How to Become a Voice Actor - 5 Step Plan

https://voiceacting101.com/how-to-become-a-voice-actor/

You’ve been told you have a great voice, but have no idea how to become a voice actor.

In this episode, you’ll learn the 5 steps that lead to you getting paid for your voice.

These 5 steps aren’t complicated to do, but super important if you want to learn how to become a voice actor.

Step 1 is all about doing your research (like you are right now by watching this video). Why is research step 1? I’ve found that many people have false ideas in mind regarding working in voice-over. Learn about the future steps even if you aren’t there yet, so you’ll be well prepared on what to do next.

Next, you need a recording space setup. Step 2 is about getting amazing sounding audio.

In Step 3, you’ll need some form of voice-over training. This will help you drop that newbie sound.

Once you’ve crushed you’re newbie voice, it’s time for Step 4, your voice-over demo.

Finally, since once you’ve completed all 4 previous steps, it’s time to take your voice to market and start getting paid.

Step 5 means finding the people and companies that regularly need voice-over work.

Now you’ll know exactly how to become a voice actor.

Links mentioned in this episode:

FREE CLASS - Getting Started in VO

Voice-Over Resource Guide

Finding Voice-Over Work & Jobs Guide

Submit a Question for the Podcast!

My voice-over website:
Jason McCoy Voice-Over

Transcript

Voice acting as a career is a pretty sweet gig, you get paid well using your voice working creatively with clients all over the world. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home. But the question is, how do you get into voice acting?

So I'm going to go ahead and lay out the five step plan, so you know exactly how to become a voice actor. It's all coming up in this episode of the podcast.

Welcome back to Episode 32 of the voice acting 101 Podcast. I'm Jason. And this is where I try to answer voiceover questions in the least amount of time possible. And today's question is one that comes up often, but it was recently sent in by Malcolm. So let's go ahead and listen to Malcolm.

Hi, Jason. My name is Malcolm, my question is this. I have frequently been pulled aside and told, Hey, you have such a distinct voice, you have such a unique sounding voice, a soothing voice? Have you ever considered voice acting? Have you ever considered voiceover work? And it's happened so many times that I've lost count? And I've just been curious, how would I get started? So my question is this. What would you say to someone who has frequently over years been told, Hey, your voice is unique? And I'm not quite sure how to start? If you can answer my question, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Alright. Thanks for sending in your question, Malcolm. So anytime someone is asking about how to become a voice actor, or how to get started in voiceover, I think it's like anything that you want to do. You need a good plan. And there's a quote, maybe you've heard it, it's credited to Benjamin Franklin. But it says if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. And that kind of sums up why I recommend that you learn and that you follow the five step plan that we're going to be talking about today.

And I'm just going to be doing an overview of the steps today, we could take a deeper dive into each one, because each one's really like a milestone of its own. And we may do that in future episodes. But I don't want to overwhelm you with too many of the details, when it's really just best to have an idea of the plan when you're just getting started. Thankfully, each step, it's pretty simple. It's not overly complicated. And this is good for all experience levels. So I've worked with people who have zero experience in voiceover to people with 40 years of voiceover experience. And they've all gone through these steps, even if you're experienced, you kind of have to continue to repeat these steps. So it really doesn't matter where you are in the process. You're in one of these steps.

Alright, so let's go ahead and get started with them. The very first step that you want to take when you want to learn how to become a voice actor, is research. So the goal of this step is for you to learn all you can about VoiceOver so that you can decide if VoiceOver is right for you, you may have some ideas of what it's like to work in voiceover.

And some of those ideas may be realistic, some may be wrong, and others may just have been true at one time. But now they're outdated. And you probably have questions about working in voiceover. So this is the step where you're going to try to get answers to all your questions. And just to figure out what you can expect, if you do pursue voiceover, there's a lot of pros when it comes to working in voiceover, like I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, you know, but as with anything that you're going to do, there are also some parts of it that you may not love, or that just may not come naturally to you. So you want to learn about the cons as well as the pros. And this way, you aren't going to be surprised by something or end up wasting your time. 

So how do you do it?

How do you do your research while you're doing it now just by learning about these five steps, but you also just want to see what's required and see if you're comfortable with it. So you know whether or not to go after voiceover. And I would also suggest that you learn from a variety of sources, everyone's going to have their own point of view. So trying to gain as much insight as possible. 

