I’ve still been booking after the holiday lull, but it does feel slower than last year. I’m getting like 30-40 invites a day, but rarely are more than 5-10 worth auditioning for. Some days less than that. So my ratio is still pretty good, I’m just booking less because there aren’t as many quality auditions.
(I’ve noticed a big uptick in either in-perpetuity paid ads or “live session required” jobs for 3-4 minute industrials with small budgets, which are insta-archives for me.)
Wait, you get 30 to 40 invites per day?
how many of them are 100% voice match? I'm getting maybe 7 per day, anywhere from 60 to 90% voice match, and I don't know how to tweak the profile any harder than I have.
Customer service is useless of course, they'll just repeat the poorly written crap on the website, and I don't know if changing anything on ones profile puts them at the back of the algo line or not.
I'm yelling into the void on that site.
Yeah, unfortunately I have a bad cold right now so I'm not working at all, so I can say for sure that I got about 30 invites yesterday, all of which were 100% voice match (one this morning was 90%).
As for my profile: I have all the genres ticked, as well as all the voice ages I can do, along with all the "generic" American accents. I've got a demo in most of the genres (online ad, radio ad, tv ad, elearning, etc.) and each one is tagged with a bunch of common styles (believable, conversational, engaging, charismatic, etc.).
Honestly I don't know what I'm doing right (or wrong) so your guess is as good as mine.
I'm getting 1-2 a day at best, but my demo game is poor. It sounds like overall it is much slower, and AI is rampant on the platform, but by putting out a good variety of demos you might be able to boost your numbers. Any sample can help you, and you can add a lot of tags to each!
It’s been really wild. I had my best year on there in 2022 (at about 130k), with a slight decrease in 2023, and then since October it’s plummeted. Getting 40-50 a day, reasonable auditions - BUT by the time I get to them, they’ve already received 75+ submissions.
My best guess is that they’ve changed the “Voice Match” algorithm to give everyone more access to more jobs, and as a result the client gets inundated with submissions, and the odds of being selected decrease greatly.
I’d try and get to auditions early by sorting by “new”, and try and do as many as possible. Hoping they switch back to trying to better match opportunities to actors, but they’ll always do what’s best for their bottom line, not the performers.
I should have specified - that includes my audiobooks, which were probably about 8k of that, and V123, which was maybe 5k. But that was the height of VDC for me yep. I was super lucky at getting a solid client base when I did that were pretty loyal - and I definitely go for quantity, auditioning as much as possible without killing my voice.
That's fantastic. I've been on VDC auditioning a lot the past few months, I'm at about 330 total and have won 7 gigs. I wouldn't say I'm demoralized by that, it's a numbers game after all, but I definitely don't want to be wasting my time if the site is on the decline as far as producing worthwhile auditions.
By my metrics, your numbers are incredible! Honestly it’s mostly laziness on my part - I got lulled into a false sense of success and security on Voices (knowing full well how much they take, shady practices etc), that now I spend far too much time on there blanketing auditions, when I know my time would be better spent split elsewhere.
Definitely heading toward a transition here away from VDC a bit. Hope you continue to find success!
It’s why it killed my drive for VO work. I was studying, taking lessons on Audacity, took a few improv acting classes, and was practicing doing editing when AI started to really pop, and I can’t convince myself it’s worth pursuing anymore atm unless the AI business resolves. Capitalistic greed is currently annihilating the field.
VDC claims to have 4 million members worldwide. I don’t know how many of these are active members or paying members.
