Speaker 1: Voices.com just introduced Project Marketplace as another way to get hired for voiceover work. In fact, clients are already using this to quickly hire voice actors. Let's go over exactly what it is, how to set it up step by step, plus cover some tips and tricks along the way. I've had a membership to Voices.com all the way back since 2006, and up to this point there have been two ways to get voiceover jobs on the platform. The first way has been public job postings, and this is where a client who is looking to hire a voice actor is going to post a job, and then 50 or 100 or maybe even more voiceover artists are going to see that job and submit an audition along with a proposal and a quote. And then the client who posted the job, they're going to listen to the auditions, compare the quotes, and hire the person that they want to work with. If that happens to be you, then you've got the job. The second way is through private job invites. A client usually posts a private job when they either know the exact voice actor that they want to hire or they've narrowed it down to a few and just want to see who responds and is available, listen to a few custom auditions, and compare the quotes before they make their final selection. Either way though, public or private, it pretty much works the same for the voice actor. You're going to see the posting and respond with an audition, proposal, and quote, and then hopefully the client is going to hire you. Based on my own experience and working with students over the years, I've found that if you have your profile and your demos set up correctly on the platform, then you're going to receive more private invites. And if you're hired from a public invite, some clients are going to want to work with you again on a project in the future. And if that happens, they're probably going to send you a private invite. They won't make you go through the mass auditioning process again. They'll just send you a private invite and you can audition privately and directly and hopefully get hired for that job. Now with the introduction of Project Marketplace, there is another way to get hired on Voices.com that does it a little bit differently and it speeds up the hiring process. So basically with Project Marketplace, you lay out exactly what voiceover service you're offering upfront. So that means you're going to include details about what kind of voiceover, how many words, where it can be used, your turnaround time, and the price, and the client can just hire you directly from your project listing. This means you don't need to audition. Instead, when a client finds your project, likes your demos, and sees exactly what you're offering and how much it's going to cost, they can immediately hire you. Your project listing does the selling for you, not your audition. So that's how it's different. And this is going to reduce the back and forth and hopefully make the hiring process more streamlined. Now, of course, many clients are still going to prefer posting a job, listening to custom auditions, and then making their decision. And I found that as a voice actor, auditioning for public jobs is a great way to practice and hone your script interpretation and your skills when it comes to following directions. Thankfully, Voices.com has said that the Project Marketplace isn't replacing job postings. It's just an additional way for clients to hire you. And if a client has a unique project that doesn't fit your project exactly, odds are they're going to end up creating a private job to get a custom quote from you. All right, now that we know what it is, let's go ahead and walk through creating a project. The first thing to know with Project Marketplace is that in order to create a project, you're going to need to have a paid account with Voices.com. If you don't have a paid account yet, but you want to sign up, use the coupon code in the description below to get a discount. That coupon code is an affiliate link, which means that by using that code, I'm going to receive a small commission and you'll get a discount off the normal membership rate. Now, before you run off and get your membership, it's important to know that using Voices.com to get work is part of step five in my five-step plan to voiceover success. So if you want to learn all about the five steps or see which step you're on, you can download that free guide. It's available at voiceacting101.com slash get started. It covers things like recording high quality voiceover at home, practicing and training, producing a demo and more on getting voiceover work. So go grab that and see if you're really ready to join Voices.com. It's all covered in the guide, five steps to voiceover success. And again, you can get that at voiceacting101.com slash get started. Okay. Once you're logged into your paid Voices account, you'll want to hover over the me icon. And then from the dropdown, click manage projects. And you're going to notice three tabs here, draft, pending review, and approved. Each project is manually reviewed and approved by voices.com to make sure that it's in line with their terms of service. From my experience, it usually takes about one business day for approvals, but that approval time can vary. Now to get started, we're going to go ahead and click create a project. And there are six steps to creating your project. It's overview, pricing, description, media requirements, and finally preview. On the overview step, you're going to see that Voices offers a few other services related to voiceover, but for us, we're just going to click voiceover. Under skill, you'll want to select the genre or niche of the project that you're creating. So think of it from the client's perspective. When they come to Voices.com, if they're an animation client and they're searching for voiceover, they want to narrow it down to the animation demos. So selecting a skill here is going to help make your project show up in the right searches. Now, ideally you're going to have one project for every niche that you have demos for, but at a minimum, you're going to want to have a project for broadcast