GARY MASON

443.624.3014

gary@gary-mason.com

P2P Sites

A bit about ACX

General, Getting Started, P2P Sites, Voice Over

Welcome Back!

Thanks for reading, and if you are a new subscriber; Welcome and thanks for joining us! This week let’s talk a little bit about Amazon/Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange – ACX.

What IS ACX?

In short, ACX is an online casting site that matches the Rights Holders (RH) of (most often) independent books with narrators for the purpose of producing audiobooks from the author’s titles.  The RH of a book is the person or company that holds the rights to the audio version of a book.  Most often, on ACX, the RH is the author themselves, but sometimes it is a publishing company or an individual who has purchased the rights from the author.

Who owns the rights?

Typically, the author of the book is the original RH for all versions of the book.  Depending on how the book is originally published, and what the contractual arrangement with a publisher may be, the RH COULD be the publisher of the book or maybe even a third party who has managed to purchase the rights from the original RH.  For books in the public domain there MAY not BE a RH at all.  It can get pretty confusing, but generally, on ACX, the RH is either the publisher or author of the work.  What you need to know is this: SOMEONE (not you) owns the rights to the audio version of a book.

How does it work?

The concept behind ACX is pretty simple: A RH posts their title to ACX (The print or kindle version of the book must be available on Amazon to qualify) and then narrators audition.  The RH selects a narrator, offers the book to them and after negotiating rates there is a contract through ACX that describes the terms of the relationship.  All pretty straightforward in concept.  If only it were that simple in execution.

Good, Bad and Ugly.

There is good and bad (and sometimes a little ugly) on the ACX platform though, and since people are involved, of course it gets a little more complicated in execution.

Types of contracts through ACX.

Generally speaking, there are three types of relationships between RH’s and narrators on ACX: Royalty Share (RS), Per Finished Hour (PFH) and a hybrid call RS Plus (RS+).  Each has advantages and disadvantages that you need to be aware of, so let’s spend a little time talking about that.

Royalty Share.

Essentially, a RS arrangement means that the RH offers the book for production and the narrator produces the book without any money changing hands up front. Once the book is complete, and passes ACX QA standards, the audio version of the book goes on sale at Audible, Amazon and iTunes.  For each sale of the audio version, the cover price is split between ACX, the RH and the narrator.  ACX (which is owned by Amazon, BTW.) takes 60% for their part (which is a pretty high percentage IMHO, but that’s a topic for a different day) and the RH and narrator split the remaining 40% 50/50.  ACX tracks sales, and pays both the RH and narrator monthly.

For the math wizards out there…

Just in case, like me, you don’t do math problems easily in your head, that means both the RH and narrator each take 20% of the cost of the book.  It doesn’t sound too bad, but the majority of audiobooks sold through ACX are based on “credits” and the cover price typically doesn’t account for much.  Neither the RH nor the narrator have any say in what the cover price is.  My experience is that the 20% cut for most books produced amounts to $2.00 or less.  Usually less.  Usually, WAY less.  You can make money doing RS titles, but if you want to support yourself this way it becomes a numbers game – you need to produce a lot of titles.

Per Finished Hour.

On a PFH contract, the RH and narrator negotiate a rate of pay for each finished hour of an audiobook. The narrator is paid that rate, times the actual number of finished audio hours that comprises the finished product.  WHEN the payment is made is negotiated directly between the RH and narrator; ACX is not involved at all in the payment for PFH titles.  Typically, a narrator must pass the first 15 minute checkoint with the RH before expecting even partial payment, but it is really up to you to negotiate that with the RH.  If you are working with someone for the first time, it’s probably a good idea to ask for some portion of the estimated number of finished hours after the first 15 minute checkpoint and before the book is produced.

A bit about rates.

I’ve talked about VO rates in a previous post, but just a quick aside about audiobook rates.  First, ALWAYS check the GVAA Rate Guide, but generally speaking $250 Per Finished hour is the MINIMUM you should be working for. If your project is RS+, you should be asking for about ½ of whatever PFH rate you charge (minimum $125).  If not, at LEAST make sure you are asking for enough to cover any production costs such as an audio editor or proofer.

Royalty Share Plus.

