Marcia Yudkin gets it right – again!

When someone contacts me about my voiceover services and immediately focusses on price, I've learned to take a step back. It has been my experience that there’s an inverse correlation between the price they want to pay and the degree to which they will turn out to be a pain in the neck. So when I received Marcia Yudkin’s weekly Marketing Minute this morning that addressed this very issue, I was amazed at how well she nailed the problem and was very interested to read that there are actually statistics available about it. If you’re a voice actor or a business person of any kind, you owe it to yourself to walk away from this kind of client. With permission, I’m reprinting Marcia’s words verbatim – and I will be checking out Holden & Burton’s book!

If you'd like to sign up for Marcia's free newsletter, Marketing Minute, go here.

According to Reed Holden and Mark Burton, authors of Pricing With Confidence, 79% of business-to-business companies serve any customer they can get.

What's wrong with that? Typically, they explain, 20 percent of the customers account for 225 percent of the profit, with 80 percent causing the firm to lose money. And that statistic doesn't take into account the extent to which the unprofitable customers increase your worry wrinkles and gray hairs.

Being choosy about customers benefits both the bottom line and your sanity. Consider sending away those who:

* Always press you for discounts

* Need or demand an exorbitant amount of handholding

* Previously requested refunds

* Are unpleasant to deal with, nitpicky, abusive, frenzied, uncooperative or irrational

* Threaten to go to the competition

* Never pay on time

* Represent where your company used to be rather than where it is going

"It's simply better for you that unprofitable customers are served by your competition," say Holden and Burton.

After shedding the undesirables, develop a clear picture of who you want as clients and pursue those. You'll then have the positive energy needed to land them!

From The Marketing Minute, 18 February 2009, by Marcia Yudkin. Reprinted with permission.

Protecting your investment in voiceover

What do you do to ensure you don’t provide voice-over work for free, unintentionally? You’ve worked hard to achieve your current professional status as a voice talent, you've made some hard decisions about the rates you will charge, you are striving to make a living, and you don’t want to give your work away except by your own choice. Most people who hire us are honest, and until recently, I’ve always gone into voice-over work relationships with nothing more than a virtual handshake unless my client has asked me to sign a contract or release form. These documents, by the way, are invariably created to protect the client, not to protect me.

A few things can go wrong when we’re working with people we’ve never met and are unlikely ever to see. One is that they can skip the step of paying you, or they can take months to pay. Another is that they pay you for one thing, but end up using your work for other applications. I’ve been in business as a voice talent for only 3 years, so I definitely have not seen everything, and would like to come up with effective ways to protect my work while not becoming paranoid and suspicious. So I’d like to review the possibilities, and would greatly appreciate input from colleagues about how to start a work relationship on the right foot.

I get most of my work from clients I’ve found by searching on my own for companies that might need the services of a voiceover professional, and from online freelance job postings. If the potential client has a website, that’s where I get my first impression of the company. If the site looks professional, that’s a good sign. If they are members of a civic organisation such as an ad club or chamber of commerce, that also speaks well for them – anyone in the habit of shady dealing is unlikely to want associations that raise their public profile and is unlikely to “waste” money joining such organisations. Membership in the Better Business Bureau is also a very positive sign; many businesses that are perfectly legitimate are not members, but it may be informative to look up the company on the BBB website since complaints can be filed about any business, not just members. So looking up the company at the BBB is an excellent way to do some preliminary checking on a potential client.

Your first communication about a voice-over job may be a request for an audition (Phase I). If I receive a very long script from someone with whom I’ve never worked and am asked for an audition, I just read a few choice paragraphs - possibly the intro and the outro and one paragraph from the middle - depending on the script I will look for a paragraph with technical terms so the client can see how I handle the complexities of the script. This way, they have a read that is long enough to tell them if I’m right for the job, but not the entire script. I prefer this to watermarking (adding music or a sound to make the recording unusable) because it lets the client hear what I do with their script without distraction, while still not doing the entire job.

