Types of website that help talent find work include:

1. Paid marketplaces
2. Forums
3. Volunteer organizations
4. Job Search sites
5. Casting Services
6. Company “rosters” or “showcases”

1. Paid marketplaces

This is primarily what we cover below. Some take a percentage of whatever work you get through the marketplace (ranging from 5%-70%), others charge a fee—known as pay-to-play, or P2P.

2. Forums

Most of these are free. Some that have been around a long time are active and helpful, though generally the most active forums have moved to Facebook groups.

Generally, if there is a charge to join the forum, it is not worth it—often it is essentially a scam or constitutes a fee to put your info online which you could do for free at a free online website maker like wordpress.com. Some forums are a combination of forum (place for people to chat, ask questions, help others, etc.) and a marketplace (place for clients to post auditions for work they are trying to cast). Many forums that concentrate most on animation work are a combination forum/marketplace. Click here to see some recommended animation sites. If you are just starting out in animation, we recommend auditioning for multi-character fiction audiobook work instead to get paid faster for your skills.

3. Volunteer Organizations

You can provide your voice over services for free to organizations like Librivox. There is a list of these organizations at the bottom of this page. We do NOT recommend working for free. People often say they want to “get my feet wet” or “get experience”.  We recommend instead working briefly at lower-paying marketplaces to build a short list of paying clients and/or auditioning for animation or audiobook work while ALSO auditioning for work on higher-paying marketplaces. Volunteer only to help others—for charitable purposes—and because you love doing it. One exception would be to volunteer on short audiobook work to be able to list yourself as an experienced audiobook talent and producer, and to gain experience using roll-and-punch functionality in Audacity (or similar software). Roll-and-punch is how you fix errors seamlessly in real time while recording, without having to to edit your recording later, i.e. your recording will be accurate to your performance standards when you are done.

4.Casting Services

Not a kind of website that helps you directly, but one that connects clients (people with the project money) with talent agents. Your talent agent then gives you the script so that you can audition for the project.

These are part of the middlemen/gatekeepers in the business that make it advantageous to have an agent.

These services are worth knowing about, because if you have an agent, you need to know that YOUR demo may be listed here for potential clients to hear. Here is an example of one of these services.

5. Recording Studio or Training Company Rosters or Showcases

There are places to list yourself that are semi-worthwhile (e.g. ProductionHUB), but a con as old as their have been actors goes like this:

B-movie music begins playing and Sam, the cigar-chewing grizzled old con artist walks onto stage “Hire me and I’ll make you a star, kid! Everybody in this industry knows Sam!”

In the VO industry, the way it works is not necessarily a scam, but usually the same difference. They promote how they will get you work in order to get your money…but no one they “promote” gets any work. Usually it’s an offer to promote you via a “listing” or through their “contacts”. Yes, you might get work from being listed somewhere, and it always looks good, but it’s usually just a clever step to help them make a profit for the studio by doing demos or demo updates for newbies, or make a coach seem more able to help you, e.g. “train with me and you’ll get listed here”.

Often they start by reaching out to you about being “listed” or “added to the roster” and when you engage with them, they talk to you about updating your demo or your training. So it seems free at first…just update your demo. With them. Or read this article…which tells you to take their class. Or they may not have a specific website they will list you on, but they will “promote” you to their contacts and clients.

It’s not directly connected that you have to pay to be listed…but everyone listed has paid. And generally no one is getting paying work via that listing. Sometimes they legitimize and promote themselves by reaching out to working talent who have a strong following on Social Media. It IS a free and risk-free deal for that big name to be listed. Or they harvest emails and send out a few bulk emails every you promoting the talent on their listing.

Remember, in a room of people only there because of money you paid, all of whom have years of experience while you have none, the odds that you look like a sucker to them are very, very high.

Another example of this is they put you in front of industry pros who can cast you. This is certainly a gray area. Some of these pros will work with that 1-in-1,000 talent that comes in front of them—if they could help you at all. But they are NOT there looking for talent. They are there because they are simply a different version of a paid coach. It’s simply another way for their industry connection to earn them money from a training program for new folks. The better it looks, the more it costs.

They may be a decent studio, or a decent coach,  but do NOT pay them for their services because of their promise to make you money, to get you “seen”, or “listed”. The most famous example of this are the John Casablancas Centers. (Ask any legitimate agency what they think of Casablancas).

What do you need to get started?

There are tons of ways to find voice over work. But first you need:
▪ Samples of your work (demo)
▪ A way to share your work with prospective clients (website)
▪ A way to record and produce work for clients (home studio)
▪ Membership in a GOOD online marketplace
▪ An understanding of fair rates
▪ Learn about marketplace ranking algorithms so you can move up in internal search results

I’ll cover these briefly in order:

DEMO: Read the rules for getting a demo here, and learn how to make your own demo here.

