| Here are the examples of voice-over profession branches pay to beginner voice talent |
| Video game voice actors salary $300-$3000 depending on studio |
| VO freelancer income $500-$2000 depending on dedication |
| Anime voice-actors pay $60+ per hour or few hundreds per episode |
| Disney voice-actors salary $50k-$100k a year |
| E-learning voice-over rates $500 but depends on a project |
| Pay per video show episode $1000 for beginner talent |
| Audiobook narrator income starts from $100 per finished hour |
Voice-over industry was growing over the past years in its volume recently crossing 5 billion globally. It’s a huge pie which consists of many slices. Or better say it is a mosaic of many puzzles.
Because the voice-over industry is not homogenous at all, it serves an incredibly diverse scale of clients and projects. You can expect to find the whole range of type of involvement roles form prominent million-dollar voice owners through the salaried corporate voices to the hundreds of thousands of freelancers across the globe.
Different people behind these roles are making different money depending on their expertise and the project budget they work on.
Voice-over is a very diverse industry, and it could be hard to compare different branches with each other. Freelancers can be getting a project with a fixed price while someone is working a corporate job with hourly based compensation, and someone else’s pay is calculated in finished minutes of delivered recording.
Video game voice actors salary
Video games changed dramatically in recent decades. There are many devices now used for playing interactive video games, Xboxes, Playstations, PCs, tablets, mobile phones, and a few others. Even some cars have games build on their computers.
Open world computer games like GTA, Assassin’s Creed have hundreds of characters, and sometimes thousands of characters like World of Warcraft or Watch Dogs Legion.
They all need voices for the characters, and they must be significantly different from each other. Gaming studios have to hire voice-over artists at least to narrate for their main personages. Some bigger studios are going further by using AI to produce the variety of voices they need by mixing real actors’ voices.
Narrating for games sounds cool, but it can turn dangerous for your voice wearing it a lot. Does it worse the risk?
If you are an owner of a well-known voice and living in one of the major game dev areas, then you may be able to negotiate your pay higher than defined by a union. Union rates are somewhere around $875.75 per 4-hour workday.
But what you are really going to get paid? If you are a beginner VO actor or you work for some indie developer, not a prominent gaming company. The prices will vary based on their budget and could be from $50 to $500 for a casual mobile game.
Pursuing jobs in the game dev definitely can worth the effort; just keep in mind your voice health is your bread and butter. Here I share the tips on How to protect your voice when acting hard.
If that didn’t talk you out of pursuing VO in GameDev, then check out my blog post on How to get into video game voice acting.
VO freelancer income
Every freelancer’s experiences will be different. Their income is the result of many factors like voice, setup, demo, dedication, representation, etc. To determine the exact number which fits all is just impossible, their range of income is extremely broad.
Let’s consider an average example of an intermediate voice artist with two-three years of experience. For the freelancer in our example, voice-over is not the source of main income, but rather it is a side job that is on the way to become the primary income.
The most of orders would be coming from the Top websites to find voice-over work. Where that freelance VO actor has a long history of successful projects and maintained great ratings. With enough of dedication, it is possible to achieve pretty remarkable results. For such dedicated workers, $1000+ per month is a minimum.
The successful freelancer keeps with the industry trends and applies in the demo or showcase on the profile. Time management should be appropriately set up and followed. It mainly applies to those who are studying or working during the day. It will require extra effort to show up every day and respond to customers’ inquiries, record and submit auditions, and complete the jobs.
Also, providing excellent customer service, responding to revisions cannot be omitted and take some attention.
And one of the essential components is staying focused on the message of every script. That is crucial for every voice actor who wants to become a professional to be able to deliver the emotions to the listener.
Generally, almost all voice-over actors are freelancers. But only professionals are able to work effectively, charging more for their work. Such talents are making 5 and 6 figures per year.
Anime voice-actors salary
Anime is Japanese animation. Its become popular among many people in many countries around the world. Not surprisingly, it needs a translation to the languages people speak in these countries.
Speaking for the USA, dubber’s work on Japanese anime is comparable to narrators’ work for animation. Except, of course, it is harder to make sound properly and well-fitting English words for not English speaking characters. Luckily anime creators re-using a lot of English words that can somehow help dubber.
Dubbing pay rates depend on where and how the final product will be used. There are three categories recognized by the union for theatrical use, for television use and for everything else like airlines, etc.
However, the pay is not different and not changes one from another. It is $65-$80 per hour, with a minimum of two hours guaranteed per day.
For category I, in theatrical use can be expected to receive residual compensation unless producer buys out voice recording completely. This means that voice actor receives 125% on top of what their made and producer obtains full rights for the recorded voice acting to use in theaters only.
Category II exhibits a motion picture on basic cable television and on broadcast television. And the actor’s pay covers the right to use for one year.
Beyond one year, using the residual schedules start to apply. For the next five years of broadcasting, the product actors receive 20% residual pay. Then for the next five years, it is 15%, and for the next five years it is 10%, and finally, for the next five years, it is 5% of residuals. That is not bad at all and motivates a lot to deliver excellent performance.
But what if you are not living in the major movie industry area, or you don’t have well trained professional voice. Can you still get an animation narration job? Of course, you can. YouTubers are continually looking for narrators for their videos.