If I’m hired, then it’s time for Phase II. As I said, I never used to do anything to protect myself from unscrupulous consumers of voice-over – starting from the premise that everybody is honest. Now, after a few negative experiences, it’s time to change that. I have a lot of colleagues who commonly request a 50% deposit via PayPal before starting work, and the rest upon completion. This is a great idea and I’ve recently started to implement it myself. It worked wonderfully well last month when I was looking forward to a quiet week during which I would finally have time to prepare for the holidays. Instead, I suddenly had an influx of work from new clients. I was hustling to get it all done and really did not want the stress of wondering whether all these people that I didn’t know were going to pay me. So, I asked them all for that 50% deposit unless they were referred to me by someone I knew, or in one case, I admit, I just had a good feeling about them and skipped that step (my instinct was good – they paid immediately). For some reason, many of us are uncomfortable about the money side of the business. If you’re new to this sort of procedure, as I am, I recommend writing out your payment policy and practise saying it, so that you can do it fluently and without flinching (or if your communication is by email, no problem – you’ve got the words at your fingertips). It's common practise to request a deposit on a service prior to delivery, particularly when the parties are conducting business remotely, so we all need to learn to do it. By the way, PayPal does charge a fee to the funds recipient (you). You can either consider this part of the cost of doing business and add the fees to your year's business expenses, or you can include them in your bill. Use this calculator to figure out in advance what the PayPal fee will be (thank-you Brian Hart for this link).

The policy of requiring a downpayment will take care of much of the potential problem of non-payment, unless you’re working with a client in another country that is unable to use Paypal. For such cases, you may be able to use Western Union instead of Paypal. For direct bank-to-bank wires, your bank may charge a fee for incoming transfers, as mine does – I solved that by shopping for a local bank that doesn’t, and opened an account there just for receiving wire transfers from overseas clients.

As for the clients who didn’t pay me – there have been two. The first one simply never paid and does not respond to my emails. The second one sent a check that bounced. Since my bank charges a fee in such cases, I actually had to pay to do that particular voice-over job, which I considered a pretty outrageous insult on top of the injury. I wrote to the client, who apologised profusely, said their bookkeeper had embezzled thousands and had been arrested, and he promised he would “make it up to me” right away. Six months later, he hasn’t. I submitted a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, who recently contacted me to tell me they had not received any response from the company. A review of the company on the BBB site reveals that they have a rating of “F” for not responding to complaints, of which there have been several. If I had done my homework I would have seen this and saved myself a headache, but I hope I have learned my lesson. I have no further plans to pursue payment for the work I did – it isn’t worth the exasperation.

Will I do the internet research, the BBB background check, and require the 50% deposit for all new clients from now on? Actually, probably not. For many of the jobs I get, I already know enough about the company to feel safe with them, either because they were referred to me by someone I trust, or because I was the one who made the initial contact and had already done my homework. And sometimes I just have a good feeling about them and decide to trust my instincts. If I have responded to an online job posting, however, and don’t actually know the name of the company until they contact me, that’s when I plan to require the deposit. Especially if their first effort to contact me is by phone, it’s important to be ready to explain that policy up front, before I do any work.

Another problem that can come up to threaten your investment in your voice and career is that of overexposure. This is something I had never really thought about until recently. A read I did for a TV commercial in a major market was later used for radio, so my voice was on the air waves a lot. It was a non-union job and I had signed a standard release. The reason this could be a problem was summed up well by Kara Edwards in a discussion at VoiceoverSavvy. She wrote:

I recently had to negotiate a contract with a company. We really hit a cross-roads with the rates I proposed for extra usage of the original audio. When I explained that it was less about money, and more about exposure...they totally agreed with me.

I'll explain: Let's say I sign a contract with company A to do a VO. I don't add anything into the contract about usage, and I give company A full legal right to do what they will with my audio. Company A takes the audio, puts it online, on TV, animates it, makes a talking doll with it, etc. Suddenly, my voice is being heard everywhere and I haven't made much money. Company B (a major corporation) creates a job I would be perfect for...but they are hesitant because my voice is already heard everywhere with company A (for little money), so they go with another actor. Now I am stuck.... (quoted with permission)

Kara further noted that

When I am contacted directly, I always repeat back to them what they've proposed...

