How to Get Started in Voice Acting for Commercials

Have you been told that you have a wonderful voice people would want to listen to again and again? If you think your natural voice talent can bring you a profitable career doing voice-overs for television and radio commercials, you may be both right and wrong. I say this because the profession of voice acting, especially for brands, organizations, and businesses, demands more than just talent.

To be an exceptional and successful voice over talent, you need to possess the needed acting, networking, and technical skills to succeed in storytelling work.

Assess yourself and scout for opportunities.

Do you really want to be a voice artist? Do you have enough resources to transition fully to audio recording work, or do you plan to do this on the side for now? Do you plan to take on just local work, meaning just local radio and television stations, or do you want to expand to nationwide opportunities? Answering questions like these help you to gauge yourself as well as the prospects available for you.

If you haven’t had training, get some audio recording and acting lessons.

This comprises the preparation phase of being a successful storyteller. No matter how great your voice sounds, you will need to have someone else, an expert preferably, to inform you how   you can optimize on your strengths and work on your weaknesses. This is why it’s always important to get lessons or short courses on voice acting if you want to do voice over for TV or radio commercials.

Prepare a demo CD or MP3 for commercial voice-overs.

Before you can land audio narration opportunities for commercials, businesses will want to listen to your demo first. Ideally, you will want to prepare different demos to illustrate the nuances of your voice and the flexibility of your voice acting skills. You may send an actual CD via courier or an MP3 file to prospects, or you may post demos on your site. Prior to sending your demos, you need to send an e-mail ahead of time, preferably with your resume, so your effort doesn’t appear spammy.

Get as much experience as you can to build your resume.

A resume will allow companies to review your experiences as a voice actor. Since you are still     starting out, now is the time for you to acquire the experience you need to land better opportunities in the future. Voice acting work for commercials abound, as you can find many brands and companies looking for fresh voices to advertise their products and services locally, nationally, and even internationally. To succeed, however, you need to build on what you have,     expand your network, and keep learning.

The world of commercial voice-overs, especially on a national scale, has always been competitive. But, you can always start small while you’re trying to build experience. Before long, you will have already achieved the success aimed at by every voice-over talent out there.

Looking for a Spanish voice actor for commercials and beyond? You’ve come to the right blog. Check out the rest of my website to listen to my demos or get in touch with me. I’d be more than happy to help you on your next Spanish radio or TV commercial!

 

How to Start Your Own Voice-Over Business at Home

Like any other home-based venture, a voice-over business at home can be highly convenient, fun, and — if you do things right — quite profitable. But like any other start-up business at home, your voice-over company should be planned carefully. Outlined below are the most essential steps in building your at-home business so you can profit from your voice-overs and audio recording services at the earliest time possible.

STEP 1 Invest in Equipment

As a storytelling talent, you cannot jump start your voice-over business without having a stash of reliable equipment. At the very least, you need a microphone, an audio mixer, and good editing software. Since you will be recording at home, it will also help if you have a spare room, which you can turn into a sound proof room or a recording studio.

STEP 2 Invest in and Update your Knowledge 

Before you start marketing your services, you may want to check whether your knowledge of the market or the voice-over business is enough. If you’re starting, you may want to learn about how competitive the current voice-over landscape is, or which services are most marketable. You also have to be knowledgeable on the business side of things such as pricing your services, marketing and promoting, and accepting online payments. 

STEP 3 Take care of Legal Requirements 

The fact that you are putting up a home based audio recording company doesn’t make you exempt from the legal requirements that go with it. To make your business a legal and legitimate venture, you need to establish it legally, from getting a tax identification number to obtaining the necessary business permits.

If you are a business that fulfills the necessary state requirements, it matters little if you simply operate at home. You can be as competitive as or more successful than the next voice-over talent. 

STEP 5 Brand/Market/Promote your Business

Marketing, promotions, and branding strategies are an essential in any business. As a voice actor, you need to brand yourself and your business. Branding helps you differentiate your company and your services from the rest. A good logo or business name also helps in creating brand recall so you become a top-of-mind choice for prospective clients.

Of course, you will have to market your voice-overs to your audience and clients actively. In addition to posting in voice narration websites and participating in forums online, you also need to build your own website. This way, it won’t be difficult for your home based voice over business to reach out to a worldwide market. Your website can serve as an online office where you can communicate with clients through private messages, e-mails, or blogs. Just make sure to update your website content regularly, including your demos, list of services, and prices.

