Do you know how your clients feel?

A fascinating article touching on how humans make decisions came across my desk this morning. Research by Princeton psychology professor Danny Oppenheimer shows that decisions can be based on the ease of processing information – for example stock prices are higher shortly after the initial public offering when the ticker symbol is pronounceable (RAD for Rite-Aid compared with RDA for Reader’s Digest). In other work, Oppenheimer found that charitable giving rates varied according to what information was available about the charity’s efficiency rate (the percentage of donations that go to the actual cause versus what percentage goes to overhead). When people have a choice of giving to a charity with a lower efficiency rate, a higher efficiency rate, or no published rate, they will give to the charity with no published rate! Another of Oppenheimer’s studies shows that writing that uses a lot of big words detracts from the message. People will rate such writing as intelligent, but writing that uses simpler language is rated as more intelligent. You can read the article about Oppenheimer here.

These studies show that the decisions people make are based not simply on what they think, but also on how they feel while they’re thinking. It’s an important message for those of us who must market our business and we obviously need to design our marketing materials with this in mind. In fact with every appearance of our name/brand we should be thinking about how it might make our clients or potential clients feel. We want them to feel a certain way when they see us or hear us or think of us. How well are we succeeding in this? Can you examine your own materials and business practices and make an objective evaluation? Did you design your website with this in mind or did it just grow as your business grew? Did you hire someone to create a marketing campaign for you or did it just happen? In voice-over, probably most of us start out thinking we’re going to offer everything: audiobooks, e-learning, corporate narration, medical narration, message on hold, character voices, promo, radio imaging, the works. After a few years we find both that we excel in a certain genre and that specialisation is a key to success (at least in the U.S.). At that point we need to re-examine the way we’re presenting ourselves. Has this happened for you?

In today’s Actor’s Voice, Bonnie Gillespie writes about networking, and in conclusion she quotes from one of her own articles: People don’t remember you. They remember how they feel when they're around you. Think about it.

Networking in voiceover

In voice-over as in all business ventures we think a lot about networking, and numerous articles have been appearing about it lately in various internet haunts that I frequent, including voice actor haunts like the Voice Registry Blog. It’s an indispensable activity, intimately related to marketing. But, it is not marketing and it shouldn’t look like it. It's just making connections of all kinds in all kinds of ways. What does it look like for you?

I have several formal outlets for networking: my local Chamber of Commerce, my local Ad Club, and another local group called Hidden Tech. The Chamber has the most regular meetings – a monthly “Arrive at 5”, quarterly breakfast meetings, and in addition I’m a member of its tourism committee. The Ad Club has a monthly luncheon series and an annual holiday party. Hidden Tech meets occasionally. I have not seen any measurable benefit to my business from the Chamber or the Ad Club - but then, I'm not measuring! A member of Hidden Tech needed a favor, which I was able to perform, which led to her giving me a spot as a speaker in a program she was organising, which led to a reporter writing a story about me for the local paper, which led to a call from a toy maker who needed a voice for a talking doll. My goal in participating in these various organisations is to be part of a community, which is especially important for those of us who work alone. When I go to these meetings, my challenge as a shy person is to talk to one or two people in some depth (not the trap-your-neighbor-and-talk-their-ear-off kind of depth, more like, find something that interests them and get them to talk about it). I want to make sure they know what I do for a living, and everybody asks, just as I ask everybody what they do. But nobody wants a sales talk at a party – what a turn-off! For thoughts on how not to network see a recent article by Ilse Benun.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this – at networking events, far more often than we voice actors hear “oh, you do voice-overs? I might have a job for you!” we hear, “I’ve always wanted to get into that – how did you get started?” There is nothing to be lost by giving a helpful answer to that question. Although I didn’t get started in this business by asking a voice actor how to do it – I was already in the demo-in-hand marketing phase before I ever talked to a working voice actor besides my coach – I hope I will never be too busy to try to give somebody a hand if they need one. We are always hoping somebody will give us a hand and we need to make sure the universe is balanced! I really like what casting director Bonnie Gillespie has to say about that in her column, The Actor’s Voice:

How often do you meet with new-to-town, enthusiastic, completely-clueless-to-the-biz actors upon whose lives you could make a huge positive impact, just by showing them how to format their resumé or where to download sides? Not too often, right? ("Why would I? What's in it for me? Who has the time?" Exactly.) Well, let's seek to change that. Do a little mentoring. Pay it forward. Invest in a relationship with someone who offers you absolutely nothing whatsoever in return....It could even connect you with someone whose career will skyrocket long before yours does, and that person might be so grateful to you for the early support that you'll benefit in ways you never imagined possible.