Now I put together a free class that you might want to check out. It's called Getting Started in voiceover, it's going to help you with learning everything that you can in this first step, and help you with that research. So if you want to sign up for that it's at voice acting one Oh one.com/start. It's a free class. 

There's three lessons of God four keys to voiceover success. Six voiceover myths. And then the third lesson is dedicated to answering some of the most commonly asked questions about voiceover. 

So I think it's a good way to get up to speed quickly without over complicating things or feeling overwhelmed. So if you are interested in that free class, again, it's at voice acting one Oh, one.com/start. You can check it out. But that's what step one is about. Just gaining a realistic understanding about working as a voice actor. And then knowing you know, if I want to do this, here's the plan, here's what I'm going to need to do. And maybe you decide it's too much work, or there's something that comes up that you know, isn't a good fit with your personality. 

I think it's better to know that in the beginning, rather than get too far in and then just give up. So then once you've done all your research, and you can make your decision, then if you've decided that yes, voiceover is what you want to do the next step step two is to To set up a home recording space now when I say a home recording space that doesn't need to be expensive, but you will need some basic recording equipment so that you can record your voice in high quality. 

And remember, voiceover is a business. So there is a financial investment and getting started unless for some reason, maybe you have the gear on hand, like if you have a background in audio. And even if you don't, the good news is that the cost to start up and then the monthly overhead costs are extremely low when you compare it to the cost of other businesses. Now, probably the number one thing that comes to mind when people think voiceover, they think about buying a microphone. But I want to point out that yes, the gear that you choose, it's going to play a role in being able to record high quality voiceover. But your gear is not what's most important when you're setting up a home recording space. 

The most important thing is your recording environment or your room or wherever you happen to be set up to record the voiceover. And that really comes down to isolation and absorption. So before we even talk about microphones and gear, let's talk about isolation and absorption. So you want to isolate your recording area, so that the only sound your mic is picking up is your voice. You don't want any outside noise leaking into your recording. 

You want your recording space to be as silent as possible. You don't want like a loud TV on the other side of the wall, you don't want a dog barking, you don't want to hear your heating and air conditioning fan blowing. Some computers have fans, the hard drives have fans that make noise, you don't want a hum from like a fluorescent light, you want to keep all that noise out of this space as much as you can. You can go the route of like complete isolation or soundproofing. But that's going to be expensive. And this is where something like a whisper room or studio brick sound isolation booth would come in. But you may not need that if your room is quiet enough to start with. 

So that's something that you have to determine. Also, if the noise is like directional, if it's like traffic outside of from one wall, and you're trying to prevent that from coming in, maybe you'll want to go with like a shotgun mic, that's going to work better to eliminate the noise from the backside. So find the most silent room in your home as possible and try to use that for your voiceover recording area, that's going to help you have a low noise floor, which is really just a measurement of how quiet your recordings can be. So in other words, if you plug your mic in, and you set the game to the correct level, and then you record just silence, how quiet is that silence, you want your silence or your noise floor to be at least minus 50 decibels. 

If it isn't quiet enough, you're going to hear that noise in your recordings. And that is not what you want. Now, if you're hearing noise, it could be coming from something plugged in within your house, it could be something outside your house, it could even come from the gear itself, that may be increasing your noise floor. But if you go with the gear that I'm about to suggest in a moment, then you won't have that problem. 

There's also noise reduction plugins that you may see they work well when you use them sparingly. But some people are going to use these to compensate for high noise floors. And that's going to come at a cost to the quality of your recording. So you definitely don't want to rely on the noise reduction plugins, you want to make sure that you find a quiet and isolated area in your home as your recording space. 

And then once you've got your room picked out, if you just go to that room and you set up a microphone and you try to record you're probably going to notice that your voice bounces off the hard surfaces like the walls and the ceiling and the floor, the microphone is going to pick up that reflection. And it's just going to sound like an echo or a little bit of reverb that you're going to be picking up. So you can reduce this reverb by just using thick blankets or sound blankets, which are really just moving blankets. 

You can find them in hardware stores a lot of times, or thick acoustic foam tiles you can buy those online, even better would be some sound panels. All these are going to help absorb the sound waves so that when you speak, it doesn't bounce off the walls. Instead, it's going to go into that thick material. And it's going to diffuse it so that it can't bounce around the room and come back into your microphone. You won't need full coverage, but you want to try to cover as much of the walls and the floor and the ceiling as possible. 

