The other day, I was talking to a voice over business insider, and he shared a bit of news with me.
Voices dot com (VDC), the Canadian P2P that is no longer welcome at any voice over conference, will now start posting jobs in the range of $5 to $249 to “align with a change in the marketplace.”
Yes, you read that correctly. The minimum rate is now $5. I wonder where they got that idea from…
VDC explains:
“We’re excited to introduce a new price point to attract clients. (…) We’ve received client feedback that they often have small, short projects worth less than $100, particularly in the non-broadcast voice over, the most popular job type on our platform. Because of this feedback, we wanted to make this change in order to drive more work for you.”
In other words:
To do you a favor, dear talent, we are once again lowering the rates, so you end up doing more for less while keeping our membership fee the same.
VDC does stress that it’s up to the individual talent to go as low as they wish to go “to build relationships and trust with clients through these smaller, introductory projects.”
Translation:
We’re offering you a rope. Go hang yourself if you like, but don’t blame us. We’re just trying to help.
Once again, this greedy market leader is showing the world how much it values the work of their “members.” Or should I say “devalues”?
Imagine a company like FORD enthusiastically announcing a huge pay cut for their factory workers, just so they can make their cars more affordable to buyers on a budget. How well would that go over? Do you think these workers might go on strike?
Maybe I’m unique in the voice over world, but I happen to run a high-end, FOR-PROFIT business. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d rather make more for less, than less for more. Call me insane, but I happen to believe that clients are paying for my experience and expertise, even when they hire me for smaller projects.
From this perspective I fail to see how VDC’s move to make voice over services cheaper, benefits anyone but these poor small project clients and VDC’s own bottom line. But because VDC is a market leader in online casting, they are sending a strong signal to that market about what they think our service is worth.
And by the way: think about the cost of living and inflation for a moment. Is it going up or down? Is it harder for most people to make ends meet? Are products and services getting more expensive? Have you had to raise your rates to make sure you’re not losing money?
Do you feel that companies have a social responsibility to help those who are helping them make big profits, especially in times of need? I mean, companies with a conscience?
Do you see voices dot com helping their talent out by lowering the VDC membership fee to “align with a change in the marketplace”?
Here’s a reminder:
If I’m not mistaken, unlike other P2P’s, VDC doesn’t allow direct contact between talent and clients. How are you going to “build relationships and trust with clients” if you can’t communicate directly?
Who determines your worth? YOU, or some company in Canada?
Who puts the voices in voices dot com?
By being a VDC member, you keep this company in business. Be honest: do you really think they have your best interest at heart?
If the answer is NO, what are you going to do about it?
What am I going to do about it?
First of all say a huge “thank you ” Paul for highlighting this change. Yes I am a member, but I had already decided not to rejoin when my renewal comes up in November and your blog has just cemented my decision.
Secondly, as I say, cancel my membership.
Thirdly, write to them to get more information about whether or not the T&Cs for voices will change. For example you’ve quoted them as saying that they want to “build relationships and trust with clients through these smaller, introductory projects” but will they still prohibit direct contact with clients?
Fourthly, probably curse as I shall have to do more direct marketing, which frankly I hate and goes against my journalistic tendencies.
Hey ho
Nicky .
P2P’s want you to become dependent on them. They are like the boyfriend from hell. And if you decide to leave, they’ll blame you for breaking up the relationship.
No one will ever work as hard for you as you do. Take your power back, and show the world what you have to offer. There’s no membership fee for that, and you have no commission to pay either.
Thank you for the great illustration and I am also going to choose to not renew on the platform for the very reasons you highlighted. I have done well enough on the platform to always rationalize renewing and have remarkably been able to gain one recurring customer off the platform. I have learned more about self-marketing and have started to be more selective in projects I want to work on. I would rather go to V123 where at least that platform appears to support the voice actor more with flexibility to actually build a relationship with clients. Thank you for your advocacy!
You’re very welcome, Bruce. It takes some guts to leave a platform that is giving you business. In fact, that’s usually the response I get when people read my stories about VDC. They say: “Yeah, I don’t like what VDC is doing, but I can’t afford to leave them. How else am I going to find work?” As you point out, there are plenty of alternatives to VDC, and there’s also the concept of self-promotion and marketing. Wishing you the very best, personally and professionally. BTW, thanks for subscribing to this blog!
VDC keeps sending me special offers to resubscribe. I dropped their paid subscription a few years ago.