Hear hear! At the very least, being helpful makes the world a more pleasant place for our own selfish selves - that's worthwhile in and of itself, isn't it??

Blogging is another way that I network. Most of what I write is just more internet noise, but occasionally something will resonate with people and then I get a lot of email about it. Most of the people I hear from are other voice actors, which is a great boon in this age of isolation. It’s really nice when people email and leave comments at my blog, and I try to do it myself at other blogs. If you’ve never left a comment here, please think about doing it – as soon as you leave a comment, you become visible – people learn that you exist. That’s a good thing! So leave one here, and then go to some of the blogs listed on the right and leave a comment there too.

I have to say that, so far, social networking has not taken up much of my networking time-budget. I have a profile at the major sites and a bunch of others, and have spent some time reviewing others’ profiles for possible connections. But I spend more than enough time on the computer as it is, and I SO do not need another reason to be here – there are more efficient ways to connect with colleagues and with potential clients, and I’m too old to be using them for friendship-related stuff (as it was so well stated at Beyond Madison Avenue: “social networking is only social if you’re alone”).

I think the most important thing to remember is that any networking you do as a voice actor and business person is like creating a garden from bare soil – you don’t plant only one kind of plant, such that your garden will look great for a week when all the flowers are blooming, and then there’s nothing going on at all. You’re planting for the present and for the future – a variety of annuals with different blooming times, a variety of perennials and shrubs and even some trees. Aim for great diversity, so that there is always something going on in your garden. Although I can't point to concrete ways that my business has benefited from all of my networking activities, I never know when some little seed I've planted at a party might take root and grow into something wonderful. It takes 3-5 years to establish a business, so get out there in the dirt and get busy!! And don’t forget to leave a comment to tell me how your garden grows.

Note on 5 Feb 2008: another article on acting and networking! It's in the air - as it always should be.

Setting rates in the voice-over business

Most of my colleagues in the business of voice-over find setting rates to be the most difficult part of their job. I would like to examine this issue in some detail, and I must warn you this is a long post - the longest one I’ve ever written.

Some of the reasons why it is so difficult to set voice-over rates:

The going rate for voice-over varies geographically.

In Escanaba, Michigan it is customary to pay voice talent $40 for a broadcast commercial, whereas in Los Angeles, “low budget” means $200. A client who works out of Dallas and Los Angeles recently asked me what I would quote for a “low low low budget commercial”. Because of my experience with “low budget” jobs from Los Angeles, I didn’t want to play the guessing game and I asked what his budget was. The answer: $150. Yet, $150 is the market rate in my neighborhood. So, if you’re trying to match the rate that production companies and ad agencies pay in different parts of the United States, you need to know what those rates are, and there does not seem to be a list posted anywhere. As you start to compile a list, however, a ranking of the radio markets sorted by size and market can be a helpful guide in setting rates, as well as in deciding what parts of the country to avoid if you have a minimum fee.

We are cowed by the perception that doing voice-overs is easy.

How many of us have been approached by people who say, “How can I get into voice-over? I’ve always wanted to do it.” I always try to be helpful, and take the time to answer questions and point people to the information they want. Sometimes, though, it can be frustrating, when the person asking for help thinks it’s just a matter of signing up somewhere. At a party a few months ago a man took up a lot of my time telling me how great his wife would be at voice-over and trying to get information from me about how she could do it. At the same time, he was telling me that she was just starting a career in psychology. If she had been present, I’m sure it would have been clear that she wasn’t even interested – nobody starting a new career is going to have the passion for voice-over that is needed to be successful.

It’s important to remember that if a potential client questions your rates, they are probably new to the business themselves and don’t understand what is involved. Maybe even you need to be reminded, yourself, about your investment in your career in both money and time to get you where you are today. Let’s think about it.

The Cost of Running a Voice-over Business.

