Voices.com Reviews…MAJOR UPDATE! Why did all the top talent leave?
Nearly two years ago, I wrote an article called “Voices.com vs. Voice123…the BIG secret!.” I wrote it because there are a lot of negative Voices.com and Voice123 reviews online from beginner talent who haven’t booked any work. Sometimes you need to hear from experienced talent. I talk about how to book work through online casting sites, as well as why I think one site is better than the other. However, as of right now, I have to take a step back to an almost neutral position for reasons I’m about to give you. Now, you can find a lot of Voices.com reviews out there with a lot of opinions attached. I’m only going to be reporting facts (quite a lot of them, but do try to stick with me).
First things first…
Before I get into all the bad stuff, I think it’s important for you to know that I was booking a lot of work through Voices.com. I was regularly on the Recently Hired list and could be consistently found on the Top 100 Favorite Voices list. In three years, I made tens of thousands of dollars from the site.
I say this is so you understand that what I’m about to tell you is not coming from someone with no experience and no success on the site. There are already enough of those reviews out there. I learned what I had to do and I put in the work. Unfortunately, due to very unethical business practices by Voices.com, myself and most of the top talent left and made the decision very public. If you’re considering Voices.com, you need to know what they are doing behind the scenes.
So what’s happening?
There’s a chance you’ve already seen some Voices.com reviews detailing some of this, but I’m really going to break it down and give you information that you’ve probably never heard.
If you’re not familiar with Voices.com, there are two types of jobs: self-serve and managed. The self-serve jobs are posted by clients. This allows them to post jobs and receive auditions from talent. The managed jobs are posted by Pro Services, which are employees of Voices.com, who act as the “middle man,” speaking to clients and posting jobs for them. Whether managed or self-serve, every job that’s posted will list the client’s budget. However, since I’ve been on the site (now 3 years), I’ve noticed a major change. There has been a very sharp decline on client budgets, however, the interesting thing is, it’s only on jobs managed by Voices.com employees. Self-serve jobs generally stay about average with budget, although some low-ballers sneak in every now and then.
Why could this be?
Voices.com is proud to offer their “first class” treatment to their clients. That’s where they take care of everything from posting the jobs, hiring the talent…oh wait, that’s it. And for doing all that “heavy lifting” they get to charge the client a pretty significant fee. Well, guess where that significant fee gets taken from? The voice over budget! How significant a fee are they taking? We’re seeing them take sometimes as much as 50% and even higher from the overall budget! So in other words, if the client has $300 for their voice over budget, we’re likely to see that job posted on Voices.com for around $140-$160.
How do we know this?
The reason is because clients will often post jobs on multiple platforms. So, it’s not uncommon for voice talents to see the same jobs posted on different websites, as well as receiving auditions for those jobs from agents. When we see a big difference in budget from one source to the next, it’s hard not to be suspicious. I was recently contacted by an agent that gave me an audition with a budget of $560. In less than an hour, that same job was on Voices.com with a client budget of $330. So right around a 35% decrease. Is it possible that this VIP treatment of the client is worth $230?
Well, let’s take a look at the notorious Harley Davidson job, which was discussed in an Edge Studio interview with the CEO of Voices.com. A voice over job from Harley Davidson with a budget range of $1800-$2500 showed up on one site. Then showed up on Voices.com as a managed job for how much? How about a budget range of $500-$750? Think about it, at best case scenario, they’re taking more than 60%. Does the Voices.com staff sincerely believe that we, as voice talents, are all stupid enough to buy into the idea of them needing $1000+ to give the client first class treatment?
Well, what do they have to say in response?
In short…nothing. If you think I’m joking, listen to the interview with Voices.com CEO, David Ciccarelli. He was nothing more than a textbook representation of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. With very clear and direct questions asked by Graeme Spicer from Edge Studio, David does his dead level best to dance around these issues. Warning: it’s one of the most awkward interviews I’ve ever heard.
The Phone Call
However, I wasn’t going to let this tell all for me, even though it really did. I decided to ask my own set of questions to the Director of Talent Sales at Voices.com in a recent two hour phone conversation. While she was very polite on the phone, the conversation ended with me ultimately receiving no satisfying answers to any of my questions.
Before getting into my conversation with her, I should point out that because of the interview, Voices.com knew that changes needed to be made and did nothing.
Asking About Changes
I point blank asked if any changes were being made. This employee told me that a lot of “internal changes” had been made to better the company. My question to her was, “When do think the rest of us will see them?” Her response was all about how “important these changes are”, with no mention of what they are or why the talent isn’t seeing them. Internal changes can be fine, but the problem is, Voices.com has yet to admit to making any mistakes. So how can talents expect to see the right kind of changes when the company won’t admit those specific changes need to be made? I can understand some budget discrepancies here and there, but there comes a time when there are just too many coincidences happening to seem accidental.
What About Budgets?
Next, I asked about the massive difference seen in client budgets from one platform to another. This Voices.com employee stated that there have been times when clients will post the same job on different sites with different usage. For example, maybe one was listed as strictly for internet and then right before posting to another site, they find out that the usage will actually be for National TV. Obviously, there’s a major difference in budget. I responded that it would be very understandable if we saw these discrepancies going more than one way. However, I have yet to run across a talent that has seen a Voices.com budget be higher than a budget for the same job on another platform.
Follow-up Email
Since expressing my concerns over the phone about the increasing number of low budget jobs, the budgets took an even sharper decline. It’s to the point of being insulting. I emailed the same employee, telling her that the budgets had decreased even further. She replied, and I quote, “Pro Serv jobs pay almost 20% more than self-serve jobs.” I immediately told her if that’s true, please tell me how she arrived at that conclusion. She said she would email me some updated numbers. I told her not to give me the dollar average per job. Show me the quantity of low budget jobs versus high budget jobs. If Pro Services jobs significantly outnumber self service job, of course the dollar average will be higher. Just an FYI, I have yet to receive those numbers.
The Rate Sheet Joke
I should also point out that in our conversation, she did say that Voices.com has a rate sheet that they stick to. The truth is, it is one of the most convoluted rate sheets I have ever seen. Compare that to an actual non-union rate sheet and you’ll get sick to your stomach over the difference in talent fees. The best and most accurate I’ve seen so far is the one found here at the Global Voice Acting Academy. This is definitely a great source!
The Call Overall
So overall, I was very unsatisfied with my conversation with this Voices.com employee. No matter what logical questions I could ask and what evidence I had to support things I was saying, I never got what I considered to be legitimate answers. It just seemed to be a lot of empty responses that she was possibly given to say. I assume that because they were very characteristic of the responses that the CEO said in his very awkward interview.
So what can you do?
Just audition for jobs that aren’t Pro Services
To tell the difference, most of the time, jobs posted by Voices will have the word ‘Voices’ in the title. An example would be “Voices: 30-40 year old Male needed for Online Promo”. You can also scroll all the way down to the bottom of the posting to see who’s posting the job.
Use the correct rate sheet!
Use the rate guide at Global Voice Acting Academy and stay far from Voices’ rate sheet. Keep in mind that if you quote higher than the listed budget, there’s a chance you won’t get heard. All of our auditions are screened by Pro Services and only a fraction are sent to the client.
Proceed with caution…
Be alert and don’t be afraid to ask questions. I had an interesting situation with someone from Pro Services regarding a job I was hired for. They not only “conveniently” left out information, but also gave me incorrect information. When I caught this Voices.com employee, I practically backed them into a corner. They immediately handed over another $869 as if I was holding them at gunpoint. Didn’t need to check with the client…just handed the money over. Now class, can anyone tell me where that money came from? Well, I doubt the client was standing next to him, listening on our phone call. The fact is, I provided a question that couldn’t easily be “answered.” The only place the money could come from was the very large cut they were taking for themselves.
Let me be clear. I gave this employee several chances to check and recheck the information. I was told my spot would air one time on Saturday. Not only did it air on a different day, but it ran six times. When I spoke to the Voices employee first thing on Monday morning, I asked them to confirm with the client when the spot aired. They told me that the client confirmed “Saturday at 3:00.” I asked them to confirm again…same answer. Then I went for the kill. I told them point blank that I watched the commercial air multiple times on Sunday. They instantly came back and suddenly said they “confirmed with the client” that I was right. Did they really miss the information throughout multiple confirmations? That instantly got me $869. It was a question they couldn’t easily lie their way out of.
Other Sources and Voices.com Reviews
There are a lot of Voices.com reviews on the internet that you can read. Here are a few other sources for you that might provide some interesting information.
- The wonderful voice talent, Debbie Grattan, wrote an outstanding article that gives even more insight into budget discrepancies and what Voices.com’s “reasons” are behind all of it. You can read this article here.
- Some former Voices.com employees have decided to write about their experiences working there. Notice how some of them mention having to work in a “moral grey area” and how employees are educated in how to “dance around the truth.” All of this can be found here.
- Again, the interview with Voices.com CEO, David Ciccarelli can be listened to here. The awkwardness begins about 30 minutes in.
- And finally, here again is the link to the rate sheet on the Global Voice Acting Academy. They have event put together a collection of reviews and experiences about Voices.com from many talent.
So what’s my conclusion?
I will continue to stay on the site and audition for self-serve jobs. I’ve made a lot of money that way. I should point this out. Most repeat clients from Voices.com now contact me directly, nearly all of them telling me how much they dislike working through site and, interestingly enough, with the people. One major Pro about the site is their escrow service, SurePay, which guarantees that the talent gets paid. However, if that’s not important to you, my advice would be to stay far away from Voices. Of course, feel free to do more research. Find other Voices.com reviews. You’ll see there is no shortage. As always, I wish you the best with your voice over career!
Voices.com Reviews: Further Updates
There are plenty of Voices.com Reviews out there that are giving a lot of information that you’ve seen here, but feel free to bookmark this page, as I will be updating this section with new information as it comes in.
October 7, 2016
Voices.com is removing their Platinum Unlimited membership. This allowed talent to receive every audition that comes through the site. They are only offering Platinum Standard, which they only claim increases your visibility in their search engines. Cost: $2500. However, talents who have paid the $4000 for Unlimited, that fee doesn’t transfer over to Standard, so a lot of them are going to have to pay AGAIN! Why are they making this switch? They want to make sure all the new talent get booked. It doesn’t matter how much work the talent put in when they started. What matters to Voices is that everyone gets an equal share. Doesn’t matter if they’re not doing their equal share of the work. And because brand new talents don’t know what to charge, they’ll accept these $100 jobs. Makes it much easier for Voices to take a cut.
