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As VO blog writers go, I’m not particularly prolific. Verbose, perhaps. Long-winded? Maybe. Stentorian? I like fancy words. But, I have the bad habit of not posting stuff unless I have something useful to say, which Anna will tell you is a vanishingly infrequent occurrence.

That said, gather round, for this shall be the first of two final blogs for the year, and before I go into my almost certain to be dramatically wrong New Year’s prediction blog in a couple of weeks, I figured we could start with some things to ponder to orient your voiceover business for success and growth in 2024.

Let’s start by acknowledging that 2023 was probably the most challenging year for most voice actors since the Great Recession, which is the last time I can remember even established VO’s reporting reduced growth and even lower income. Yes, the pandemic hit some segments of the industry hard, but many voice actors situated in the right genre segments had their biggest years in 2020 and 2021, with growth continuing in 2022. 2023, however, was a banner year for few. I’m fortunate to still be up on my 2022 numbers, but more marginally than I’d like. 10% annual growth is my minimum acceptable benchmark, and I won’t hit that this year. I’m closer than I expected after a robust October & November, and there does seem to have been a general uptick in business for many talent over the fall, but 2023 was a bit of a stinker for most, with many talent reporting declining income versus 2022.

Why? Guess what…..the answer is NOT AI. Despite the considerable Chicken Little panic, I know very few VOs who lost jobs to AI voices in 2023, and many, (including myself,) who saw clients experiment with them for a few months and come running back to human when they realized that the need for extra labor in making AI output remotely effective, coupled with inferior quality, was a time-waster and money loser. I raised rates on these buyers, and if you experienced something similar I hope you did, too.

2023 was a wet blanket for some fairly obvious reasons. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes had knock-on effects on parts of the industry even unrelated to the work being struck, including non-union work. Couple that with reduced ad spend in general, particular in the OTT space, (  https://mediaradar.com/blog/ott-ad-spend-is-in-a-slump/   ) where over $200 million less was spent in 2023 on ads than in 2022, and you have a setup for a bear market. Moreover, if you work in the non-broadcast narration space, the message from corporate buyers was clear……belt tightening was the order of the day in 2023, largely due to the expectation of a recession coupled with the effects of inflation. Simply put, the squeeze was on in 2023, and voice actors felt it in their bottom lines.

So, what will 2024 bring? Experts are predicting a considerable rebound in ad spend.  https://shorturl.at/gKRUX  Moreover, spending on political ads in the USA election cycle is expected to exceed $15B….yes, fifteen BILLION dollars….meaning those voice actors playing in that arena are in for a strong run. Recession looks less and less likely, and inflation, though not disappearing, is slowing, meaning corporate belt-tightening may slow as well. Many established VO’s and agents/managers I know reported noticeable upticks in general business volume starting right around the first of October, and remaining strong as we approach the holidays. My year-on-year growth was 3% on October 1st and is sitting at 6% now, so there definitely seems to be momentum.

The question is, what can you do to make sure you maximize the opportunities that will come our way in 2024?

EVALUATE YOUR VO ASSETS and PORTFOLIO

Where are you earning? Focus on shoring up relationships in the genres where you are experiencing consistent success, both by providing extra-attentive service to existing clients, and looking to expand your access to at bats in these areas through new relationships and representation in markets where you are not currently covered. Where applicable, up your marketing efforts to focus on the sectors that the market is telling you that you excel at.

Where are you not earning? Consider the areas of VO where you are not consistently booking, and why. Do you need more training? Better demos to gain access? Or is the market simply telling you that certain segments are not your forte? Connect with your coaches, agents, managers, and peers, and if you feel the answer is the latter of these, perhaps focus more on core competencies and reduce time and investment spent on areas that are not panning out.

What do you offer that is attractive to buyers and potential representation? How fresh is your skill set? Remember that delivery trends and “the hot sound” in certain genres often change rapidly. Retail commercial at the national level is undergoing shifts at the moment that are both deeply subtle yet equally substantial, with definitions of “conversational” or “authentic” that were accepted even a year ago possibly feeling stale today. Certain sounds, vibes, styles, and demographic trends are also informing who is booking what. Are you and the people you train with up to date on these latest shifts?

Looking for representation? What are you bringing to the table. Can you show recent quality wins that let an agent or manager know you are booking in the current marketplace? Is your demo game tight and multi-faceted, or do you have dated content/read styles on your reels and only one or two genres with pro reels? Have you taken time to lay the relationship groundwork that might get you a yes over someone else when all else is equal? Are you putting yourself in front of them? Reading for them when the opportunity arises? Getting referrals from people they trust?

