Topher Keene

Advice and Timelines for Young People Getting Started as Voice Actors

Are you hoping to get started with Voice Acting as a career but don’t know where to begin?

Classes, Lessons, Coaching, YouTube Videos, Books, Online Courses, etc. can all be wonderfully helpful to beginners, but what do you expect when it comes to making money, quitting your job, and becoming a full-time Voice Actor for animation, films, TV, and video games?

The following path is what most of my students go through. Even the established married older adults go through something like this, but young people have a few advantages since they have fewer commitments to worry about in transitioning their careers.

Year 1:

  • Work your full-time job (or another one, if you can get a better paying job, or one that involves more performance, all the better).
  • Learn the basics
  • Practice a LOT
  • Build a stronger/more flexible voice
  • Buy some cheap basic equipment/software
  • Start doing some auditions and book some unpaid work (animation/video game projects from indie developers/creators you find on twitter/reddit/YouTube/etc. Student animated films and VG projects from local colleges and universities)

Year 2:

  • Continue working a full-time job
  • SAVE MONEY!
  • Get better equipment
  • Develop a “demo reel” (professional-level recordings of your best work),
  • Do a lot more unpaid work to keep learning, make connections, and build your reel
  • Book some paid work
  • Hopefully, earn enough from Voice Acting gigs to cover the costs of your equipment/coaching/audition sites

Year 3:

  • Continue working a full-time job
  • Consider scaling back hours to focus on Voice Acting gigs
  • SAVE MONEY
  • Earn $500-$5000-$10,000 on the side from your Voice Acting work
  • Start pursuing bigger jobs
  • Make your business more legitimate to get ready for “full-time” VO work

You can continue in that phase for as many years as it takes, and if your VO biz ever slows down and is unsustainable then you can always go back to that phase, then when you’re ready:

Year 4 and Beyond:

(Sooner if You’re Lucky)

  • Quit full-time job
  • Maybe keep a part-time job for stable income and benefits
  • Scale up your small income to a reasonable income (~$30-$50K)
  • From there, it mostly comes down to More Hours = More Money so if you budget well you can live on less and work a very relaxed and rewarding schedule, or you can bust your butt and make a lot but work almost every hour of the day either finding work or recording.

That’s the basic outline.

If you’re young, you have a lot of advantages starting early, so you could take a few more years to fully launch your career and be more comfortable.

Biggest advice: it doesn’t happen overnight.

Set the goal of committing to several years.

Live at home with family as long as you can, it lets you save an INSANE amount of money as a young performer and really skyrockets how fast you can build your own business. (You’d be shocked how many successful artists/musicians/VO’s/entrepreneurs etc. lived at home even into late 20’s early 30s.)

And finally, practice every day if you can.

You’re gonna have to give yourself the equivalent of a college degree in this to do it right, and that won’t happen in a couple hours a week.

Want to practice your acting from home?
Acting Resources

Want to read more to improve your Acting?
Recommended Acting Books

Need Monologues for practice/auditions?
Monologues

Want to schedule a one-on-one Voice Acting Lesson with me?
Voice Acting Lessons Page

Topher Keene