The VO Pro Blog is your go-to resource for voice actors who are done winging it.
We serve up real-world strategies for growing a profitable voiceover business—without relying on casting sites or waiting for someone to “discover” you.
Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, this blog delivers actionable insights on voice over marketing, how to get voice over clients, building direct relationships with buyers, pricing your work, professional development, personal growth, and navigating the modern voiceover industry like a pro.
From email outreach scripts to mindset reframes, we go beyond fluff and give you practical tools that actually move the needle.
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ChatGPT. A.I.. Text to speech. Speech to speech. Are the digital boogeymen finally here to decimate voice acting and beat us up and take our lunch money?
Today we're going to talk about ChatGPT specifically and A.I. in general to kind of make sense out of all the fear and hype in the voice acting community.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, a lot of us are asking ourselves, Well, hell, how do we even stay relevant in a world that is changing at lightspeed?
Read MoreThe GVAA Rate Guide creator, David Toback, tells the crazy story of how the guide that our industry depends on was an accident, how he founded it with Cristina Milizia, what it is, WHY it's so crucial for talent to use it when quoting professional voice over rates, and what some of the exciting future plans for the guide are.
Read MoreOne of the biggest pains in the butt for freelancers and voice actors is just getting paid on time. I know tons of freelancers and voice actors who have right now outstanding invoices, past due invoices, and I even know several who have been stiffed completely by clients.
It's rare, but it happens.
Today we're going to talk about how to manage your billing practices so that you minimize the risk to your own business while still maintaining a positive relationship with your clients. But most importantly, you get paid on time.
Read MoreToday, we talk with Robert Sciglimpaglia, noted VO attorney and voice actor, who warns us how to avoid bad voice over contracts regarding AI, text to speech, synthetic voices, and more.
We recently told the story of one voice actor who’s own voice she discovered on an AI voices website without her knowledge.
Rob explains how Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google have been building voice databases for years, how companies like Revoicer are operating legally and ethically, and most importantly, how to protect yourself from discovering your own voice on an AI site.
Read MoreThere are a lot of coaches,, one in particular, and even Voices dot com who will tell you how to make your own DIY voice over demo.
And I'm here to tell you in your best interest, especially as a beginner, do not do your own demo.
Today, I'm going to tell you in no uncertain terms why it's an absolutely awful idea to make your own DIY voice over demo reel and why it can significantly damage your career before it ever gets started.
Read MoreOne of the scariest aspects of being a voice actor in modern times is AI, artificial intelligence, synthetic voice, and text to speech. Most of the discussion has been around the question of, “Well, what happens when AI steals our work?”
The scarier question to me is what happens when A.I. has your voice?
Joining us from Dublin today is the Irish voice actor and author Remie Michelle Clarke with her story of how she believes her voice was stolen directly by artificial intelligence and the difficulties she's had in pursuing the people that have taken her voice.
Read MoreToday, we’re going to go over Voices' new rate guide and compare it to the GVAA so that you’ll know exactly the differences between the 2 guides, where exactly Voices' rates are substandard and stick around because we’ll also show you where they’re actually above standard.
For years, the voice acting community has been begging Voices dot com to take solid steps to protect voice actors from unfair rates and practices on their site.
And I am happy to report that they seem to be taking some steps to do that.
First, Voices has revamped their rate guide for 2023.
Read MoreHow do I know if I'm making bad marketing mistakes that are turning clients off? What are the most common marketing mistakes in voiceover and how do I avoid them? What critical social media marketing mistakes am I making with my voiceover business?
Today we're talking about seven common marketing mistakes to avoid making in voiceover, why they are common and not so obvious, and why you want to avoid them.
Read MoreWhat you are about to hear is an actual call about an exploitative practice that is too common in our business. It is a prime example of producers who purposefully seek out younger and less experienced talent and knowingly exploit them for the benefit of their own organizations.
To be clear, this is representative of a tiny-but-still-too-large fraction of producers in the business and this call centers on but one specific practice: the all-media buyout.
It is shocking in its brazen self-awareness.
Read MoreToday's post is essentially a letter to my former self. It's all the stuff I wish I knew when I was starting out in voiceover and stuff that you should know, maybe even before you get into voiceover.