ARE YOU DIVERSIFIED?

If I sound like an investment adviser, it’s because VO is a lot like investing…..if you put all your eggs in one basket, they’re likely to all get cracked at some point.

Here are six things you need to be thinking about:

1.) Evaluate your representation situation. Make a plan for gaining the agency rep and/or management that is best suited to your assets and portfolio as described above.

2.) If you play in the commercial world in particular, and other broadcast genres, there are about ten thousand production companies across the USA for you to market to, and even more internationally. Your demos should be finding your way to as many of them as possible each day.

3.) Do you pay to play? If so, are you doing it smartly? For most people the sites have become so saturated that you have to be both exceptional in performance and willing to pay for a more expensive membership (on Voice123 at least) to get traction. The P2P’s were billed for years as a place for VOs to start out and get experience while learning on the job, but the cold truth is that it’s a lot harder to break through on these platforms than it used to be, and if you’re not super competitive and wiling to pay for real access, your chances are limited.

4.) SEO is the new P2P. Huh? Twenty years ago young buyers thought casting through websites was cool and new. Today they think it’s lame to give 20% to a gig economy platform that may be shaving even more off the top that they aren’t aware of. Where are they looking for talent? Search. Does your site rank highly in search when someone types in something generic like female commercial voice actor with a young fresh sound? If not, find experts like the folks at voiceactorwebsites.com to help you.

5.) If you play in explainer video narration, e-learning, corporate/industrial narration, medical narration, political commercials….are you marketing to potential buyers every day? If not, why? This industry isn’t as complicated as it seems. Don’t suck. Understand the tech. And get ears on your voice. Do these three things over and over and you’ll build a business. But if people aren’t hearing you, they aren’t hiring you.

6.) Come out and play. Meetups, conferences, charity galas, whatever…..make friends in the industry. Not only do we actually hire each other a lot more than people discuss, but we also uplift, support, and refer each other all the time. You don’t build a circle of friends to use them, but your circle of friends WILL bring you opportunities. It’s what friends do.

So, are you doing a mix of all of these things? Or are your huevos exposed to single-basket risk? No one likes exposed huevos.

ARE YOU PLAYING IN GROWTH SECTORS?

Let’s be real. Some parts of the business are healthier than others.

Movie trailers are slowly fading away as a VO artform. Game trailers are increasing, with a more equal mix of male and female voices.

Imaging and Affiliate work is becoming more and more susceptible to cost cutting and interference from AI.

Explainers are growing a little stale, and E-Learning is still a great place to play but maybe isn’t exploding like it was 5 years ago and at the start of the pandemic.

On the other hand, Corporate Narration and Commercials are steady, Political ads are going nuts, In-Show Narration, Promo, and Animation are as sexy as ever, and Gaming work is going through the roof in terms of volume.

Are you positioned for growth sectors, or clinging to areas that are fading? If the latter, do you have a plan to pivot?

WHAT NEXT?

I’m optimistic for 2024. The strikes are over, at least for now. Commercial spend is coming back. Political season is rocking and rolling. Recession seems less likely so corporate spend may loosen. AI has so thoroughly spooked a great deal of the general public that it is facing substantial headwinds in the form of simple resistance, potential legislation, and risk aversion on the part of corporations that worry about exposure to liability. And the fact is that it’s still mostly in the uncanny valley. That doesn’t mean we should bury our heads in the sand, but we also need not run around like decapitated poultry.

VO in 2024 has the potential to rebound strongly. Are you ready?

 

Another day, another city.

I’m typing this from a lovely hotel suite in Miami where I’m about to host another round of my Get Your Voice Elected political commercial workshop. Tomorrow, I head to Cartagena, Colombia to appear as a speaker at the Viva Voz conference, which I believe is Latin America’s biggest voiceover event. This trip has also taken me to Cincinnati, and New York.

A Twitter commenter, seeing a 5AM shot of me on another piece of American Airlines metal, wondered, “how do you find time to record?”

It’s a great question. More to the point, how do I find time to maintain a thriving VO career, which still accounts for around 70% of my income, when I’m hopping around the world doing workshops, running conferences, and generally living the Life of Riley?

Ten years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. Yes, I traveled and did events even then, but I either schlepped a bag full of gear or, in many cases, just lost out on work. And, don’t get me wrong. When I’m traveling around today, I do pass on auditions that aren’t high-dollar or aren’t red hot demands from agents/manager/buyers, and I do often turn down smaller jobs when I’m on the road.

