6 things you need to know to start your voice-over career

Starting a career as a voice over can be a difficult task, since it requires mastering techniques and disciplines that can only mature with practice. On the other hand, to make yourself known, you must also learn promotional and business skills, and have  sound production software technical knowledge to to carry out your work as a professional voice over actor. However, it’s not a process that you should do alone, or without any guidance. Therfore, here are some tips that you need to know before starting your career as a commercial voice over actor.

Read, read and… read!

Although it sounds tedious, reading is a fundamental part of training as a voice over, you must spend a considerable time (30 to 60 mins a day) reading aloud, since only then will you be able to master intonation, punctuation, breathing and the tempo. In this way you will also find your own style and be able to bring the texts you read to life. As you practice reading aloud, your voice will stop sounding “read” and will seem like a natural dialogue.

In the same way, when you record an audio for a job, read the script aloud beforehand and start trying different intonations. Do not settle for just reading it superficially, but sit down and explore it, get to know it.

Train your voice

Your voice is your work tool, therefore, you must take care of it and train it. Explore all the nuances of your voice, its limits, weaknesses and strengths, warm up before recording, practice techniques for better breathing, intonation, time and the proper use of silence. It is important that you also seek professional help to improve your voice, be it a singing teacher or someone from the voiceover industry, as they will teach you the best techniques to improve the quality of your voice and give you advice on how to take care of it.

Train yourself in sound production

A voice over actor not only needs to learn techniques to improve the voice, they also need to have knowledge in other areas such as audio editing, and the use of softwares for the production of demos, etc. Therefore, look for courses or mentors that teach you how to use this type of tools and help you enhance the quality of your audio. You can learn a lot on your own with tutorials and information online, but also seek the advice of others to improve faster. Feedback in this field is essential to refine your skills as a voice-over. 

Create your own Home Studio

If you want to save money in the long run, and become a professional voice over actor, it’s important that you create your own home studio, so that you have all the necessary tools for your recordings at hand and don’t have to depend on external recording studios . It’s important to invest in equipment like sound isolation booths to produce high quality recordings. Most agencies and commercial clients prefer a voice actor who has a home studio and can edit their own audios, as it signals a higher level of professionalism and faster turnarounds. If you want to create your own recording studio at home, here we tell you what you need to have it.

Create your own portfolio

If you want to get high paying jobs as a voice over, you must show your work, this is the only way for companies to get to know you. Create your portfolio on a website, and show who you are, what you do (your training), the projects or jobs you have done in the past and the companies you have worked with. If you haven’t had your first job yet, set up your demos. (preferably shorter than a minute). Your website will be your cover letter, focus on quality content and clean web design, you can use a template based service like Wix or Squarespace or hire a web designer from Fiverr or Upwork. 

Find promotional tools

The web page alone will not achieve much, you must be intentional with what you publish and for that you need a marketing strategy. It’s necessary that you promote your work through social networks, freelancing platforms such as Upwork or specific voice over platforms such as Voice.com, Voice123.com, Bodalgo, among others. As you progress, you can strengthen your marketing efforts or hire an agency to help you with your digital promotion strategy.

If you are interested in continuing to learn about voice over, acoustics and sound production, we invite you to read our blog and visit our website.