Training. Most of us have paid for workshops and private coaching. Most of us continue to pay for workshops and private coaching in order to stay current and hone our skills. This can run from $100 for a workshop of a few hours duration, to $2000 or more for a several-day workshop, and $50 to $250 an hour for private coaching. Regardless of how much we spend on training, we work independently to keep the voice and our acting skills in top shape. I routinely take college courses in acting as well as in foreign languages since I am starting to offer VO in German and Spanish. I am extremely fortunate to be able to audit these courses so I am not paying for them, but I spend every bit as much time on the work as if I were paying, and take every exam and make every presentation that the other students are doing. This is a significant investment of time and intellectual energy. Many of us read voraciously about voice-over and about marketing. I try to get as many books from the library as possible but whether the books are purchased or borrowed, they are an investment of time if not money. Karen Commins has compiled an Amazon reading list of voice-over reference books that is valuable indeed.

Demo production. Most of us have paid to have at least our first demos professionally produced. Even if we produce our own, there is a tremendous amount of time and work involved, and the royalty-free music libraries from which we are choosing the background for our voice are not cheap. I've written a couple of posts about demo production in the last few years if you need further information on this topic (here and here).Demos need to be updated every few years, at least. Many production companies and ad agencies still request CDs, so the cost of CD duplication and design and printing of CD art work must be taken into account.

Recording studio. Having your own studio is absolutely essential to make it in the national and global voice-over market. The investment here is likely to be significant. Microphone, preamp, computer(s), good sound card, recording software, soundproofing and acoustic treatments for the recording space, microphone stand, second monitor and mouse for the recording space, headphones. Eventually we may invest in a Whisper Room or the materials to build a soundproof recording booth from scratch, and possibly in significant renovation of home or commercial space for a studio. We may also decide to install an ISDN line to enable remote recording sessions if we have clients who require this. Very expensive to purchase, install and maintain! For most of us, recording equipment is in flux - as we learn more about our voice and about audio equipment, we upgrade (I've lost track of how many microphones I've been through before settling on my current two). Basic office equipment may include a second computer, printer, scanner, business phone (and monthly bill), desk. Software for managing your database of contacts and for invoicing clients. Office supplies include paper, printer ink, mailing labels (preferably with your logo on them), postage, CD mailers – and now we’re starting to overlap with the expense of marketing materials.

Marketing time and materials. A great deal of our time as voice artists is spent marketing. Once we have put in the time to train our voices and learn about copy interpretation, acting, and all the other elements of excellence in the craft of voice-over, and produced the demo and done the art work and got the CDs made, what happens next? Unfortunately, the mere fact of having developed the ability is not enough – we have to tell everybody who might need our services that we’re available. How?

Website. You need a website, a place for clients to hear your demos and learn about you and your work history. A gallery, in effect. Domain registration, web hosting, possibly extra for an ftp server so you can upload large files for clients, web design and maintenance and search engine optimisation all cost money and time. Even if you do the design and maintenance yourself – how did you acquire the skills to do it? In my case - I took several courses in HTML and Dreamweaver. Time and money.

Internet access. Dial-up is dead – there is no chance of survival in this business without broadband internet access. Significant monthly fee for that. With this service you will spend endless hours on the web, searching for companies that might need your services, studying their websites and deciding if they and you are a good fit. Then you call them and/or email them.

Telephone. You need to call people who might need your services, ask if they use voice talent and keep a talent roster and if you can send them a CD or a link to your demos online. This is very time-intensive, especially if you get somebody who is interested in chatting (fun and pleasant, but still time-consuming). It also costs money if you don’t have unlimited long distance calling in your monthly telephone plan - and of course you still have a monthly phone bill to pay; probably two phone bills if you also have a cell phone so you don’t miss important calls when you’re on the road.

Postcards. This is an important part of a voice talent’s marketing plan. Many people prefer to be contacted this way, and it’s an excellent way to make an impression, to remind people that you exist. If you have landed a really important gig, you will want to get postcards printed that showcase that gig. It will cost around $25 to print 100 large postcards and $41 to mail them. But you don’t just have 100 people in your database. You may even have a thousand or more. And you will want to do several mailings per year, at least.