"You need a :30 VO for a 13 week run in Louisiana, correct? The fee for this voice over will be $---.--. If you choose to use the audio in any additional manner, I've included my rate sheet for your convenience." (quoted with permission)

So in your preliminary negotiations with your clients, it's important to give some thought to how you will deal with usage fees, buy-outs (an additional fee to give your client unlimited use of the recording for a certain time period), interest on late payments, and other contingencies. You will find some very helpful templates that deal with these matters at Voices.com.

My thanks to Kara Edwards both for her wise words and for giving me permission to quote them. You can expect a blog post on this topic in the next few weeks by Kara herself at her own blog.

I welcome your comments about your own experiences with client agreements, contracts, non-payment and all that other bad stuff! What else should we be doing to minimise the bad stuff and maximise the good?

Perceived Value in Voice-over

Those of us in business to offer a service are sometimes challenged by those requiring the service. “I can get it cheaper", they tell you. My previous post on setting rates addresses this question in excruciating detail for the voice-over business (without going into much numerical detail) and might serve as a resource for those of you who come up against this with your clients. The purpose of my current post is to explore a related problem: how to make sure the question doesn’t come up in the first place. Our own attitudes and convictions will go a long way towards that end.

I used to work as curator of birds at a large midwestern university with a natural history museum. My job responsibilities included 1) advising students and teaching general biology (majors and non-majors courses) and evolutionary biology, 2) research and all that that entails (obtaining government funding and writing papers), and 3) curation of the bird collections (including writing grant proposals for collection infrastructure). We had regular curators’ meetings that included all the departments within the museum – birds, mammals, insects, molluscs and so forth. One of the topics that came up repeatedly was how to defend our existence to the dean of our college, who simply didn’t understand why a natural history museum was important. She did not see its value, so the threat of reduced funding and loss of paid positions was always hanging over us. This could be demoralising. A few years ago I heard George W. Bush on the news referring to the Smithsonian Institution as “the nation’s bug collection” as he slashed funding for its programs. A "bug collection" can be a source of pride - a national treasure - or a derogatory term, depending on how it's uttered and how it's perceived.

In contrast, the American Museum of Natural History is a private institution, not subject to the budgetary whims of a president with an agenda that does not include ‘bugs”, nor a dean whose short-sightedness affects their bottom line. The museum has a charismatic leadership that understands the importance of branding and marketing, and that encourages and funds research that regularly makes the news. Some of this research may not directly affect “the human condition”, but it’s snazzy and it grabs the public’s attention. That museum is huge and it’s flourishing. Then there is the much smaller Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks in tiny Tupper Lake, New York. This museum cost millions of dollars to build, and when it opened its doors in July 2006, the Governor of New York and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were in attendance for the ribbon cutting. The leadership of this museum certainly knew what they were doing - starting out from a position of strength, they hit the ground running with heads held high. No need to defend your existence if you don’t permit it to be called into question in the first place. It’s all about perceptions and posture - attitude.

If someone questions your value and you let such questioning corrode your own perceptions, you can start to feel that you are indeed less valuable than you really are. This sort of situation can be avoided with charismatic leadership. In the case of your business, that leadership is you.

We’ve all seen or received requests to donate our services for non-profit projects or even for producers creating commercials or other assignments “on speculation”. “No pay, but there will be lots of paid work in the future for the person who helps us now”. I’ve heard comparisons of voice-over with other professions such as the plumbing trade, like this: “install this sink for us for free, and we’ll pay you to install other sinks in the future.” Amusing, but not exactly apt. Almost everybody needs a plumber at some point, but not everybody will need a voice-over in the course of their lives. So, do we secretly feel that plumbers’ work is more valuable than our own? Not everybody can install a sink, but anybody can talk, right? Attitude! Anybody can install a sink badly, write badly, or perform a voice-over badly. If Jim Dale were indisposed while recording Harry Potter, would it be okay for one of the audio engineers at Scholastic to fill in for him? Who would be a better choice to voice a commercial for Geico, the CEO of the company, or Jake Wood? To be Bart Simpson - Nancy Cartwright or the kid up the street? Whom would you rather listen to promoting your favorite TV program – your cousin Darrell, or you? You’re not as good as Jim Dale or Jake Wood or Nancy Cartwright, you say? Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. Maybe you aren’t yet. Read this for more thoughts on that subject. Value comes from quality in many cases, in others it’s marketing, or a combination of both. Gregor Mendel’s research on garden peas was the basis of modern genetics. His work was ignored for years before others were able to appreciate its significance fully and explain its value to the scientific community and to the public, and thus change perceptions.