It doesn’t matter whether you work with a huge voice-over company or a voice artist operating at home. The important thing is to choose a voice-over talent that can deliver the results you need, effectively and efficiently. If you are in need of a Spanish voice-over talent today, look no further. Talk with me so we can get things started!

Top 5 Things that May Hurt your Voice-Over Business

Have you just recently put up your own voice-over business? Do you have trouble attracting the right prospects for your voice-over services? Or do you find establishing yourself as a stable online voice artist difficult?

If it seems like your voice over business can’t take off in the right direction, you may be doing a few things wrong. Here is a list of 5 things that may be hurting your chances at audio narration success:

You don’t take care of your voice or your clients. 

While voice talent is just one factor in your success, it is still the most important factor.  Thus, you need to be able to take care of your voice at all times.  Avoid things that may cause dry mouth, mucus formation, and hoarse throat.  When you take care of your voice you also take care of your clients who are, after all, paying for your voice acting services.

You allow distractions to take over. 

You may not notice it at once, but little distractions can affect your audio recording performance. Thus, regardless of the problems you have outside of work, you need to focus on your voice-overs wholeheartedly. As a voice artist, you have to be totally involved in what you are doing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with half-baked performances that fail to establish your spot in the competitive voice-over market. 

You don’t update your website. 

Have you recently changed your e-mail address or contact numbers? Have you decided to expand your voice acting services to include commercial voice-overs?   Is your website well- ranked in popular search engines? When you don’t update your website, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities out there.

You forget to take care of business matters. 

Your voice-over business should be a legitimate business. Thus, you have to get the right permits and pay the right taxes. Clients will want to transact with legally-operating entities especially on the web. This way, your audio recording company will be a legitimate, responsible business that your clients can rely on.

You don’t network with the right people.

If you think your voice-over business is not moving in the way you’d want it to go,  you may       want to expand your contacts and participate in offline events. Surely, the Internet is a great   way to network and earn more contacts. But getting involved in actual events such as meetings, conferences and seminars with fellow voice artists can help establish your presence in your chosen profession. These events can also serve as opportunities for you to get in touch with people or organizations that may need your voice over services now or in the future.

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An excellent voice artist not only knows how to take care of his or her voice. A successful voice-over professional also knows how to find solutions to pressing problems as soon as they crop up. Are you in need of a creative professional for your Spanish voice-overs? You have come to the right place. Check out the rest of this website to know more about me and my Spanish voice-over skills!

A Look into the History of the Voice-Over Industry

Did you know that the history of the voice-over business started with weather reporting? Yes, that’s right. More than 100 years ago, a Canadian inventor and mathematician Reginald Fessenden delivered the first voice-over weather report test for the United States Weather Bureau. A couple of decades later, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. popularized cartoons and the voice actors behind the characters. The industry also saw several prominent voice acting greats in the persons of Mel Blanc and Don LaFontaine.

From the 1900s to the present times, the history of the audio-recording industry has definitely come a long way. Here’s a quick look of the timeline of the voice-over industry: 

The Man Who Started It All — 1900’s

As stated above, it was Canadian Reginald Fessenden who recorded the first audio weather report as a test when he went to work for the weather agency in the U.S. An avid fan of inventor Alexander Graham Bell, Fessenden looked for a way to communicate remotely through a wireless set-up. His efforts paid off when he became the first radio announcer around Christmastime of the year 1906, hosting a Christmas program of music and messages that was broadcasted to ships that had already set sail during that time.

The Legend of Mel Blanc — 1936 – 1960’s 

Anyone who’s been seriously working as a voice talent will get to know the legacy of Mel Blanc at one point or another. He was known as a comedian and a talented, highly-versatile voice personality who worked for Warner Bros. as a cartoon voice. While Walt Disney holds the prestige as having introduced the first cartoon voice in 1928, Mel Blanc is considered to be the first outstanding voice actor in the history of the industry. Best known for his moniker, “The Man of a Thousand Voices”, the versatile Blanc played voices for the characters of Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, the Tasmanian Devil, and many other Warner Bros. cartoon characters.

The Modern Scene — 1960’s – 2000’s 

As the need for outstanding voice actors steadily progressed, especially for projects like movie trailers, commercials, and promos, the industry also saw a growing number of professional voice artists. One of the most famous voice personalities for the modern generation is Don LaFontaine, who recorded hundreds of thousands of commercials and promos by the end of his career and death in 2008.

These days, voice actors are not only needed for English-language recordings. With Spanish considered as a world language as much as English and Chinese, the need for Spanish voice actors is also growing.

Are you in need of professional Spanish voice-over services? Get in touch with me today so we can talk more about your upcoming audio recording project!