RS+ titles are a hybrid of the RS and PFH model.  The RH and narrator negotiate a reduced PFH amount and then share in the royalties based on sales.  The reduced PFH rate is paid directly to the narrator by the RH, and the royalties are paid monthly by ACX.  This model allows the narrator to cover production costs and reduces the risk of not making any money on a given title.

Risk.

Speaking of risk, if you’ve followed along so far, you’ll note that for the narrator RS is the riskiest model.  Since on average it takes anywhere from 2-8 hours of work to produce ONE finished hour of audio (based on the narrators experience and workflow), the narrator can spend many hours on an RS title, only to have it not sell very well. Since you only get paid with this model when the title sells, if it DOESN’T sell you (as the narrator) get paid a pittance for a lot of work.  PFH is riskiest for the RH (and least risky for the narrator) and RS+ means the RH and narrator SHARE the risk.

Much less risk…

Have you noticed who is NOT really at risk here?  Right, ACX.  Don’t get me wrong, ACX (a la Amazon) is providing a service, and should be compensated for that.  I’m just not sure they should take the largest cut for the least amount of risk of ANY of the publishing models.

The good.

The good thing here is that the platform provides a way to connect RH’s and narrators to produce many audiobooks.  They have also established and enforce minimum quality standards so that really terrible (note I said MINIMUM quality standards) audiobooks are not published on their sites.  It’s likely that MANY very good audiobooks exist today thanks to the ACX platform, and likely many narrators exist that previously would only be “aspiring” narrators.

The bad.

There are, however, some bad things about ACX.  ACX does not vet the authors or the books up for production except to insist that the print or kindle versions are for sale on Amazon in order to be able to post them at ACX.  This means it is up to the narrator to vet the titles to decide if they might sell well.  ACX does provide some handy tools to do that, showing the narrator the Amazon ranking of the non-audio versions of the book along with a link to the title at Amazon so you can see reviews.  This helps you decide which titles to go for.  And there are some bad titles on the platform.  You’d think they could at LEAST make sure that the book is not chock-full of grammatical and spelling errors before allowing it to be listed.  This is not terrible I suppose, and narrators should absolutely insist on seeing the full finished manuscript BEFORE accepting an offer to produce anyway.

The ugly.

But it gets worse.  Not only are there some books by authors who just aren’t very talented there (which, I guess, goes under both good AND bad, maybe) there are also a LOT of scams.  When I say scams, what I mean is there are people who claim a title from Amazon as their own, but do not actually hold the rights to the title.  Typically, they offer the book as a RS project, have someone produce it and then they download the audio files for their own use once ACX takes the title down.  The narrator never gets paid.  Just today I saw a Harry Potter book on ACX offered as RS, and you just KNOW J.K Rowling is not posting that to ACX…besides, there is ALREADY an audio book published!  You’d think ACX could do SOMETHING to at least reduce the number of these offerings on their platform, but they don’t vet the books AT ALL.

Buyer beware.

Well, narrator beware anyway.  If you are going to work through ACX, you’ll need to get good at spotting scams and books that won’t sell well.  Remember that well known authors and their publishing houses are NOT listing books on ACX (generally) and when they do, they offer a decent PFH rate because they want to keep the full 40% of royalties.  As a general rule, always remember: If it seems too good to be true; it is.

At the end of the day…

ACX is, or CAN be, a great place for narrators to find titles to work on and connect with authors.  Just know that if you decide to start using ACX as a platform, you’ll need to be aware of the scams that lurk there, understand the payment models used, vet the titles well to decide if they’ll sell (if doing RS) and for PFH jobs make SURE you are negotiating a fair PFH rate!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

If you haven’t already, please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

 

Persistence

Encouragement, General, Getting Started, P2P Sites, Voice Over

Welcome back! 

Thanks for reading!  If you are a new subscriber, thanks for joining us!

It’s pretty easy to get discouraged sometimes, right!?  This week I’d like to talk a little about persistence.

This is a tough business.

I mean, it’s easy enough to get involved, pretty much anyone can get a microphone and some editing software and go for it (OK, maybe not very WELL, but going for it anyway).  And it is BECAUSE it’s pretty easy to get involved, it is also very competitive.  Don’t get me wrong, it is not cutthroat win at all costs competitive…it’s just there are so MANY people all competing for the same work.  Honestly, I am sure there are some, but NONE of the people I know are unhappy when you book a gig.  Maybe it would be better to say “It’s crowded” instead of competitive.

A hungry school of fish.