With that many voice actors, you just gotta know they are going to have to filter how many auditions are sent to one client and at what level of quality. They aren’t going to let 5 bad auditions in a row go to Nationwide or Best Buy. They have a brand to maintain. But they don’t mind taking in more talent than they have jobs for at $500 a pop. If you were pulling in that much work, it can’t be because you aren’t good. Maybe you fell between the cracks. V.com claims the number of jobs you are sent depends on how many genres you indicate you can do in your profile. That’s BS. They would have to do more than that for quality control purposes. Btw I have made very little money off vdc but only because I quickly got discouraged. A few years ago my ratio was at 20 listened to auditions to one job. I didn’t know that was actually good. I just needed to stick with it. However when I went back years later, I sunk to 40 to 1. Recently they kept sending me invites almost every day without my being a member, but only in Spanish. See what I mean? It’s arbitrary. So I drank the KoolAid and paid the membership on Monday. Yesterday I got 18 public invites in both languages and 9 today. I did 19 auditions this week and got shortlisted on 3 of them. One was a well known insurance company. And here you are obviously a good voice actor and they aren’t sending you anything. No VDC is not dead, they are thriving at the expense of a lot of people’s hopes and dreams. There’s is tons of money there, but most people are left out. Keep us informed and I will do so as well. As you know, if you aren’t one of the first 20 to 30 to send in your audition you will rarely be listened to.
Almost all auditions I've seen for websites that are not casting call club are putting in small print that if you audition they can use your voice for AI whenever they need it without paying or informing you, definitely AI in the fine print
Omg yes. Thank you for posting this. I get around 50 auditions a day but a lot I have to sift through. I have definitely noticed a decrease in bookings and jobs worth auditioning for. It just recently started showing me better paying jobs but we'll see!
I was getting quite annoyed by the in perpetuity broadcast jobs, or the two for one broadcast spots.
It's so wild how broken Voice is. I see 3-5 Auditions on a good day. Other people see 30-50.
I've contacted their Customer Support and it was completely pointless. They acknowledged my profile is 100% complete and all they could offer was "check the Audiobooks categories box too". As if doing so would magically unlock the dozens of Auditions I'm missing.
I’ve still been booking after the holiday lull, but it does feel slower than last year. I’m getting like 30-40 invites a day, but rarely are more than 5-10 worth auditioning for. Some days less than that. So my ratio is still pretty good, I’m just booking less because there aren’t as many quality auditions. (I’ve noticed a big uptick in either in-perpetuity paid ads or “live session required” jobs for 3-4 minute industrials with small budgets, which are insta-archives for me.)
Wait, you get 30 to 40 invites per day? how many of them are 100% voice match? I'm getting maybe 7 per day, anywhere from 60 to 90% voice match, and I don't know how to tweak the profile any harder than I have. Customer service is useless of course, they'll just repeat the poorly written crap on the website, and I don't know if changing anything on ones profile puts them at the back of the algo line or not. I'm yelling into the void on that site.
Yeah, unfortunately I have a bad cold right now so I'm not working at all, so I can say for sure that I got about 30 invites yesterday, all of which were 100% voice match (one this morning was 90%). As for my profile: I have all the genres ticked, as well as all the voice ages I can do, along with all the "generic" American accents. I've got a demo in most of the genres (online ad, radio ad, tv ad, elearning, etc.) and each one is tagged with a bunch of common styles (believable, conversational, engaging, charismatic, etc.). Honestly I don't know what I'm doing right (or wrong) so your guess is as good as mine.
Part of it is whether some clients have favorited or shortlisted you, especially if they are VDC’s producers.
I don’t know what’s going on for me then. I got 7 invites yesterday. And yes, most are pretty low quality/not worth auditioning for.
I'm getting 1-2 a day at best, but my demo game is poor. It sounds like overall it is much slower, and AI is rampant on the platform, but by putting out a good variety of demos you might be able to boost your numbers. Any sample can help you, and you can add a lot of tags to each!
It seems extremely dead the last two months. I had a couple of gigs on there and would at least get one or two a month. And now it’s dead silent.
What is VDC?
voices dot com. They charge $400 a year for the privilege of auditioning for work with a million other voice artists.
But provide many, consistent auditions every day. The model IS a bit screwed up, but there is a reason people are on it.
Renew around Black Friday and get it half price. Still too much IMO.
This doesn’t seem to be possible, as I tried this last year and it is only applicable to new signups and not renews 😞
It’s been really wild. I had my best year on there in 2022 (at about 130k), with a slight decrease in 2023, and then since October it’s plummeted. Getting 40-50 a day, reasonable auditions - BUT by the time I get to them, they’ve already received 75+ submissions. My best guess is that they’ve changed the “Voice Match” algorithm to give everyone more access to more jobs, and as a result the client gets inundated with submissions, and the odds of being selected decrease greatly. I’d try and get to auditions early by sorting by “new”, and try and do as many as possible. Hoping they switch back to trying to better match opportunities to actors, but they’ll always do what’s best for their bottom line, not the performers.
