Doing Voice Over for Free
Join Voice Over Expert Pat Fraley in his podcast “Doing Voice Over for Free”. Pat’s 10 minute lesson highlights the personal and promotional value of creating voice over messages, sketches, songs, and parody spots for free.
Download Podcast Episode 79 »
Discussion from the podcast
As a professional voice talent, it is customary to charge a fee for voice-over work. Not only is it customary, it’s essential to put bread on the table for your family.
I would say that this is true for the vast majority of professionals and individuals who aspire to go into this line of work, unfortunately, there are a few apples out there who want to give away voice-over services for free or at ridiculously low prices.
How is an honest professional to feed their family, pay for electricity, and balance their finances with corruption stowing away at the very point of sale?
This is an issue close to our hearts at InteractiveVoices because our service is built upon a business-to-business platform, connecting buyers and sellers of voice-overs.
Before we move ahead, I want to identify the differences between those who actually hold credentials and make their living from recording voice-overs and amateurs who liken themselves to professional voice talents.
First of all, the professional, as is his or her right, sets business standards for themselves and charges fees for their time, work, and skills. This person is also talented and capable of meeting the needs of their clients on creative, technical and business terms.
On the flipside, someone claiming to be a voice talent is missing the mark and misleading clients. Their knowledge of performance, packaging a product, and invoicing clients may be limited. Not only that, they often don’t know the worth of a voice-over and charge far less than they should, disturbing the delicate balance of the trade both online and offline.
The jobs falling into the hands of eager amateurs are usually small and local in nature such as telephone recordings and radio commercials.
Whether a job is large or small, high paying or just enough to get you through the week, voice-over work is indeed the bread and butter of the professional voice talent.
When aspiring voice talent give away voice-overs for free, they are generally doing it to build up their portfolio and voice-over resume.
Your Instructor this week:
Patrick Fraley has created voices for over 4,000 characters, placing him among the top ten performers of all time to be cast in animation. He has produced dozens of award-winning audiobooks, such as, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Very Easy Death, and The Light in The Piazza. Pat produced and performed all 100 voices on the award winning audiobook, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which People Magazine hailed as, “The best yet of this evergreen.” Patrick teaches events, workshops, and seminars on various aspects of voice over across the country, and has created a variety of instructional books and CDs, all available at PatFraley.com. He is a member of The Voice and Speech Trainers of America, and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Professional Acting from Cornell University.
Comments
Excellent advice. Many thanks!
How delightful. I took notes on the 2nd listen. There’s a lot of wisdom and grace in there, thank you so much.
Great podcast! I’ve already got a couple of ideas for some contacts I made on some business networks.
Arlene Kahn
Pat has an incredible way of making me feel like he’s talking to me personally which only makes me want to listen to every bit of advice he’s got. Please Pat, keep ’em comin’.
thank you for the inspiration and guidance. chase excellence, great words! and thank you voices.com
Brilliant! I loved it.
Time to create some characters and take them for a walk.
Thanks Pat.