Voiceover Couple Averages $4,500/Month

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome to a brand new episode. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. Today's story features an award-winning African-American voiceover team. It's a couple.

They work together. They've got clients that include Google, Nike, Netflix, the Houston Rockets, and many more. Business is going strong, but we're going to look at how it got going as a side hustle with low startup costs, as well as focusing on what this couple brings to the table as a BIPOC owned business. We're going to call the story voiceover couple averages $4,500 a month. So they're making good money, but also creating generational wealth for their family, serving as industry leaders in this voiceover field.

And again, it all got started as a side hustle, which is what we look at here and try to understand how you could do something just like this, perhaps. Or maybe a little bit different, but how you could take the same spirit, this inspiration and apply it to an idea of your own. That's the point of side hustle school. I'm glad you joined in for this episode. You're going to like it.

I'll bring it to you after this quick shout out to our sponsor. While he was a student at Delaware State University, Dominic Draper, who goes by Dom, ran his own radio show. He already had some audio equipment. He'd also learned how to record and edit audio when he was in a Christian rap group as a kid. So in 2017, Dom's mom suggested he try voiceover work.

He landed his first gig using Fiverr. It was a $10 project for Detroit Radio. And two months later, his wife Nicole got her first voiceover gig, also for Detroit Radio. Nicole had earned a degree in musical theater, so she had the perfect background. Starting out, Dom and Nicole did radio drops, church announcements, and podcast intros.

These projects weren't high profile or high paying, but they helped the couple gain experience and built up their network. They used basic audio equipment and over time invested about $5,000 in better microphones, software, and a computer. They've gotten so good at editing, they can now turn around a 30 second voice ad in under 30 minutes. Now in 2018, things started to pick up. Dom connected with a company from Brazil called Hefty Audio.

This company was connected to a larger one with offices all over the world. And that relationship got the couple award winning projects with companies like Nike, Netflix, and Deezer. When the pandemic hit, Dom was working for his dad's telecommunications company. And the work slowed down, even though they were considered essential workers. The couple had also just had their first child.

So Dom spent a lot of time early in the pandemic at home with a new baby, improving his audio and video editing skills. Fortunately, their son turned out to be a good sleeper. So they didn't need to soundproof their home. Nicole encouraged Dom to quit his job and focus on growing the voiceover business. Meanwhile, she found a new job as a literacy specialist.

Together, they launched a website, thevoiceovercouple.com. So that they now market themselves together. For clients who need male and female voices, they become a one stop shop. Sometimes they work individually. Sometimes their clients have a need for both of them.

And collectively, they've done over 3,400 jobs with a monthly income, at least in 2021, averaging around $4,500, which is twice what they earned in 2020. Now let's talk about that a bit. How do you decide what to charge in a field like this? Well, when they started out, they didn't know either. But they now follow a guide from the Global Voice Acting Academy, that's GVAA.

And they charge around 45 cents a word with a $45 minimum. And that's the basic charge. But then depending on what the usage of the voiceover is, they charge licensing rights. Commercial rights cover usage online and social media only. Broadcast rates can vary depending on the coverage, such as TV, radio, and streaming.

Now Dom stresses that every job is different. And some clients have bigger budgets than you might expect. At the same time, some companies try to take advantage of voiceover talent. So he encourages you to closely read any contracts. In particular, you want to make sure you know the term length.

Sometimes it's in perpetuity. Sometimes it can be one year, three years, and then you get paid again. So you just want to pay attention so that you're not giving your voice away for nothing. The voiceover couple's tagline is diverse voices for a diverse world. Meaning that they want all voices, especially BIPOC voices, to be heard.

And Dom and Nicole themselves are African-American. Until recently, it was acceptable for a white actor to voice a black character. And sometimes black actors had to try to make their voices sound more white. But now that black culture is popular culture, authentic black voice tones and accents are more acceptable. And sometimes even desired.

Dom and Nicole hope to use their platform to help black and brown youth get into acting. They want their community to build generational wealth and legacies, just like they're doing for their son. And as they've grown the business, they're also able to work on higher profile projects. In addition to Nike and Netflix, they've now worked with PNC Bank, Mountain Dew, Adobe, and several sports teams. Next, they hope to find an agent so they can take on even bigger projects.

Nicole also wants to host workshops for youth interested in voice acting. It sounds like the voiceover couple has set the stage for long-term success. All right, an inspiring story from the voiceover couple. Thanks, guys, really appreciate that. Hopefully we can send some listeners your way.

And what I want to focus on here is this question of how do you decide what to charge as a professional in this world or this industry? And you could be doing something totally different. And you have the same question, right? How do I decide as a freelancer what to charge? Well, it doesn't actually work for every industry.

But for some things, like where there is a certain standardization, there are groups, often agencies or unions or even just kind of trade associations that have come up with some guidance in the form of a rate guide, as mentioned. Now, on the show notes page, I'm going to link up that specific rate guide that I mentioned. I went and looked through it and you can see it's very detailed, covers all sorts of usage. And when you're relying on something like that or when you're pitching for gigs or responding to an inquiry, it really helps to be able to point to something, as I said, standardized and say, well, this is our rate based on the industry and so on, as opposed to just taking what you're offered and not knowing if it's good or not. So things like this for certain industries can be very helpful.

If you're trying to figure out some particular world of freelancing or providing a service, see if there might be some sort of common rate guide. And by the way, if you don't like what you see in the rate guide, if you found a way to charge better prices for you, then of course you can do that as well. All right, that's it for now. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1872.

I'll link up that rate guide, the Voiceover Couples website, anything else I mentioned in the episode. And of course, I hope you will subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Come back tomorrow, new episode every single day. Take care of yourself out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.