categories like online ad, radio ad, TV ad, and then at least one non-broadcast niche like e-learning or video narration. So for this example, we're going to go with video narration. Now for project title, you can see some examples here, but in general, you want your title to be to the point and clear about what you're offering. Then you want to select a language up to five accents and up to three voice ages, but keep in mind your voice accents and age should actually match the demos that you plan to use. So if you include child as your voice age, but your demos all sound like a grandparent, it's not going to be a good match for what the client is searching for. All right, go ahead and click save and next. Now on the pricing page, notice that you can create one package or you can toggle this button to create three packages or pricing tiers. If you're short on time, I would suggest just creating the one base package to start. You can always come back later and edit this project to include the other packages if you want. For scope of work, this is where you're going to specify things like how many words are included, your turnaround time, or how many days until you deliver the voiceover and how many rounds of revisions you're willing to do at no additional cost. So you'll want to include that as well. Below you're going to see included package options. These are things like recording in a live directed session, adding background music or splitting files. You can check any options that you want to include in the package and keep in mind this is at no additional cost to the base price. Then you want to add your price for this package. Now how should you set your project price? Voices.com has a pretty simple voiceover rate guide or you can check out the voice acting 101 rate sheet. I'll leave a link to that in the description below. The rate guide, it can be a good starting point. You're going to notice prices on the guide have a range. Voices.com has said that their data shows that clients typically hire a voice actor whose quote fell in the mid range. But I've seen jobs posted and have been hired for many jobs that are well above the range. So keep that in mind. A few clients, of course, they're going to have very limited budgets. No doubt they're going to make price the biggest deciding factor. But for most, they say that finding the right voice is more important than the price. So with that in mind, I would suggest going to the high end or even above the suggested range. And there are many reasons why you want to be in the higher end, but I'll just point out three quick ones here. First, if you price too low, clients may think that there's a catch or that it's too good to be true, or they're going to just assume that the quality isn't going to be as good as a higher priced project. Second, of course, you know, giving the client the ability to see your prices upfront and then immediately hire you without you having to audition. That is great for you. But clients that are going to use this are probably going to be in a rush. They're trying to meet a deadline and they're going to prefer this streamlined convenience. And convenience is more valuable and it should come at a higher price. So keep that in mind. And then finally, Voices.com, don't forget, has a 20% platform fee and that fee is deducted from your rate. So don't cut yourself short by pricing too low. Another way you could do it, you could also reduce your word count, which is pretty much the same as increasing your rate. Now, the great thing is that you can quote however you want. It's completely up to you. So use the rate sheet as just a guide. But just know that many clients are willing to pay more. Moving on, add-ons are basically just extras for the project. It's an additional service that you're willing to do. And that comes with an additional fee for the client. So maybe you want to charge extra for a directed session. That's common. You'd want to select the checkbox and enter the price to add that on. If you've decided to offer three packages, you can really mix and match package options and add-ons for each tier. For example, maybe you want to charge for the live directed session in the two lower price packages, but then include it at no cost in the higher price package. It's completely up to you how you want to do it. You can kind of do it endless ways. But something to keep in mind is that each job is going to be unique and some are going to want this or that, and then others won't. So keeping the included package options the same for the three packages and then only adjusting the word count and maybe turnaround time, that's the simplest way to set it up in this way. The included package options are for things every project is going to need, kind of the default needs of a project. And then you can use the optional add-on pricing for things like live directed sessions or adding music or file splitting, which not every project is going to need. Now, one note before we move on, this example is for video narration, which is non-broadcast. If this were an ad for broadcast, you'd see other variables. So for TV or radio ad projects, your rates are going to vary based on the market, either it's a local, regional or national, and then the time period that it would be used, which is either for 13 weeks or one year. This means that you're granting usage rights for the client to broadcast your voice for either 13 weeks or a year in that market, after which they would either stop using it or renew the usage by paying you again. And for online ads, the market is worldwide and you just see the time period option for 13 weeks or a year. So that's the difference between broadcast and non-broadcast projects. And again, you can find the budget suggestions in the rate guide. Once you're ready, you can click save and next to move on. Next up is the description. This is where you want to provide details on what the client receives if they hire you. So what sets you apart? What is the client going to receive? You want to make sure that you describe what you're offering, the quality of your studio, your