October 17, 2016
Voices.com has increased their escrow services, SurePay, from 10% to 20% for all self-serve jobs. That’s what happens all major talent stop audition for Pro Services.
November 23, 2016
I’ve received an email from Voices.com stating that for Black Friday, they are taking $150 off of there Premium Membership and stating that it’s for the weekend only! My guess is, we’ll see an extension.
November 29, 2016
Well, after receiving an email yesterday claiming “Just hours left…” on their special Black Friday deal, I received an email today stating that the special has been “extended 48 hours!” They need all the memberships they can get.
December 6, 2016
After nearly two months of being away from Voices.com, I logged back in and looked at the jobs. Out of the 136 jobs that are open for auditioning, more than 50 of them are managed by Voices.com. Budgets are at an all time low. One is titled “Local Superbowl TV Spot” with a budget of only $300!! Even after losing their most booked talent, they still make no effort to switch to ethical business practices.
January 13, 2017
THE WORST LISTING THAT I KNOW OF TO DATE! A top talent on Voices has just informed me that managed job has been posted on the site for 5 National spots with 5 cut-downs. The lowest a top talent should charge is $8,000 which is the very bottom line for this kind of job. Professional Services at Voices.com listed a budget of $3,000. For any newbies to voice over work, that rate is just slightly higher than the non-union rate for ONE National spot. However, they want to you to do 5 with 5 cut-downs for a total of 10 spots. This is hands down the worst job posting that I know of in the history of Voices.com. And this now confirms that they’re not even adhering to there own, very inaccurate Rate Sheet, which they claim they always do.
February 21, 2017
Within the last 6 days, I have received 3 emails and a phone call from Voices.com, telling me about a $100 off promotion they now have on their Premium membership and asking if I would like to join. Have never seen this promotion take place apart from Black Friday. They just keep looking more and more desperate.
March 20, 2017
After some advice from a couple of fellow voice artists, I’m going to test the waters for one month on Voices.com with non-managed jobs. I really hope I can report some good news. I want these guys to make a change.
April 3, 2017
So far, on this trial month, here’s what I have witnessed. I receive about 15-20 auditions per day…and only about HALF OF THEM fit the incredibly extensive profile and voice characteristics I’ve filled out. Just received an audition for a job that was in another language! Is this really what talent has to deal with, on top of everything else?
August 11, 2017
More Voices.com reviews surface and here’s the worst job I’ve heard of yet. One talent discovered that VOICES.COM TOOK 92.5% OF A $4000 JOB! That’s $3700 they pocketed, giving the client a total of $300. What’s amazing is that this was for a NATIONAL SPOT! Here is the link so you can read it for yourself.
August 13, 2017
After Voices.com bought out Voicebank, it received a lot of negative response and reviews from nearly the entire voice over community. This resulted in the continuing 1 star reviews on Voices’ Facebook page. Since Voices.com clearly tries to remove any and all transparency from their business practices, is it any wonder that they removed all bad reviews, as well as the ability to leave a review? However, I anticipated this would happen, which is why I took a screenshot just hours before the reviews were removed. Here’s a split screen of the before and after, as well as what’s displayed if you have a direct link to the reviews on the Voices.com Facebook page.
March 2, 2018
I COULD NOT be more excited to share this information! For anyone familiar with Voice123’s system, they have just announced that they are completely removing SmartCast and allowing talent to audition for as many jobs as they want. Their exact word was “Limitless”. If Voices.com should have any feelings right now, it should be fear. Voice123 is treating talent and clients with the respect they deserve. This has all come from talent AND clients banding together. As one of the top talent, J Michael Collins, said in a panel with Voice123, “You as the talent have the power…look what YOU did.”
July 13, 2018
It’s official! A top talent files a lawsuit against Voices for “deceptive marketing”. The article can be read here. The negative reviews for Voices.com just keep getting worse.
September 3, 2018:
I have received an email from Voices saying that my profile is being removed due to multiple violations of their Terms of Service. They claim I have accepted work on 5 separate occasions off site with their clients. Of course, they haven’t provided any evidence. The reason is because I can provide evidence that they’re lying in all but one of the cases.Voices’ policy only requires that jobs posted through the website must be completed there.
The ONLY time where work was taken outside the site for the same job was when I was contacted by a client that needed a pickup done immediately. After messages were left by both of us, we never received any calls or emails back. I told the client to simply PayPal the money and I would inform Voices of this once I was contacted. Well, here we are, months later and I never heard from them, so I simply let it go.
So let me ask a question. How does Voices know those jobs were taken if my correspondence with these clients is through private email accounts? Very simply, Voices employees now masquerade as Self Service clients. This is so they can continue taking their 50%+ cut for doing absolutely nothing except thickening the wallet of their lying, stealing coward of a CEO. Until Voices can show me evidence of violations in any of the other 4 cases, or how they obtained information between the clients and myself through private email accounts, Voices is lying. Also, If Voices believed I was violating their policy, why did they wait for 5 “violations” before contacting me?
Emails have now been sent to every Self Service client (assuming they’re legitimate). They can work with me directly, so that everything is kept honest between me and the client.
September 20, 2018
Despite Voices deleting my account, they continued to charge me for membership. Of course, I can’t login to change this, so I reported them to PayPal. Shouldn’t take long to get that money back.
September 21, 2018
I sent a message to Voices last night saying that I would report them to PayPal. The refund showed up first thing this morning. It’s amazing how they move when you show the proof. Wonder if they were just hoping I wouldn’t check my PayPal activity. What’s also interesting is, I tweeted them with all the proper hashtags. This morning I’ve discovered that my tweet has disappeared. Fascinating! I guess Voices is scared the truth will get out more than it already has.
August 29, 2019
I have officially released a new blog talking about the Voice123 update. You can read that here.
I live in the Garden Grove, CA area. Do you have any advice on where to look for auditions or where to even start if Voices.com and Voices123 are a no-go?
I’ve worked as a Cashier and Retail Associate my entire life, and have always been told I have a very cheery personality. I know that it takes more than a cheery personality to be a voice actor, but in my short time (2 months) at Disneyland as a Ride Operator I think I could make it as a voice actor. Before the World of Color show started, I would hype the crowd up with a speech. Did I have to? No. All that was expected of me was to stand in one place and answer questions.
When I was working the Golden Zephyr ride, I created a voice for myself and customized the “spew” I would give Guests about safety so that it would not only be in-character, but entertaining.
As someone who has only been a minimum wage grunt his 38 years of life (along with having no car), I had hoped that this would be my avenue into showbiz. That a random talent agent might see me on the job and go, “I want that voice.”
Unfortunately I lost my job at Disney this past Friday. The only thing left for me is my skill set in Customer Service, but I really don’t want to go back into retail.
Hey Lance. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer anymore for beginners. The only thing I can recommend is to get some coaching. Not just voice coaching, but coaching on the voice over business. The industry has drastically changed over the last 10 years and a lot of that is due to the negative experiences that sites like Voices and Voice123 have provided talent and clients. So again, my best recommendation would be coaching. To be honest, that’s what I’ve done recently because I’m having to learn a viable option to fit in with my performing schedule. Once I have more knowledge and things are working, I’ll likely share a little of what I’m doing with everyone in a new article. Keep checking back! Best of luck!
Test
hi bryan! what is your opinion of bunny studio? thanks! Victoria
Hey Victoria. I thought of making this its own post and still might. Wouldn’t recommend Bunny Studio to anyone on this planet or neighboring planets. September 2020, I got a message from another talent saying that my name was on Bunny Studio’s website. As it turns out, they basically went to other P2P sites, grabbed as many name of the top talent and put all the names on their site claiming that they were representing all those talent. I along with a flood of the top people on P2P sites all found our names there. We sent mass messages to the VO community as a whole, then all messaged the joke of a VO website, some using lawyers to send the message, and the Bunny people took off running like their cottontails were on fire. All names got removed immediately and have never appeared back on the site. So, that’s my opinion of Bunny Studio.
Those former project managers who had a moral compass chose to leave because they could not stomach how they were earning their keep.
I wouldn’t be surprised. When I was on the site, right during the timeframe when all of this was coming out against them, I saw a crazy amount of turnover with jobs. It almost seemed like a completely new crew was managing the jobs every month. I also believe that quotas were a major part of it. They would only keep around the people that brought in a certain dollar amount. It was easy to see who the newbies were, because they hadn’t learned the value of subtlety. You would see jobs hit the site without even having a range…just a budget of $100. Some of projects were hysterical. I even saw some of the employees posting a job and throwing in a disclaimer (ie. This is the industry standard rate for this project.). Their disclaimers were almost always wrong and I would bet a lot of money that they always knew it.
Do you have an updated version (2021) of this post to share? Considering joining a P2P.
Thank you!
Hey Shelley. Unfortunately, I don’t. About the only thing I can say is that I’m avoiding P2P sites all together and sticking with agents. If any of that changes, I’m sure I’ll post about it. However, as of right now, there really isn’t a site that I’m comfortable attaching my name to. Wish I had a different answer for you. Best of luck with VO!
I so appreciate your articles. Very informative, thank you. 🙂
I’ve been a voice actor for many years, and have come to the conclusion that there is no VO company without major flaws. There are many benefits, but unfortunately, they’re all out to make quick money. And they all seem to cater to the client more so than the actor… even though it’s the actor who pays the yearly subscription fees. So, it’s really a matter of choosing the lesser evil, and going with a company that best fits your needs.
My main work, at the moment, is from Voice123. They’re ok. Lower paying jobs on average, 6% fee if you choose Secure Pay (which is only avail if the client makes it an option), and several payment tiers, which they’re now kind of sneaky about. You think you’re upgrading to the second highest level only to discover -once you pay- that there are two more levels beyond that. Ugh. Sort of a ‘moving the finish line’ kind of deal. Oh and not a big fan of the “quoted by actor” option given to clients. It only encourages low-balling. But, if you ever have an issue with a client, they will support you and stick with you until the matter is resolved, which is really great.