WEBSITE: Here’s a sample of a WIX.COM voiceover website you can create by yourself in just a few minutes. This video covers the first steps to creating a Wix.com website. If you want to try WordPress instead, click the links in the left column at this website to go step-by-step.

HOME STUDIO: Click here, or scroll to the bottom of this post for more info.

ANIME/ANIMATION-SPECIFIC: Check out the these sites for opportunities.

WHERE TO START: There are lots of sites purporting to help talent find work, and helpful forums such as VO-bb.com and other sites worth knowing such as VOAgentalliance.com, but in the list of dozens of sites below, I concentrate on places well-known to help you get work or connect to those that can help you. Note that site owners and reputation change all the time! Also realize that Pay-to-play (P2P) sites have their own strategies, see P2P tips and more P2P tips. Generally, only audition/submit early, when the number of requested auditions are under the limit. Here are two lists of sites if you want to do more research: one, two.

FAIR RATES: Examples • How to negotiate. How much do online jobs pay? Pretty decently at the better sites. Here are some examples with dates from screenshots of gigs after the 2018 relaunch VOPlanet, where nearly 1/4 of the gigs shown are in the $1,000-$6,000 range, and almost all available to non-union men or women. The image below is an edited summary. Actual listings on VOPlanet include much, much more detail on each gig. Posted with permission of VOPlanet owner Kevin West.

To find in-person work near you, search for advertising and recording studios near you. Here are 558 example results from the Twin Cities one • two • three • four. (You can possibly also search for “talent roster.”) Call them and say “I do voiceover and live in the [your city name here]. Do you have use for a voice like mine?” VoiceActing101 also shares many, many ways to seek out work in a post you can read here.

1. RANKING ALGORITHMS: When you join a site, it knows nothing about you. So each of the first things you do weigh very heavily on the internal ranking of “is this person worth having here?”
2. Never join a site unless you’re ready to work. If you join and do nothing, all they know about you is that you do nothing.
3. Within reason do ANYTHING your first client wants you to do, for example, give them free proofreading. Because your first client is 100% of your “how does this person deal with clients” ranking in the site’s algorithm.
4. Third, if you are already on a new site and feel you got off to a bad start, consider restarting with a different email and slightly different profile instead of quitting altogether.

But: Every site is different. Some don’t have a formal internal ranking system. Just realize for now that all of the first things that you do are 100% what create your reputation, and your reputation is what affects your results.

Many sites have little to no voice over work or are primarily job sites not gig sites, though some change over time. Popularity is based on old (2021) Alexa rank divided by 100:

1 Fiverr
2 Upwork
7 Freelancer
10 Dribbble Jobs
20 Angel List Jobs
20 PeoplePerHour
30 Toptal
50 Guru.com
60 Turing
70 FlexJobs
100 We Work Remotely
100 CodeMentor.io
100 Truelancer
100 Crossover
200 Hired
200 Bonsai
200 arc.dev
400 Codeable
500 Superside
700 X-Team
700 Working Not Working
700 Scalable Path
800 RemoteOK
800 Experfy
800 freelancermap
1000 Gun.io
1000 StoreTasker
1000 Soshace
2000 No Fluff Jobs
2000 Himalayas
2000 Gigster
2000 Adeva
5000 DOZ.com
6000 Golangprojects.com
6000 Speedlancer
10000 Remotesome.com
10000 Remote One
10000 Moonlight
10000 Jobdone.net
10000 10xmanagement
10000 #frontenddevelopers.org
20000 Lightboard
20000 Clarrow
20000 Worksome
80000 Team Extension
80000 Jobhunt.ai
100000 Dreamlance
100000 CodersClan.net

On May 1, 2022, Amazon shut down Alexa Internet which subsequently discontinued Alexa Rank with it. Modern alternatives to Alexa include Semrush, Similarweb, Ahrefs, and Moz Pro.

They function more like an agency. A client comes and tells them (Voquent) what they need, and they connect the client with a voice actor in their roster. So how do you get contacted? Samples.

1. They are very upfront with what they want as far as samples and how many you need. Put in AS MANY AS YOU CAN. At the top of your profile page as you add more samples it’ll tell you how great your visibility on their platform is becoming, the more you add the more you’ll be seen.
2. Fill out your profile, professionally. They want (as every website does) high quality sound and they charge based on that premise. You can even include images of your studio, what gear you use, what DAW you use, your computer, etc. Give them this info. If a client is going to pay $500 for a 30 second ad spot (which yes, is priced accurately depending on broadcast needs and length of use), you better believe they client will want to have some visual assurance.
3. Variety is key. Since they limit the number of samples you can provide and you can’t actively look for jobs, you’ll need to provide vocal variety and tag your samples to appeal to different needs. This will open you up to a wider client base and get you in front of more people.

Tip Source Here