However, I have a tool today that I did not have ten years ago that more than makes up for it. My website.

Yes, I did have a website ten years ago, and a good one. But it was not nearly as visible as the one I have today. My original designer did a great job, and my first SEO guy got the ball rolling to where I popped up on page one of search from time to time, but it was never a priority or major investment. About 6-7 years ago, when I decided it was time for a thorough redesign of my website, I had a domain authority in the high teens or low twenties. Now, I’m speaking as an educated layman here, but your domain authority is essentially the measurable metric of credibility that Google and other search engines assign to your website, and it affects how highly you rank when someone searches for things that are matches for your content or business. You can see yours at https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker

So, six or seven years ago, with a domain authority in the high teens or so, I popped up reasonably early in some searches, later in others, and was landing a buyer or two per week through my website, which is functionally a voice actor’s storefront. Not bad, but certainly not enough to keep up with the work I booked through agents, other rosters, casting platforms, and marketing. It was a nice extra.

When I first reached out to Joe Davis and Karin Barth at voiceactorwebsites.com it was mostly about freshening up the look of my site, which they did an amazing job of. But, I quickly came to realize that their true killer app is their understanding of search engine optimization and helping make my page rank highly.

After a process of refreshing and rebranding the site, we turned our attention to search. Ultimately, I settled on a monthly budget of $1,500 for SEO, including acquiring backlinks that would help give my site more authority and credibility. I’ll be having Joe on a Gravy for the Brain workshop in October to talk about what all that means in more detail, but the bottom line is that the skill of my SEO team and the investment I’ve made have lead to my domain authority more than doubling, to what at last check was a robust 42 (out of a possible 100.) Consider that billion dollar companies and institutions typically rank in the 90s, and the top casting platforms, with tens of millions of dollars behind them, are in the 70s, and that gives you an idea of what a domain authority of 42 means for an individual voice actor.

This also coincided with a very distinct shift in the way younger buyers are hiring voice actors.

We are in the midst of the second casting revolution. Almost twenty years ago, online casting platforms popped into existence and changed much of how the game is played. Today, for the first time, they are in decline, either running fewer jobs through their platforms or experiencing far slower aggregate growth than in the past. This is because younger buyers have shifted their preferences when it comes to hiring voice actors.

Having been nibbled to death by extortionate commissions and fees on casting sites, and having grown up being subjected to unfair labor practices by gig economy companies, greedy landlords adding more fees and charges to their rent, out of control tipping culture, and service fees for walking across the street or just existing, today’s 25-35 year-olds are tired of everyone having a hand in their pocket. So, over the past 5 years, they have started to come directly to us and have actively begun bypassing any and all middlemen, including casting platforms which were popular with this age group when they first appeared in the mid-2000’s. As such, voiceover artists with sites ranking highly in search have been seeing an exponential increase in traffic and business.

Seven years ago, I booked an average of a job or two per week through my site with around twenty unique visitors per week. Today, with nearly twenty unique visitors per day, (and most of these being LA and NYC IP addresses,) my website is acting as a spiderweb that is collecting on average almost two bookings at market rates DAILY. And with this, I’ve discovered a newfound freedom.

Today, I’m working from storefront brick and mortar pro studios more than at any time since the early 2000’s. I was on a workshop tour in Seattle when one of my more recent big national jobs came in a few weeks back, and I popped in, banged out about a dozen spots and several dozen tags, took the opportunity to hit a couple high-priority auditions, and then went to a 1PM Mariners game because Wednesday. This is becoming more and more standard operating procedure. Landed in Cincinnati this past weekend for another workshop, and hit a friend’s studio before I even checked into the hotel, (thanks, Bobbi!) Workshop Saturday, Bengals game Sunday, then on to Miami and beyond, with more studio stops along the way to handle the work that comes in, and no terror over missing small or medium-sized opportunities. And all because my own storefront, my website, is doing the work for me after a concerted period of effort and investment into making it a booking engine. It’s like I’ve reverse-engineered a voiceover career from days gone by, where we weren’t tethered to home studios or bags of gear. It’s incredibly liberating.

The best part? YOU don’t need a $1,500/month budget. Joe and Karin recommend $500 as a good monthly SEO budget to move the needle, but even less will get you started. If you’re voice is more niche, or your genre focus less broad, you can find yourself ranking in search even more quickly, especially in undersaturated genres like political commercials and medical narration.

