How to Find Voice Over Work Online in 2022

Stephanie Ciccarelli

March 29, 2022

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There has been a surge in demand for talented voice actors who can do voice over work remotely.

While the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on in-studio recording sessions and forced movie shoots to shut down, the voice acting community was largely prepared to weather the storm and continue doing voice over work online.

With just a home studio setup and a talent profile on an audio marketplace like Voices, you can audition, record your voice, and complete voice over jobs from anywhere. 

Some real talk: The freelance professional lifestyle is often held up as an ideal. On the surface, being a freelancer appears to provide an amount of freedom and flexibility that others yearn for.

And while this is certainly true in many instances, what often goes unmentioned is that working the gig economy means spending far more time looking for employment than traditional employees might suspect.

Freelance Voice Over Work

Working as a freelance voice actor is akin to running a small business. Like any other entrepreneurial endeavor, it takes talent, time, dedication, grit, ingenuity, and a passion for lifelong learning.

This insider’s look at how the industry operates will guide you through the process of embarking on your career in the voice acting world. In this post, you’ll find answers to the following questions and more:

• How do voice actors get auditions?
• How do I make my audition stand out?
• How do you do well at a casting call?
• What makes a great audition? 

How Voice Actors Get Auditions

Because this profession is like running a small business, your typical voice actor’s hunt for auditions may take as much as one-quarter to one-third of their work time. This includes business-like activities such as:

• sending out emails
• attending networking events
• creating demo reels
• Maintaining a profile on marketplaces like Voices

All of these efforts are commonplace activities for freelance voice actors who primarily find their voice over work online. Online marketplaces are a critical component to getting auditions in voice over these days. At Voices, signing up for a guest account and filling out your profile to represent your skill sets is a great way to be found by clients who can then invite you to audition. Or, you can look at other membership levels that give casting calls to audition for gigs without first needing to be found and invited by the client.

Find more tips for understanding your voice over business’ marketing mix.

How to Get a Voice Over Job

Getting the audition is one thing, landing the gig is where a voice actor’s success lies! Here are eight tips that will help you get the job after finding the audition:

1. Take a voice acting class
2. Practice reading out loud
3. Seek out pro-bono jobs to build your resume
4. Network with other voice actors
5. Practice proper breathing techniques
6. Produce a voice over demo reel
7. Create a Voices talent account
8. Follow up and be persistent

1. Take a Voice Acting Class

Before you get too far ahead of yourself and buy studio equipment, get some training. When you’re exploring voice acting as a potential career, taking a class or two, or enrolling in voice over coaching can help you to determine whether voice acting is the right business for you.

Sometimes finding voice over work is a matter of experience and training. You can take control of this factor by deepening your training and industry relationships through online learning opportunities. Companies like The Voice Shop provide remote coaching services with industry experts such as Mike George and Steve Tardio. Their classes cover everything from the ‘Fundamentals of Voice Over’, Intermediate and Advanced Classes and even specialized classes about audiobooks, animation and more.

2. Practice Reading Out Loud

Read out loud often, so that you can really feel the copy, hear your voice, and play with the interpretation. Overcome any inhibitions by practicing your reading on a regular basis either on your own, with a teacher, family member or a trusted friend. Reading out loud also has many unexpected benefits, too.

3. Seek Out Pro Bono Gigs to Build Your Resume

Consider apprenticing under an established voice actor, or volunteering your talents for charities, nonprofit events, or student projects. As you are building your voice over portfolio, it is important to make the distinction between volunteer work and “giving your voice away for free”—your future colleagues will thank you.

4. Network With Other Voice Actors to Build Your Network

While coaching and training are a great place to start, don’t let your networking activities end there! Look for local Meetups, conferences, and online communities. Not only will you find kindred spirits and moral support, but you’ll also become part of a powerful referral network. When a fellow voice actor is presented with a job opportunity that they aren’t well-suited for, you can count on these peers to recommend other vocal talent in their network, including you, for said opportunities.

5. Practice Proper Breathing

Remember to breathe properly. This means being able to control your breath and shape it to create flowing phrases and energetic, articulate performances. Breathing deeply from your diaphragm, breath support, and proper placement can work miracles and keep you conditioned to deliver in top form, even through sickness.

6. Produce a Voice Over Demo

Making a voice over demo is a very personal, artistic, and technical process. You can go about this on your own, but it is advisable to consider the possibility of having a demo professionally produced for you. Your voice over demo can be your ticket to success, and often serves as the first impression of your voice that a prospective client will hear.

7. Create a Voices Talent Profile

When you’re ready to pursue voice over work, you’ll need to have a web presence and a steady source of auditions. Registering for a Voices talent account is an optimal way to get your name in front of clients, market your talent on a global scale, and most importantly, gain access to our vast job board full of amazing voice acting opportunities. 