Electronic newsletter. This is not for everyone, but some people use them. I do. It takes me, at a minimum, 4 hours to write one and find the photos and other art work I need. I use Constant Contact to mail them out, which costs $30 per month. I have probably lost some people to whom I used to send individual emails, but I was spending all my time writing emails which became untenable. Regardless of how we stay in touch, database management is a constant investment as we need to keep track of whom we contact and what kind of response or lack thereof we are getting from them. That always entails frequent returns to websites or other means of updating contact information, and frequent additions to the database in the form of notes about communications from our clients and other contacts. Back to newsletters - my own newsletter includes a regular column about Avian Bloopers – mistakes that sound designers make when choosing bird song for their sound tracks. This is not something that every voice artist must include in their marketing materials, obviously, but it is an area of expertise that I have that took me years to acquire.

Podcasting. I haven’t tried this yet, but one of my newsletter subscribers wrote me yesterday suggesting it. He said he would like to be able to download an mp3 version of my newsletter to his computer and listen while he did other things. So I need to give serious thought to this. More time and possibly even money, because I will probably be tempted to hire somebody to compose theme music for it.

Promotional materials. Business cards, company pens, letterhead, thank-you notes, return address labels, all the usual stuff that business people need, printed with your logo that you probably paid somebody to design.

Memberships. Chamber of Commerce, Ad Club, M-CAI, whatever you decide to join both for networking purposes and for giving back to your community, it costs money. Many people also join Voice 123 or Voices.com or other online services that connect talent with talent seekers. Each of these costs money as well.

Promotional events. You may choose to attend and possibly present at a business expo. I did this last year and you can read my post-mortem. The cost of renting a table and preparing promotional materials can be significant (pens, brochures [see Writing, below]), cookies, whatever it is that you decide to present or give away.

Travel to auditions and gigs. If you go outside your own studio to audition or record a job, as I frequently do, this takes time and gasoline (money). If you do film work (e.g., documentary narration), there are always screenings and other promotional events to attend, and it’s important to go. Time and money.

Writing. Most businesses require some writing. The effectiveness of your writing is determined by your education (which was probably time-consuming and expensive) and by the time you put into learning to write well and to improve your writing skills. The better your writing, the more you should be using it in your business - to write press releases, prepare brochures that you can give to potential clients, write commercials for clients that don't appreciate you, write engaging prose for your website that encourages potential clients to connect with you, write compelling letters and emails of introduction to interest potential clients in you and your work, and to maintain that interest with monthly newsletters and blogs.

Education. Some of this was covered under Writing, above. Your education was different from everybody else's. Maybe you grew up in a bilingual household and do voice-over in more than one language. Perhaps you attended a primary or secondary school with a language immersion program. In my case, I have an A.B., M.S. and Ph.D. in biology, which gives me some fluency in medical and other scientific terminology. This adds value to your business (stay tuned for more about this in a future post).

Phew! That’s a lot of pieces that go into running a voice-over business! And notice that I haven’t said anything at all about the actual voice part of the business! So let’s examine that part now.

The actual voice-over of Voice-over.

You are contacted by a potential client, who says you sound like a great voice for their project but they would like to hear what you do with their script before they commit to hiring you. Many clients skip the audition, they’re convinced you’re right for the job based on your demos, air checks on your website, or the word of other clients who have hired you in the past. If they do want an audition, then you have all the work of an actual gig, with no promise of getting anything for it. Making the time for the audition, formatting and printing the script (unless you have a monitor in your recording booth and the client has already taken the trouble of formatting the script for you rather than just sending it in the body of an email), studying the script, interpreting the copy, in many cases creating a character for the script, recording the piece, editing it, possibly watermarking it if you do that (if you don’t know the person requesting the audition, you don’t know for sure that this person will not just take your audition, tell you it won’t work and they will look for somebody else, and then use your work without compensating you. That’s why adding an auditory watermark may be a good idea).

