Voice Acting is one of the BEST jobs you can have. It’s fun, unique and when you book, it (usually) pays well. You can do a lot of it on your own time or at your own pace and there are a TON of free and paid resources all over the place.
But let’s take the rose coloured glasses off for a second.
This post is about some of the hard truths of the industry. If you can accept these then carry on with your VO journey! Keep trucking and the successes will come.
(Note: There ARE exceptions to some of these, but for the vast majority of voice actors, this is the reality of the voiceover industry)
If anything on this list seems insurmountable to you, maybe you need to pivot. Maybe you need to take more time to prepare yourself mentally for voiceover and voice acting. It is not for the faint of heart (ooooohhhhh spooky).
You’ll probably lose money your first year.
Starting in voiceover is not cheap. You may get lucky with a great place to record in like a good sized closet in a quiet corner, but gear like a microphone, interface and then training and coaching is not cheap.
People also often make the mistake of skipping coaching and training and just dive right into auditioning. But think of it this way: If you’ve got a license, would you buy a racecar and start entering races? No, you’d take classes, maybe buy a cheaper beater to practice on and learn how to race!
You’ll need a LOT of flexibility to find success.
Quick turnaround auditions, clients in different time zones, the other people in your household, the construction down the street, the helicopters overhead etc. So many factors come into making VO a career.
Not to mention colds, the flu, strep throat and internet outages!
People also make the mistake of buying a mic, quitting their day job and then praying for success.
Consistently making enough is a challenge. Not to mention once you do book, it can still take months to get paid so you need to be flexible with your bank account and savings.
Also…
DO NOT QUIT YOUR DAY JOB IN THE FIRST YEAR OF VOICE ACTING*
*Unless you’re consistently making enough from VO/VA to be able to afford to quit and have 3-6 months of rent and expenses saved up.
You probably won’t hear back after sending that audition.
Sending an audition is very satisfying. Booking a gig is even MORE satisfying. But guess how often one leads to the other? For the vast majority of voice actors, it’s less than 1%. That means for every 100 auditions you send you MIGHT get one booking.
That’s right, you will audition a TON and will book OCCASIONALLY*.
And guess what? You usually only hear back when you book a job. Sometimes casting will send out a bulk email to those who weren’t cast and occasionally you’ll get a personalized one mentioning you impressed them but weren’t the right fit. But more often than not, it’s radio silence.
This is especially important because it means if you start auditioning before you’re ready, you’re sending out BAD auditions and you don’t even know they’re bad… That’s why practicing with other voice actors, a coach or in workshops is so important. You want to get to a point where you feel confident that your auditions are consistently good.
*this is regarding paid work as unpaid work has a much lower barrier for entry and people make the mistake of thinking their booking ratio will stay the same or improve when they jump from unpaid to paid work.
Voice acting probably won’t pay your bills.
Roughly 10 percent of voice actors do it full time. The vast majority make less than $10,000 USD a year. That’s not enough to live on. And the amount of time and effort that goes into even getting to that 10k mark is tough. If you’re looking for extra spending money or a “side hustle”, this is not the job for you unfortunately.
I’ll be fully transparent in saying that 2 specific clients of mine make up close to 25% of my yearly income. Which means you bet I’m hanging on to them for dear life.
You are a small business owner
It might sound weird but in order to find true success, you need to treat VO as a business. You are your own employee. You need to juggle social media, your online persona, your offline persona, auditions, emails, marketing, bookkeeping, filing taxes, scheduling and more.
I get it. You didn’t sign up to be a business owner. You’re an artsy and creative free spirit right??
Well… ya gotta figure out how to do both if you want to make it!
You need to be a self starter
No one is going to MAKE you audition or practice or invoice or market. You need to do most of these things on your own otherwise you won’t get very far. That means you don’t need motivation, you need determination. Motivation is fleeting. It comes and goes. You need to be determined to have success in this industry.
So what does all this mean?
It means I’ve been in this industry long enough to achieve jaded status.
But seriously, all of what you just read about needs to be taken into account when you’re starting in this industry.
Voice Acting and Voiceover is very competitive. It requires a lot of drive and determination and honestly some luck. You need to know the right people and learn the right things and make the right choices to succeed. And even after all that, you can still “fail”.
Like Patrick Stewart famously said as Jean Luc-Picard in Star Trek TNG:
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
You know what I say? Make mistakes. Make a LOT of mistakes. Learn from them. Grow. Make more mistakes. Learn from THEM.
And then go out there and kill that next audition.
Break a lung!
(And of course, thank you to the incredible Ed Selvey for giving this blog a second set of eyes before I posted it! Check him out if you have a second)