8. Follow Up and Be Persistent

When you are pounding the pavement on your own, be sure to follow up with the prospects you have submitted your demos or marketing material to. Do everything you can to keep your name front of mind. You may not receive a response from every person you deliver your promotional materials to, but that shouldn’t deter you from marketing your services. When someone needs your voice, they will get in touch!

How Do I Make My Audition Stand Out?

If every voice actor is going through similar processes to find auditions, and many auditions are filling the client’s inbox, asking “how do I make my audition stand out” is a valid question! 

There are two primary ways to make your auditions stand out to clients:

Have next-level, totally awesome audio quality 

That means using an effective recording space free sounds like traffic going by outside, the upstairs neighbour’s laundry machine spin cycle, the air conditioning kicking on and off, and all the other sounds you don’t notice until you’re listening back and hear it underneath your audition read. 

It also means having some audio production skills to:

• Have proper recording technique. The sign of high quality audio is audio that needs very little fixing in the post production stage.

• Help you clean up your audio after you’ve recorded, if needed. The ability to control and mix multiple sources, remove lip smacks, plosives, sibilance, etc. is key to delivering an audition file with spectacular audio quality, on top of proper recording technique. There are so many ways to make the production process smoother, like through the use of presets in your DAW to help control your levels, plugins to assist with the audio clean up, and more. Check out those two links for the “how to” on audio quality. 

Our in-house Content Producer made this helpful video on training your ear to hear what needs to be edited out after recording.

2. Be an *Actor

Our community manager Andrew Zuber says, “It’s voice *Acting. Capital ‘A’ on the acting because successful voice actors invest in themselves and develop acting skills through practice and guidance and more practice.” 

You’ll stand out in auditions when you can take the creative brief and interpret it meaningfully. 

What does a client mean when they say, “We want a conversational read,” or, “We’re looking for a pre-teen voice age?” Being able to interpret a script and incorporate the characteristics the client has specified is a great way to stand out in auditions. 

Again, this skill of interpreting a script comes with practice, practice, and more practice. We have a bank of voice over sample scripts, all with unique descriptions built out, so you can try your hand at a variety of roles, styles, and voice ages. 

Once you’ve identified your wheel-house, stick to it. Which leads us to our next point.

Be Selective When Auditioning for Voice Over Jobs Online

No matter whether you’ve been in the voice acting business for a while or are just starting out, when you’re looking for voice over jobs online, it pays to know both where to look and what to look for.

For instance, when you’re reviewing a voice over job posting, you’ll notice that a variety of criteria are included,  including vocal requirements, artistic direction, and more. The key to determining whether this is the right job for you comes down to how well you know your own voice and your brand. 

Types of Online Voice Over Jobs

The global voice over industry is more vast than you may think. While you’re likely familiar with voice acting for video games or radio spots, there are a number of other industries that are ramping up their use of voice over, especially as a means of adapting to our increasingly digital media landscape. 

There have never been more voice over job opportunities for voice actors who work from home. And according to findings from our 2021 Trends Report, internet videos, eLearning, and animation voice over jobs have seen the most rapid increase over the past year. In fact, internet video jobs increased by almost 200% year-over-year in 2020.

Now, the 2022 Trends Report affirms the momentum remains. Over the 1100 clients surveyed, 1/3 of people said they hire a voice talent more than 50 times per year.

What to Look for in a Voice Over Job Posting

For the sake of being choosy and pursuing only the voice over gigs that suit your unique set of skills, you’ll want to double-check a few key specifications on the job form, including these six criteria:

1. Language, accent and dialect
2. Gender and voice age
3. Category of work
4. Deadline
5. How the client needs the work delivered
6. Pay rate

Language, Accent, and Dialect:

Be honest about the languages, accents, and dialects that you can fluently perform, because many clients can distinguish an authentic sound from one that’s not as polished. If you’ve received language training or dialect coaching, indicate your level of fluency or comfort with the required language when submitting your audition and proposal.

Gender and Voice Age:

Make sure that the job posting’s requirements reflect your voice and the roles you want to book. To protect your time spent on producing audition demos, and the client’s time reviewing audition demos, make sure you stick to the jobs that represent your vocal gender and voice age. Just as a client will hire a middle aged voice actor who can convincingly and naturally sound like a child (thinking Bart Simpson here), a client will hire the voice gender they need for a project as well, so long as it convincingly and naturally sounds like the gender they’ve specified in the job description. 