I was on Bodalgo for about a year and had such high hopes. I got a lot of work from them (despite the very few auditions that come in per week), and I loved the projects I worked on, but the CEO was completely obnoxious and rude when I reached out to him (by his own suggestion via the site) for advice concerning a client who downloaded my audio and ghosted me for over a month–no response to my emails, and no payment. (Perfectly communicative BEFORE I did the work, but after… nothing.) The CEO told me to “calm down” and that there was “nothing unprofessional going on here”. Which means… there was totally something unprofessional going on there. haha. I was stunned–here I was, a paying customer, asking for his advice on the matter (very calmly, I might add), and I’m the one being finger wagged? Then, he tried to convince me that 4 weeks was really only 2 weeks (becuase, it turns out, he was only counting weekdays)–so, as far as he was concerned, I hadn’t been waiting for a month, just 20 weekdays. Huh? Funny, though, how Bodalgo’s “monthly” subscription fee is due every 30 days, weekends included. LOL
Interestingly enough, a few days later, I got a response and payment from this MIA client. Perfect timing? And, I must note, after that convo with the CEO, I didn’t book anything via Bodalgo for almost 4 months. (Prior to this, I was booking, roughly, a job a week, or every other week.) He’s very hands-on, apparently, with the audition process… so, if you have the audacity to ask him for help when you get ghosted by a client, it seems you’re “punished”. (I have no proof of this, of course, but it just seemed awfully coincidental.) Also, has anyone read his Facebook articles? Yikes. His advice to voice actors on industry scams is basically, ‘Don’t be stupid enough to fall for them.’ So, not going to get much support from this company, just fyi. (I’ve since canceled my subscription.)
Hey Eliza! I agree that right now, it seems to be a concept of picking the lesser of 2 evils. I hate that it has to be that way. I believe there’s still good connections to be made on some of these sites. While I can’t stand Voices, I have regular clients because they existed in the beginning. Granted, almost all of those clients have all read this blog and have completely left the Voices.
With Voice123, I still book some work off of the site. It’s a much smaller percentage out of my auditions than before the website’s change for the “better”. I agree that the different tiers are a little odd and, from what I can tell, only have one difference…the price. I did a slightly higher tier this last time out of curiosity and I have seen nothing that would cause me to recommend an upgrade to any talent (new or experienced). I imagine their $5000 package is still the best bet, but I’ve known many of the top talent that have purchased that level, and it the sound of their praise of 123 has gradually faded over the last year to nothing.
As far as bodalgo goes, I’ve never heard anything bad about the CEO. I honestly hear nothing but good things about him. I’m sorry to hear about your experience. Most people I speak with have never booked any jobs through bodalgo, but the ones who have talk about how amazing the experience is and how great the clients have been, primarily because the CEO does some screening. In any event, hope you’re finding some good work out there. There’s definitely been a shift in the last couple of years. All the sites I was recommending, I have since stopped.
Best of luck!
[…] would ask that after you read it, please read my most recent article on this subject called “Voices.com Reviews…MAJOR UPDATE!!” One of these companies has made a very significant change that you should know about. I […]
[…] it’s possible that you’re here because of my other post regarding Voices review that I did. If you haven’t read it, I would recommend that you do. So because of that […]
I heard that the process is rigged. I heard from an an ex-insider that the process is rigged. Those with morals and ethics leave the company. those who are able to turn a blind eye, stay for their commissions. I heard that they intercept job posters before the job is made active. they ask them if they want their job managed, then they see who is willing to bid low and award it to them so they can retain the rest of the $. I also heard that the Ultra Platinum members are the truly favored ones, and these members know it ( at the expense of the regular paying members). They seem to sleep tight at night. U can see who these are. Look at their profiles and the multitude of jobs booked in succession.
I have definitely heard pretty much everything you’re saying. We figured jobs were being intercepted the moment the notorious Harley Davidson job was posted. It was on the site for a few minutes as a self service job at $2000+, then was removed and reappeared as a managed job with a budget of $500-$750. In the time I was with Voices, I rarely saw big budget jobs and even then, I never saw big budget jobs go above $2000. I never saw the Harley job until after it showed back up as a managed job. I’m more than convinced that the national spot I discuss in this article was probably a $3K-$4K job, if not more. I had a good friend in VO tell me that it likely was near 5 figures. I can’t say for sure that it’s rigged, but every piece of evidence that can be brought out is against them. I was friends with someone who worked at Voices. I asked her direct questions, not against her, but directed towards the company’s behavior. She, like all Voices employees, avoided direct answers and gave canned responses that didn’t even match up to what I was asking. After that conversation, she never spoke to me again and unfriended me on Facebook. Trust me, the employees must know how bad this looks. And now on Glassdoor, I’m seeing a lot of reviews that appear to be manufactured to essentially “stuff the ballot box.” They went from horrible reviews from their employees to suddenly glowing reviews. Voices received a flood of good reviews on Glassdoor very quickly after people started linking to Glassdoors’ page showing less than a 3 star review. Doesn’t take a quantum leap here.
HI Bryan,
After carefully reading articles, reviews and changes it seems like Voices, Voice123 and VoiceRealm all have scathing reviews. Voice123 just underwent a major change that no one seems to like and Voices has their issues too. Which is one you recommend now in 2019?
To be honest, there are only 2 that I would recommend at this point and about the only one of those I could recommend to people starting out would be Bodalgo. The CEO seems to be very much on top of the ethics game in this industry which is just a breath of fresh air. If you’ve been doing voice over for a while, then I would recommend http://www.voiceovers.com. You have to be accepted to be on the website, which is great to have a website that takes that route. Again, if you’re new to voice over, I always recommend coaching and getting a home studio setup. Then, I would head over to http://www.bodalgo.com and look at being a part of that.
DECEMBER 2018
I’ve been with Voices.con for several years and could sum it up thus: I have made more from it than I have spent on it and so in that regard have lost nothing much apart from studio time. More on that later.
I, like others, don’t like the VC Agent-run full service jobs where, very often, my auditions are marked as having been listened to and liked by the Client. I’ve challenged them on this as it is clear that what is really meant is that the audition had been listened to and put on the short list by a VC-Agent, who, of course, is NOT the client. He or she is only the mail man!
When I suggested that they simply put ‘Your audition has been shortlisted by our agent’, the reply I got was (cut ‘n’ paste?) “Thank you for your suggestion. This has been forwarded to our developers”, ie: no comment, moving on swiftly.
Now to my precious time. For any talents who don’t get awarded the job, the jobs are marked ‘Hiring’, then ‘Deciding’, then ‘Completed’. The full service jobs have recently become slightly higher paid. Might they have reduced their own cut (commission?) to up the talent budget (?) – unlikely, but one thing is for sure, very few of these jobs ever reach the ‘Completed’ stage. If I trawl back over the past few months in my own outbox, I can see dozens of full service jobs still sitting at the ‘Deciding’ stage. Only 2 or 3 marked ‘Completed’. I enquired as to why this was, and got a very woolly and unsatisfying answer. So I’m wondering if these jobs might be fake fish bait to get talent auditioning. It is a complete waste of my precious time to audition for jobs like this, and yet I do….. just in case ?
It used to be that self service jobs automatically added 20% fee to the talent budget whereas the full service jobs showed the budget and no additional fee was added at ‘the checkout’, so to speak. And I would always quote high. NOW as of very recently, there is a 20% added ‘Platform Fee” and it also says + management fee. So there is a double dollar whammy for the client who opts for full service.
Are they trying another way to explain away the difference between what the client is charged and what the talent gets? I hate this business practice, yet I stay with them because I do get work even though I refuse to audition for any job paying less than around $350 (and nothing lengthy for that small amount either!) although most of those, and lower paying jobs, get immediately deleted! I stick to my own rates basically.
Then there is the poor vetting of self service jobs. A recent example of this is a British company requiring a single sentence out of hours phone message that you wouldn’t put a higher budget on than $500, yet it was listed at $1250-$1750. Yes I auditioned ? and got my audition in 4th. Not even listened to and the job is still flagged as ‘Deciding’. Then months later, the same self service client put a similar job on the jobs board – a short out of hours answering message but this time paying $5500!!! That time I auditioned 1st. Still not listened to and still showing as ‘Deciding’. Meantime the client must be laughing at all the talents sending in their auditions. So I phoned their out of hours phone line number and the message was dreadful, very unprofessional and noisy – probably cost a Fiverr!!! Why did Voices accept this casting with its ridiculous budget? I asked them because it said that their staff had vetted the job. No reply!!!
So I’m watching and waiting to see if this huge business eventually trips itself up. If I now get thrown off the site, I’ll let you know!
I see a sudden change….for the worse! Until now, with Voices’ full service jobs, however much the published budget differs from the hidden amount charged to the employer, on full service jobs, the total figure showing when the talent filled in their price would be the SAME as the client budget. No added 20% like Self Service jobs attract. NOW, they add a ‘Platform Fee’ of 20% as well as a Full Service charge!!! Is this to justify the price differences between what the employer is prepared to pay and what Voices want the talent to receive? Ultimately, I suspect that as the talents, the loss is all ours!
Quoting their website “Voices.com Fees”
The total cost of hiring a non-union voice over actor on Voices.com includes a talent fee as well as Voices.com fee:
For a Self Service job, the Voices.com fee is a 20% Platform Fee. The Talent Fee and Platform Fee are combined and displayed for you alongside the talent’s audition.
For our Full Service option, you’ll work with an Account Manager who will provide end-to-end project management. For Full Service jobs, a Project Management Fee will apply in addition to the Talent Fee and the Platform Fee. The Project Management Fee is $300 per talent required and $200 per premium language required.
All I ever consistently hear from talent that have stayed on the site is that it’s gotten progressively worse. They are constantly being caught “stealing” large amounts of money from the overall budget, calling it their “Platform” or “Full Service” fee. Although, interestingly enough, their full service fee always seems to be 50% or more of the overall budget, no matter what the overall budget was in the beginning. When I was switching over to mainly agent representation, I had a few jobs come in from different agents and would see the same job post to Voices. The budget would be listed at 50% or less. However, it’s nothing short of entertaining to hear the Voices staff try to rationalize to their clients and talent as to why their “Full Service” fees have taken, in some cases, thousands of dollars off of talent payout. It’s like watching a kindergarten class put on a play…they’re all saying what they’ve been told to say, but none of them understand it. I’ve got a flood of clients now that I NEVER worked with on Voices, but all of them came from Voices after past experiences. Rest assured, top level clients won’t touch Voices and some of those clients go to Voices to make sure the talent they’re hiring isn’t also on Voices. I’ve got a few examples of that by itself. Best of luck with your VO career!