Have you ever been to a lake where they sell loaves of bread to feed the fish with?  You know how the fish crowd around a single piece of bread, climbing all over one another to get at it?  Yeah, that’s what I think of when I say competitive.  It’s like a hungry school of (non-shark) fish all trying to get to that one piece of bread.

Online casting.

If you spend any amount of time on any of the online casting sites, you’ll know what I mean.  Just this morning I saw a job that was posted yesterday, which was open for the next 8 hours, who wanted to receive 50 auditions.  When I saw it early this morning, it had over 150 responses.  THREE TIMES what the client asked for.  In all honesty, if you don’t get your audition in within the first 25-30 submissions, odds of you getting the gig are miniscule even if just because they will never even GET to your audio.  On top of that, if they DO get to yours, by the time they do audio exhaustion will have set in, and your fine nuanced performance may as well be a jackass braying into the microphone.    Go ahead, try listening to 150 audio clips of the SAME TEXT and see how you feel after 30 of them.  Not good.

They’re not ALL bad.

I’ve talked about online casting sites (P2P) in an earlier post, so I won’t belabor it here, but suffice to say that using a P2P site is not an inherently bad idea; you just need to use it to draw clients away from the P2P and to you as a return client.  Your goal with the P2P sites should be to make satisfied clients who reach out to you when they need your services.

I’ve also previously mentioned that a voice over artist, especially when just getting started, should expect to book ON AVERAGE about 2 out of every hundred auditions.  On average…this means that sometimes you book 5 out of 100 and sometimes you book 1 out of 300.  It’s just the way averages work, sorry.

But it can be so discouraging!

Yep, it CAN. Trust me, I KNOW. But here is the rub: You book exactly ZERO of the jobs you don’t go for. It is important to KEEP TRYING!

Here’s the thing: Every audition you do teaches you something and makes you better at this craft.  It’s true, auditioning should never be the tool you use to practice, but the act of auditioning DOES give you practice and teaches you valuable things. Just make sure you are reasonably proficient at recording and editing your audio before you start auditioning and never stop getting training and coaching.  While auditioning does give you experience, and valuable lessons, it is definitely NOT a substitute for training.  Besides, remember earlier when I discussed casting directors getting WAY more auditions than they asked for?  What they DON’T need is to have to listen to someone’s (or many someone’s’s (I made that up just now) practice auditions).

If you just want to practice…

Then a good way to do that is record several takes using the script for the audition, edit it, master it and then LISTEN back to it.  If you wait a day between recording and listening, you are bound to hear the flaws in the audio.  Better yet, find a partner that has some experience and ask THEM to listen and give feedback.  Feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about is invaluable, and something you never get from an audition.  Well, never…except when they book you, I suppose that’s a form of feedback.

Another reason not to use auditions as practice.

Many of the clients posting jobs on casting sites do it over and over again. See, the casting sites got the memo about return customers.  If you are submitting substandard auditions in order to “practice”, before long when these return clients see your name, they skip right past your audio…after all they have 149 more to listen to.  Using auditions to practice is like shooting yourself in the foot to enter a marathon.

Anyway, back to persistence…

I suppose this goes for just about anything in life, but just because you “fail” (don’t get the job) doesn’t mean you don’t have what it takes to do this work.  For me this applies not only to voice over, but screen acting as well…maybe for you too. I know when I was a kid my mom always used to tell me: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”.  I modified that in my teen and early 20’s years to say: “If at first you don’t succeed, try once more then give up.  No sense embarrassing yourself”.  Clearly, as I have started this third career at sixty years old, that advice didn’t work out so well for me.  I highly recommend you follow that FIRST piece of advice from my mom and not listen to young, flippant, ignorant me.

The Dip.

I read a good book recently called The Dip.  Full disclosure, the book ALSO talks about quitting things as well as persevering.  You have to choose which things you pursue, but once you decide, you have to work through the dip.  That period of time after initial success that gets discouraging.  You see, it happens with nearly everything.  You jump in, have some minor success, get excited, then everything slows down and you get discouraged.  That discouraged part?  That’s the dip.  If you work hard through the dip, you come out the other side successful.  I’m paraphrasing, you really should read this book.

Did you know?

