Welcome to Ask Clark, a column designed to answer your financial questions, by money expert Clark Howard.
A $25 Webinar on Voiceover Work Turned Into a $5,000 Sales Pitch. Is It a Scam?
Mary Ann from South Carolina asks: “I was wondering if you had any advice about getting into the voiceover industry. I recently took a $25 webinar that turned into a sales pitch for a $5,000 training package. How do I figure out what’s a realistic expense to get started vs. a scam?”
Clark’s Take on Voiceover Job Prospects Today
Clark says: “This is what we call ‘bad ugly’: the idea that you go to a webinar that costs little or nothing and it’s really just a sales presentation to get you to sign up for very expensive classes and training.”
Clark says the voiceover industry got hot a few years back, and at the time, the Consumer Action Center got many calls about it.
“The truth is there is not the amount of voiceover work available that is being pitched online,” says Clark. “And so don’t believe that this is going to be a good side gig or career opportunity for you.”
“If you were to take a very inexpensive class for voiceover, at least you wouldn’t put a lot of money at risk, but the realistic thing is that the income-earning power is not very high right now in the business,” Clark says. “There are a small number of people that make a lot of money in voiceover, but for the most part, even people who have done it for a long time have seen their incomes trend down over the last decade.”
Nonetheless, if you’re interested in voiceover work, some resources that you can sign up for include:
- Voice123: Find jobs in this voiceover marketplace.
- Backstage.com: Find casting calls for voiceover work.
- ACX: Connect with authors who need audiobook narrators
To hear Clark’s full take on this question, listen to the segment from his podcast:
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