Pros And Cons Of Getting Into Voice Acting

Voice acting is a profession that has been growing in the past few years and many people are trying their luck in it. It is one profession that can be lucrative if you approach it well and be daunting if you don’t. It is not a profession for everyone, the same way being a doctor is not a profession that everybody can get into and be successful. The most important thing that will help start your career as a voice actor is your talent. Talent will take you far in voice acting but skills will take you further. In this article, we will look at some pros and cons of being a voice actor.

As I mentioned voice acting can be a lucrative career or a daunting one and you can tell how it will be for you by looking at the pros and cons.

We will begin by outlining the pros of voice acting.

Pros Of Voice Acting

1. The Impact You Can Have by Lending Your Voice to Projects Around the World. A lot of voice actors, never take voice acting seriously. For most, voice acting is a side hustle, that gives them extra money from time to time but as a voice actor, use your voice to affect a certain audience. By lending your voice to different projects, you can affect different audiences in different ways and that is something that should make you proud of being a voice actor. You should always think of it like this, if not for your voice then the project would have not existed. Well, there is the thought they would have used another voice actor but the fact that it is your voice that was used, should make you proud of yourself. Your voice is the reason a particular project is being received well internationally, your voice is the reason a client’s business is doing well, your voice is the reason your client is experiencing a certain level of success. The thought of how great your voice can affect positive change is great enough reward as a voice actor. If that is not one high of being a voice actor then I don’t know what is.
2. The Voice Acting Community and the Amazing Clients. Voice acting will help you build great and quality connections with different people in the industry. There are several professions where you can never make connections with people because your work entails, you sit at your desk all day and work on your machine. This is not the case for a voice acting profession. As a voice actor, you will need to attend industry events that are usually held in order for voice actors and actors to meet, mingle, and create connections. You can meet with production houses or directors of upcoming films and securing an audition with them for casting. Apart from the industry events, you will also meet amazing clients who will guarantee your recurrent job offers as long as you deliver incredibly the first time. When you are first starting out, it might seem hard to get access to these clients but as you continue growing in the profession, how many contacts you will have collected and how many connections you will have made will surprise you. You will also be exposed to the voice acting community, where interacting with other voice actors, and learning from each other will be easy. This is one benefit that not all professionals can enjoy.
3. The Ability to Work from Anywhere, on Your Schedule. This is one of the most amazing aspects of voice acting. The mere fact that you get to work around your own schedule is something that a lot of professionals who work a nine-to-five job will never understand or enjoy. When it comes to voice acting as a career, you can either be permanently employed at a production company as a full-time voice actor or you can be employed as a freelance voice actor on a contract basis. This point is suitable for freelance voice actors who don’t have to show up early in the morning to an office and can work from anywhere as long as they have an Internet connection. You can even set up a home office and work from home. Imagine working at the comfort of your home not being expected to leave the house and still do your work and get paid at the end of the month. This is something that will help you create a work and life balance seeing that you will have more time to spend with your family, enough time to do other things that make you happy away from work life.
4. The Freedom to Make as Much Money as You Like. Now one thing about voice acting is that you can make as much money and as little money as you want. All this depends on you as an individual. The mere fact that you are a freelance voice actor, means that you can work with different clients on different projects and still deliver to the best of your ability. You might go on and say getting jobs is highly dependent on the client which means they control your income. To some extent that is true but the vice versa is also very true. When you are a freelance voice actor, you are your own boss. Your voice works for you and brings you money. You should learn to train your voice and perfect it in a way that clients will always look forward to working with you because that is how good you are. When you are a pro at what you do, clients will always want to work with you, and this how you control the amount of money you get. This should not make you believe that getting success in voice acting is that easy, it will take time and years of experience but once you catch on, there is no turning back. Be sure to perfect your craft and you will be surprised by how much money you can make from voice acting.

Cons Of Voice Acting

Those are some pros of working as a voice actor. We will now look at the cons. When starting at out as a voice actor, things won’t be as smooth as you probably think they would, you will experience some lows that might even make you think twice about your career choice, and that’s what we will look at below.

1. Time Costs. When you first start out as a voice actor, deal with a lot of time costs. What we mean by time cost is the amount of money and time you will use before you can come out and proudly say that you are a professional voice actor. You will have to spend money coaching your voice and this is to help you learn how to make your voice work for you, for different characters, and whatnot. You also need to set up a studio at home which will cost you an arm and a leg considering the fact that the equipment is usually not cheap. You will also spend a lot of time learning how to do recordings in your studios, going for auditions, and so on and so forth. At the beginning of your career, you will spend so much time bettering yourself and so much money doing the same.
2. Isolation and Emotional Costs. Creatives will tell you outrightly how emotional the journey to success usually is. You will have to isolate yourself hours on end trying to get creative and imaginative so you can deliver on a project. A lot is expected of you and therefore it is always important to have resilience because you might end up giving up if you don’t. Spending hours in a recording booth can end up feeling like isolation in the beginning but as you get used to it, then it starts being easy and enjoyable for you. The downside of voice acting is that isolation and emotional triggers happen every other time and work around them by creating other activities away from work.
3. Monetary Costs. Being a voice actor can be expensive at the very beginning of your career. I will tell you this for free, you need to invest in your craft in order for you to achieve later on in life. Nothing comes easy, and that is why people say you should inject some money to make more money. Taking on training courses will need money, doing auditions will cost you money, going for the industry will cost you money. Before you make money as a voice actor you will have spent a fair share of your money before you make any. 

Related article on: [Career Guide – Getting Started With Voice Acting……]

As you can see, the pros outweigh the cons, and that’s how voice acting is. You will experience some lows while you are starting out and then everything will come full circle and you will start experiencing more pros than cons.

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