Think about all the cool gadgets we have for our convenience these days.  We carry more computing power in our pocket now than was available on the NASA rocket that sent men to the moon and back.  Have you ever thought about what it took to get these things into your hands? Things we take for granted today didn’t exist, and in some cases weren’t even being considered 150 years ago.  Here are some examples of when persistence paid off.

Airplanes!

Today, we think nothing of buying a ticket, heading to the airport and jumping on a huge airplane to head, well, just about anywhere we want to.  But the airplane is a relatively new invention in the overall scope of things. The Wright brothers are well known for their invention of powered, manned flying machines, but their first successful flight lasted only 20 seconds and traveled a meager 120 feet. Did you know that the successful flight in 1903 came after working on this idea for more than 7 years?  They started by modifying kites into unmanned gliders to learn about aerodynamics, and from 1896 to 1899 when they started working on a manned version, they encountered failure after failure.  Imagine what the world might look like today if they had given up after the first few? Best case, someone else would have figured it out, but no one would now know the names of Wilbur and Orville Wright.  Persistence pays.

Light bulbs.

Everyone knows the name Thomas A. Edison, because without him, we would still be reading by candlelight.  I’ve read accounts that Edison failed more than ONE THOUSAND TIMES before successfully developing a light bulb that worked.  Edison is famously quoted as saying: “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”  What if he had stopped at 1000?  It was the 1001st try that has us lighting up our house like a Christmas Tree (AND lighting the Christmas Tree!).  Persistence pays.

Telephone.

Ever heard of a guy named Alexander Graham Bell?  Yeah, me too.  Think he just set out one day in 1876 and after a week or so, there was the phone?  Guess again.  Bell first envisioned the telephone in 1874, and two years and 31 failed attempts later he finally muttered those fateful words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you”.  And HE was already researching speech and sound waves, so he was YEARS ahead of the game when he started.  Had he given up on the 30th attempt, we might still be sending telegrams.  Persistence pays.

It takes years…

I’ve said it before, and I still don’t know who to attribute it to, but it takes years (and a lot of hard work) to become an overnight success.  You don’t hear much about all the failed attempts leading up to success, you only hear about the success.  While voice actors are hardly household names, think about actors who are household names.  Do you think Robert De Niro started OFF as an academy award winning actor?  Nope.  You can google him if you’d like details, but De Niro’s first role was in 1963, and he didn’t really get “noticed” till 1973 in Mean Streets.  It took him 10 years to become an overnight success!

And you, too!

It will take time for you to become successful as a voice over artist or if you choose screen or stage actor.  There will be flops and failures along the way, as there is for everyone.  If you get discouraged and give up, what happens if you give up JUST before the perfect role for you; just before you get noticed?  Persistence paid for the airplane, light bulb, telephone and De Niro’s acting career.  It’ll pay off for you too!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

If you haven’t already, please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

 

Pay to Play (P2P) Casting sites

Getting Started, P2P Sites

Welcome back! 

Well, here we are in the dead space between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Since not may people are paying attention this is probably a good time to talk about something pretty controversial: Pay to Play (P2P) casting sites!  Fun, right?  (and maybe a little sneaky too).

Where do I find work?

If you are relatively new to the voice over world you may be wondering: How do I find work?  A great question to be sure!  What was the point of buying all that gear and getting all the great training and coaching if you now aren’t working because you just don’t know where to find the work?  Odds are you don’t yet have a big-name talent agent out of NYC and LA, and unless your family owns a production studio or are already knee deep in the entertainment industry you are probably looking around at a pretty barren landscape of work right now.  Don’t fret, this scenario is pretty common for almost everyone just getting started.

But you don’t have to be just getting started to find yourself staring blankly at your DAW wondering how in the word you are ever going to find someone to hire you.  Even if you’ve been at this for a good long time there are going to be “down times” where it seems you just don’t have any prospects.

Competition, OH MY!

This is a very competitive line of work (even though the vast majority of voice artists are not so competitive in that they are willing to help you achieve success – it’s a bit of a dichotomy really).  What I mean is that while there are certainly 10’s of thousands of voice over jobs available each day, there are 100’s of thousands of voice actors all trying to book them.  Your voice and capability must be competitive in the market or you are probably going to need a “day job” to put food on the table.  On top of having skills to compete in the market, you really need to be able to successfully market yourself.

There are some long-time industry experts who will tell you that the only way to really find consistent work in voice over is to direct market yourself to clients.  And while I agree that this is the BEST way to get good, consistent, work, it is not the only way.

