BlackBerry and iPhone are part of your tools these days. Agents and clients simply expect that you will be available and be able to respond. You need to be Fast.

Good

But along with Fast, your audition must be Good. You need to know how to lay down a couple of good takes with contrasting reads in the shortest amount of time so that you can deliver it Fast. And the simple fact is that you need to do this in a vacuum – this is the reality of today’s online casting. Actually – creating the final product these days is also frequently self-directed, so learning how to create Good reads that are “right” for the job is paramount. You have to wear all the hats – writer, producer, director and talent. Listen to all of those voices in your head and get a Good audition out Fast.

This may be hard to do for the seasoned (read older) talent used to directed auditions in studios with other actual living breathing people around. It may be hard for the newer talent who may not know exactly where they fit and what auditions they should be doing. Both scenarios will result in auditions that are not quite “Good” enough.

Cheap

Unfortunately, with the reality of online casting and delivery of final product combined with the depressed economy and the trend toward niche marketing, there are more and more jobs demanding all three – Fast, Good and Cheap.

The end clients are “selling” less of more. Which means one of two things – they need to charge more for their product, or they need to spend less on everything else. As media gets more and more splintered, with fewer eyeballs and ears seeing or hearing the end product, it is going to be harder and harder to maintain rates. Eyeballs and shelf-life are two ways that rates have traditionally been negotiated. Volume and frequency of work are other ways to caress a budget or bid. But when it comes to shelf-life, even if a spot or a project is supposed to be for a limited audience and short-lived, consider that once something is posted online, it can live forever.

There will always be higher visibility projects or projects with longer shelf-life, or more distribution channels, so for the cream of the crop, there will still be mortgage money coming in. But working Cheap, or working for less than established norms, is becoming more and more common.

There are talented voiceover folk (experienced and newbies) who meet the Fast part by being one of the first few auditions; who meet the Good part by knowing how to find the “right” read; and who also meet the Cheap part by accepting a sub-par rate.

The tricky part in all of this is that we are in the middle of a huge change in the way we all do business, so what was once a sub-par rate may end up as accepted. While it has become easier to produce multimedia Fast, producing Good media is still an art form. Which is why it shouldn’t be done on the Cheap.

Gosh I Love Schick’s Schtick

Todd Schick may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he really is sharp and I recently ran across his “rate” page on his website. He also recorded the content of the page so you can hear what he sounds like.

Check it out! Interesting, irreverant, controversial. That’s Todd.

http://www.toddschick.com/VoiceoverRatesForVoiceTalentServices.htm#R1

The Decline of Network TV?

A friend in the advertising biz sent me an article from the New York Times titled “The Decline of Network TV.“

The big three broadcast networks are not so big anymore – and major “stars” are jumping ship over to cable. The networks are having a hard time charging more for ad rates as their ratings sink. This, as the big cable networks (USA, TNT, TBS) get money from advertising AND subscription fees – which translates to more profit.

So my question. With more and more eyeballs moving to cable coupled with the proliferation of niche channels on the cable systems – most of which run the same ads that run on the broadcast networks - do you see this affecting the budgets to make the ads?

It certainly has created more work for the time buyers! But will it affect us, as talent, postively or negatively?