Whatever your budget or ability to invest both time and effort, there’s no denying that the industry is once again undergoing a substantial shift in casting habits, and your web presence will drive your ability to compete in the future. What are you doing to make that happen?

 

 

 

 

We live in the golden age of voiceover training and information. To the extent that many sometimes view the abundance of choices and advice as confusing and occasionally almost too much. But as someone who began in an era when training for VO hardly existed outside of LA and NYC, (and even then not at all in abundance,) and adopted the DIY mentality at the inception of the first casting revolution, when we were all figuring it out on our own, I can tell you, the abundance of information is a blessing for new talent.

 

Once you find the paths and strategies that work for you, it’s up to you to implement them consistently and effectively. Do so, and if you have the performance skills, (and EVERYONE needs to be cold-eyed and frank with themselves about their ability level and position in the marketplace as it pertains to demand for their sound and their access to opportunities,) and the technical chops, chances are you’ll find some measure of success in the industry.

 

That said, there are things that come with achievement, regular business, financial gain, and recognition among your peers that aren’t discussed frequently enough. This post is meant to shed a little light on what you’re in for if and when things start to come together for you.

 

1.) Taxes and Financial Planning

 

Until you’re earning income similar to that from any other full time job your tax situation probably won’t take any dramatic turns, but voiceover success can come more quickly than some people expect. I’ve seen talent go from booking occasionally to a healthy six figure income in a matter of months if they are lucky enough to get a string of big wins in short succession.

 

This naturally feels like cause for celebration, and it is, but it’s also a time for caution on a couple of levels.

 

First off, if you just jumped from a modest five figure income to a healthy six figure one, and are self-employed, you’re about to get the hammer dropped on you come filing time. Around a third of your income will go to federal tax, as much as ten percent to state tax depending on where you live, and then there’s self-employment tax on top. Common advice is to set aside a third of what you make, but if you start stringing wins together quickly, you’d be better advised to put 50-60% of it to the side for safety sake. Chances are you’ll wind up with something left over if you do, whereas if you’re not careful you might be looking at a shiny new car in your driveway and a tax bill you suddenly can’t afford to pay.

 

This leads to point #2: Live Below Your Means

 

Now, if you’re one of my Facebook friends you might be going, “JMC, come on man, do you make a dollar you don’t spend?” We love travel and playing as hard as we work, and while we have a rule against posting “things,” we love sharing our experiences, (or if you hear certain messianic meatheads tell it, “flaunting wealth.”) But the truth is that for every dollar that puts a piece of lobster on a fork or an airplane seat under our butts, there are two that go in the bank. It’s how we‘ve lived since day one, and it’s why we’re now able to do many of the fun things we do as a family.

 

I had the awful experience of witnessing people dear to me light the world on fire in their careers and blow it all living like they earned twice as much as they did, only to wind up in their later years scratching out a meager existence on social security. Don’t be that person. If success starts to come your way, avoid the temptation to want to live as though your current income level is permanent and never-ending.

 

Which leads to point #3: That gold-plated gig that is making your year, (or years,) is going to go away.

 

Once you hit a certain level of access, you’re gonna land some whales. Jobs that are regular and outsized paydays. It’s not unusual to find one client accounting for 25-50% of your income if you hit a big one. Best advice: Pretend that job doesn’t exist at all.

 

When you are earning a substantial portion or a majority of your income from one voiceover client, it’s easy to think you’ve now graduated to a new income level. But the hard truth is that the job that is feathering your nest so beautifully right now is very likely going to go away sooner rather than later, no matter how well you’re performing or how iconic your role is.

 

Today’s VO and media marketplace moves faster than ever. Attention spans are shorter than ever. And what’s hot right now is very unlikely to stay that way for long. There can be exceptions of course, but if you have an outsized client who represents a large share of your earnings, your best bet is to base your lifestyle around the amount you earn without them, and treat what they contribute as a long-term security buffer. Don’t be the talent earning $250K today who loses one client and is down to $100K and struggling to pay a mortgage based on that larger number.

 

#4: Don’t buy in to your own bullshit.

 

We are all capable of running afoul of this one, and I’m no exception.

 

When things are going well and the stars seem to be aligning it’s easy to believe you’ve got things figured out and you can do no wrong professionally.

 

But the market will always check your reality. That big league agent you’ve been leaning on for years might move somewhere else and the new team may look at your skill set differently. The market itself may move away from your signature reads or demographic. The tricks and techniques you’ve been employing effectively for years might start to be less effective as more people adopt them and your strategy becomes saturated. Coach? Teach business? Produce demos? Eventually you won’t be the hot new thing anymore.