Good news the number of video creators is growing, and it drives a constant need for voice-talents. They looking for unique voices, and cooperation is usually longer than a single episode. The estimated average offer $150-$500 for 5-50 episodes. You can get hired for these jobs on freelance websites if you market your voice skills specifically for animation.
Disney voice-actors pay
The companies often need voice-over services to complete in-house projects. Training, announcements, interactive instruction need speaking media versions. Not all corporations find reasonable employee voice talent permanently, and they use outsourced contractors or hire agencies.
But other like large enterprises, media production companies can have teams of full-time voice actors because they have a constant high volume of jobs for them. And of course, Disney is one of the largest media content producers who employ voice artists.
Walt Disney also hires voice contractors from agencies. Such contractors are offered $26-45 per hour for their services. While the hourly wage of an employee working on a similar position is about $40 as well. This rate is not flat across the company but rather an average.
Junior artist at The Walt Disney Company starting from $40k a year and can grow to a principal level of the artist or a character artist with pay above $100k per year and accounting with additional bonuses 10-15%. Needless to say that on top of that, employees receive company benefits.
Alternatively, other companies in the same branch as Twentieth Century Fox Television offer on average from $2500 monthly for similar roles.
It is a very lucrative position to be in and requires to have a very competitive voice. With such companies in your resume or your clients’ portfolio, your voice value is skyrocketing.
E-learning voice-over rates
E-learning is a continually growing industry. It became one of the favorite ways for people to get information and skills. More and more video courses or explanatory videos recorded every year on thousands of subjects on dozens of educational platforms.
Corporate educational and internal use of media material can be included in this category as well. A lot of course makers are narrating the videos themselves. But there is plenty of other video production opportunities available where external voice-over job needed.
These narration jobs can find you through virtually the same channels as the others. Larger companies look for talents through the agencies which calculate compensations by the union defined pay rates.
Currently, pay for off-camera videos, when a voice actor is not on camera, starts at $480 for the first hour. Then additional time paid $125 per every 30 minutes. And the cap is 8 hours per day, everything above is paid as overtime. It makes one half or double time depending on the number of days performed.
Doing voice over for the videos while staying off the camera is something that any voice talent can do. But what if you need to deliver the read while staying on camera. If you’re ready for such a job, great news then. You should get paid more money.
Compared to off-camera voice recordings on camera reads are paid additional money to be on camera. And it counts on a per-day basis. For the first day, the reading part of the job pays you $480, and for being on camera, you receive $650 as if you work through the union.
For those just starting out in voice-over also possible to get an e-learning narration job. It usually comes from the smaller course creators or YouTubers. They generally look for the voices on freelance platforms.
Given the customers are smaller companies or individuals, their budgets are also smaller and regulated by a market of less professional voices. There is the opportunity to implement the advice on how to beat the competition from the article How to win voice-over audition. The pay for chosen voice actor from $500 while the number of videos usually 15 and more.
Pay per video show episode
What about voice talent working on a show for television use, so-called broadcast contracts. When the recorded media going to be translated on the TV networks and include a billboard showcase.
The rates are calculated as follows. For the performer, it is $1000 per day. If you are working three days for one hour, show expected compensation would be just above $2500. Major role performer for the ½ and 1-hour show would be correspondingly $5500+ and $8800+. That’s the shiny start worse to make an effort to reach out. Don’t you think?
Again, all of these rates are calculated based on union rates. And I base on them because when you are going to get your first job for the more prominent production company, your pay will most likely going to be based on union rates.
That’s how big clients work. They look for guaranteed and quality delivery. They dictate to agencies the conditions, and to be legally covered and have all paperwork intact; agencies are using union actors.
Obviously, if your voice is highly demanded in the industry and you are the star they need to get on their program. Your pay individually negotiated and will be above the level of what union pays.
Audiobook narrator income
Narrating audiobooks is a separate chapter in the voice-over industry. There are some differences you should know about. Because the books are larger than any other type of script, the recording for audiobook takes longer. Both to record and to produce. The work on audiobook is not counted in days or words; the script length does not measure it. Narrators get paid Per Finished Hour (PFH).
There quite a few audiobook publishers, some working globally, some are local to the specific country. Such giants like Books On Tape, Blackstone Audio Book, and of course, Audible.
Audible owned by Amazon and utilizes its massive platform for selling to customers in many countries in the world. For the purpose of reviewing audiobook narrator pay, let’s focus only on them then.
First of all, Audible allows authors to chose if they want to offer narrators pay PFH or to make a Royalty Share deal. If the narrator’s cooperation with an author based on Royalty Share, then they split income 50/50. But the narrator is not going to be paid per PFH and does the narration and post-production from their own expense.
If the author finds the narrator to record their book for immediate compensation. Then all royalties are author income, but the narrator has to be paid on PFH basis. That’s motivating the narrator to deliver their work quality and quick.
When working as a freelancer, you often should do narrating and post-production work all yourself. That is not terribly hard; even the amount of recorded audio is overwhelming.
When negotiating your pay, this needs to be considered. As well as the cost of your equipment, the time spent on post-production, and the level of your experience. Considering all of these factors, the rates on ACX start somewhere around $100 per finished hour. And yes, there is room to grow if all factors as voice, experience, performance, quality of recording at the top level, such narrators get $300 and more PFH.
That is how the voice-over industry works; voice actors can be investing completely different effort for a similar amount of money. But what everyone really has to invest in is the education that will pay them back rather sooner than maybe never otherwise.