My thinking is this. A client or customer is the one paying an entity for a service. Buyers of voiceover services, while a very necessary component, are not paying VDC a dime, so they are not VDC’s clients. Voice talent are VDC’s clients and should be treated as such. Our value needs to be supported and protected.
It’s not necessarily true that voice seekers don’t pay VDC. Let’s assume a client pays Voices $650 for their services. That doesn’t mean the talent will see or get $650 for a voice-over narration. Colleagues tell me that Voices will often show the job as paying much less, from which a 10% escrow fee will be deducted as part of their SurePay™ system that every member is forced to use.
This is not some random example. This actually happened to voice-over Andrew Randall. The client was already a contact of his, and told him how much they had paid Voices to get the job done. Andrew writes:
“The rate Voices.com originally posted on this job was $440. Deducting their 10% escrow fee, that would have left me $396. That means Voices.com was intending to keep $254 of the client’s voice-over talent budget of $650, or a staggering 39%.”
This particular job was handled by Voices’ Professional Services team. This division will cast the job on the client’s behalf, and more and more projects are handled this way. It seems fair that a client pays a bit extra for this service, but close to 40%? That’s a huge cut of which the voice talent will never see a dime.
A ticked off Andrew responded:
“Union agents are only legally allowed to take 10% of a talent’s fee, and even non-union agents never take more than 20%, and usually 10 to 15%. I wonder how much money I have lost over the years from previous jobs for which I was unaware that Voices.com was taking such a huge cut of my fee. I may seek legal advice to see if I have a case to request those exorbitant fees back.”
Oh, yes. That’s for their “managed” jobs. I’ve seen that too and it stinks! When I was a paid subscriber, I avoided the managed jobs like the plague. Nothing short of stealing from both the buyer and the talent.
and of course they’ll keep yanking 20% off the top of every gig so those $5 jobs are really $4… and for the privilege if accessing those bottom if the barrel crapfest “jobs” talent can keep paying the exorbitant membership fee.
I truly hate voices.. and voice123 garners pretty close yo the same level of ire from me. they at least don’t rape you for that 20%, or do managed service jobs and keep 90% of the client budget for themselves, but the budgets keep circling the drain there too.
p2p sites suck. as a long time software engineer I’d be tempted to build my own, but I can’t stoop to the level of being yet another hand digging in the pocket of talent for no good reason.
would certainly prefer to avoid these sites entirely, but for the time being they’re somewhat a necessary evil for me, so I at least stick to reasonably budgeted opportunities.
If there are two words in the English language I hate more than others, they must be “necessary evil.” The term is a weak excuse to accept a horrible situation. By doing that, those using the term become part of the problem. They enable a bad situation and in doing so, make it worse.
Pay to Plays want you to believe that they are necessary for you to make a living as a voice actor. Thanks to this blog I am in contact with many VO’s who are doing just fine without these parasitic companies. All you need to do, is what is expected of anyone running a business: offer the best products or service, promote what you have to offer, and attract clients.
Yes, it requires more work than paying a hefty membership fee and waiting for the mediocre auditions to flood your inbox. I get that. But the rewards are much greater and more gratifying. If I had a choice, I would much rather create my own success, than leave it to the likes of the CEO of voices dot com who obviously doesn’t care about the business I love so much.
Yes, “all I need to do” is what I’m already doing… But it’d sure be nice to book something from time to time, in the meantime, too. 🙂
Until I have _regular_ business coming from my own marketing efforts, yes, it’s one of the few sources that are providing me opportunity so, maybe necessary isn’t the most apt word (evil arguably is), but not everybody has a big list of recurring clients right now, today… so, for now, it’s necessary-ish – and I really held my nose paying their subscription fee because I do genuinely HATE them. I bypass more than I audition for though because the budgets are crap more often than not, and never touch those poison ‘managed’ jobs.
But please, don’t assume that I’m not also doing all the other things..
I don’t know you, Will, so I can only go by what you have written. If I were in your shoes, I would invest the money that would go to a VDC membership fee, in a voice over marketing training (assuming you already have the right skillset to win auditions).
I would have a very hard time paying money to a company I hate, that does not have my best interest or the interest of my community at heart.
Have done, several times over in fact, and yea I do have a very hard time giving any business to vdc.