 

When things that have always worked stop working so well, do you have a plan to pivot? A plan B, and C, and D? If not, you may find that growth you were used to declining. And then maybe your business won’t be growing at all. Always have a “what’s next” in mind, and be ever attentive to trends and your brand itself. I’ve watched too many legitimate industry stars fade away because they just assumed the same old thing would always sustain them. The only constant is change.

 

#5: You’re gonna have haters

 

We celebrate the voiceover community as a special assemblage of kindhearted and unusually charitable people. And it is. I can’t imagine another industry where the vast majority of those involved genuinely care for and look out for each other the way we do in this business.

 

But success, especially if it’s visible, will always breed resentment in some. I’m a student of politics, but I’d probably make a shitty politician, because nothing wounds me more than knowing some people just plain don’t like me. That said, it’s something you need to prepare for if you choose to discuss your work publicly and/or begin to take part in industry events as a speaker, presenter, or expert once you’ve achieved whatever level of success you believe justifies stepping into a more public role.

 

I’m happy that I can count most of the people who hate my guts on one or two hands. I like to think that’s a product of an intentional effort to treat people the way I’d like to be treated, but it’s not a guarantee of immunity. Even a few folks I once sincerely counted as friends haven’t taken real well to one element or another of how I present myself, and I’ve lost relationships I genuinely cherished.

 

Most of the folks who express their dislike for me have reached that place after they’ve been removed from my life for repeated disruptive behavior or abuse of myself, my family, my events, or those I care about or employ. I have zero tolerance for that kind of behavior, especially when it threatens the well being of attendees of conferences and other events I’m involved in. It’s okay for you to set firm boundaries too.

 

Others aren’t pleased that I’ve cut ties, and in some cases pursued causes of action, after they’ve engaged in dishonorable or unethical conduct. Some just don’t like to see people loving life and having a good time, and are prone to resent those who do. And on occasion you get one who uses attacks on others in the business as a cynical means to create a following based on discontent and grievance, hating on anything that looks like a celebration of our community.

 

In all of their own minds, except perhaps the last type, these folks probably feel perfectly justified. As we’ve seen over the last decade, it’s easy to construct realities based in alternate facts, and those living in alternate realities would probably suggest the rest of us are doing the same.

 

In the end, this is the price of visibility, even in an industry as comparatively gentle as ours. There will always be politics and grievance. If you are in a place where you are thinking of stepping out to where the industry will take notice of you, be ready to reap your fair share of haters, no matter how hard you try to avoid doing so.

 

But never forget that the kindness and decency of this community is in fact the real deal. For every bad pineapple there’s a Carin Gilfry, a Marc Scott, a Dave Fennoy, and a Debra Wilson. We are only as good as the best of us, and the best of us….are pretty damn special.

 

I recently came across a discussion in one of the online forums about a trend on one of the super-low-budget casting platforms: voice actors having their human-voiced work rejected by the buyer because the buyer believes it was created with an AI voice model.

Now, I make it my purpose to stay abreast of conversations in all corners of the industry, and even though the platform in question is not one where I participate, the discussion raises a larger point.

As synthetic voice technology improves, there will naturally be voice actors who look at deploying a voice clone to perform auditions, (especially on casting sites and for other lower-budget work,) and even actual jobs, as a means of improving efficiency and maximizing revenue and productivity. In fact, there has already been discussion of this being done on more mainstream platforms like Voice123 and others.

Which, of course, begs the question: Is it ethical?

The discussion regarding the super-low-budget platform centered around a growing dissatisfaction among buyers, (and mind you this is occurring in the micro-budget space, so one can only assume that the reaction would be amplified among higher-dollar buyers,) with voice actors trying to game the system with voice models. Apparently this is so prevalent that even actual human-voiced work is now falling under suspicion.

This is telling, of course, as if even Fiverr-level buyers are rejecting synthetic voices then all of the industry panic may well be even more of an overreaction than I’ve previously suggested.

More importantly, though, it leads to a dilemma with regard to the morality of using AI voice clones to audition for jobs or deliver them without clearly disclosing this is what one is doing.

Here’s what bodalgo CEO Armin Hierstetter had to say when I asked for a comment for this article:

So, I ask, what do you think? Is it ethical to audition with a voice clone without disclosing it? Should casting sites ban the practice?

Leave your comments below!

 

So. Much. Fear.

