VOICEOVER CAREERS

When people think of professional voice overs, they naturally think of television or radio commercials for TV or radio advertising.

It's their residual value that has always kept commercials high on the list. On a network, particularly, you get paid every time it airs. Even if it doesn't, if you've got a commercial and it runs in regional markets every 13 weeks, if they want to run it again, they pay you again. It's a great job. So that little session fee might be multiplied by 5 or 10 or even 15 times.

Some people make very good money from retail accounts. They might produce half a dozen new commercials per week. The residual factor of such an account can make it especially lucrative. You make money despite the fact that you don't physically do anything new. I've found that the corporate/industrial market also has a residual value. People are always surprised at that. Their reaction is, "What do you mean?"

The producers involved in corporate/industrial work tend to find a few performers who can understand their business and talk their language. In some cases it's pretty convoluted, particularly medical stuff; once they have found a female and a male and maybe a young male, they use those people over and over again.

You become, frequently, the voice of a corporation. As a result, you have a residual value. You become the voice on all their training films and that introduces the CEO of the company at their annual meeting.

A small group of people regularly is employed by the corporate/industrial market. If you can crack that code, if you can become one of the "go-to" people, you'll discover that it, too, has residual value. They also pay on time, their budgets are pretty big, and it is frequently ongoing work.

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