experience, and anything else that you can think of that's going to make this client want to hire you versus hiring someone else. You can write this in first person or third person, it doesn't matter. And if you need inspiration, you can sign out of voices and you can look at the project marketplace to see how others have described their projects. Also on this page is an area where you can add frequently asked questions. Voice over clients, maybe you've noticed they tend to ask the same questions. It's probably all businesses. Clients ask the same questions. So if you know which questions typically come up, this is the place to answer them before they even ask. There are some common questions already included that just need your answer. Those are things like what file types do you offer and what kind of live directed sessions do you offer? But you can also add in your own custom questions and answers. So if you know it's a question the client's going to have, you can go ahead and create that custom question yourself. Once you're done, click save and next. That brings us to the media page. Now each project features one project image and each project you create should have a different image. Since this is what clients see when searching, it's super important to have a project image that is related to you and the product niche. It's going to look professional and hopefully it's going to get attention. Those are the important things about your project image. Now to prevent getting stuck with this default image, you're going to want to create your own. So a photo of yourself would be unique. That tends to stand out. Your business logo would also work, but make sure that you don't include any contact info or cluttered text since it won't be approved. Ideal dimensions for the project image are 1200 by 900 pixels saved as either a JPEG or a PNG file. If you're using Adobe Audition for audio editing, like a lot of voice actors do, and you have a Creative Cloud subscription plan, then you have access to Adobe Photoshop and you can use that to create your images. If you don't have that subscription, other options would be canva.com or a free online editor called Photopea. And for fun color palette ideas, I recommend checking out Coolors. And if you need stock photos, you can check out Pexels, Pixabay or Envato Elements. Again, check the description for links. After your project image is done, it's time to choose your demos. You're going to want to pick up the three audio demos to be featured with this project listing. Hopefully you already have demos in your profile categorized into this niche. If so, you can just select your three best samples to showcase. But if you haven't uploaded demos in this niche yet, you can upload the files here. But I would suggest that you do it right and upload to your Voices profile and tag properly instead. This way they're going to show up in other searches as well and not just be here in the project listing. And by chance, if you don't have a demo created yet, you can check out the How to Create a Voice Over Demo guide on Voice Acting 101 or the Voice Over Demo Producers resource. I'll link to both of these in the description below. Be sure to sort the demos to make sure you put your most requested style at the top, and then you can click Save and Next. This brings us to the requirements page. What do you need from the client to get started on this project? The client is already going to be reminded to include the obvious stuff like files, scripts and directions for you. So you don't need to add those. But at some point you may realize there's a question or two you're always asking clients like which demo of mine is closest to what you're looking for? Or do you need this as an MP3, WAV or AIF file? We're going to leave this blank for now and come back to it later if needed. So we'll just go ahead and click Save and Next. The last step is the Preview page. So this is where you want to take a close look to make sure that everything is correct. This is how your project is going to look to a client. So if you're happy, just click Submit for Review. Voices.com is then going to review your project and either approve so it's live and can be found in searches, or they're going to let you know of anything that needs to be modified. Now keep in mind, anytime you make an edit to your project, no matter how minor, you're going to need to submit it for review again. And that's pretty much it. Now a few things I would like to see added to Project Marketplace. First and foremost would be analytics for impressions, listens and clicks. Knowing how many times your listing has been shown, if the demo was played, and number of clicks that can help you narrow in on what to fix if you aren't getting results with your project. Another thing I'd like to see added is the ability to add delivery time for add-ons. So you know, if your project has a 24-hour turnaround time and a client selects the live directed session add-on, scheduling that session within 24 hours might be tough in some situations. So making it so that it adds a day or two, that would be helpful. Now remember, this is just another way you can get hired on Voices.com and it's in addition to public jobs and private jobs. Project Marketplace is new, but if you look at it from the client's point of view, it's easy to see exactly what you need to focus on to be successful. And that starts with an eye-catching project image to bring attention to your project. Then a clear descriptive title, demos that match what the client is searching for. And finally, a description that explains exactly what you're providing and at what cost. If you check all these boxes, you're going to have a great shot at a client clicking the hire button on your project, and you never even had to audition. All right, that's it for this video. Don't forget to check the description for any links mentioned. And if you really want to be successful in voiceover, go download the free five-step guide I created. It's at voiceacting101.com slash get started. I hope this helped you. I'll talk with you next time. Have a great day.