Voice Over rates and budget around the globe

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about rates and what fair rates of pay and voiceover are especially for beginners you guys have heard me talk about not taking on low budget jobs not giving it away for free and making sure that you are working for fair market value and voiceovers which is very very important. however, some of you made some really great points which is, I didn’t really explain what those fair market rates are

so we’re going to talk just a little bit about that today something really important to understand is that most professional voiceover actors don’t work for less than 10000 Indian rupees  there might be the occasional exception there might be times where you decide to take a non-union job for less than a 5000 bucks maybe it’s a really really small market commercial for INR4000 or  INR9000  maybe it’s a really quick message on hold for INR3000 to INR7000 but for the most part that’s about it.

we really don’t honor those rates people who’ve been doing it a long time certainly you can’t even get them out of bed for less than INR12000 and even that’s kind of pushing at most days but it’s important for beginners to understand that have a basic standard a basic platform INR2500 no absolutely not INR3500 no ,same thing ,so I mean INR5500.

I feel like should be your bare minimum of payment for just about anything most non-union voice over work for professionals starts in the range INR5000 to INR9000 ,neighborhood ,the majority of voice over actors that you’re gonna meet who are professionals, who are making a living doing this every day their job minimum is gonna be somewhere in between those numbers and I mean it might vary a bit based on their experience or the exact types of voice overs that they do and the types of clients that they serve

The most part it’s a pretty good starting place it’s not only experience that makes us valuable in this industry. we have equipment ,we have overhead, we have all of these different costs associated with what we do and how we get to the point of being experts at this and you have to make those costs back. I always explain it to upcoming voice artistes , this way- someone who’s just coming out of business school  who’s brand-new and who is really just a very recent graduate to the business field is still gonna charge as much as ,

if not slightly more than someone who’s  been doing it for twenty or thirty years with an established practice because they’re just getting going  .They’re not worth less money because they’re a new comers , if anything some of their skill sets, some of the techniques that they’ve been taught ,some of the newer technologies are at their disposal they might even be worth a little bit more so at the very least you’re worth the same as the rest of us .

Don’t forget that Union voiceover work starts in the range INR15000 to INR35000  range and I always recommend and advocate that non-union actors look to the Union rates to help them determine what exactly a fair rate of pay is for a job that’s really really important stuff always using the Union rates to help you align whatever’s going on with voice over union , is gonna give you a really good indication of where you should be pricing anyway but typically , Union jobs have a starting point of 15000 to 25000 and remember!  you’ve got things like studio charges versus the actual usage of material which can make those rates skyrocket  !!! really really fast ,

larger projects – higher exposure commercials major markets ,Nationals regionals things of that nature are going to be jobs that minimum are INR50000 or more,  a lot of voiceover actors and I mean a lot averaged INR25000 to INR45000   per booking , and some of their jobs go way  higher than that, we are an industry that definitely comes along with a price tag that’s indicative of all of the training the equipment ,the years of experience we have and certainly that recognizes us as quality skilled voice over actors ,

A lot of beginners are sometimes shocked when they come to realize that there are projects with budgets up into the thousands, there are on a very regular basis ,most talent agents won’t even take a job if it’s not at least a thousand dollars and one of the things you have to realize is that a lot of your experience with regards to rates has to do with the kinds of exposure that you’ve had , two particular jobs if all the jobs that you’ve ever seen are on pay to play or on online casting sites then your view might be a little bit skewed as to what’s really going on out there

because you’re only seeing one small piece to the puzzle when it comes to talent agents which is one of the reasons why it’s so competitive and it can be difficult to get an agent it takes time but it’s one of the reasons why they’re so valuable  voice over actors and what we do is that typically speaking your agent is going to take a job with the understanding that there has to be enough meat on the bone,  there has to be enough room for them to have a percentage and make money if they charge 10% of what you earn , well 10% of a thousand bucks is only a hundred dollars

they can have to do a whole lot of legwork and paperwork and phone calls and negotiations to get to that hundred dollars , they would much rather be working for twenty five hundred or five thousand or ten thousand rupees for the total number of the job that’s where their focus is ,is those big budget projects ? so again you have to realize that for those of us who have worked with agents for many years have multiple agents which you can do,

we’re operating with those budgets and those numbers and mind , so when we see really low-budget stuff.  we get kind of turned off by it and don’t really want anything to do with it ,neither should you,  I’m not alone in this want to help standardize the rates of our industry and make sure that none of us are inadvertently driving the rates down for voice acting