That’s the nature of new technology. Whenever “the next big thing” becomes part of the zeitgeist, the world seems to explode with opportunists, hype monsters, and those who are terrified that “this will change everything,” or want to make a buck off of that fear.

The voiceover industry is resilient and defiant, and it has been through change after change. 9/11 and the associated economic downturn barely dented the industry. The rise of the P2Ps changed the way many work, but have hardly been apocalyptic. The financial crisis of 2008, the worst since the Great Depression, slowed things down by a small margin for a year or so….then they picked right back up. The rise of micro-budget platforms like Fiverr also failed to cause the cataclysm. Today, the fear is that AI voices will replace human voice actors…..and if you live on VO social media, that fear is EVERYWHERE.

Here are a couple of stories and some journalistic insight to help you sleep better, oh fellow mic jockeys.

A few weeks ago I was hired to voice a submission for the recent Cannes Film Festival, one of the film industry’s signature annual events.

As often happens, the client sent over the video I would be narrating prior to the directed session. This video contained a scratch track. A scratch track that used an AI voice. And, honestly, a pretty good one. It probably could have sufficed for the final, if I’m being candid. Not an exceptional VO, but a reasonably competent one that a layman might believe was a real person.

I have strong faith that most sophisticated creatives…..people who aren’t working on tight margins and beholden to brutal corporate economics, are going to reflexively refuse to use AI voices to replace humans. Authenticity has been the keyword that has driven our industry for over a decade now. And authentic AI is not.

Thus, I have no problem broaching the subject with a client, and I did. As we were chatting at the beginning of the session, I asked if the scratch was AI as I though, and my suspicions were confirmed. I commented that it was pretty decent and asked why they wouldn’t just use that for the final as opposed to hiring me at a proper rate. The reply? “This is for Cannes. The client would kill us if they knew we used a fake voice for the final.”

Then followed a ninety minute session where a very dedicated director explored every nuance the copy had to offer, and we got to experience the high that creatives working together in synchronicity find when they are, essentially, at play. The director’s job, my job, that interplay between two creators…..this is not something a machine can replace. And not something those creating elite work would want one to.

A premium production for a premiere event. The very thought of a “fake” voice was anathema.

Similarly, some months ago I had the privilege of doing national TV work for an Amazon ad campaign tying in Alexa, (their virtual assistant!,) and the Lightyear movie. This job involved a few lines as Mission Control, and was booked for an hour session. Another fun and creative director. Over a dozen takes in about twenty minutes. Session complete. Her parting words? “This is why we don’t use AI or sound design. We could never get this kind of range this fast.”

National TV. Fair pay. For the world’s leading virtual assistant. AI VO? Not even a consideration.

As we panic over being replaced by AI, we may even be ignoring its potential benefits to us as voice actors. And no, this isn’t the “create a synthetic voice to do your work for you,” speech. Still too much downside there in my opinion.

Rather, AI may help create MORE content for us to lend our voices to.

Check out this recent article about political advertising in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/ai-political-campaigns-2024-election-democracy-chatgpt/674182/?utm_source=msn

There’s some scary stuff in there about deepfakes and other potential abuses, but what caught my eye was the discussion of using AI to create 50 commercial variations in a matter of seconds, (hopefully using licensed video and REAL copywriters!) to test different messages in different markets. And guess what? If there’s one part of voiceover that is perhaps least likely to use plagiarism software to replace human voice actors, it’s one where the opposing candidate could drop a spot saying, “Senator Twaddlebutt even used a robot to voice his campaign ads, replacing a human actor. Senator Twaddlebutt doesn’t care about the jobs of everyday Americans.”

More spots than ever. More content than ever. More need for VO than ever.

And that’s just one genre.

Inevitably, AI, plagiarism software, whatever you want to call it, will eat away at marginal work, and surely there will be the occasional splashy production that chooses to employ it. But it may also create as much new work for us as it takes away, or more still, and in any case, the hype-driven panic needs to stop. We’re not even in chapter one of what this technology will evolve into. This is the prologue. The foreword. Heck, the cover of the book. It’s okay to be vigilant and plan for disruption, but for those who think the end is nigh, all I can say is feel free to drop your client list in the comments on your way out the door.

Love them or hate them, traditional online casting platforms like Voices.com and Voice123.com have been an enormous part of the voiceover industry landscape for over fifteen years now. They fundamentally changed many of the rules of our industry, and opened the business to talented professional-quality voices in parts of the country and the world that previously had little or no access to voiceover work.