And if the room is just too big to treat, it would be too expensive. You can build a smaller PVC booth and you can just hang the blankets right on that booth. And this way, you're going to have a nice quiet well treated space to record voiceover. So then once you have the room picked out and you've got the acoustics all set, now it's time to get the gear. So what do you need? You're going to need a microphone and audio interface, some headphones and a computer. 

Those are the basics of recording voiceover at home. I'm not going to go into all the available options out there but the MX L V 67 G microphone. It's a great budget mic and also the focus right to it too. It's a clean sounding audio interface that's going to last you for years. And for headphones. I like the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones. 

But there's others out there from other brands like Sony you can check out i'll leave a link in the description to a voiceover resources guide with all kinds of equipment recommendations if you want to check that out for Computer hopefully you already have a computer, it doesn't matter if it's a Mac or Windows, whichever one you prefer. 

And then you're going to need recording software, you've got all kinds of options when it comes to recording software like Audacity, Reaper twisted wave, or the one that I've used for decades now that's Adobe Audition. That's definitely my favorite audacity, that's a free one. So if you're trying to keep your expenses as low as possible, just go ahead and start with Audacity. 

But in general, this gear is going to give you a good balance between great quality and still keep it affordable for you. And keep in mind, you don't have to go with this setup this exact setup, you don't have to do that. It's not like this is the magic recipe for voiceover. There's all kinds of setups that you could use. But I know from my experience that you can get great high quality recordings with this gear. 

Now, before we move on to step three, I just want to remind you, all the other steps in learning how to become a voice actor are going to hinge on getting this step right, you won't be able to provide high quality voiceover, if you have noise or if your voice has reverb in the recordings, it's not going to work. So that's why this step is so important to get right in the goal of this step is to be able to record your voice in silence. 

So once you have your studio space set up, it is then time for step three. So now that your studio is capable of recording your voice, you probably are going to need some training and training can include anything you need help with in voiceover, but the two typical areas for training our voiceover tech, like learning the recording software, or setting your levels. And then voiceover training, which can be anything from mic technique to performance improvement. 

Now, your exact needs at this step are gonna vary depending on your background than just your natural skill level. Learning the tech, the tech side of things, that's pretty quick and easy, especially if you've been around computers for any time at all. 

Odds are though, you won't be delivering your best performance, the first few times that you step in front of the microphone, and that's just going to take time to get used to hearing your own voice and then reading and speaking naturally. So that's why improving your performance makes this one of the more challenging steps and learning how to become a voice actor, because it's just going to take time and practice a lot of practice. And no matter how many years you've been in voiceover, you're always going to be working to improve your performance, there is no best, you're just continually improving. 

So if you're brand new to voiceover, you're probably going to sound like you're reading, maybe you have like an announcer voice where you feel like you need to protect your voice, or you aren't enunciating or you're just reading or you're too quiet or you're too fast, or you're too slow. Or maybe you only have one read style, and you just need variety. So with a lot of practice, you're going to be able to overcome these challenges, then this is going to be different for everyone, some people are going to need a lot of coaching to overcome some bad habits. 

And some people will just need a little bit of coaching. I've known some people who have made a big without any coaching at all. And I think that comes down to being really good at noticing details and being able to do self assessments. But for the majority of people, I think those skills are hard to come by. So if you don't think that you possess those skills, or if you question it at all, I think that you're going to see faster and greater improvement if you hire a coach so that you can get that immediate feedback on your performance. And if you hire a coach, a great voiceover coach is going to pick apart your reads in a constructive manner, and then give you different techniques and ways to approach the scripts. 

And a big part of it is just finding the balance between reading the words that you didn't write, and probably you wouldn't say that way, and reading it in a way so that the words are your own, and so that they don't sound like they're being read. And you probably never think about it. But there are these nuances when you're in natural conversation. But then when you're in front of the microphone, for some reason, you know, it's just easy to forget how to do it, or you just start to overthink it. And there's a lot of creative freedom in voiceover. But in the end, clients just want what they want. 

And unfortunately, clients and people in general just aren't always the best at putting into words, the style of voice that they're looking for. So you have to kind of learn to interpret how they describe the voiceover. And then looking at the script, you have to figure out the emotions that you need to bring to it. And then kind of mix in what you think would sound best with your voice and what you can do and your abilities. 