My goal and hope are that you can learn from some of the mistakes that I made and learn some of the lessons that I learned. As I've gotten older, I've learned that when you can learn from somebody with a little bit more experience than you, it can save you a lot of heartache and hurt. I'd like to think as a voice actor, I've done a better job of listening, but I still have made my own fair share of mistakes and learned lessons that I hope to pass on to you here.
So here are seven truths you need to know before you get into VO or at the very least, as you're getting into VO.
Read MoreHere's a question: How do you drive an exceptional customer experience, one that generates loyalty among your customers and drives repeat and recurring business? It all starts with understanding customer needs.
And today, we're going to talk about understanding and identifying customer needs, using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and just how that applies to the service business of Voice Over.
Read MoreWhat if we could change how the P2Ps work? What if we could have a real dialog with the decision-makers, the policymakers, at the online casting sites? What if we could make actual recommendations directly to the people at the top of the pay-to-plays?
Now, it's one thing to have a monologue to someone in such a position as we did with David Ciccarelli of Voices in a couple of videos prior to this.
But it's another thing entirely to be able to ask questions from and make recommendations directly to the CEO of a major P2P platform.
Now, as it happens, one such opportunity is coming up.
Read MoreSo, I thought the first post of the New Year would be a great time to lay out the 2023 Voice Over Conference Calendar for you, not just the big ones like VO Atlanta, but some of the lesser known, more intimate, more boutique conferences like MAVO.
So, at this point in the first week of January, when we're filming this video, some of the conferences haven't announced dates or details yet, but we know generally, historically, when they fall.
So, I want to give you a brief overview of each and, you know, details and all that good stuff, organizers, and event people when I can, in case you've never heard of these conferences or you've never been to them.
Read MoreIn my last video called I Offended Voices.com. and Here's How, the founder and CEO, David Ciccarelli asked me to lay out my points as to why I asserted that Voices puts profit before talent.
Now I laid out five facts that detailed their history of disregard for transparency when it comes to fees, taking egregious cuts of the budgets and a few others.
The reaction was just nuts, Unprecedented. Here's just some of what you had to say…
Read MoreIn my last video, My (No Gear) Christmas Wishlist for Voiceover, one of my wishes was this:
"I wish all of the pay-to-plays were ethical, but the chief offender here, of course, is Voices.com, but they're certainly not the only ones that put profit before talent and clients. These companies control a huge amount of work globally in the voiceover business, and it's a travesty to me that rather than seeing themselves as leaders and stewards of our industry, they couldn't give a reindeer turd about anything else other than putting profit ahead of people - clients and talent."
And the very next day, I got an email from David Ciccarelli. David, if you don't know, is the founder and CEO of Voices.com, and he was NOT happy…
Read MoreChristmas is right around the corner. And of course, this is the time of year when voice actors get the steamy undies for all kinds of gear. Mics, interfaces, preamps, amplifiers, headphones, you name it. We want all the gear.
But I think in this season of gratitude and giving, I want kind of a different kind of Christmas wish list this year for voice over.
Sure. I love great gear as much as the next voice actor, but what I want for voice over this year is not for me. It's for everybody. Everybody that calls themselves a voice actor.
So, Santa, if you're listening or watching, here's my list. I've checked it twice…
Read MoreI was completely freaking out.
Seven months into my full-time voiceover career, I lost my biggest and best client, one of my gateway clients, one of the ones that helped me make the leap to full-time voiceover. I had lost a huge client and I had never seen it coming.
I was a single dad, a one-income house. I had risked everything for voiceover. Not only that, but I had fled a job that not only I hated, but I knew I would be fired from and could not go back to.
What in the hell was I going to do? Well, I'll tell you what I did, and I think it'll help you if the same situation or one similar ever happens to you.
This is your VO Crisis Management Plan.
Read MoreI was in a dark place.
I had been through a series of three jobs in three years. I had largely failed at all of them. I was a single dad. I was paying my bills, but just barely, living paycheck to paycheck. Near the end, I was working for people I didn't respect. I didn't enjoy the job.
I wasn't enjoying any success at the job, and I was pretty sure I was going to be fired within a year. I was approaching 50 and I was sick of at-work politics. Sick of working for other people. Sick at working at jobs I had absolutely no passion for. I was sick of all of it, but I had no real options, no hope.
Plan A was to go back and get another sh*tty job, and there really was no plan B.
Now, just to be clear, I was not suicidal. I was moderately depressed. I loved my son, but I hated my life. I dreaded going to work every day.
But there was one bright spot, and that was voiceover
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