In the process, they also became lightning rods of controversy, blamed by many for everything from eroding rates and standards to commoditizing talent, to damaging the traditional brick and mortar voiceover space and the livelihoods of talent agents and union actors.

This article isn’t going to rehash the P2P wars of the past nearly two decades.

What I will examine, however, is how the nature of the most dominant platforms has now changed so fundamentally as to herald the beginning of a new era in voiceover casting…..one where individual voice actors are more empowered than ever before.

First, the bad news: The days of making a full-time living from online casting platforms alone are functionally over for voice actors just entering the field, and even for many veterans.

In the early days of the platforms there were a couple dozen elite talent who immediately mastered the functionality of the sites and quickly grew to dominate them. This small group of heavy bookers rapidly generated six figure returns from the sites, and through their example, (and in some cases, teaching,) hundreds more voice actors were soon comfortably earning well into five figures and beyond from Voices.com and Voice123.com alone, with a side dish of other platforms in many instances.

Jobs were abundant, competition was less intense than the sites’ claims of talent numbers would suggest, and the fruit hung low.

Voices.com for many years featured a top ten list on their front page showing the most successful talent over a 7-day period. This list was usually populated by the same ten or twenty VOs, with a few new power players emerging each year, but not much real change. Presumably the same cohort were the heavy hitters on Voice123.com as well.

This status-quo persisted for the better part of a decade, with more than a few talent earning into seven figures through these platforms during that time. Around 2016, however, things began to change.

First Voices.com, and then Voice123.com, began making changes to their algorithms and pricing structures that reflected marketplaces that were no longer growing at the same rate in terms of job numbers as they had during their first decade, despite a continuing influx of new voice actors, many well-trained, champing at the bit to attack any and every job posted to the platforms. The sites started to realize they had a problem. Membership was growing faster than new buyer volume. More voiceover artists were chasing proportionally fewer jobs.

Why was job growth slowing? The answer involves a confluence of events that ultimately will prove to have saved the industry from what at one time seemed like an inevitable future where a single casting hegemon would reduce voice actors to a faceless product subject to corporate whims.

First, YOU happened. During the 2010’s a chorus of voice actors who had found success through their own marketing efforts began teaching their secrets at conferences and through online courses. Jonathan Tilley, Marc Scott, Tom Dheere, Tracy Lindley, Anne Ganguzza, Yours Truly, and numerous others shared how to find jobs on your own, most often in realms not covered by talent agents like E-Learning, Explainer Video Narration, Corporate and Industrial Narration, Medical Narration, Telephony, and others.

Guess what? You listened!

Over the past ten years more and more talent have built strong and consistent income through direct marketing, taking responsibility for the success of their own careers. This has undoubtedly been responsible in part for the reduced growth of traffic on traditional casting sites.

And, you listened when Joe Davis & Karin Barth talked about the power of SEO, and when Celia Siegel and others showed you how to brand yourselves effectively to drive sales directly through your websites. More work is being hired through direct talent search than ever before, and more functional search driven by tools like ChatGPT will likely only increase this traffic, inspired in no small part by a modern generation of buyers determined not to pay rent to casting platforms.

Moreover, as unfavorable as these platforms have been for talent agents and managers, those who represent us have done a far better job of adapting to and even thriving in a changed landscape than they have been given credit for. Ten years ago the very best jobs, the highest-end broadcast genre work, almost always went through agents and managers. Today they still do. Relationships still matter, and there is no one better at building strong relationships with voice buyers than those whose job it is to represent us. They deserve a great deal of credit for holding the line.

Now, how about something a little more controversial?

Most professional voice actors see Fiverr.com as a blight on the industry. But what if there’s an upside to a micro-budget platform backed by billions of corporate dollars entering the casting space?

Many who have strong stables of quality clients don’t see Fiverr or similar platforms as a threat. They see them as the dollar store or what the car industry calls “zero lots.” A place for bargain shoppers to buy a generally lower-end product, and a place where occasionally one of those bargain shoppers will get a great deal from a voice actor who hasn’t realized that their ability could command much higher rates. Yes, there is a legitimate argument that platforms like Fiverr are highly destructive to the perceived value of our craft in general, but many in our industry disagree about the actual impact on high-end professionals. After all, does the Mercedes with 20,000 miles for $35,000 on the zero lot really threaten Mercedes certified pre-owned operation, where the same car with the same mileage might be $45,000? The zero lot doesn’t give you any extras or guarantees. Mercedes certified pre-owned ensures you are given white glove treatment and a vehicle you can rely on. Same car. Different types of buyers. The bargain hunter would never walk into the Mercedes dealership. The certified pre-owned buyer would be aghast at a shabby office that didn’t serve an espresso with a smile and offer a plush couch to close the deal on with an attentive salesperson offering peace of mind that any short-term repairs or defects will be covered by the dealership.