As I’m sure you’re aware, marketing, and cultivating those relationships, and getting business from those efforts takes a considerable amount of time, it’s not something that happens overnight. I would LOVE for 100% of my business to come from direct contacts that I’ve made from my own marketing efforts, or people who find me, or agent auditions, but that’s not the reality I presently live in… and I’ve got bills to pay. VDC is _definitely_ not a part of my long game, nor is any other p2p. 👍
It would be unfair to you to give you specific advice because I don’t know your situation or what you have done to book more jobs. What I can say is that based on results, you’re not achieving your goals. Many different factors could contribute to that. Logic dictates that if what you’re doing is not working, you try something else. To anyone reading this over our shoulders I can say that they should not rely on companies like voices dot com to pay the bills. They are an unreliable partner that is pimping their talent out to the cheapest clients while pretending to do us a service. That’s like Starbucks justifying a huge cut in pay, so they can attract more business.
I was not surprised when I saw that email come through. It’s just another way for then to milk VO for more money, which is all they care about.
P2P’s are a virtual cattle call. People should expect to be milked.
Its amazing to me how many talent I know who not only are still on the site, but apparently still doing well on it. They either don’t care about what the company is doing to the industry (because it’s not directly affecting them in the site), or they get so much revenue yearly off the site they can’t see a road to covering the revenue off the platform.
The question is: do you have a WE-mentality and a long-term strategy, or a ME-mentality and you only care about the present. If you only care about how well you do on the platform, you probably think this story about minimum rates is irrelevant and it won’t affect you. Until you see rates decline even further and you finally feel it in your pocket. At that point it’s probably too late to do anything about it. It’s much easier for rates to go down than to go up. Especially when market leaders set negative trends.
I dropped vdc early this year and now more glad than ever that I did!
VDC: The originators of the race to the bottom.
It’s their business, so they can do with it whatever they want. What surprises me more is all the “members” that go along with it.
I am truly baffled by the idea of paying $5 or $25 or even $50 for any kind of business-related expense (which is what VO is to our clients). I can’t remember the last time I paid $5 for anything at all other than basic grocery items. It’s just unbelievable.
I pay my accountant $500 just because she saves me a few hours work and has expertise that is extremely useful to me. How do these people run businesses?
My answer would be: they don’t. In my books you simply cannot run a for-profit businesses under these conditions.
LOL. This was just like driving past a car accident on the way to work. Except it’s the same car that you’ve seen in multiple accidents for several years. Thank, old friend, for reminding me why I stay away from Pay 2 Play.
Always happy to help out.
What will I do? I’m interviewing the CEO this week to ask him these questions! Stay tuned!
Email sent!
Wow. Man, I feel dirty for still doing Voices.com . As someone who’s been laid off in 2020, had to stay home for 2 years for virtual school for the kids, VDC worked out great for ‘keeping me in the game’ where I could quickly do some auditions in the morning and then assume the ‘Dad job’ with the kids.
Now that they are in school and the wife is the main-earner, I find myself plowing through auditions on VDC, occasionally landing a job, then switching over to my own marketing efforts like my newsletter (subscribe at moosevoice.com!), tweaking website, updating my demos, uploading videos,doing webinars, etc.
I think a lot of talent are still on voices.com because they’ve gotten some decent work there and aren’t really sure how else to do it.
In the last week I’ve landed a regional commercial agent as well as a national radio imaging agency but it was only until I actually had the opportunity to ‘focus-in’ on my career and job as a voice actor that I’m starting to see some results OUTSIDE the arena of voices.com.
What am I getting at? I’m saying that the sites like voices.com are a great way to get your feet wet and build the resume but that comes at a cost. As for me, I never audition on voices.com for anything that’s way below fair value and if it’s closer in budget to where it should be, I always crank that puppy up to where it’s more in line with FMV.
I’m aware of people like Tom Dheere and other VO focused marketing ‘experts’ but what are some other avenues to explore for marketing yourself as a VO talent?
I totally understand the convenience of a P2P, and that’s what you are paying them for. But if you feel “dirty” working with VDC (which I totally understand), there are lots of alternatives to VDC. The big takeaway is that you should NEVER make yourself dependent on entities you do not control. No one is willing to work as hard for your career as you do. One of the most important ways I secure business is through content marketing, but that’s not for everyone. If you’re exploring other avenues, check out what Marc Scott and Paul Schmidt have to offer. They have done the leg work and offer tried and tested ways to further your VO career. Best of luck to you!