Any news on when Voice 123 will get rid of SmartCast? Ans when to they generally run specials for a discounted annual rate?
Everything is up and running on Voice123, but I would strongly take a look at my blog regarding the updates. I’m telling people to avoid 123 until they get the numerous bugs worked out. Bodalgo is my best recommendation at this point.
Hey Bryan! Thanks so much for this article, it’s really great! I’ve been looking to jump ship from VDC to Voices 123 for a little while now. I’ve had success with VDC but am unhappy with their business practices. My question for you, is about SurePay on VDC. Does SurePay guarantee that you’ll be paid even if the job is from Voices.com? Reason I’m asking is because I recorded a national spot that I booked from Voices a few months ago and have not yet been paid, even though it has already completed its run on TV. I emailed the guy at Voices who I was working with, but he hasn’t responded. Will probably follow up again this week, but who can I got o about this if I still do not receive a reply? The job is stuck in my “awarded” tab and it’s frustrating. I also have a job that a 3rd party booked me for on VDC back in December 2017, but still has not paid.
Hey JR! Thanks for jumping on the page. Voices has the most ridiculous turnover rate for employees I’ve ever seen. Basically, once an employee can’t operate inside the gray area that Voices likes to operate in, they get canned (go read the reports on GlassDoor). I would call their customer service. I’ll go ahead and prepare by saying that no one will answer. Just leave a message. Tell them that you completed a national job, it’s already finished it’s run and, if you have proof, let them know. Also tell them about the other job that you did. Then, go to the website, click on the Payments tab, find the jobs and click on Release Payment. Trust me, Voices is just slow when it comes to most everything. That only started when the truth came out about their business practices. Feel free to send me an email if you have issues. Once Voices knows about both jobs, you should have the payment released within 30 days. Good luck with it and congrats on the national spot!
Hey Bryan,
I enjoyed reading both your articles and for the most part agree with you assessment on the P2P sites. I just consider it part of the daily grind. The question I have for you is…have you heard or seen any more movement on the V123 eliminating SmartCast so you can audition for whatever job you would like. I don’t mind Voices as I’ve had good success with them. However, paying $350 for 1-4 auditions a day and any more actually hurting your rating seems a bit of a backwards investment to me. I was just curious if you had heard anymore. I haven’t been able to find anything searching that would “yay” or “nay” that they have made that switch.
Hey Craig! Thanks for chiming in here! I completely agree that it’s all part of the daily grind. That’s where we differ from people just getting started. When someone asks me how to get into VO work, I first ask them what they think my daily/weekly routine is. This is so I can gauge what their expectations are and clear some things up for them.
As far as 123 goes. They’ve been pretty tight-lipped about this, but they said at VO Atlanta that their launch timeframe was late summer. We’ll see what happens.
Best of luck with everything!
Hello Bryan!
Thank you so much for sharing all that you have! When I first began looking into a career in voice over, I was curious as to why so many “veterans” in the business would offer advice and guidance to their potential competition. I quickly determined that there are two reasons. One is a marketing tool for those who want to sell coaching sessions, pay per view webinars and training. The other reason is because people like you who know that there is plenty of work out there for everyone and the voice over community must find a way to protect each other and the business. Thank you for that! I am new to VO and have relied on VDC to provide an opportunity to practice and get a feel for my best VO niches. Plenty of “likes” but limited success in booking jobs. My question to you is; why have I read some advise offered by a few reputable voice artists that say to join voice123 only after you have found some success at VDC.
Hey DJ! Really appreciate your comment! There could be a few reasons for why reputable VO artists would say to join 123 after you have success on Voices. What I would gravitate towards is because 123 has SmartCast (and that’s going away in another month or so). Smartcast is essentially a way for clients to rate talent on their auditions (1-4 stars). If you start auditioning for jobs that are calling for a young adult style and you sound like a booming movie trailer voice, they may rate you 1 star, and you’ll eventually be sent fewer jobs of that nature. So being on a site that doesn’t slap your hand for auditions can help you get a better feel for what jobs you’re better suited for. But as I said, SmartCast is fleeing the scene very shortly and some of it’s in part to some clients having no clue to what the rating system is. I’ve been booked from 1, 2, 3, and 4 star ratings, so it really is better for them to get rid of it all together.
The other reasons are much shorter…promise!
Unless something has changed, Voices still offers a month to month membership, so you’re not paying $400 right out of the gate. If 3 months down the trail, you decide this isn’t for you, your wallet took less of a hit.
The last reason is something I love and hate all at the same time. Voices has something called SurePay where you are guaranteed payment. The client is required to pay upfront and once the job is completed, even if the client bails, Voices has the money and releases it. But the simple work around is requiring all first time clients to pay upfront. Besides, SurePay has given Voices some kind of notion that this entitles them to 20% commission for doing absolutely nothing. I could understand 5%, but when I joined, they were at 10% which I thought was steep. Now it’s just plain insulting. That’s why I befriend all of my Voices clients and pull them from the site immediately after the first job (which complies with Voices policy). I even send them the link to this article.
The fact of the matter is, while these few conveniences are nice, they in no way would make me recommend Voices over 123. I wish you the very best! Please keep in touch. You’re welcome to send me a link to your Voices profile and I’ll take a look at what you got.
Hi Bryan! Thanks for all of this information, it really helps. I have been trying to decide which P2P site to use for a while. I have not used any before and all of the info you provided about voices and voice123 was very insightful. I got really excited about your update on March 2, 2018 stating that Voice123 got rid of their smartcast system. However I did some research on this and could not find much. Where did you hear that information? I did find one youtube video of a voice actor stating they stopped limiting auditions they SEND but the amount you submit still affects your score and more than 4 a day can hurt you. Any thoughts?
Hey Stevie! This information was revealed by Voice123 during a panel at the VO Atlanta convention this past March. According to them, they will be unveiling a brand new site in the summer (I believe I heard July) timeframe which will completely eliminate SmartCast and you will be able to audition as many times as you want. Trust me, if they go back on this after that announcement, they could be as hated as Voices. I firmly believe that 123 is doing their best to use the horrible revelations about Voices as their momentum to propel forward. Keep an eye out. My guess is that they’ll make a more formal announcement online soon. While I wasn’t at VO Atlanta, I watched that part of the panel online and saw the response from a lot of voice talent. It’ll be a great change!
Hi Bryan – thanks for the informative blog and to respondents for providing interesting comments. I registered on Voices.com free account but realise now it is a waste of time. Can you tell me the process for deleting my account?
Thanks,
Ed
Hey Ed! Thanks for your comment. I wouldn’t say that it’s a waste of time, especially not the online casting side of it. However, trying to get the CEO and employees of Voices to change their business practices would certainly lean more towards being a waste of time. And I would also say that if you’re not paying for a membership on these sites, it’s much harder to get booked. Now, here’s the cute part of this story: I have heard talent rip Voices apart because of the simple fact that they will not remove profiles. So what I’ve seen talent do is post pretty hard words on their profile and have their profile picture state something negative about Voices. I don’t necessarily condone this, but if you don’t want to be represented by them in any way, I would first give them a call. If they make their claim of “we’ll get that taken care of for you” and then nothing happens, I would try one more time. The bottom line is, don’t be surprised at any headache you have to endure when dealing directly with them. I wish you all the best with VO. Don’t let Voices kick you out of the business!
Hi Bryan,
I found your article interesting. I just signed up a few weeks ago with Voices.com (the free membership). Right now, I’m not able to audition for anything unless I’m invited. Is that right? I read in your article that you audition for the self-serve jobs. I don’t see those.. but I will check again.
I was invited to about 10-12 jobs, for which I auditioned. Funny thing is, I got that email telling me they were giving $100 off of a membership that weekend. I told them i wanted to wait to see if I landed any of the invited jobs, before investing. After that, I never got another invitation to audition. Sounds like they were baiting me in with the invitations, and there is no way to tell if those jobs were legitimate.
I appreciate your article and plan to check out Voices123
Thank you!
Lea
Hey Lea! Thanks for your comment. I’m happy if anything helped! To answer your question, yes, if you sign up for just the free membership, you can only audition for jobs that you have been specifically invited to. Once you have a paid membership, then you can see all the other jobs that are posted on the site. They have now changed how they’re titled. They call them “Self Service” for ones posted by clients and “Full Service” for ones posted by Voices employees. I can’t say for sure if what you were getting was real or not, but I can honestly say that it wouldn’t surprise me if that was a baiting tactic of theirs. Let’s put it this way: if everything posted in this article is true (and it is), how could you be surprised by anything unethical done by this company? Now, assuming that everything was legitimate, you have to remember that this is a game of numbers. The top talent generally don’t book more than 5%-7% of the jobs they audition for and on top of that, the first job is always the hardest to book because you don’t have a rating on the site. I would take a look at Voice123 and hit them full force. If you read in the updates, Voice123 is about to make a major change for the better that all the big talent are really excited about. Keep an eye out for it. In any event, keep in touch and best of luck with what you’re doing!
Wow, up until I read this article, I had no idea that Voices bought out VoiceBank. I would use the latter to see what demos the pros have put up (including my first coach, Crispin Freeman) and the kind of stuff they do for the reel, but now this is a total travesty. Voices is a real shady business and I will tell others to avoid using their site.
The amazing part is that Voices literally has their hand stuck in the cookie jar and is denying that it’s there, even though we’re all looking at it. I believe the purchase of VoiceBank was more shady than we realize. I want to know the real reason VoiceBank decided to give over control so easily. I do believe that as long as talent and clients share the truth about Voices, it’s only going to hurt them more, because like a lot of industries, the VO community loves to share news.
Hi Bryan,
I’ve been at VO now for about 2 years. This past year I used V123 & boomed a job to cover the fees for 2 years. Ca.e close with some others, but they fell through.
I’m interested in what you said about 3 to 5 minute auditions. Does that include perfect editing? It takes me much longer.
I’d appreciate any advice you can give.
Thanks & thanks so much for all this info!
