The TOP 7 REAL Reasons You’re Not Booking VO Jobs
It's no secret. Actors historically are notoriously bad business people. We just are.
And statistically, we're even bad at booking work, something that we're supposed to be able to do as part of the job.
Even elite voice actors book maybe 5 to 10 out of every 100 auditions they do. And chances are you're booking way less than that. And today I'm going to teach you why.
So, to start, there are a couple of overarching truths about voice actors.
We are historically, willfully passive.
According to the State of VO Survey, which is now conducted by the National Association of Voice Actors, NAVA, about 75% of all voice actors report marketing their services less than three times a day. Let's take voice acting completely out of it and think of literally any other business in the entire world.
What business in the world could reach out to two people a day and expect to be successful?
They wouldn't be in business very long.
And so let's bring it back to voice actors. How are they doing with that strategy? Well, about the same amount, 75%, report making less than $40,000 a year.
Can you live off of that? Can your family?
2. And the second overarching truth is that there are way more voice actors than there ever have been in history.
That was true before COVID. And then a saturated market became absolutely drenched during the pandemic. And this is the basic problem confronting the pay to place how to fairly distribute a relatively small number of auditions to hundreds and thousands of voice actors.
Now, you can't control the number of voice actors there are in the world. You can't control how over saturated the market may be at any given time. But what you absolutely can control is how you go about finding business in a sea of talent.
So today I'm going to break down the seven real reasons why you're not booking more voiceover work.
Number seven: you're afraid.
I had an email conversation very recently with a voice actor who has been in the business for eight years and still does not have his basic demos or website done.
Eight years.
Wars have been fought and won in less time.
Now, that's not a lack of time or a busy schedule. That's fear. That's perfectionism. That's procrastination.
As author Brené Brown tells us, “Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought. If I look perfect, do everything perfectly. I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment and blame. It's not striving for excellence. It's not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move.”
Now, if you're not putting yourself out there at some point, the reason is highly likely that you're afraid of being judged. Don't let perfect be the enemy of done. Don't take eight years before you get your demos done.
Do take many months, maybe even a year before you get those first demos done. It takes that long to develop your acting chops and get competitively competent.
So if your kid changes schools, by the time you get the basics done, you're procrastinating. You're being a perfectionist.
Number six: you’re too new
There was a post recently on Facebook within the last week or so about an actor bitching, moaning, and complaining that he hadn't gotten any traction in the business in a week.
A week.
Now, that's a true story. And yes, this particular guy was especially delusional. But I've heard the same shock and awe from people who've been looking for work for six months or a year and expect to be full time in that amount of time. And it just doesn't happen.
As I said in my last video, it takes 3 to 5 years in this business to develop a foundational, recurring, full time clientele.
Okay. So what does that look like? Let's do some quick math.
So if you have, let's say, 100 clients, each of whom hires you, a minimum of two times a year, and you average, let's say, $500 a job, you'll make $100,000. If you average $350 a job, you'll make $70,000.
You need to book, in my opinion, a minimum of 200 jobs a year to generate a full-time clientele in this business. But if you're booking Fiverr rates, that number goes through the roof. $70 grand, if that's what you want to make, a year at $50 a gig is 1,400 jobs.
Yeah, good luck with that.
It takes time to build solid relationships that lead to recurring work. It just does. If you're too new, you simply just haven't had enough time in the business yet.
What's the fix? Be patient. Hang in there and keep building relationships.
Which brings me to…
Number five: you haven't built the relationships
Sometimes this is because you're too new. Other times, it's because you've relied on the pay to place or your representation too much. And you haven't built those direct relationships that have allowed you to grow your business properly.
This business, and yes, your business, is built on relationships.
When you're working through a third party, whether that's an online casting site or a good agent, you don't have the ability to manage the client relationship directly.
A good agent will do that for you, but they will also get you access to better, more lucrative opportunities, freeing up your time and potentially significantly increasing your income. That is, if you book.
The pay-to-plays, on the other hand, you don't get to manage client relationships generally through them either. But in that case, you're working for often not as lucrative opportunities and crappier rates.
So now you're competing with hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of other talent and paying for the privilege, by the way, to jump into a pool of jobs that generally consists of a lot of bottom of the barrel work.
Some good stuff in there, to be sure. Absolutely. There are good clients on the pay to play some good jobs on the pay-to-plays, but a large portion of that work is going to go to AI if it hasn't already.
The best way to grow a stable business is to build your own relationships.
Number four: you're not auditioning enough
Let's say you book two out of every 100 auditions that you go out for and your average job booked is, let's say, $500. So for every 100 auditions you do, you're making $1,000.
So if you want to make 70 grand a year from auditioning, then you're going to have to do 7000 auditions a year, 140 auditions a week, or 28 auditions daily. That's assuming you take weekends off.
If auditioning is one of the chief ways that you book work, then you need to audition, often 25, 30, or more auditions every day.
And that's not opinion. That's just math.
Number three: you haven't put in the work
Now, as artists, we tend to default to in our own heads to, “Well, if I'm not booking, then it must be my talent. I must suck. Right?”
But of all these seven reasons that we're talking about today, this one is the only one that is performance related.
Sometimes if you're not booking and you're getting ample audition opportunities, ample opportunities to get work, it could be because you haven't put in the work on the performance side.
Today, with the oversaturation of human voices in the marketplace, with the encroachment of AI into voice over, and with this sort of epidemic overreliance on the pay to plays, if you don't get really good, you will struggle to find work.
And by the way, that's true even if you build your own relationships. It's way too easy to go grab an AI voice now off the internet if you can't deliver the goods to your client, because that's what they're going to be looking for.
And this is why I disagree with the standard “eight or ten weeks to first demo” business model.
It's not enough time to get competitively competent.
Look, a couple of years ago, if you sat on the pay-to-plays, back before the pandemic, you could make a decent living beating out Grandpa and his Blue Yeti.
But now you're competing with any number of synthetic voices who now work for a fraction of the cost of old Grandpa and his Blue Yeti.
And the only way not to get stuck in that pool is to compete with pros.
There is no substitute for putting in the work.
Number two: you’re relying too much on the pay-to-plays
Look, we love to bitch about the crappy rates and the outrageous fees and then this and that and the other thing. But the fact is, we keep forking over that money year after year to the platforms.
It's like that husband who bitches about his wife of 43 years but never leaves.
I'm not saying a good online casting site shouldn't be a tool in your business development toolbox. I'm simply saying that it shouldn't be the main tool in your business development strategy. If you want to know how to use pay-to-plays, online casting sites… the dog just sneezed… online casting sites smartly, then I suggest you check out this video.
And finally, the number one reason you're not booking enough voiceover work: You're not marketing enough
You need to reach out to dozens of people a day, every damn day. Why? The more people you reach out to, the more people who will reply. The more conversations you will generate, the more demo listeners you'll drive, the more rosters you'll get on, the more auditions you'll get, and the more gigs you'll be offered outright without even having to audition. The more gigs you’ll book overall, the more clients you'll accumulate, the more revenue you will generate.
But it all starts with reaching out to more people.
What if you took those pay-to-play fees and invested them in the tools and processes it really takes to grow your business? What if you took four years to build 100 relationships that would grow your business, that would generate $50-, $60-, $80-, $100-, $150-thousand a year for the rest of your career?
What if you didn't have to rely on the pay-to-plays?
What if you didn't have to rely on your agents?
Would that change your life?
For more information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, which teaches precisely that, click on the link.
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Thank you so much for being a part of the conversation here on YouTube, in VO Pro and in the voiceover community at large.
Thanks so much and we'll see you again next week.