behind the scenes - a day in the life of a voice actor
If you’ve worked with voice actors in the past, or even considered a career in voiceover yourself, you may be wondering: what is the typical workday like for a voice over artist? What’s it like behind the scenes? I get this question all the time from new voiceover talent, customers, as well as family/friends. The answer is complicated, because every voice actor’s path is different, but I’ll do my best to paint the picture for you.
Years ago, voice actors had relatively few responsibilities. They would show up to the studio, record their auditions or paid projects, and go home. Someone else usually handled the audio engineering, and many voice actors relied solely on their agents to help them secure work. Only the true veterans of the industry will really know what that was like, as the currently reality for VO talent is much different these days.
Today, if you want to be a full-time voice actor, it’s very likely you will have to bring more than just your voice to the table. Many of us are also audio engineers, as well as the sales department, marketing, finance team, and more for our businesses. While wearing all of these hats as solopreneurs, we tend to work out of our own home studios. This is in stark contrast to the past I described above. Furthermore, instead of relying mainly on agents to help us book work, we now look to freelance platforms, pay to play sites, and even our own direct marketing efforts to help secure the work we want.
With that in mind, we can now start to picture what the average workday might look like for a voice actor in 2022.
Your average full-time voiceover talent will need to do the following on a regular basis:
Essential Business Processes. This is the stuff that every business owner needs to handle (or delegate) regularly. Responding to emails, paying invoices, engaging in customer service activities, budgeting, strategic planning, etc.
Auditioning. We need to find opportunities, record auditions, and book work. This is something that happens every day for voiceover talent. Many of us spend hours each day sending out auditions, and it’s a big part of the gig. Auditions are typically found on voiceover casting sites, or they come in from talent agencies representing the voice actor. Between my agent, as well as sites like Voices.com, The Voice Realm, and even Upwork… I have quite a few auditions that come across my desk every day.
Marketing. Whether it’s researching clients and sending marketing emails, or responding to job opportunities on freelance marketplaces, we need to get our name out there as voice actors. Marketing is truly essential, as no one will book you for voiceover work if they don’t know of you in the first place. You have to get in front of people, demonstrate value and relevance, and build those relationships. Specific actions that can be taken by talent looking to market themselves can include: setting up and maintaining a professional website, doing SEO, setting up PPC ad campaigns, sending emails to potential clients, and more.
Learning. Even if you’re a seasoned veteran of the voice over world, it’s important to stay up to date on the happenings in the industry, trends, prevailing styles and sounds, and more. Many voice actors, including myself, take classes or attend regular coaching sessions to keep our skills fresh. This helps us provide better service to our clients.
Voiceover Recording for booked jobs. Once all the business development activities for the day are completed, it’s time to do the jobs we’ve booked. On any given day, the amount of paid work to be completed will vary, but there’s usually a handful of items for the voiceover talent to record. As an example, on the day I’m writing this article… I have to work on an audiobook, a short documentary, a video sales letter narration for a medical supplement, as well as a radio spot.
Audio Editing. Now that you’ve recorded all that content for the day, it’s time to edit that audio. The amount of time and energy this takes varies greatly from project to project. Editing something under 2 minutes will take hardly any time at all, while editing a raw 3-hour audiobook recording will be much more involved. Some more established talent like to farm this part out to an audio engineer, but I personally like to handle it all myself. I only outsource editing if I’m swamped with voice-over work; otherwise, I spend time each day at my editing station cleaning up and shipping out the audio I’ve created for the day.
Networking. Running a business is all about growing and maintaining professional relationships. Those relationships can be with customers as well as peers in the industry. But why are they so important? It’s simple: by expanding your reach, you expand your opportunities. Great customers often have their own network of peers or businesses that might require your services. Peers might send jobs your way if you’re a better fit for that particular role or client. It’s really a no brainer. Plus, voiceover work can be lonely sometimes when you’re alone in the booth all day; you might as well make a friend or two! Engage with customers and peers on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or even in professional organizations, and get involved in the community.
One thing you’ll notice about what I’ve shared above is the lack of timestamps or blocks for each part of the workday. Personally, I like to work without a specific structure to the day, instead devoting whatever time I feel is necessary to each task that day. Whether or not this works for you is highly dependent on your motivation level, skillset, and other factors. If you need a more defined structure for your workday as a voice actor, try giving each activity a certain block of time each day to which you can commit. For example, you could use the following schedule:
9:00AM - 10:00AM: Marketing and Essential Business Activities
10:00AM - 12:00PM: Auditioning
12:00PM - 1:00PM: Break for lunch
1:00PM - 2:00PM: Learning
2:00PM - 4:00PM: Record your booked jobs
4:00PM - 5:00PM: Audio Editing
5:00PM - 5:30PM: Networking
What about voiceover talent that are part-time?
Everything I’ve shared above is applicable, mostly, to full time voiceover talent. But it’s important to acknowledge that not all voice actors are full-time. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of voiceover talent are part-time in VO, while they work a full-time job in another industry to make ends meet. According to voiceoversurvey.com, 48.3% of voice actors surveyed make $8,000 or less per year from voiceover work.
When I first began my voiceover career in earnest, I had a day job as a university administrator doing financial aid work. It took about 15 months of hard work to develop my voiceover business, and that entire 15-month timeframe was extremely challenging from a scheduling standpoint. My day job would require at least 10 hours of my day, leaving only 14 hours to split between family time, voiceover work, and sleep. There were many nights where I’d come home from work, hang out with my family for an hour, and then go into the home office to develop my VO business until 1-2AM. If you’re in that position right now, I feel for you. Keep pushing! It gets much better.
For part-time talent, I personally believe the activities with the highest value and efficacy are learning more about the craft, and auditioning. Taking courses, enlisting the help of coaching, and auditioning regularly provides ample opportunities to learn about almost every aspect of the voiceover business.
conclusion
The average workday for voiceover talent can vary pretty wildly day-to-day. But, you can count on a handful of key activities being completed regularly to sustain the talent’s voiceover business. Whether it’s auditioning for their next role, or recording an audiobook for a client, there’s bound to be an exciting and eventful day ahead.
Did you enjoy this content? Check out the blog for more! To get you started, here’s a blog post about the 10 things every pro voice actor should have in their home studio.