All the best,
Tricia
Hey Tricia! Thanks for your comment! Congrats on the booking with 123! As far as auditioning speed goes, that just takes time. However, there might be a thing or two we can tweak. My method of operation usually is me reading 15-30 seconds of the copy twice. I then take out the breaths and do a listen through. I’ll pick whichever take sounded the best, then export and send to the client. I’m not sure what is considered “perfect” editing, but basically, as long as you don’t have strange breaths where they should be or any weird noises, you should be good. Also, one thing that will greatly cut down on editing time is keyboard shortcuts. I have my favorite effects as key commands so once I finish recording, I can apply several effects in less than a second by hitting just a few keys. What editing program do you use?
Thank you for this information. I wish I saw it before I signed up. I would not recommend voices.com based on my experience so far with the site. I joined about a month ago and I still have yet to receive a call back or an email responding to my concerns/questions. I feel like I wasted my money.
Hey Dianne. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. Unfortunately, from what I heard, they had to let a bunch of their staff go about a year or more ago so besides the dishonesty and lack of ethics, now their customer service has dropped significantly. I’m actually about to need to call their customer service and I’m dreading the conversation. Right now, Voices is basically holding onto money that the client hasn’t released and, since Voices.com has yet to come up with a very simple solution of automatically releasing funds, I’m stuck waiting for 30 days or until Voices.com makes contact with the client. It’s really just gotten worse, but they have yet to admit to any mistakes. Hope you have better experiences with other companies and that Voices.com’s apathy towards this industry hasn’t scared you away from doing voice overs.
Hi Bryan,
Thank you for this detailed articles – and for all the updates! It’s highly appreciated!
I’m just about to sign up for Voice123 yearly membership, but because Black Friday is coming up very soon, I was wondering whether you have any information: Has Voice123 offered any (significant) Discounts in the previous years for Black Friday?
Thx,
Antoinette
Hey Antoinette! Thanks for your comment! Really glad to hear this was a help to you! I have definitely seen discounts over the last few years with Voice123. I believe one time it was on Black Friday. I’m not positive, but I think it was. Other than that, they’ve had deals at very sparse times. What I would do is, if you’re not already on the site, sign up for a free profile. That will at least get you subscribed to their emails. That way if there are any specials going on, you’ll hear about it first hand. I’ve seen them discount more than $100 off of there $400 annual membership. You could always send them an email and ask if they have deals coming up, but I’m not sure if they would be open about that information. I’ll keep an eye out and if I see anything, I’ll reply to your comment again with the info! Thanks again for joining the conversation! Hope voice over is treating you well!
Glad I found the site; I worked in radio for a decade, have voiced hundreds of commercials and yet with my 3 demos up and carefully selected keywords, I’m 91 auditions into voices.com, with 6 likes and 0 jobs, and getting very very disheartened. Even if I landed a job tomorrow, at their rates I’d need to get at least 1 job / day to make all the auditioning close to worth it, and it’s clearly not happening. My first P2P experience and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a freaking thankless grind.
I haven’t signed up at the other sites, honestly I’m reluctant to even continue down this P2P road. I’m not willing to go out and scrounge to this degree, for work. Nor am I willing to pay thousands for better access. It’s BS. I can feel that I’m being kept from being in the running for the good jobs, and getting auditions after 20-35 people have already submitted and it pisses me off. Isn’t this supposed to be the point of an agent, to find work appropriate for me so I don’t have to waste my whole GD day auditioning? How do I get to that, glorious point?
Not even using my named email for this because I suspect voices keeps tabs on your and others’ critical blogs about them. As you showed they take negative comments off FB, wouldn’t be surprised if they actively looked for registered talent bitching on those blogs, and gave them worse or less auditions. I also see their forums are about as deserted as myspace these days . . I wonder why . . .
be well, I’ll be reading
I appreciate you taking the time to give your thoughts! The biggest thing I can recommend is COACHING! I’m not necessarily talking about voice over coaching, because of your background in radio…I’m talking about P2P coaching. The fact is, some incredible talent get on the site and still flop in the beginning. Often times, the biggest issue is that they’re spending too much time for each audition. When I hear people tell me that they spend anywhere from 10-15 minutes per audition, I get a little queasy feeling. You should spend no more than 3-5 minutes for one audition. You should easily be knocking out 20 auditions in two hours. It should be more like 25-30. Another big issue on Voices.com is that people haven’t learned how to work the Voice Match score and, in many cases, they haven’t learned what it means. Let’s say that 35 people have auditioned for job and only 5 of those had a Voice Match score of 100%. Well, if your score is also 100%, you’ll be #6 in line, because your score is higher than everyone else’s. Believe me, I’ve been booked on jobs where I was the 115th person to audition. You just have to know how to work the platform!
And as far as using your name here, nothing that’s being done here violates Voices.com’s policies. So technically, if you or I were kicked off the site because of this public discussion, they would be violating the policies that we both legally agreed to when we became part of the site. I can also tell you that I know several instances where talent have been on the site under another name. Voices would have no way of knowing. So don’t worry, we’re not violating any of their policies. And on top of that, everything that’s being discussed here (besides my phone call with one of their employees) is public information. I just put it all together with a bow on top.
Best of luck if you continue to do P2P. Getting some coaching on the subject might not be a bad idea!
Thank you Bryan – as a newbie looking for work – this information is invaluable. I will be going with Boldago and voices123 — why would I even want to deal with voices.com …. I understand you have made some good contacts there, but it may not be worth my time if just starting out.
Thanks for your comment, Christian! I think you have a much better chance of having a positive experience if you avoid Voices.com. Bodalgo is great and still relatively unknown by amateur talent, so that’s a good option. Voice123 is more known, but they also have a lot more auditions. I wish you the very best and I’m glad this article was able to help you!
Thanks for writing this Brian. As someone who is still getting their feet wet in the industry this is really helpful information. I’ve done hundreds of auditions there and landed a handful of jobs, so it’s fairly irritating to know that of all that work they’ve been misleading me on what I could have made otherwise. My one year subscription is coming up for renewal in a few months and I came across this as I was looking for opinions of whether VDC or voice123, or both, would be a good idea to subscribe to. I’d heard some grumblings from professionals I’ve connected with on social media about the business practices of VDC, but I never thought it would be that egregiously bad. To undercut as egregiously in the examples you gave in the updates is unbelievable.
I honestly thought the budget they listed was what the client had specifically stated they were willing to pay talent and being a newbie to the world of professional VO work I wanted to respect that rather than give a bid like the pros who have the reviews and credibility to get away with quoting over what the budget is. For example, it seemed really weird to me that a job listed with 21k words was only willing to pay $500-1,000, but I auditioned anyways and only gave a bid of $800 because, again being the ignorant newbie, I wanted to respect that budget, plus I figured an established rock star talent on the site like you would’ve gotten it anyways over someone like me with only a few five star reviews to my name. To my surprise I got it and it was way easier than initially anticipated (the word count ended up being around 4.2k with a total run time of around 20 minutes), but to now know how they were trying to low ball people into terrible rates like that is obscene. At least the elearning client I have is honest about shortchanging me, but that’s because they’re a smaller outfit and all so it’s what they can reasonably afford while they work on expanding. Which I’m okay with since I’m new and consider myself fortunate to even be considered by them, and especially because they were pretty upfront about their rates from the outset. But what VDC is doing is beyond the pale.
My current day job is with a nationally known radio company (prefer not to say) in a medium sized market, and the experience that I’ve gained over the last year now having done work for the stations in the building has been invaluable. However, the production director in the building has repeatedly told me to abandon VDC completely and just go with voice123 since that’s where he gets the majority of his freelance work from. And he’s a national voice so his opinion carries a lot of weight in that arena. I’m actually looking to leave the station at the beginning of next year and was hoping to make enough money auditioning between VDC and voice123 full time to support myself. But from the sounds of things I’m second guessing if that’s possible with how much money is being siphoned off and how many auditions are getting screened by the middle man rather than the client.
Thanks again for writing this and informing others of all the shady stuff going on there. It’s given me a lot to consider when it comes to whether or not I renew my subscription in a few months. I may opt for Bodalgo over VDC, especially given the price difference.
Hey Nate! I really appreciate you taking the time to give your input! Being a newbie in this industry can be hard, but I’m glad for any help this offered you. The listing of 21K words for $500-$1000 is pretty much a joke. The problem is, there are plenty of “talent” on the site that would take a job like that without ever questioning the budget. Most of the time, those are the only jobs they can book, if any, because of the lack of quality in their reads. The best thing that can happen is for new talent to visit http://www.globalvoiceacademy.com/resources/voice-over-industry-standard-rate-guide/ and get a sense for what the industry standard rates actually are. If these were the rates that talent abided by, bad VO artists would be flushed out immediately. Also, Voices.com would have no choice but to behave ethically because the only talent that would be on the site would be professionals. However, as I’ve mentioned in this article, hundreds of quality talent have left the site without looking back. Because of this, I’m hearing from past clients that contact me directly through my website that they have quit using Voices.com. They have told me point blank that their reason is because there are very few quality auditions that come through the site. And you can believe it now, when you have 100 auditions to listen to and you don’t even get 5 good ones, you’re not sticking around for long if that’s par for the course. All I can recommend to you for any P2P site is to not spend too much time on one single audition. Clients make their decisions fast, and that being the case, spending more than 5 minutes on an audition from recording to sending and giving them more than 30 seconds is not an efficient use of time. Audition and move on. Let them come back to you! I wish you the very best and please keep me informed on what you decide to do!
Bryan,
As a newbie, I can’t express how grateful I am for this information. I’m taking voice acting lessons with an amazing instructor, learning about the industry, and learning everything I can. I considered Voices.com as my platform of choice to get my feet wet, and likely still will… but this information potentially saved me a lot frustration. Even if it’s just an easy way for people to locate me, it sounds like Voices.com is useful as long as I avoid their managed services.
Hey Tom! Good to see you on the site! Wishing you the absolute best in your VO career. Without a doubt, finding a good instructor is a major step, so you’re definitely going about it the right way. Just remember, if you get on Voices.com, their deceitful ways have only gotten worse over time. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see the escrow fee increase even more. Once they go higher, that’s when I’ll take the next step in my process. For now, stay as far away as you can from Pro Services and make contacts quickly!
