This Rate "Guide" Is RIDICULOUS! DO NOT USE IT!

I recently posted on social media a great guide from the website of a well-known coach in this business.

And today I call bullshit. I'm going to break down exactly why I think this entire rate guide is a crap sandwich and be specific about the damage it does to voice actors and the industry as a whole.

You may want to put on coveralls. This is going to get messy.

I want to make it clear that this is not an attack on this coach personally, but it is an opposition to his teachings and practices in this rate guide which I believe are harmful to the careers of voice actors who put this right guide into practice and damaging to the industry as a whole.

Now, to start, there's a long sort of preamble and introduction of sorts at the top of this guide, and it is riddled with fallacies and misinformation. Let's go through it paragraph by paragraph.

“This rate guide is meant to help voice actors that are beginners, intermediate and long-time professionals in the voiceover industry, primarily working from home-based studios. [Well, that's everybody.] This voiceover resource guide does not discriminate between full time and part time voice talent, but does take into consideration the realistic nature of voice work, voice acting that is available on a large scale in the market today.”

Now, the problem here is the phrase, “the realistic nature of voice work” which he doesn't explain here, but which I take it to mean he’s talking about… there's a lot of work out there that goes for subpar, inappropriate, unprofessional rates.

He goes on…

“There is a discrepancy in the voiceover business between beginners, intermediate and seasoned professionals. We, as an industry, should not expect a new voice talent to command the same prices as someone with years of experience. To do so would seriously undermine the ability of a new voice over artist to acquire tangible results in a reasonable amount of time.”

Let me be pellucidly clear. Your ability to book voiceover work is not in any way based on your experience. It is based on your skill.

As Patrick Kirchner appropriately points out, the only place where experience really matters in terms of rate is in the audiobook industry. If you have more experience, you often can command a higher rate. Other than that, the rate is the rate. If you book the job, you get the rate.

The second problem is this sentence: “To do so would seriously undermine the ability of a new voiceover artist to acquire tangible results in a reasonable period of time.”

And here's the problem. What this person I think believes is that a reasonable period of time to acquire tangible results is in your first year in the business.

It is not.

In your first year, you should be researching, learning about the business, learning how to act, learning how to record and edit, learning what gear is appropriate starting out, learning how to set up a proper recording space, and most importantly, getting proper training with a reputable coach over the course of months, not days and not weeks.

It is most certainly not reasonable to expect to decide today you want to become a voice actor and to acquire tangible results, I'm assuming he's talking about financially, in your first year.

Does it happen? Sometimes. Usually with people that have a bit of a head start in the business, they come from an on camera background, they come from a broadcast background. They may have been an audio engineer. Yes, that can speed up the process.

A new voice actor simply is not a pro yet, and to expect quick, tangible results in any financial way is an unreasonable expectation.

The intro goes on…

“Also, the voiceover niche is worldwide, not just localized to one country, and most voice talents work for clients around the globe. So taking into consideration, the international community is vital to helping each voice over business grow and become more competitive in a truly connected marketplace like the Internet.”

Okay, that was almost a sentence. But what he says here is absolutely true.

And what he's implying, but does not come out and say is that there's a lot of work out there that comes from countries with much, much lower costs of living than we have here in the States and much, much lower budgets than we typically have here in the states.

If you're a professional business person, you bid and bill based on the costs in your home country, the cost of living, cost of doing business, because that's where you pay your taxes. That's where you pay your expenses. And that's the cost of living your subject to.

I have clients all over the world and they pay my rates or we don't work together. Why? Because living in the U.S., I am subject to a First World cost of living, and so I do not bid on projects with third world rates.

Back to his intro…

“So this voiceover guide is meant to help voice talent at their current level of business and acting ability price their commercial work. Realistically [pay attention to that word], globally, and with enough room for the dynamic change we see in our market today… [Room enough for what?] prices in this rate sheet are based on union and nonunion standard rates with an emphasis on word count.”

Let's be clear. These rates have about as much to do with standard SAG-AFTRA and GVAA rates as trigonometry has to do with potato salad.

Secondly, the only genres in this business where word count has anything to do with rates and estimating and quoting are in longform genres like audiobooks, corporate training and e-learning.

Let me be clear. For broadcast work pricing by word count is never, repeat, never appropriate.

That includes broadcast work, promo and imaging, and most non-broadcast work is priced by the length of the script, which is only somewhat correlative to word count.

“Update: We have begun to add online casting websites, freelance websites, P2P Web sites, etc. by name with their own pricing structure. It has long been an issue navigating the different platforms because they all have their own unique requirements and communities.”

Translation: This guide cartels to the whims of each individual platform's clientele. Please learn an entirely different rate structure for each of these platforms completely made up by me.

And finally, to wrap up this novel…

“This guide does not show SAG-AFTRA rates or the top 10 to 20% of earners.”