And then over time, you're going to learn subtle changes to make and the habits that you most likely need to break the types of reads where you're like the strongest, and then some of the reads where you feel like you're just weaker, and you're not doing your best in those reads. So a coach is going to be there to help teach you how, but then again, you know, your time with a coach is very limited. 

So you're also going to need to continue to practice every day and just learn how to do it yourself over time. If you are at the point where you're looking for a coach, you want to make sure that you choose one that specializes in the voice over niche that you're interested in. And also one that's going to work well with your personality type and your learning style how you learn. And if you aren't ready to commit to a coach yet, that's okay. You know, maybe You're not to that point yet. 

Or maybe you just want to practice more on your own first. But maybe you want to know what you're doing right and maybe kind of have an idea of what you're doing wrong. There's something called a voiceover evaluation. And that's a great place to start just to get some immediate feedback on what you're doing. 

Again, if you want more information on the voiceover evaluation, or some coaching options, I'll leave a link in the description. 

And you'll gradually get better and better at voiceover, the more you do and the more training you have. And like I mentioned, training is a never ending process, because you're always going to have room to improve, no matter how far you've come. Alright, so once your performance is at a high level, the next step in our plan is to create a voiceover demo. So your demo is your primary marketing tool, clients are going to listen to your demo, and then decide if your voice is the voice for their project based on what they hear. So your demos important, it needs to showcase what you're able to do. 

And hopefully, it's going to impress potential clients enough for them to contact you, and hire you so that you can work on their project based on what they heard. So when you're ready, you can hire a voiceover demo producer to put the demo together for you, they're usually going to do a consultation call with you to make sure that you've kicked your bad habits, like we talked about in the last step, and also determine whether or not they feel like you're ready for a demo. Or maybe you need to go back and get some more training before doing the demo. 

If they feel that you're ready, they're going to go ahead and write scripts for you, then they're going to do a session with you or they direct you through each script. And then they're going to take your best takes and produce it with music and sound effects. And then give you a fully produced demo, sometimes you're just going to do one demo, maybe you want to get like a package deal. If you do a couple demos at a time. 

Whatever you do, if you hire an experienced producer, then you're going to end up with a really great sounding demo. But the downside is the cost of course, because a 62nd demo can cost anywhere between two and $4,000. So that's pretty expensive. For 60 seconds of audio, it's worth it because you get the the demo in the end. But will you get more work because of your demo, it's hard to say it really depends on you and your demo and what you do with that demo. 

But I will say that there's a good chance you won't get work if your demo is poorly produced, or if it just doesn't put you in the best light. And that can be because you have bad scripts or maybe your performance is bad. Maybe it's bad music or bad mixing all that can lead to a demo that just doesn't get noticed and doesn't get you hired, you know. 

But when I first started putting down $2,000 or $4,000 per demo, it just wasn't an option. For me. I had decent audio production experience before. So when I first started, I just had to do the demo myself. Again, your decision for this step is going to come down to just your budget, your background, your experience, the voiceover niche that you're making the demo for, and your skill level and what you think you can do. For most people, I would say hiring a demo producer is probably the best way to go. But learning how to do it yourself is definitely possible. 

And even if you do hire a producer for let's say every demo that you ever have, I still think that you should at least know how to produce a demo. And that's because as a voice actor, you're going to have the recording and editing software like Adobe Audition. So I think knowing how to produce and mix audio, it's going to be a huge skill that you should have, you may not need it every day. 

But I still think it's good that you know how to do it. Also, keep in mind that where you are today, performance wise and skill level wise, that's not where you're going to be like a month from now or six months from now or five years from now. And because of that your demo needs to be updated as you continue to improve. 

So if you can master producing demos, then you're going to be able to save yourself quite a bit of money over the long term. And you can still keep your demos up to date with your best performances, because you know how to do it. Again, if you want a list of demo producers, there are some listed on the voiceover Resources Guide, which I will leave a link to in the description below. 

Alright, that brings us to the final step of this how to become a voice actor plan it step five, which is marketing. Alright, so at this point, you're able to now record high quality voiceover in your home recording studio, you have improved your performance, you have a great sounding demo, you don't want this to just be a hobby or to just work for free, you want to be paid. So you need to start getting work. And the most common ways to find voiceover jobs today would be through online casting sites, direct marketing, or agents. 