Byran, thanks so much for the good info! My 17-year old son has spent a year training as a VO actor and has just finished three demo reels. We have set up free accounts on Voices and Voice123. True to form, Voices called and emailed my son within hours, saying they have a “teen” rate. Not wanting to spend money on both sites right away, I googled and found your review and web page. Thank you!!! We will be going with Voice123 for now. He has worked so hard to get to this point and I want him to experience some commercial success. Thanks again for your excellent information!
Hey Deb! Thanks so much for your comment! Please tell your son I wish him all the best. Glad this article helped you make a decision. Don’t be a stranger. Would love to know how your son is doing on his journey!
Well done…great article Bry. Being a proud Canuck, I thought I’d support them because they are Canadian. I’ve since left them and am ashamed what they are doing for Canada’s name in the VO World.
Thanks, Bryan! Truthfully, they should be ashamed. Of course, the fact that they keep making things worse and worse leads me to believe that they are caring less and less. I still make connections because of them. Mostly, it’s people who heard my demos on the site, then Googled my name. If they have a clue how many clients they’re losing, then they must have something else up their sleeve. I wish you the best in the VO world!
Hey Bryan!
Sorry if this has already been answered, but have you uploaded a review of Voices123 yet?
Thanks!!
Hey Courtney. I haven’t posted a Voice123 review yet, but I have definitely been considering it. Far less cons for that site, even though I had a recent situation with them. I’ll hopefully get one up before too long. Thanks for checking in!
Super job, Bryan. I forwarded your blog link to the man who wrote glowingly of voices dot com at their recent infusion of investor cash.
Thanks, Bob! While I despise the business practices on Voices, you can still make a lot of great connections through them. As long as a posted job on their site is completed through the site, the client can then contact for any future jobs, separate from Voices. I just had a client contact me yesterday and ask if I needed to work through Voices for a new project. I gave him a resounding “no”. At that point, we met in the middle of that 20% cut that Voices takes and both of us wound up with a little more money in our pockets at the end of the day. If both clients and talent are going to remain on Voices, they just need to know what’s happening and how to avoid those issues. In closing, I’ll just say, I have multiple clients per year contact me and say that they simply found my profile on Voices and then searched my name on Google, all because they didn’t want to work through Voices. I’m telling you that Voices is sitting on a goldmine that they have chased quality talent and clients away from. Thanks for the forward, Bob! Keep in touch!
Super glad I googled reviews for Voices.com! After spending decades in radio, I’ve whittled it down to a part-time morning show gig. Was looking forward to getting started in a more substantial voice over business, after dealing with just local and regional agencies and clients. I began to create my profile on Voices.com just the other day…uploaded some demos and, right after I entered my phone number, my phone rang! It was a rep from the site, asking me how much experience I had, how much time I was planning to devote to auditions, etc…and, to expect to get at least 20 leads for auditions each day. I was told about a newbie rate special..which, of course, expires in a few days. I just thought it was pretty desperate sounding! Reading your review certainly solidified my suspicions!! I still haven’t finished my profile…got an email this mornng, reminding me to do it. Not so sure about that, now!! Thanks for the honest info…
No worries at all, Donna! They are consistently getting worse. The fact of the matter is, I still get clients through Voices, but nothing overly substantial. The big key is just to avoid any posting by the Voices.com staff. Yesterday, there was a post by Voices.com and the budget was $2700. The actual fee for a project of that nature, according to Global Voice Academy, was over $13,000. I guess I wouldn’t have been so blown away by this if the Voices.com employee hadn’t said in the description that the “budget set was the typical rate” for this type of project. This crossed the line to insulting. I wish you the very best! Voice123 and bodalgo are still out there!
Bryan,
Thanks for the info. I worked in radio for a few years in a small town market. I currently freelance in web design and blogging. I’m looking to expand into voice work. I found Voices.com, and signed up, and was called by an account rep within a couple of hours. She left a message, and then sent an email. I finally called her back, and asked some questions. She told me about the premium membership, and told me to wait until the last week of June as it would be discounted $150. I left it at “This will give me time to get my studio setup as I had just moved a few months ago and everything is still packed.”
I decided that before I spent that much money on a membership, I would be doing some more research. After reading a couple of other reviews, and then finding yours, I’m convinced that they are not a fit for me. I will look at Voices123 and Boldago. I will update my website as well to reflect my expansion into voice over work.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for the detailed information I need to make an informed decision. I also appreciate the resources in this article such as the Global Voice Over Academy Link.
Thanks again.
Thanks Jeremy! Glad for any help this was to you. Just be prepared to receive a lot of calls and emails trying to get you on the Premium membership. In any event, Voice123 is a good option for you. Make sure you get yourself PayPal and require all new clients to either pay upfront or pay a 50% deposit upfront. With no face to face contact, you never know who you’re doing business with. Good luck with branch out into VO work! It can be pretty awesome if you know how to work online casting sites.
Fascinating stuff. Are there any P2P sites with integrity? I note that The Voice Realm, whose rates are also very low, have shortlisted my submissions about 75% of the time but the conversion rate has been such that I am suspicious that this is a ploy to encourage talent to stay onside and paying!!
Hey John, I haven’t tried Voice Realm. However, I heard a few things recently from several voice talents that made me think there were better options out there. I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never done anything with them. The only thing to keep in mind is that most people would love to speak into a microphone at home and make money. Some of them would take 5 cents on the dollar. So the fact of the matter is, online casting is great and the way of the future, but subpar talent is coming out of the woodwork and driving the industry down. The encouraging news is that most of this “talent” doesn’t get booked. Keep plugging away! Best of luck!
I’ve noticed the supposedly tailored voice algorithm on both voices.com and voice123.com has gone very wrong since I’m getting all kinds of audition notifications that have nothing what so ever to do with my profile.
Hey Michael! Join the very unfortunate club. I’ve been amazed at some of the invitations I’ve gotten recently. Especially since Voices.com sends a lot fewer auditions on a day to day basis. When I get 15 auditions to my inbox daily and a handful of those aren’t even close to my voice specs, I basically call that stealing. What’s the point of me entering in my specs to begin with? Hope you’re still having success, though!
Thank you for this, Bryan. After a major life change, I’ve begun following my dream of being a professional actress, which has always included voiceover (I have recently started auditioning). In my research, I stumbled across voice.com, then your reviews. It’s a good thing that I did, as I was on the verge of signing up with them.
I really appreciate it!
Hey Carol! Glad to hear you’re looking into voice over. It can be a great industry as long as we keep the honesty flowing. Glad I was able to help you in your decision. I don’t normally post anything like I did here, but I just felt that at the very least, I need to just let people know what’s happening. The decision is still up to you if you wanted to try a month on the site. No matter what you decide to do, I wish you the very best. Let me know how things are going!
Wow! I am so glad to have stumbled across your site and grateful as well. I now know who I won’t be dealing with. Being very much the newbie to the VO industry (after having spent years in Marketing/Engineering/Oil and Gas) I thought I’d try this but looks like I’ll be doing more digging. Thanks Bryan so very much for your insight.
Cheers
Glad you found my site, Glynis! Voices.com CAN be a good place for newbies. The problem is, that’s about as far as the average person can go. They have publicly admitted that they want to create a lot of small success stories, rather than big ones. In other words, they make a big point of throwing things into the mix that keep new talent from becoming very successful. What’s hurting them is that a lot of the talent remaining on the site is mediocre at best and the talent with the real ability ultimately are causing clients to leave the site…and they’re doing it 100% ethically. I’ve had numerous brand new clients contact me from just having found my Voices.com profile. Their typical feelings are, “I’ve used Voices.com in the past and would rather not go through that again.” Many of the jobs are not completed on the site because the clients can’t find a lot of quality voices to choose from. Find a site that doesn’t appear to do so much to stand in the way of your success. Unfortunately, Voices.com doesn’t fit that description right now. All of us are hoping they’ll change. I do with you the very best with your VO career. Don’t be a stranger here!
Hi Bryan….great info! Thanks for posting this. I too was an avid voices.com member from their inception, particularly because it is or WAS a Canadian company. I let my membership lapse years ago. I still have a free profile and get the odd private invite but from what I’ve read from you and Nethervoice and several others I won’t be going back anytime soon, even though I too get the “personal” email from various people, at least once a month, offering me a special deal. Thanks again for your thorough and honest article.
Jud Niven
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
Thanks, Jud! I wish the stuff I said here was untrue, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. The only shot at building a career on Voices.com is making great connections on self serve jobs. Thankfully, I get quite a bit of repeat business, but I can tell you that almost all of the clients that have come back to me for repeat business have come to me apart from the Voices.com website. So trust me, it’s not just the talent leaving the site. Keep a lookout as I will soon be posting the pros and cons about Voice123. Good luck with your VO career!
Hi Bryan!
Great reviews and advice! As a radio personality who’s been in the business for 18 years I am now at the stage of my career looking to make a little extra income as a voiceover artist. After setting up my profile on voices.com I almost immediately got a call from an account manager who was only too happy to help me touch up my profile, which at the time, I thought was a good sign in order for me to get work. It was only when I asked him about how much work can I expect to get he replied, “We have many who just don’t want to put the work in and as a result, quit. That was the first red flag. He then proceeded to tell me that because I’m a radio ‘guy’ and have the experience I should have no problem. It was when he told me how much the membership was I said I will need some time to think about it, and buy a microphone. Since then I have literally received 12 emails from him, none of which I have replied to, asking me when I’m going to join and if I had any questions. Talking about HIGH PRESSURE sales! That to me only tells me that they are desperate and clearly only care about getting people to join and then leaving them out to pasture with no work , despite the hundreds of auditions members make with no response. After reading all your comments it seems voices123 might be the better choice? As a fellow professional, can I ask what you think of my short demo which can be found on the audio link of my website? Just launched my website and ANY feedback would be so greatly appreciated! And thanks again for your thoughts on voices.com!
Hey JT! Thanks for jumping on the page here! Trust me, those people are nothing but high pressure. I don’t believe the salesmen are pocketing the commissions. I’m betting they take in what they can and it goes directly to the CEO, based on the turnover I’ve seen. In any event, I do agree that because you’ve been in radio, you’ve already got an advantage. It’s all about volume. The more auditions, the more bookings. Check out my other blog about the type of mic I recommend. Your site looks solid. The homepage video is killer. I couldn’t get the VO demos to play, but I’m sure they’re great! I’ll try again soon. I wish you the very best! Don’t be a stranger!
