Working as an independent actor outside of a major market, whether that actor works in voice,stage, TV, or film, involves understanding that they’re in show business and that no matter what’s come and gone, including AI, the old maxim about showbiz still applies.
Working as an independent actor outside of a major market, whether that actor works in voice,stage, TV, or film, involves understanding that they’re in show business and that no matter what’s come and gone, including AI, the old maxim about showbiz still applies.
Show business is 5% show and 95% business.
Viewing the acting community, specifically my global voice-acting community through that lens, voice actors can be an interesting lot.
Many of them are what I refer to as “full-on” artists. As in, “I don’t want to sully my hands with money, so I’ll let my agent take my calls and condescend to make money while practicing my craft.”
You think I’m kidding, but they’re not an insignificant faction of the community. They frequently “marry well” to a principal income earner. 😆
Then there are the “full-on” businesspeople who get into voice acting because they’ve been told they have a nice voice. So, they’re awesome at the business part (marketing, admin, etc.), but they suck or are middling at the actual craft of voice acting…and oftentimes don’t care.
These people can have some success, some even long-term, if they’re good at business relationships. Still, they’ll never unlock the top tier of voice work because they can’t compete on craft when the way every single syllable in a 60-second commercial is spoken matters.
So that leaves the rest of the modern voice-acting community – the hybrids.
As mentioned above, these voice actors are often outside the major global markets. As a result, they learn that their agents (if they can get one in a major market) will NOT call them. At best, they’ll get emails with custom audition requests until they land something that makes a lot of money for the agent/manager.
So, they learn to market locally and further afield. They do it in every way that works for them and their styles: cold-calling, direct marketing, online advertising, social media, networking face-to-face and virtually, podcasts, and more.
They build their voice-acting business one relationship at a time, but importantly, they also work on their craft.
They attend workshops facilitated by qualified coaches, NOT the “voice actor” who tried for three weeks, failed miserably at getting work, and then became a “coach” with “all that experience.” There’s a much longer AVOID list than you’d believe, and I won’t list them here because….lawsuits.
These hybrid voice actor/business managers become better actors. They get more comfortable running their careers as businesses. When they snag an agent or manager (or 2 or 3), they work proactively with them to find the best fit and way to collaborate.
In other words, they earn a much better-than-average living, often flying completely under the radar with “non-sexy” corporate narration work of every kind, including eLearning, simply because they understand the old showbiz maxim.
I’ve learned a lot from incredibly patient mentors on both the craft and business side, and I thought I’d share this online marketing business tip.
When you set up online, you’re literally one of billions of names out there. So, how do you increase your chances of people finding you? How do you protect the name/brand you’ve worked so hard to create and distinguish?
My name online is https://www.paulboucher.com.
It occurred to me very early that I should protect my name online by acquiring similar “flanking domains.” So, in my case, I also purchased the Canadian variant of my name, paulboucher.ca.
I also made sure to protect my corporate name, The Right Voice Communications Inc., by purchasing therightvoice.com and therightvoice.ca.
As time passed and it became clear how people found me online, I added a few more names to my domain cupboard.
So now, if you’re looking for French Canadian Voiceover, paulboucherfrenchcanadianvoiceover.com and paulboucherfrenchcanadianvoiceover.ca might come up.
If you’re searching for a bilingual voice actor, paulboucherbilingualvoiceover.ca and paulboucherbilingualvoiceover.com might come up.
If you’re looking for a voice actor proficient with eLearning, then therightelearningvoice.com or therightelearningvoice.ca might come up.
All of them lead back to https://www.paulboucher.com.
So, the earned wisdom from many people who know more about this than I do amounts to several things. Two of them are: think about your brand. Are there flanking domains easily available? Secondly Are there complimentary domains that might pop up in an online search that might help people find you?
I’ll leave it there and relay the one con to this strategy. Eventually, the renewals for the domains come due. So, manage your relationships well, keep your craft on point so you can keep killing the game, and then…set everything to auto-renew without a worry in the world.