Perceptions change with changing values. What’s one of the cheapest things you can buy at the grocery store? Salt. Where did the word “salt” come from? From the Latin, sal. And the word salary is rooted in the word for salt. Why? Because in ancient Rome, salt was used as payment. For a while we used gold. The paper money that represented the gold doesn’t have much value by itself. Neither, actually, does the gold. It was merely the standard. Create a need, and the thing that’s needed has value. Create value, and you've enhanced the need.

I received a newsletter last week from Marcia Yudkin of Marketing for More. She has some cogent thoughts about perceived value:

Governor Deval Patrick's proposal to eliminate tuition for Massachusetts community colleges recently received a thoughtful response from the president of Greenfield Community College, Robert Pura.

"We want to really deeply explore what the word 'free' means and conjures up" before we implement such a proposal, Pura said, suggesting that increasing financial aid might be a better way to make college more affordable.

The effective cost might be the same for state residents with both proposals, but "free tuition" might encourage "a wave of students who take their education lightly, over-enroll and drop classes without much thought," Pura told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Beefing up financial aid communicates responsibility rather than entitlement and may encourage a more serious approach to education.

Likewise, business coach Mark Silver says an acupuncturist he worked with found her patients getting well faster when she raised her fees. It seemed that patients were more likely to do as she suggested between sessions, to get their money's worth, when they were paying more.

Because prices influence perceived value, prices also affect client behavior and their results. Marcia Yudkin, The Marketing Minute (quoted with permission).

My friend and fellow voice talent Dan Nachtrab tells a story about perceived value that remains one of my favorite voice-over anecdotes. He has given me permission to quote it:

A while back, I answered an ad for a narration. A few days go by and I get a call from the producer, who keeps going on that she really has "heard my voice before" and how she would love to have me voice her project. Unfortunately, someone else had answered the ad and said they would do it for FREE, just so they could pad their resume. This is when the sales comes in. The challenge is: How do I not only get the gig, but get her to pay me? The answer: Create value. The hook was baited when she visted my site, read the opening introduction sentence and listened to my demos. (To save you some time, it says "Most likely you have heard his voice.") She truly believed she knew who I was and that I was an established talent. (I can't verify the first, but, hey, how can I argue with the second?) Next, I had to remove the credibilty and perceived value of the talent giving away his services. So, I ventured to tell her "I already have a resume filled with many companies in your same field." Then I related a quick story of one such company, very closely related to hers. This proved I had intimate knowledge of her industry and could provide the service she desired. Now I have VALUE in her eyes. She bit the hook and asked my price. She paid full rate. Remember, we are also in sales. Even though Wal-Mart offers cheaper prices, people are still shopping at Saks.

That last line should be cross-stitched and hung over the door to all voice-over booths. Dan's got it right - he offers great value, but he also knows how to convey the perception of value - he knows how to sell.

It's a rule in voice-over that the clients who are paying the least are demanding the most. You get a few of those and you learn to avoid them like the plague. If you're a professional voice talent, quoting low prices to get the job undervalues the service you’re offering, in the eyes of your customers and, eventually, in your own. Offering a service cheaply may eventually result in loss of quality as well, as you become demoralised and fail to deliver your best work. It is not possible to perform well when you or your customers expect a $50 performance for a $300 job. Much better to give a $350 performance when you’re being paid $300. The next time you’re tempted to quote low, ask yourself why you are undercutting your own services. In effect, you’re on the road to putting yourself out of business. So I ask you - are you offering a valuable service or aren't you? If so, charge a respectable fee - a fee that shows you recognise and respect what you are offering - if you expect other people to value it as well.

Whether you're a voice talent, or a college graduate applying for a job, or a manager negotiating a raise or a corporate executive trying to win a big account, take a lesson from Dan Nachtrab, who was so (rightly) comfortable with the value of his services that he convinced a producer to hire him over the guy who offered to do the job for nothing. Or from the leadership of the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, who had the guts to open an expensive institution in a little town in upstate New York in a climate of "the nation's bug collection". Because of their justifiable conviction of their own value, they had the entire state of New York behind them.

