If you have a decent voice or know how to manipulate your voice, Voice over or Voice acting could be a great way to make an extra income. Your voice could be used for movies, audio books, animations and maybe even a featured movie! Now, that’s exciting! 😀
Voice Over actor and voice acting are same thing and most people ( Including this article ) will use it interchangeably. In this article, we will discuss everything that you need in order to do voice over as a side hustle.
What Is Voice Over or Voice Acting?
Voice actors are performers who use their voice to read and express someone else’s text. Typically they work in creating audio books, video games, meditations, movies etc
Why is Voice Over Important?
Voice actors are important part of entertainment industry because they help create sounds, and bring feelings to words. They help move the story and bring trill to entertainment such as movies, audio books, youtube videos and much more.
How Much Money Can You Make As Voice Over Actor?
Expect to get low end projects when you start but as you are able to do more projects, which will build your portfolio, you can demand a higher pay. In average voice over artists make about $50,000 to $75,000 a year.
Benefits Of Becoming Voice Over Actor
- Work from home
- No formal training required
- No College degree
- Low startup cost
The biggest benefit of becoming a voice over actor is the flexibility of being able to work from anywhere, and not having to work for hours. Most of the time, you will either record your voice overs when you ( and your voice) are in best condition, which is usually at about noon after noon or you get scheduled to a audio studio where you will record your voice.
Voice acting side hustle is a good way to supplement your existing income or even start a new career.
Most of the people who are doing voice over as a side hustle, can just start this site hustle with just a basic computer and a decent microphone and record it in a place where there is least noice or remove noice from the computer.
Equipments Needed
- Reliable Microphone
- Studio or Cozy Space
- Audio Software
The main equipment that you will need is a good mic and besides that you need a space where you can record the voice on your computer. This space must not have echos and for most people who are doing this from home and don’t want to spend too much money, it’s going to be your closet where you have clothes, because the clothes will act as sound absorbents. I also recommend buying sound absorber if you have the budget for it but it’s not a necessary.
Microphone
There are micros-phones of all prices that you can find online but the one that i liked was Yeti Mic, which is about a $100 USD and work pretty well.
Software To Record Sound
You will also need a software to record your voice into. There are many expensive products out there that you could use but to be honest, most of them are not worth the money, So, I opt for something that’s free and works really well. To record the sound, I recommend either Audacity, which works on both Windows and Mac. You can get it for free here.
Voice Enhancing Tool
Once the voice is recorded and you want to make it studio quality, you may want to use “Ai Enhancement” Tools. Adobe Podcast, offers a free Audio enhancer which is really good and costs nothing. Use it here.
Building Your Portfolio
Before you can start offering your voice over services, you need to build a voice over portfolio to show people what kind of voice acting that you can do. So record few examples, these could be different types of voice and expressions that you can do. You can put these on SoundCloud, which is a an audio hosting site.
Aim to create about demo reels that show your unique voice and how versatile you can be with your acting. This is to show the clients that you can adapt if there are changes in the script in their project.
Most people that you work with will want to see some samples so instead of creating something for everyone, you create about 10 types of voice actings that you can do and use it as portfolio. Having a good portfolio could be a main key into getting a new customer.
Finding Customers
To find voice over customers, I recommend having a “gig” on fiver and and also searching for voice over jobs on sites like Upwork and Freelancer.
The idea is to have customers who will keep buying from you because they need your voice for a specific project and your voice become key part of their business. So, don’t be scared to offer discounts initially.
Fiverr & Upwork
Fiverr , Upwork and Freelancer.com are going to be your main places to find jobs for your voice acting side hustle. For Fiverr, start off with a lower price so you can get those reviews in and once you do, you can raise your price to a higher price, so that people will pay premium for your quality.
Over all, Voice over acting is a great side hustle for people who have unique voice and want to use their talent to make extra side income. This side hustle doesn’t require you to get any special training but rather just practice enough with your mic and audio software.