Become A Voice Over

Has it been your heart’ s desire to make money with your voice? If so, buckle up and hold on tight: you ’ re about to experience useful yet motivating information that will help you make your transition into the world of professional voice over! But first… let’ s identify the biggest misconception about voice over…

“I have a great voice, and that means that I can do voice over, no problem!”

Needless to say, a great voice is not the only factor that breeds a solid career in voice acting. A voice talent is not just a great voice, but a person with endless ambition, polished talent, and good business sense.

If you have a naturally enthusiastic, smooth, or otherwise attractive voice, then you may have been considering getting into voice acting for a while—and with good reason. Voice acting is one of the most exciting and rewarding careers available today, especially when you consider the diverse range of clients, flexible work hours, and the ability to audition and work from home.

Creating your own Streaming Audio audio studio has never been easier. There are so many great products around today that will allow you to produce high quality streaming audio for a fraction of the price it used to cost.

What are the Benefits of Becoming A Voice Over?

1. The Impact You Can Have by Lending Your Voice to Projects Around the World

Even small voice over projects can make a big splash. Every client you work for, whether it’s an international powerhouse or a local small business, is being made better by the voice over you provide. It can be extremely fulfilling to witness what success is achieved with your help.

2. The Voice Acting Community and the Amazing Clients

As you begin to book projects and build a portfolio, you’ll be connecting with producers and coordinators who can very easily become repeat clients if you employ some simple rapport building tactics. Before you know it, you can be working with the producers responsible for Coca-Cola’s international campaigns.

Networking also extends to fellow voice actors. It’s quite important to pursue this particular kind of networking, too. Not only to expose yourself to others who are open to sharing business, technical, and artistic tips, but also because voice actors frequently refer a fellow talent in situations where they’re not quite right for a job.

Many voice actors report feeling that the voice over community plays a major role in the fulfillment that they experience as a voice actor. Attending VO conferences and events of the like are great ways to start meeting other VO artists to build your support and referral network.

3. Ability to Work from Anywhere, on Your Schedule

By far, one of the most appealing aspects of the voice over industry is the ability to work from anywhere that has an internet connection, and on a schedule that works for you. Some of the most successful freelance professional voice actors on Voices have expressed gratitude for their ability to create a work-life balance that works for their family, as well as their personal schedule.

4. Freedom to Make as Much Money as You Like

Voice actors are often entrepreneurs: their voice is their business, and they treat it as such. When you’re your own boss, the sky’s the limit on how much you can make. Although, that’s not to say that becoming a successful voice actor is easy. As a business owner, be prepared to work hard and learn a lot in the process.

HARDWARE

The first thing you will need is a compatible computer. Today every new computer is already set up with everything you will need. A basic sound card with a mic and line in jack. If you do not have a sound card they are very cheap and you can get a good one from any standard computer shop. Next you will need a good mic.

These come in all sizes and shapes with different configurations however a general all round mic like the Logitech Noise-canceling microphone is fine for beginners. I suggest you get a desk top one to start with, as you may want to move into video later and so you wont want a headset in your videos.

Of course you could go up a stage and get a preamp with a professional mic but this will start running into dollars and the whole aim of this article is to help you get started. Next you will want to get some cables to connect up your tape recorder and other audio equipment. Again the computer stores now have packs that will connect up pretty well any device into your computer to digitalize your sound.

SOFTWARE – RECORDING

Recording your audio is probably one of the most critical parts of this process and again you can get software that ranges from free to many thousands of dollars. For this exercise I suggest you download the free copy of Audacity. This is an excellent free software package that will allow you to record from your microphone or any equipment you have. It provides excellent editing capabilities and also will allow you to edit multiple tracks and then combine them into one single track.

SOFTWARE STREAMING

There are a few different ways of streaming your new audio files. If you have Macromedia products you can simple organize this your self however there are some great third party programs around that will do it all for you at a fraction of the time. This is a simple piece of software that takes any mp3 or wav audio and converts the whole file into a swf file and then attaches a button so that viewers can listen on a web page without needing to download any extra software. This is because the flash plugin is on 98% of computes and if not it will automatically detect and load the small plugin. This is great for anyone not wanting to get into all the technical aspects of streaming audio.