Category of work: 

The different categories of voice over projects can range from radio and television, to animation and audiobooks, and even includes podcasting, internet video, movie trailers, and more. We mentioned above that honing in on what types of jobs suit your vocal skills the best was a great way to use your auditioning time wisely! If you’re not a long-form audiobook narrator, consider leaving that one for the voice actors who have built their speciality in that area. 

Deadline: 

Consider when the client has set the audition deadline. If it’s not possible for you to audition in time, or you’re booked solid when the client needs the voice over recorded, you’ll need to pass on the opportunity. You don’t want to give the impression that you’re available when you aren’t, causing you to come across as being unreliable.

How the client needs the work delivered: 

Ensure that you’re able to deliver the file in a way that works for the client. This may include the audio file format, or even the prospect of taking part in a live directed recording session via ISDN, Source-Connect, or another connective technology.

Pay rate: 

This may be your deal maker (or breaker). Does the pay line up with the amount of work required? Look for a budget range and compare it with the amount of time it will take you to complete the work. Note that you can quote whatever you choose for any voice over job, but never settle for any rates that you feel aren’t in alignment with what you want to charge.

How to Submit Auditions for Voice Over Jobs Online

In this video our Content Producer, Randy Rektor, outlines 8 tips for submitting voice over auditions.

8 Tips to Submitting Great Auditions

Bring the energy 

Get right to it! Make sure that as soon as the client hits play, they hear your voice connecting with their audience, and no delays or silence in front.

Shorter auditions

When a script is supplied, it’s best not to read the whole thing in your audition. Read approximately 15 seconds or so, and then move on. Save your time, save your voice, keep your auditions short!

Bulk process auditions

A time saving tip, carve out a time of day or full day of the week to complete all of your auditions at once. And then, rest your voice while you keep the productivity train rolling— after the bulk auditioning comes the batch processing of your audio, and that is another great time saver as well. 

No slating 

Tieing into tip number one, get right to it! The job number, job title, and your name is all information the client can see right next to the play button. Let the job proposal cover that info for you so you can get right to bringing the client’s script to life.

More volume

We’ve seen time and time again that quiet auditions don’t book the gig. Our recommendation is to normalize your audio files to around -1dB.

No watermarking

This especially applies if you’re following our advice about shorter auditions! It’s just one of those things that isn’t necessary to add to your audio files when working with an online marketplace like Voices. If a client ever used your audition audio somewhere, we would go to bat for you!

No music

Adding music is a risk. The client already has an idea in their mind of what they want to hear behind the voice so adding music can distract the client from truly hearing your audition and could move onto the next voice actor. Focus on your vocal delivery instead. It will save you time from surfing stock music websites in your post production, too. 

Audio read = final project expectation

The client believes your audition audio quality and performance to be what the final project would also sound like. So invest the time to make sure your audio quality is as good as it can get and that your performance will be duplicatable after you’re hired!

Writing a Strong Proposal

Along with your audition, you should submit a cover letter—also commonly known as a proposal—which will inform the client why you believe you’re the best candidate for the job. It’s easy to dismiss this step because it doesn’t seem to have much to do with your voice. However, if you pause and recognize that the client can only see a few things when evaluating your submission—your audition, your quote, and your proposal—you’ll realize that it’s one of the three aspects up for consideration.

Learn how to write a clear and compelling proposal (and make use of proposal templates) to wow clients and communicate why you’re the right voice for the job.

Bonus Tip: Ask for the next gig and a referral.

After you’ve booked the job and delivered the final files, that’s the absolute best time to ask your client how you can be helpful to them in the future. Strike while the iron is hot!  If you sense that another job isn’t immediately available, at least ask for a referral to one of your client’s colleagues within the organization, by politely throwing out a suggestion like: “Is there anything else at your company that might benefit from my services? I’d welcome the introduction.”

Launch Your Career in the Voice Acting Industry

You’re now fully equipped with the essential knowledge to start landing voice over work online. Sign up for a Voices talent account, begin submitting auditions, and you’ll be well on your way to making it as a voice actor online. Happy recording!

Post was originally written by Stephanie Ciccarelli and published February, 2021.

Stephanie Ciccarelli

Stephanie Ciccarelli is a Co-Founder of Voices. Classically trained in voice as well as a respected mentor and industry speaker, Stephanie graduated with a Bachelor of Musical Arts from the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario. For over 25 years, Stephanie has used her voice to communicate what is most important to her through the spoken and written word. Possessing a great love for imparting knowledge and empowering others, Stephanie has been a contributor to The Huffington Post, Backstage magazine, Stage 32 and the Voices.com blog. Stephanie is found on the PROFIT Magazine W100 list three times (2013, 2015 and 2016), a ranking of Canada's top female entrepreneurs, and is the author of Voice Acting for Dummies®.

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