Now, go out and get your clients behind you.

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.

Getting what you’re worth.

Last week we had a tree removed from our property. This tree was a once-majestic sugar maple and when we moved here 11 years ago, it was already declining. We put it on a schedule of biannual fertilization and kept up with pruning and had a few cables put in to stabilize it. But at long last we had to face the inevitable, since it was so diseased that large limbs were dying and threatening the safety of our house, vehicles, and persons. I called several local tree services and got estimates ranging from $700-$900. We put it off and put it off, thinking the whole time about how that dollar figure would seem like nothing in hindsight if a limb landed on one of us. Then last week our neighbor mentioned a tree guy she had used who was very reasonable, and a phone call to him got us an estimate of $325. We jumped at it. I wondered if we would experience the “you get what you pay for syndrome”, but this gentleman was professional and efficient. It took him about 6 hours, including time to lower the larger limbs with a rope. The tree is down and we have firewood for next year, although a lot of work lies ahead to get it all cut up (which would also be true if we had paid the higher price, which did not include cutting and splitting either). The higher estimates I got were from companies that were multi-person operations, so I can only guess that the price reflected the overhead (so to speak).

Still, I struggled with my conscience over that one. Should I pay the higher price to keep up standards in the tree-cutting business and discourage “low-balling”, or should I support the smaller company? Not that there was really any question of the outcome, since there are so many costly and necessary projects awaiting attention here that we can’t afford to choose a higher price on principle when we aren’t even sure what the principle is. I was particularly glad to have paid the lower price when, in the course of our moving cars around to protect them from falling limbs, an unknown driver went past and side-swiped the driver’s side mirror on our old minivan and zoomed up the street without stopping. This left us with a new expense (as well as a slightly dimmer view [so to speak] of humanity).

As in tree-cutting and any other fee-based service, in voice-over work one must take numerous factors into consideration in setting fees. It’s important that voice actors be able to survive on the fees they make, so that they can a) continue to do voice-over work full time and be at the top of their craft as a result of their continuous work and 2) still be in business the next time the client needs their services. That’s pretty much it. Even if “all we do is talk” (and of course that isn’t all we do), it requires equipment, and utilities to run the equipment, and of course the housing of the voice (us!) needs to be fed and clothed. We also need respect, because there is nothing like feeling unappreciated to make someone not work to their potential. You tell someone often enough that they are terrific and they will be terrific. You tell them they’re not worth much and they will perform poorly. Paying someone below what they’re worth is another way of telling them you don’t think much of them. Accepting less than you’re worth is a way of telling the client that you don’t think much of yourself, and long before the job is complete you’ll be resenting the client and kicking yourself.

All this is not to say that I think poorly of our tree man. I’m grateful to him for taking our tree down at a price we could afford. And I have to assume that he is setting his rates based on what he believes the job is worth. He’s taking responsibility for his rates and does not assume that his clients are going to argue with him that he’s charging too little. Voice artists should do the same. Don’t give your clients that responsibility.

You should know what the “going rate” is in your market. When I’m in discussion about rates with clients outside my market, I ask the rate in their market. I know that I won’t get my own rate in a rural area and if I don’t want to work below that, I don’t have any business trying to get work there. Every path not taken has opportunities that we will never discover, though, and I don’t always limit my inquiries to the highest-paying markets. A few weeks ago I came across a company website that spoke to me. Despite their location in a very small market I knew I had to try to work with them. Fortunately the feeling was mutual and they offered me a fee above their usual rate, without my even asking. I love working with them and am so glad I didn’t pass them over because their location suggested a lower rate.

How to sum it all up? I try to aim for a certain place, but I also try to be flexible so that I don’t neglect the opportunity to have fun nor the opportunity (within reason) to provide a service to someone who needs it but might not be able to afford the higher rate. As for our tree man – we got a bargain and I’m grateful for it. I hope his business is flourishing so he’s there the next time we need his help. But despite my professed struggle with my conscience, I really don’t think it’s my job to worry about it excessively, and I sure don’t want my clients worrying about me!