Hi Bryan, thanks for laying it all out in the open! I’ve been doing VO for a few years now and I’ve been comparing P2P sites to find the best one recently, voices.com nearly got me with the $100-off deal and I know an actor that still works through them now. I haven’t investigated Voice123 yet but I’ve been invited to join The Voice Realm after sending them my demo, £99 a year plus 15% fee from any jobs. Have you had any experience with this site or know anyone who has?
Hey Luke! Thanks for commenting here! Hope VO has been treating you well! Believe me, I was an advertisement for Voices.com for the first two years I was on the site. I have yet to look into The Voice Realm. Because I’m a stage performer, I’m pretty much just on Voice123 right now. I book what I need off the site, plus I get quite a bit from repeat clients. Voice123 is the only one I can recommend other than Bodalgo. However, you will find a lot more auditions on 123 simply because it’s much more well known. Whatever site you end up jumping on, learn everything you can and try to audition as much as possible. Your booking rate will sync up pretty well with your audition rate. I wish you the very best!
Holy moly, SO glad I came across this review! I’ve been doing local VO work through my own radio & spokesperson contacts for years & have finally decided to ramp it up abit. Voices.com was one of the sites you always hear about. I have to say, I haven’t heard anything nearly as in depth as this. I so appreciate the fact that you laid it all out here. Ok, to be clear, it looks as though you believe Voices123 is a-ok, right? This will be my first foray into P2P & actually, I naively thought I could actually get work from the free Standard choice, but apparently that is not the case. Any opinion on say, Upwork or the like?
Hey Melody! Glad to hear that you’re ramping up your VO work! Yes, at this point, Voice123 is the one I would recommend. Voices.com has become the new Fiverr, unfortunately. Now, I will tell you that you can book work on a P2P site with a free membership, but it’s hard. There’s a lot more that goes into it. Get your paid membership and start knocking out at least 15 auditions per day, if possible. Hope you start booking real soon!
As someone who is just starting out – thank you. You have no idea how much money you just saved me. I had considered doing the $399 option on voices.com (which is currently discounted to $299), but don’t want to waste the money if the chances are slim to none that I will get any work. I appreciate your time and effort.
Hey Kate! Jumping on the site doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get any work. However, these sites should give us respect and they are doing the complete opposite. Voices.com is basically stealing from the talent and they have yet to admit to it. That’s just not something that any of us need to be around. I wish you the very best with your VO career!
Hello Bryan,
Wow – what a great, well written and well researched couple of articles (I read your first one and then this follow up). I’ve only been involved with VO for a couple of years. I started with 11 coaching sessions with Marc Cashman, then began my foray into this exciting field. Marc had suggested Voices as a starting point, so I signed on as a monthly member as that was the most I could afford. I did as many auditions as I had time for, maybe 5 – 8 a day and did manage to book 2 decent jobs over a year’s time – enough to have covered the fees. At the same time I was using other sites such as Fiverr & VoiceBunny to get work and hone my skills. I made way more money through those sites and even picked up a few clients that used me directly so after a year I dropped out of Voices. It’s been a year since then and I’m still doing well with those two sites but felt my skills had improved enough to maybe try Voices again. Since VoiceBunny is associated with Voices123, I thought about considering them as well and went about searching for any articles comparing the two. I am SO glad I found yours!!!! I had read about some of the goings on at Voices very similar (ok, exactly the same 🙂 ) to what you had written before, but with no where near the detail you supplied. Because of that detail, I felt very comfortable accepting your article as truth (I had actually personally seen a job posted on Voices and then on Fiverr and indeed, the budget was higher on Fiverr….ON FIVERR!! Jeez!)
Anyway, thanks again for this great article and the advice. I know where I’m going to pay to play now!!!
~Carmen
Thanks so much for you comment, Carmen! I’ll be honest, you got my attention when you said you saw a higher budget job on Fiverr. That’s about the equivalent of finding a real diamond ring out of gumball machine. I haven’t been to either Fiverr or VoiceBunny, mainly because of some things I’ve heard, so I can’t comment too much there. I would take a look at Voice123. Get your skill to the point of doing an audition in 3-5 minutes. If you can knock out 10-15 auditions in an hour, this will greatly help you booking rate go up! Good luck with it!
Bryan, Thank you for your thorough research, info and suggestions. You have confirmed much of what I suspected. It is indeed sad that voices.com, which was such a good company a few years ago, has gone so far astray. I’ve also questioned whether or not the voice consultant on the “managed” postings forwards all the auditions, or screens many of them before sending them. In the past year, I’ve noticed that many of my auditions never get a listen…this rarely happened in the past. Many thanks also for all your one-on-one help in the past. Keep talking!
Rafael
Rafael!!! Hands down, one of my favorite voices in this industry! I know you have been on both sites and I would definitely recommend heading over to Voice123 and hanging around there. The unfortunate part of what you’re saying is…you’re right. The Professional Services people at Voices.com forward to the client whatever auditions they want, which, no matter how much they deny this fact, it’s actually illegal for them to do so. They are not an agency, therefore, they are not allowed to act as such. One thing I noticed a lot in the last year, is if my fee was within their budget range, my audition was listened to. However, when I was outside of their budget range, my audition was rarely listened to. They may do some screening based on quality of audition, but they’re definitely screening based on budget. After all, the higher we quote, the smaller their commission is, and the less money they’re bringing into the company. I’m just avoiding them all together, and based on your talent, you should too! Look forward to meeting up soon!
Thank you so so much for your incredibly insightful blog and taking the time to ask such pertinent questions. I have worked in VO for several years and just on the brink of starting to work with P2P sites observing the success of some of my friends in the business. I started to set up my profile with voices.com and was going to complete the process this afternoon but following this post I will try out voices123 and Bodalgo instead. I really appreciate your work and advice in all of this. I am currently chasing up money from another client, on invoices dating back to Oct and have had enough of working with morally/ethically corrupt companies, so thank you again!
Of course, Mhairi! I’m glad this was helpful to you! Just took a look at your site. Very impressive! To something you said, unfortunately, chasing money is something that has to happen every now and then. Getting an agent can definitely help with that. The good news is, that’s a rare thing if you establish the expectations from the beginning and the client’s perception of you is big. Voices.com does cut out the part of chasing the client to get paid. Unfortunately, too many other bad things are going on for me, and many others, to stick around. Best of luck with Voice123 and Bodalgo!
Man this really makes me sick to my stomach that voices.com has gotten really greedy as the years have gone on. Regardless of what everyone says P2P is kind alike a cattle call kind of a mess anyway from my experience somewhat. I have had a little bit better experaince on thevoicerealm.com but even still not the greatest. It is very hard to land a job it seems on casting sites. I might look into voice123 or that other site you mentioned. Right now I have a free account on voice123 and voices.com in hopes possibly to get a personal invite to a booked job. I can’t afford the membership fees right now for either of those sites. I will probably not at all join voices.com and pay for their site after reading this article and business practices very disgusting. Will need to take a listen to that awkard interview of the ceo of voices.com. Haha I wonder how edge studio felt afterwards of that interview. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t edge studio to sometimes reccomend voice talent to go to voices.com and join there in the past? I thought I have heard that somewhere or on their site.
Sean
Hi Sean. Thanks for your comments! I’m not sure if Edge Studio has recommended Voices.com in the past, but I know they’re certainly not recommending them now. I’ve had a good experience in booking on P2P sites. I’ve made a lot of good connections and have gotten some great clients that now book with me directly. Very few of my repeat clients from Voices.com prefer to use their platform. There’s just far too many complaints surrounding them. Bodalgo might be an option for you. They offer a monthly membership that’s about half the price of Voices.com’s monthly membership. Keep in mind that there are much fewer auditions on that site, as it is still pretty new, although I’ve seen an increase recently. If you get a chance, go look at my link under “Anything Else” regarding reviews from past employees. Since a major layoff at Voices.com last year, quite a few reviews have shown up and it’s quite interesting to read what some of the recent issues have been over there, including misreporting the amount of revenue taken in. I wish you the best and don’t hesitate to let me know how things are going.
Hello Bryan,
thanks for your reply back to me much appreciated. I actually decided to join Bodalgo after seeing interview with the owner on a website and seems like a very interesting place. I joined in February still auditioning like mad on there I have been shortlisted a couple of times but still no luck as of yet really trying to land a gig. I do like the concept a little bit better on there compared to other p2p sites but time will tell. I got the 6 month plan on there and trying hard to audition to any that come on there. you are correct as well there is not as much auditions to do compared to thevoicerealm.com or the other ones it seems.
I wish you a good day.
Sean
You got it, Sean! One thing to keep in mind with Bodalgo is that they are based out of Europe. A lot of those VO clients are looking for really strong voices. So, unless you get specific direction to read in a conversational tone, I would try to add a little more authority to your voice! I might jump back on there before long. There are more auditions than there used to be. Hope you get booked over there soon!
Sure wish I would have seen this before I signed up for a month! Atleast I won’t be sucked into a yearly membership, now though. Thank you for the information.
So we have voice123.com, is that the only site left for voice talent?
Hi Jane! Since you’ve signed up for a month, at least you can take that time to learn a little bit of how P2P sites work. Just know that you’ll be contacted quite a few times from Voices.com, trying to get you into their Premium Membership, which I wouldn’t take right now at half price. Just be on top of canceling your membership the day before it expires because they’ll automatically renew. As far as other sites, I would say that Voice123 is probably the best P2P option available right now, as far as number of decent paying jobs are concerned. Another good site is bodalgo.com. They’re new to the game so you won’t see nearly as many jobs posted on that site, but they seem to attract the higher end clients, from what I remember. I can definitely recommend Voice123 based on the quality of jobs I’ve gotten from them. I wish you the very best and please keep in touch!
Hello Bryan. Love your work. So I am relatively new to VO. I joined voices.com a little over a year ago. Took me 200 auditions to book but I never did VO before that. Since then I have booked over 20 jobs and made over $5k. Not where I’d like to be but better than some I suppose! I wanted to ask you about other voiceover outlets that operate like voices. I love the one stop shop idea and ease of use. But the pay seems to be going down and in most cases the communication (when voices manages the job) is awful. Josh was mentioned above and I believe I know exactly who that is. He never responds when he’s managing. Those of us seeking agents would love to have the concept of voices with a little less hand in our cookie jar. Thanks for the very valuable insight! – Jeff
Hey Jeff! I appreciate your input. 20 jobs out of 200 auditions is not bad at all. 10% booking ratio is very good. Congrats on your success! I would look into Voice123 or Bodalgo. These are the only ones I can recommend right now based on experience. Voices.com was a great one stop shop where even the payment was handled. However, I don’t mind losing the escrow service to gain some honesty and, truthfully, better pay. I booked nearly three times as many jobs on Voices.com than Voice123 last year and made approximately half the money. I don’t say all this to promote one site over another, but I think it’s important, especially for new talent, to know what’s going on here. I wish you the very best! Please keep in touch!