I’m not advocating one position or the other, but here’s something that’s not up for debate. Fiverr has sucked enormous wind out of the sails of Voices.com and Voice123 by investing millions of dollars to harvest their lower-end buyer traffic. And they’ve been immensely successful. While becoming problematic in their own right, they have helped reduce the likelihood that one mega-platform will emerge to the detriment of the industry as a whole.

Talent finding their own jobs through marketing and SEO. Agents and managers kicking ass as they always have. Low-budget platforms siphoning traffic.

What are the legacy sites to do?

Well, they’re doing the only thing they can do, albeit differently depending on the platform in question.

First, both sites have begun accepting the same kind of low budget jobs as Fiverr. Whereas Voices.com and Voice123.com previously held at least basic minimum project rates, both platforms now, (in one capacity or another,) allow jobs with any budget, even five dollar gigs. This has helped them hold the line against further imbalance between members and buyers, and to date does not seem to have impacted the overall quality of jobs on either platform, other than to add many new low-quality jobs without reducing the number of better ones.

More importantly, however, both sites are aggressively implementing algorithms that seem to have the effect of reducing access to most voice actors.

Voice123 has done this by creating a plethora of membership tiers that require lower-tier members to be extraordinarily careful about which jobs they choose to audition for. Indeed, anyone paying under $2,200 per year is now effectively blocked from auditioning in the volume necessary to sustain daily or weekly bookings. Strong talent in the highest two tiers are still able to earn five and even six figures through the platform, but even these voice actors are subject to the whims of an algorithm that punishes taking risks with regard to the jobs one auditions for. That said, Voice123 deserves credit for choosing to offer top bookers the ability to access the quantity of jobs needed to at least try to sustain their historical earnings on the site. Moreover, at least for now, Voice123 continues to limit the instances where it plays middleman and takes a cut of the voice actor’s pay.

Voices.com has gone the other way by sunsetting its Platinum tier and creating a new system that rewards voice actors who consistently engage with and book through the site. Meanwhile, anecdotal reports indicate that members who were used to seeing dozens of audition opportunities per day on Voices’ $499 Premium tier are now seeing fewer than they have in the past, in some cases considerably fewer. It’s only speculation, but it’s hard to imagine that, much like Voice123, Voices.com isn’t experimenting with new ways to spread access to more members competing for proportionally fewer jobs.

Now, to be clear, many voice actors still earn handsomely from these two sites. Indeed many still earn into six figures, and in perhaps a dozen or two cases WELL into six figures. They have stayed abreast of changes, understand how to manipulate their profiles and, (to the best of their knowledge,) the algorithms, and have years of experience applying best practices in their audition process, as well as elite skills to land the job with their performance. And yes, occasionally the talented newcomer, especially on Voice123’s higher tiers, can still find immediate results.

The bottom line, however, is that if you can afford just $395, $600, or $888 on Voice123, and $499 on Voices.com, it is now very unlikely that you can access the number of auditions necessary to build a full-time income on these platforms alone. Even when we add industry-favorite bodalgo.com and others into the mix, the volume just isn’t there. Remember, elite talent on casting sites have historically reported booking 7-10% of their auditions. Most full time pros book 3-5%. Talented newcomers often one in a hundred. The average job across these platforms pays $500. If you can only access 10-20 auditions per day, and run the risk of having those numbers reduced if you aren’t being liked/favorited enough….well, you do the math. The days of strong new talent banging out 50-80 auditions per day on casting sites are over, and they aren’t coming back.

And yet, I present this to you in the form of good news. Voices.com and Voice123.com aren’t going away. They, and others like them, will continue to be a tool available to those who wish to use them, (and I’m not getting into the morality of individual sites in this article….that conversation is a quick search away,) but the good news in all of this is that the era of these platforms actively disrupting our industry is over.

We are now in the era of talent empowerment. Supported by our agents and managers, our own hustle and web presence, and whatever other tools and platforms we choose to use to augment our income. The difference is that now, we make the decisions, and if one source of work doesn’t align with your process or values, there’s another one waiting for you that will.

Some people see this as the Wild West. For better or for worse, a lot of money was made in the Wild West by those who embraced control of their own destiny.

As a voice actor in the 2020’s, the future belongs to you.