How to Get What You’re Worth: Creating A Reliable Income Doing Voice Over

Welcome to Voice Over Experts, brought to you by Voices.com the number one voice over marketplace. Voice Over Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom, and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voice over. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voice over talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform and succeed from the privacy of your own home, and at your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else. Now for our special guest.
David Tyler: Hi. I’m David Tyler. I’m a voice talent and teacher based in Montreal, Canada. I’ve been doing voice over for about 20 years and have voiced somewhere around 5,000 TV and radio ads that have aired on stations mostly in North America, but worldwide also.
I do radio imaging and TV promo work in the US and Canada. If you live in Canada you may recognize me as the national voice of CTV news. I, I work with each CTV affiliate across the country, I’m the voice of the CTV National News, Canada AM, CTV News Channel and the voice of the current affairs program W5.
I spent the better part of 2014 giving live lectures on how to achieve voice over success. The lecture series was called The Ultimate Voice Over Guide, and as we start the new year, I’m preparing an online version of the course, which you can take from the comfort and privacy of your home. You can get all the details at ultimatevoiceoverguide.com.
Now in the process of giving the course and socializing with other voice talent in various groups on Facebook and LinkedIn I’ve met hundreds of amazingly talented voice artists who struggle to make a living doing voice over, and are looking for help creating a reliable income through voice work. And the biggest reason the struggle is because of what they charge.
Price is a function of perceived value: yours and the client’s. There are a lot of things that go into perceived value. What you can charge for your services is a function of the value the buyer attaches to the purchase and that you attach to your own worth.
What you can charge and what you actually charge is almost never the same thing. Now in my experience, far too many voice talent undercharge because they feel that price is simply a function of competition, or that they simply don’t value what they do enough to get what they’re worth.
Compounding the problem are inexperienced engagers who are awarding projects to the lowest bidder, as opposed to the voice talent who’s able to communicate the idea of their script the best. There’s a reason why big ad agencies pay more for what you do, and that’s because they value what you do.
I think we can all agree that selling your voice services on Fiverr is no way to create a reliable income. Even if some say they do it as an introductory offer, when a client who’s hired you through Fiverr has the budget to hire somebody at a proper price, they will most likely not turn to you. Why? Because of perceived value. They believe that you are only worth the fiver dollars you charged them before.
Somebody recently told that before you send a quote for a job, pause, come back and add 15 percent to what you were going to charge. More often than not, if they like your voice, they will accept the quote. By that one gesture, you have increased your perceived value in that customer’s mind.
Another way you can increase your perceived value is by doing something called a Result Review. A report card, of sorts, on how you did after you’ve delivered your audio to the client. You can do this review by sending an e-mail and casually asking, or you can do something more formal through a Survey Monkey short question survey. You could ask questions like, how would you rate the quality of my service, 1 through 10, 10 being the best. How would you rate the sound quality? Again, 1 through 10. Would you recommend my services to a colleague? If no, how can I improve? And finally be sure to leave them a space to write a general comment on the transaction. You’ll likely get a useable quote that you can put on your website.
It’s important to keep the list of questions short and easy to respond to. A click here, a click there, you don’t want to take up more than two minutes of their time. You can sign up for free at surveymonkey.com. Go have a look.
Now once you have the results of your review, one of two things will happen. One, you’ll find that you didn’t deliver on the client’s perceived value, and that’s okay, because that’s how you can improve. Or two, you’ll define a tangible amount of value that the customer received, because that will act as proof of value delivered, and should give you the confidence to raise your prices.
At first it may seem scary to turn down low paying jobs, but stick to your guns. And to use another clichés, short term pain leads to long term gain. In order to create a reliable income, you’ve got to step back and measure your perceived value. And then, start charging what you’re worth.
Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this voices.com podcast, visit the Voice Over Experts show notes at podcasts.voices.com/voiceoverexperts. Remember to stay subscribed. If you’re a first-time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes podcast directory, or by visiting podcasts.voices.com. To start your voice over career online, go to Voices.com and register for voice talent membership today.