Voice123 and Voices.Com - Your Online Voice Over Hot Spots

If you need a professional voice for your commercial, company DVD, phone system, web video or about any other type of project, looking online is your best choice. Sure, you could invest the time to contact an agent, discuss your project, needs, budget, etc. - you might find what you're looking for, but you will definitely pay a premium price. There are agent fees, studio fees, cost of voice talent, and a variety of other costs to take into consideration. The easiest, most economical, best value for your dollar will be found online.

The two largest online voice-over communities are Voice123 and Voices.com. At either site you can sign up and post a job, your budget for the job, your script for auditions, and related criteria. You will get auditions with a direct link to contact the talent, often starting within an hour or so of posting.

Open Audition vs. Targeted Talent

While Voices.com works on an open audition system, Voice123 offers a system called SmartCast that sends your posting only to talents that fit your specifications. Both sites will allow you to search through the voice-over professionals' individual listings. Each talent will have a profile page with complete voice description and details, as well as demos you can listen to on the spot. You will also find contact information and the option to directly invite the particular talent to audition for your project. To see what information is provided and the differences between the talent profile pages, you can click on the links - view an example of a Voice123 profile and an example of a Voices.com profile.

Voices.com

If you post with Voices.com your job will be either openly posted or by private invitation only. In order to get a number of auditions without searching through people looking for who you might like, you will likely post an open audition, with all voice talent allowed to view it and submit an audition if they choose to. While this may initially seem like a good idea, you may quickly find yourself overwhelmed with auditions, many more than you'd expected to wade through, not to mention many of the people may not really fit what you had in mind by a long shot. This is a great option if you really are looking for a very large number of auditions or have little direction on what exactly you have in mind, as this many auditions will surely provide a wide variety of voice types, styles, and deliveries. I do feel it is worth mentioning that there is one posting requirement. The job must pay a minimum of $100 for the job to be posted. They also charge a voice seeker, you, an additional cost of 10% of the amount being paid to the voice talent if you use the SurePay feature, which many of the talents may use exclusively to get paid. For more information about posting a job at Voices.com, just click here.

Voice123

If you post a job with Voice123,you again can choose between posting a job without SmartCast where you will post the job only to people you choose yourself, or with SmartCast enabled, where your job will be sent only to the voice-over professionals that best match your criteria. You will also set the number of auditions you are seeking, thus insuring you do not get a completely overwhelming response, unless, of course, that is what you really need and are asking for. Another benefit to posting with Voice123 is the project budget section. There is no minimum budget to meet in order to post. You can set a fixed or flexible budget price, price range, or "to be determined", which will result in auditions with a quote for the job from each person. For information about posting a job with Voice123, click here. For more information about the SmartCast system, click here.

Welcome to the Online Voice-Over Marketplace

In conclusion, the internet has changed many types of businesses and the voice-over industry is no exception. The online voice-over marketplace is now the "go-to" spot for a great deal of large businesses, organizations, production houses, as well as small business owners looking for the best deal they can get with the "most bang for the buck". While both of the top two online voice providers can produce results, you should look into each to see which truly fits your own needs best. As most of the things in our lives do, there are benefits and drawbacks to either choice, but in the end choose wisely and I'm sure you will be pleased with what you hear.