Once you’ve sent off the audition, you may then be asked for another interpretation of the copy. This is not unusual if the audition is taking place in the agency or production company or casting director’s studio and there is an audio engineer taking care of the recording. I have learned the hard way that if a client starts asking for additional takes of an audition copy, one needs to proceed with caution. Much better to do that sort of audition in person or over the phone, so you are not wasting time editing and uploading auditions when the client may not end up hiring you. In my case, I have one computer for recording and editing, and one with internet access for doing everything else. I move audio files back and forth between them with a jump drive. It is time consuming although I consider it important to keep my recording functions protected from the internet. So, additional takes add more time. At any rate, if a client wants additional recorded takes after I’ve sent an audition, they need to either commit to hiring me, or find someone else, since it is usually the case that multiple auditions of the same copy do not lead to a paying gig.

If you are hired, then you do all that work and more. Often the copy is simply too long for the required time – a 30 second commercial with 40 seconds or more of copy for example. So there is back and forth communication with the client and the client’s client. Sometimes the voice talent is called upon to contribute editing skills. Sometimes the script writer’s English is imperfect and you end up helping them rewrite it. Maybe you are even asked your opinion about the script itself. So now you are voice talent, recording engineer, sound editor, copy editor and “creative”. Then you must prepare invoices and send them out, and follow up if you don’t get paid within 30 days. So you are also the accounts manager and bookkeeper.

Now that we have reviewed the skills, equipment, materials and other resources required to make a voice-over business a success, let’s consider several other crucial points.

A 30 second commercial takes much, much longer than 30 seconds to complete. The job may include: email correspondence, telephone consultation, copy rewrites, actual recording, editing, file upload, more email or telephone exchanges to approve the style of delivery, then final recording, editing, file upload, email or telephone communications, possible script changes and more recording, editing, file upload and communications. And finally, invoicing (and writing a thank-you note after you get paid). And of course, remember all the marketing you had to do to get that 30 second commercial gig in the first place? You need to charge enough to cover all of that, marketing included, and a reasonable amount of profit. You need to charge enough so that you can make a decent living at voice-over, so that you are available the next time somebody needs you to do a voice-over for them. Don’t ever let somebody tell you that charging X amount of money for a 30 second commercial means you are making a preposterous hourly rate. It just doesn’t work that way. Nobody does 120 30-second commercials per hour, 8 hours a day anyway. It simply isn’t possible. If it were, and I charged the market rate for my area, I’d be making $144,000 per day. Obviously we have to charge a rate that takes into consideration the investment we have made in our skills, talents and business, the volume of work that we get on a daily basis, and our cost of living plus a reasonable profit. Whatever the appropriate rate is for you, you need to have some degree of flexibility, but only up to a point. If you’re working for a fee that is below what you consider fair, you will not perform to your best abilities, you will not value your own work sufficiently, and chances are your client won’t either.

Despite having written a near-novella on the subject, I’m still not finished. I will save my thoughts on perceived value for another post [N.B. this is now published]. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment, because I’m sure I’ve left out plenty of important points about setting rates for voice-overs and would welcome your thoughts. Also, if you know of other information on this topic that you would like to link to this post or that could be included in my upcoming monolith on perceived value, please get in touch.

Note: Here is more insight into the process of pricing a voice-over job, in an article by voice talent Elaine Singer, and a valuable post on rates at Voices.com (thanks to Tim McLaughlin for the latter link). A rate sheet is also available at Voice123, which reports averages based on the input of a large number of working voice actors. A rough guide to voice-over rates in the UK is here.

Addendum 31 March 2009: See the non-union rate card compiled by David Goldberg of Edge Studio.

Business Expos and Voice-over

Today I went to a Business-to-Business Expo in a nearby city, sponsored by the chambers of commerce. That was some kind of fun! In two hours I made more contacts than I would have done in several days from my office, and this was face to face. I met people from ad agencies, marketing companies, a message-on-hold business, several TV and radio stations – all consumers of voice talent - Toastmasters, representatives of several area hospitals that actually have their own audio-visual departments (got some phone calls to make tomorrow!!) not to mention a company that rents out cappucino machines and a company that rents out all kinds of other stuff including a chocolate fountain, with samples…. I don’t know why it took me over a year in business to realise that I’m a business person and should be taking advantage of what local organizations of business people have to offer. It was great to get out of my solitary studio where I talk to myself all day, and make contact with 3D people. Business cards were flying as thick as the swirling snowflakes outside (really!), many hearty handshakes exchanged – just a very nice change of pace. My community is now a little bigger and my life a little richer as a result.