You Gotta use everything you have…

In the voice over industry you need to have many arrows in your quiver, or you are going to struggle for a very long time.  Directly marketing yourself and signing with an agent are two of the bigger sources of work, but there are plenty more.  Networking, advertising, having a professional website are just a few of the ways to get your name (and voice) out there.

There are actually innumerable ways to find work in this industry.  Yes, you can work to land yourself a talent agent, and I definitely recommend doing that, but casting agents want talent that has proven themselves able to book work, since they don’t get paid unless you get paid, and if you don’t already have SOME sort of portfolio of paid work to show them, your chances are not good.  Honestly almost ALL of the best strategies to find work are going to require you to already HAVE a body of work completed, along with professionally produced demo reels, in order to land those elusive gigs.  It’s the age old “Chicken and egg” conundrum. The one place you really don’t need to have examples of work you have already completed is online casting sites.

Now, to be sure online casting sites, or Pay to Play AKA P2P sites are not the place you are going to find work that will sustain you long term in the industry.  You are not likely (or as likely) to find the high paying national television commercials you really want there, and as a matter of fact you are not very likely to find work that is paying “standard” rates as established by the unions or as advertised at the Global Voice Artist Academy (GVAA).  But you are likely to find SOME work there, and there are both good and bad casting sites.

What makes one site good and another bad?

Well, there are a couple defining features.  The first and most obvious one is good casting sites vet their talent.  Now, like the saying “All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs” I could say All casting sites that vet talent are good, but not all good sites vet talent.  But if you have to apply with an audition to be accepted on a casting sites roster, you can feel pretty confident they are a good site. A couple sites that come to mind are voiceovers.com and Bodalgo.  These two sites provide an audition script and review your submissions to be sure not only that you have the performance chops, but also can provide good quality audio.  There are more sites that vet talent, but these two are the ones that come to mind.  Both of these sites also work hard to ensure their clients are offering competitive rates to their voice actors.

Speaking of rates, this in itself is another defining feature for a good casting site.  It can be a little difficult to ferret out, but if, for example, you see the same gig offered on multiple sites at different rates, then the ones with the lower rates are somewhat suspect.  One big problem with some sites are the rates the charge clients for posting versus the rates they offer talent.  If you notice the same job posted to multiple sites and one (or more) are offering the talent much lower rates, what may be happening is the client is offering, say, $500 for the work and the site is offering $100.  In this instance the site is keeping (skimming) $400 for that work in addition to whatever they are charging producers for being able to list the job on their site.

Hey, they gotta eat too!

Now I don’t begrudge the fees charged by these sites for producers and talent to be able to use the site. I mean, we are ALL in this to try and earn a living, and it does cost something to host and maintain a website.  On top of that they need to pay employees AND take home a profit to fee their families.  The fee for participation is not the issue;  it is that the fees are not transparent, so the voice talent cannot determine if the client is offering a much higher rate than what the site shows as the payment to the talent for the job.  Honestly, MOST sites are not this transparent.  The only site I am aware of that reveals both the client budget and voice actor payment is voices.com who reveals to the voice actor the budget and how much of that budget is fee for the site. They MAY also be charging the client a fee for the privilege of posting the job for auditions, but I can’t find that information.

Watch out for Bargain Basement sites…

There are also some “bargain basement” casting sites like Fiverr that are well known for low rates.  I get it that some people just don’t have a large budget for voice work, but Fiverr (and others) are pretty well known as the “Dollar General” of professional services.  And like Dollar General, the majority of talent on this particular site are relatively untrained and have a poor recording space.  Most of the time you get what you pay for, so I recommend you steer clear of sites like Fiverr as a voice talent.

For the sites that are reputable, you are going to have to pay a monthly or annual fee to be allowed to audition for work.  Fees vary by site, so make sure you understand the fee structure before signing up.  Sites like voice123 offer a tiered membership plan, where the more you pay the more often and earlier you see available jobs.  As you can guess, the more you pay for a membership the more likely you are to see and be able to audition for the more lucrative jobs.  And the fewer people you will be competing against for that work.  You have to decide which tier is right for you, but make sure you are able to at LEAST break even at the end of the year.  Of course, breaking even is not the goal: You want to be earning far more with a site than it costs to be a member.  Keep that in mind!

Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t…

Now, there are some very experienced and well known (or at least known) voice actors that will tell you that using a P2P site is a waste of time and money.  And if you are a well-established voice actor with an agent (or three) and some clients that call on you to do voice over work for them, then that is probably true.  However, if you are a relatively new, not yet established, voice actor trying to “break in” to the industry, I say the P2P sites have their utility.  Before my established colleagues lambaste me for saying this, hear me out.

Be a collector….

If a voice over artist is using these sites properly, as opposed to letting them use you, they can be beneficial.  On top of potentially earning a little money to keep your business moving, these sites are handy for a couple things, not the least of which is building a portfolio.  One of the best marketing tools a voice artist has in his or her quiver is examples of work already completed.  Not just the raw unproduced audio, but a fully finished video or audio segment that has had music and sound effects added.  If you are booking gigs through a P2P site, you should ALWAYS be asking for the finished product that you can add to your website as an example for potential clients to listen to.  Building a portfolio takes time, but the more finished work you can show, the more likely a client who likes your voice is to hire you.

The next thing these sites are useful for is collecting testimonials.  A good client review, just like a review on Amazon, helps give prospective clients confidence that if they hire you their job will be completed professionally and on time.  If you are a person who, like me, scours reviews for online purchases then you understand. When you book a gig on a P2P site, along with the finished product ALWAYS ask for a brief testimonial about your work.  This can also be added to your website for prospective clients to read.

Your mileage may vary…

Be cautioned though, not all clients on P2P sites will provide the finished work or a testimonial.  This is the nature of the beast, of course.  However, if you have completed a job and they don’t provide the finished product, you can sometimes find the work on their website or YouTube, so when you have some time look there.  Without permission, the best you can do is link to their content, but if you find it, ask for permission to display it on your site, then download it and add it as your content.  If you don’t have a professional website, you should definitely consider getting one!

By far, the most useful way to use P2P sites is in finding and securing direct clients.  The majority of clients posting available work on these sites are agencies and production houses trying to find fresh talent.  Many (if not most) agencies and production houses maintain a roster of talent they use, and your number one goal with these sites should be to establish yourself with them and to be added to their rosters.  To be sure, you will need to maintain these relationships, and be able to respond when they call on you, but establishing and maintaining relationships with these clients will pay big dividends down the road.

I mean, what’s REALLY wrong with P2P?

One of the biggest complaints I hear about P2P sites are the low rates most jobs bring.  And I can’t dispute that the vast majority of the work I see posted to most of these sites is well below industry standard.  A direct consequence of this is that it drives the industry standard down and impacts voice actors across the board.  I’m not sure I’ve seen empirical evidence of that, but it sure does make a lot of sense.  Please keep this in mind when you are deciding whether or not to work at a reduced rate.

If you choose to work for these reduced rates in the hopes of establishing a long-term working relationship with these clients, then I caution you that it is going to be very difficult to later command higher rates if you do become a regular voice talent for them.   Only you can decide what your time and talent is worth, but I urge you to review and understand the standard rates published at SAG-AFTRA and GVAA.  I suggest you stay away from the low paying listings altogether, and whenever the listing is looking for a rate “quoted by actor”, then bid ethically in alignment with these established rates.  That means if the posted budget is $500 but the established rate is $5000, you bid $5000.  And yeah, that also means if the job lists a budget of $5000 and the rates indicate an appropriate fee of $500, you bid $500.

Does that mean you may lose work because your rates are too high?  Sometimes, yes.  Will they likely find someone who is willing to work for the lower rate?  Maybe.  But if they REALLY like the work you did on the audition, then they may just hire you at the higher than budget amount.  You need to let your conscience be your guide here.

Only YOU can decide what’s best for you!

At the end of the day, YOU have to manage your own business and make decisions on where you’ll find work rates that suit YOU.  No one else can tell you how to chase your dreams, and online casting sites are just one way to find work, find clients and build a portfolio.  Remember that, even if this is a hobby, it is also a business.  You’ll need to use everything at your disposal to build your business, and maybe someday, even if it IS “just” a hobby for you, it can become a full time endeavor.

If you are just getting started in voice over, head on over to my earlier posts and look for the series on “Getting Started in Voice Over” where I talk about what you need to get started in this business and talk a little about my journey.

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know. And if you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

Please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!