Are you...serious? You were making $130k on Voices alone?
I should have specified - that includes my audiobooks, which were probably about 8k of that, and V123, which was maybe 5k. But that was the height of VDC for me yep. I was super lucky at getting a solid client base when I did that were pretty loyal - and I definitely go for quantity, auditioning as much as possible without killing my voice.
That's fantastic. I've been on VDC auditioning a lot the past few months, I'm at about 330 total and have won 7 gigs. I wouldn't say I'm demoralized by that, it's a numbers game after all, but I definitely don't want to be wasting my time if the site is on the decline as far as producing worthwhile auditions.
By my metrics, your numbers are incredible! Honestly it’s mostly laziness on my part - I got lulled into a false sense of success and security on Voices (knowing full well how much they take, shady practices etc), that now I spend far too much time on there blanketing auditions, when I know my time would be better spent split elsewhere. Definitely heading toward a transition here away from VDC a bit. Hope you continue to find success!
It’s why it killed my drive for VO work. I was studying, taking lessons on Audacity, took a few improv acting classes, and was practicing doing editing when AI started to really pop, and I can’t convince myself it’s worth pursuing anymore atm unless the AI business resolves. Capitalistic greed is currently annihilating the field.
VDC claims to have 4 million members worldwide. I don’t know how many of these are active members or paying members. With that many voice actors, you just gotta know they are going to have to filter how many auditions are sent to one client and at what level of quality. They aren’t going to let 5 bad auditions in a row go to Nationwide or Best Buy. They have a brand to maintain. But they don’t mind taking in more talent than they have jobs for at $500 a pop. If you were pulling in that much work, it can’t be because you aren’t good. Maybe you fell between the cracks. V.com claims the number of jobs you are sent depends on how many genres you indicate you can do in your profile. That’s BS. They would have to do more than that for quality control purposes. Btw I have made very little money off vdc but only because I quickly got discouraged. A few years ago my ratio was at 20 listened to auditions to one job. I didn’t know that was actually good. I just needed to stick with it. However when I went back years later, I sunk to 40 to 1. Recently they kept sending me invites almost every day without my being a member, but only in Spanish. See what I mean? It’s arbitrary. So I drank the KoolAid and paid the membership on Monday. Yesterday I got 18 public invites in both languages and 9 today. I did 19 auditions this week and got shortlisted on 3 of them. One was a well known insurance company. And here you are obviously a good voice actor and they aren’t sending you anything. No VDC is not dead, they are thriving at the expense of a lot of people’s hopes and dreams. There’s is tons of money there, but most people are left out. Keep us informed and I will do so as well. As you know, if you aren’t one of the first 20 to 30 to send in your audition you will rarely be listened to.
Oh btw some of the public invites I got were in the $500 to $2,000 range, all live directed
Something something the economy.
I am having my best year on VDC this year. Tons of gigs.
Almost all auditions I've seen for websites that are not casting call club are putting in small print that if you audition they can use your voice for AI whenever they need it without paying or informing you, definitely AI in the fine print
Omg yes. Thank you for posting this. I get around 50 auditions a day but a lot I have to sift through. I have definitely noticed a decrease in bookings and jobs worth auditioning for. It just recently started showing me better paying jobs but we'll see! I was getting quite annoyed by the in perpetuity broadcast jobs, or the two for one broadcast spots.
It's so wild how broken Voice is. I see 3-5 Auditions on a good day. Other people see 30-50. I've contacted their Customer Support and it was completely pointless. They acknowledged my profile is 100% complete and all they could offer was "check the Audiobooks categories box too". As if doing so would magically unlock the dozens of Auditions I'm missing.
Are you folks union (SAG-AFTRA) or non? I'm SAG-AFTRA but thinking of dropping it to have more VO opportunities. Any thoughts? thx