VOICE OVER CAREERS

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

Commercials, of course, always have maintained a high position on the list because they have residual value. You get paid, particularly on a network, every time it runs. 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 sometimes that little session fee can be multiplied by 7, 8, 10 or 15 times.

Retail accounts can provide substantial voiceover incomes. They might produce half a dozen new commercials per week. So the money in such an account is especially valuable due to its residual factor. You earn money without physically doing more work. Interestingly enough, the corporate/industrial market, I have found, also has a residual value. That always surprises people. 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.

Frequently, you become the voice of a corporation. You have a residual value. The voice who introduces the company's CEO at the annual meeting and who is on all their training films is you.

The corporate/industrial market employs a small group of people. 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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