So working with agents, that's not something that usually happens in the beginning of a career. Once you've proven that you can land jobs and that you're in demand. The agents are going to have more interest in you so they're selective when it comes to who they choose to represent. So that's something to keep in mind after you get some traction. The other way I mentioned to find voiceover jobs through online casting sites. They're great because it's pretty much customers in line ready to buy Voiceover, they have some kind of project that they need a voice for, they've posted a job, they're ready to hire, they're just looking for the right voice. 

And hopefully your voice is going to fit what they're looking for. So for online casting sites, you have to audition. And then you have to say how much you would charge to record the script. And if they like that, then they will reach back out to you and hire you for the job that they posted. There's many sites out there, some of them are going to be free, some of them are paid, just something to remember is that if you're on a site that is free, you're going to end up being paid less, because the site is going to take a cut. So in general, the free sites are free memberships to anything, don't pay as well, other sites out there that you're going to pay a membership for, they typically have higher paying jobs posted. 

So if you get a paid membership on a site, like voices.com, or voice 123 dot com, you're going to have hundreds of audition opportunities per month. Now some people try these sites out, they don't get any work. And they just think that it's a scam, I'll just say that they are not scams, I've gotten plenty of jobs from both of these sites that have listed, there's some other ones out there I've gotten jobs from so they are definitely not a scam. These sites are really a great way to land job after job because like I said, the people are there with the job, all you have to do is audition for the job. But to get that job, you've got to be at the top of your game in terms of your recording quality, your performance and the process of auditioning. So just know that it's a highly competitive area. 

And if you have one thing that's off, you're not going to sound as good as the next person. And that's going to reduce your chance of getting jobs. And that's why these steps are so important. Now, the downside to online casting sites is that all the jobs and all the communication with the client is funneled through the website. So in reality, they aren't really your clients. They're just jobs that you got through the website. And at any time, that website could change their terms, or they could just stop functioning for whatever reason, you know, they could go out of business. And that's going to impact your business if you're solely relying on an online casting site for your job opportunities and for the income to come in. 

So that's why the third way marketing is a really great way to build your voiceover business. Because when you find your own clients and you have a direct relationship with them, then you're taking control of your client base, and then you have more control over your business. Now going out and finding your own voiceover clients may seem scary at first if you've never done it before. But if you just sit back and look at it, it's really just creating value for others. And that leads to a relationship where someone wants to work with you, and you want to work with that person. If you want more information on voiceover work, there's a guide I put together on voiceacting101.com I think it can really help you with this stuff. And with finding voiceover jobs. So look for a link for that in the description below. 

But by building direct relationships, now you aren't just getting jobs, but you're working with people who have your back and you have theirs and they want you to succeed and you want them to succeed. It's almost like a friendship. And eventually, they're going to think of you for all their projects or other projects that they have come up because they love your work. And they just want to keep coming back to you. And that is how you build a solid voiceover business. Okay, I know we covered a lot. So let's do a quick recap. Each one of the five steps is important to becoming a voice actor. So step one is to do your research. Think about these questions. Do you have space to record voiceover? Are you willing to practice and go through the training that's necessary and the other steps and then you want to ask yourself, you know, knowing what you need to do is voiceover still something that you want to do and if so, then step two, you need a recording space so that you can actually record voiceover. And it's got to be high quality voiceover step three, you need to know how to give your best to read so you can compete and be exactly what the client is looking for. 

That's where the practice and the training are going to come in. Step four is your voiceover demo. That's your primary marketing tool. Some clients are going to decide to hire you or not hire you, based on what they hear from you on that demo. And then step five, would be to have a plan for driving traffic to listen to your demo, and getting as many high quality audition opportunities as you can, so that you have the greatest chance at getting work. Alright, that's it. 

Hopefully that answers your question, Malcolm. I know it was a lot, but that is what I would say if someone said, What do I have to do to get into voiceover? So I hope that answers your question. And again, it's really an overview. I'm sure you have questions or you know, maybe there's some things that you haven't thought about yet, or things that I forgot to mention in this episode. So I would definitely suggest that you go and join that free class. Getting Started in voiceover that's voiceacting101.com/start 

There's three lessons included with that. So make sure that you go check it out voiceacting101.com/start And that will help you don't forget to check the description below for links mentioned in this episode, I know there were several of them. 

Also, if you have a question about voiceover, you can always send it in just go to voiceacting101.com/ask I would love to hear your question and your voice. 

Okay. Thanks for listening. I'll talk with you next time. Have a great week.