So what he's really saying is, if you use this rate guide, you will not be in the top 10 to 20% of earners.

So what are the top 20% of voice actors really make? $100-grand a year? $120-, $150-, $250,000?

According to the State of VO Survey, now published by NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, in 2021, the top 70% of all voice actors in the U.S. report making $75,000 or more.

70% make less than $40,000 a year, and that's down 5% from two years prior.

And 50% of us all made less than $20,000.

The contention of this rate guide is, well, most people don't make much money, so you shouldn't charge pro rates in order to be competitive.

That's ass-backward.

People aren't making any money because they're not charging pro rates.

“Since freelance voice actors do not offer SAG voiceover rates. The voice rates below are based on realistic [There it is again. That word realistic - says who?] prices for the working Voice actor in today's market working from a home recording studio. However, it is important to note that many freelance voice actors do charge rates that are the same and possibly more than SAG voiceover rates, but for the purpose of this guide, we are sticking solely to the majority of freelance voice artists.”

Show me the data. Who says this speaks for the majority of voice actors?

So, his claim is essentially that this rate guide is a reflection of the market. My point to you is that, yes, there will always be a dollar store. It does not mean that you have to sell your wares there.

With all that said and done, with all the preamble and introduction done, let's cut this turd open and see what's inside.

First, we see he's got this broken up by experience. Again, the only place in this industry where experience really affects rates is in audio books.

You're either properly trained to baseline competitive competency in this business and therefore you can command pro rates or you're not properly trained. Therefore, you have to take crappy rates from exploitative clients.

Secondly, experience is all his rates are based on. The broadcast rates for instance have zero structure around where those recordings are going to be used, where those ads are going to run.

Are they local, regional, national? Are they worldwide?

For broadcast, the usage is what determines the rate, because the more widely an ad runs, the more potential impact it has to the bottom line of the advertiser, the more revenue it will put in their pocket.

And that's how voice actors get paid.

Secondly, and this is really the crux of the matter, the rates themselves are absolutely ridiculous.

He's suggesting that a seasoned voice actor with five plus years of experience should do a broadcast spot, for instance, theoretically that can include a national spot that runs for a year, for a total of $290.

Let's forget even SAG-AFTRA union rates for a minute, the standard nonunion GVAA rate for a national spot for one year is $3,200 - $3,500.

This guy wants you to work for between seven and eight cents on the dollar.

At his rates, to make even $70,000 a year, you would have to book 270 broadcast commercials

At those rates, you may as well hang a red neon sign on your front porch that says, “I am a complete hack. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not properly trained and I have zero self-esteem. I don't deserve a seat there. And as evidenced by my rates, I am literally begging for scraps.”

And thirdly, a buyout means you are signing away your rights to that recording, to that advertiser in perpetuity. That means forever, and yes, that means even after you're dead,

It also locks you out of ever working for any competitor of that advertiser, even if they don't require you to be exclusive, competitor won't hire you because you've already signed away your broadcast rights to a competitor of theirs.

And no, it doesn't matter if you, later on in your career, charge pro rates. If you later in your career join the union. If you later in your career win an Oscar and thank your momma on stage, you still have a perpetual conflict in that product category.

I've said it before in many other videos, and I will say it again in this one.

Never, ever, ever do a buyout for broadcast work, period.

And in the end, about this entire rate guide, here's what really galls me. This person is not only putting out awful advice, he is profiting from doing it. He is literally preying on new talent who don't have the experience or the education to be wise to this garbage.

And what's more is this isn't happening in a vacuum. This sort of get-rich-quick, low-barrier-to-entry philosophy that you can just blast into the voiceover world and start making money right away, as long as you charge low enough, has negative downward pressure on industry rates for everyone.

We get what we tolerate, and the more people that tolerate and my God even ask for exploitative and inappropriate rates, the quicker the race to the bottom and the more commoditized the industry becomes.

My God, it's the only industry I know of where you have to convince people that they deserve more money.

The more you accept bad rates earlier in your career, the harder it is to raise those rates over time, the harder it is to make more money over the course of your career as a voice actor, and the harder it is for the rest of us to hold industry rates.

You either choose to be a pro by treating your craft and your business like a craft and a business, or you choose the quick, easy way to an ultimately lower-earning career.

For more information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, which is a proven process to grow your own relationships, find your own business, and own your relationships - the most stable way to grow your business - click that link, and to get my Move Touch Inspire newsletter for voice actors every Thursday, click that link as well.

Yeah, we're probably going to have some contention in the comments, in YouTube, and maybe even in the larger voiceover community this week.

I beg you, keep everything civil. I am not attacking this man. I am attacking his behaviors and processes. Do not make it personal for him or for me. That's not what this is about.

Thanks so much and we'll see you again next week.