Hey Bryan
Did you see on their rate page that all rates shown are now “Rates are in US Dollars and include a worldwide unlimited usage “full buy-out” license.”
This is how they sell our audio recordings to clients!!!!!
INCREDIBLE!
Claire
Hey Claire! Thanks for your message! I will just say that I had a major dispute with them about this very topic just a few months ago. A client took my audio and made more than one commercial, when the job description stated clearly that it was for one video. When I approached Voices.com about this situation, they told me that it didn’t go against their policy to create multiple videos from one audio recording. My argument was, if they are so concerned about keeping with the “industry standard rates” (according to their rate sheet), wouldn’t allowing a client unlimited usage go against their rates/industry policy? As hard to believe as it is, the employee didn’t have a concrete answer. He knows they’re doing wrong, but he has no authority. He said that if it had been specifically stated in the agreement that it was for one video only, then Voices,com could step in and help. Well, guess what happened when I showed him that it WAS specifically stated in the agreement? He reminded me of their unlimited usage policy, basically contradicting himself in under 30 seconds…a new record. I don’t know where you are in your voice over career, Claire, but I advise you to completely stay away from Voices.com.
And for that reason, Sharks, I’m out! Thanks, Bryan!
You got it, Steven! I’ve heard your stuff. Good talent doesn’t need to be treated this way. I’m glad you’re stepping out! I’m riding my membership out (which ends in November), in case someone contacts me for a VO project. As soon as my membership ends, I’m gone! Very best of luck!
Hello Bryan! Have you heard anything about the cancelling of the Platinum memberships?
Hey Natalia! I will give as many updates on this as I can when as they become available. From what I understand, Voices.com is removing the Platinum Unlimited which allows talent to receive every audition that comes through the site. They are only offering Platinum Standard, which they claim increases your visibility in their search engines. And for that, they charge $2500. However, here’s the “best” part: talents who have paid the $4000 for Unlimited, that fee doesn’t transfer over to Standard, so a lot of them are going to have to pay AGAIN! What’s the reason for getting rid of Unlimited in the first place? They want to make sure all the new talent get booked. So it doesn’t matter how much work we all put in when we started. What matters to Voices.com is that everyone gets an equal share, even if they’re not going their equal share of the work. And because brand new talent don’t know what to charge, they’ll accept these $100 jobs when Voices.com is pocketing several times that amount. I’m comfortable enough now to call them crooks. And just an FYI, I know for a fact they just lost a couple of major talents.
Wow, what an insightful blog! I’m glad I stumbled on your page and saw this before making any decisions. The people of Voices.com sound like crooks and I’m still unsure as to why more people haven’t come forward about these issues.
Hopefully you get the answers soon!
Thanks so much for your comment, Natalia! I’m not going to go as far yet as to say that they’re crooks. However, there are certainly a lot of unanswered questions that they seem to be refusing to even address, and most of those questions have to deal with their ethics. It’s such a shame because they could be successful beyond their wildest dreams, all while maintaining ethical standards. At this point, however, it’s going to take them a while to get back a lot of the big talent that left the site. Voices.com has lost a lot of trust in the industry, especially among the professional talent. As always, my best advice is to proceed with caution. I wish you the very best and thanks again for your comment!
This is a VERY enlightening article, and the responses are equally educational. Thank you for the information.
Thank you so much for your comment, Chris! That’s the whole reason I have this out in the public eye. Honesty is critical and I just think that people should at least know to proceed with caution on Voices.com, especially right now. Thank you again and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions!
And the saga continues! Earlier this week, a job appeared on Voices.com to read for 5 videos. The total budget was listed as $180. If following the Voices.com rate sheet, that’s $320 less than it should be. I sent a message on Facebook to the same employee that I spoke of in the article. My message was as follows:
“Just curious, how is 5 reads $180? Even following the Voices rate sheet’s minimum, wouldn’t that be 5 videos, totaling $500?”
The message was “seen” just over 20 minutes later and was never given a response. Once again, Voices.com was backed into a corner and decided to avoid the question all together. No correction was ever made to the job. Following their rate sheet at $100 for one video, making the total $500, that’s still incredible low. Not to speculate, but knowing the industry and after asking a fellow talent, I believe Voices.com received no less than $750 to get a talent for all 5 videos.
If they can’t even acknowledge a blatantly obvious mistake, even when they have publicly made it clear that we should inform them of any such situation, then that should give you some indication of why talents have a hard time trusting Voices.com. The evidence leads to the appearance of things are being hidden and until proven otherwise, I just can’t allow myself to give this company the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Just to give a quick follow-up to this story, a response was just now sent to me from this same employee which says:
“I did look into this for you and you’re right. It was confusing. We had the job edited to make more sense and be in line with proper rates.”
Unless I completely missed a repost of this job, nothing changed at all. I just took a look at the job posting and there were no edits made. It still gives the same 5 reads for $180. I’m wondering if this was another one of these “internal changes” that the voice talents and clients are unable to see? If there were actually some edits made, shouldn’t we be able to see them?
So pleased not to support Voicesdotcom any longer – did not renew my membership but left my profile up. As a result, was contacted with a private request for an audition. Wrote to the client that I was pleased to submit an audition but if selected, would prefer to work directly. He liked what I sent him and responded that Voices are still screwing over the talent. After he posted his job, the team contacted him and said they would manage the job for $700.00 twice what the narration was advertised for. He said he was not interested and in the meantime his job was removed from the public list. He’s not working them any longer and is disgusted with their practices. Moral of the story – they are still screwing the talent and those posting on the site.
Thanks so much for your comment, Dennis! I would love to be able to tell you that you’re wrong or that this is uncommon, but unfortunately, I can’t do either. Voices.com has made these kinds of stories common, they just do their best to sweep them under the rug. If Voices.com really wanted to act as a middle man, their primary focus should be to look out for the talent and the client, making sure that the budget maintains high ethical standards for both parties. I just got contacted today by a client that I initially met through Voices.com. They’re about to hire me for a fourth or fifth voice over, since leaving Voices.com. They were very quick to tell me, after booking me for the first time which was through Voices.com, that they would never use the site again. They were infuriated about their experience through the site. Then, their anger levels doubled when they asked if I could still do it for the same price and we concluded that the Pro Services team at Voices.com had charged them just slight less than twice my fee. Also, just a few weeks ago, a client who had never booked me through Voices.com, found my profile and did a Google search to contact me directly. When I asked out of curiosity why he didn’t contact me through Voices.com, his response was, “I don’t want to get into what happened since you’re still with them, but let’s just say that I can’t stand their employees.” And this is just two cases out of the ten or so that I’ve acquired over the last year.
The bottom line for me is, I’ll stay with the site to audition for self-serve jobs, but as soon as their efforts to control that become more evident to the talents, I’m gone. It would not shock me if Voices.com is already posting jobs under different company names to hide the fact that the jobs are Pro Services. We’ll see.
Thanks again for joining the conversation and sharing your story!
I am currently in the same position with the Professional Services Dept at Voices.
A job was posted for 3 sentences and 2500 Individual names.
Think about that – reading 2500 individual names. The budget was $600
Plus, a directed session was required, to have the client on the phone/ISDN/SourceConnect (not specified), directing the session. Surely there is additional value on that.
I contacted voices about the budget, because I truly believe that this job was very low balled and inappropriate.
Now… let me be clear. I did NOT audition for the job.
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But, when I reached out to inquire about it… I got a response from Josh that said – (and this is copy pasted from the last email I received)
Hi Dave,
These are just singular names, from my understanding after having talked to the project manager, as such this is just 2900 words in total. Which fits the aforementioned budget range.
Regards,
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Now, I have reached back out to Josh at voices.com 2 times about what the budget for the job was prior to the involvement of professional services… and so far, both emails have gone completely unanswered.
My frustration with the low ball rates from the Professional Services Division is rapidly growing.
Even more frustrating is knowing that with all of the auditions I am providing, many may not even reach the intended client.
-Dave
Hey Dave! Hope you’re doing well, man! I’ve seen you up there in the rankings of Voices.com many times. You got some good stuff! I really appreciate your input here!
Trust me, I saw that job the other day and took me a few minutes to uncross my eyes. You said it perfectly. The 2900 words for $600 is bad enough, but a directed session on top of that, reading 2500 names, is humorous. I don’t have to tell you what a directed session is like. I”m sure you’ve had instances where you’re reading one word 15 different ways (sometimes more). I can’t even imagine the nonsense of 2500 names. Directed sessions should already be a per hour charge and if ISDN is a requirement, another $150 just for that.
Reaching out to Voices.com for a straight answer on budget is like fishing in a swimming pool for king mackerel. When the say it “fits the aforementioned budget” you have to keep in mind that they’re going by THEIR rate sheet, which I told this Voices.com employee, mentioned in the article, that it was very out of date. And you can’t press them about it. I’ve already heard from several talents that when you back someone at Voices.com into a corner via email, you won’t get a response. Probably for fear that they’ll look like David.
Here’s what I’m guessing has happened. The fact of the matter is, most of the people that bid low for a job still sound like they are overpricing themselves when you hear their auditions. This leads to a major influx of horrendous quality auditions that never get selected by the client. However, all the good auditions, mostly by pros, have a bid that usually far exceeds the listed budget, which unfortunately, cuts into Voices.com’s “well deserved” commission. So, in an effort to get the pros to bid lower, Voices.com has dropped the listed budget even further. What they are failing to understand is that if a pro has a set rate sheet they go by, Voices.com could put a budget of $5 and it still wouldn’t change anything. Most of the pro talents have and display a commitment to integrity, unlike what we’re currently seeing from Voices.com.
At this point, backing out of auditioning for Pro Services seems to be the best idea at this point. I’m not going to let them determine my income on something that I’ve worked hard for.