Voice over websites: the two things people mean

"Voice over website" means two different things, and the difference matters more here than in almost any other field. One is a marketplace: a platform where jobs are posted, auditions are submitted, and a buyer picks a voice. The other is your own site, at your own address, where your demos live and a client who already wants you can hear you and book you.

They are not alternatives. Working voice artists use both, and they use them for opposite purposes.

Meaning one: the marketplaces

If the question is where the work is posted, this is the answer, and it is not us:

• Voices is the largest, aimed at brands and agencies, with the volume and the competition that implies.
• Voice123 is one of the oldest, and leans toward commercial, audiobook and e-learning work with direct negotiation.
• Bodalgo is smaller and more curated, with a reputation for transparent budgets.
• Casting Call Club is where a great deal of indie, game and animation work is cast, and it is the most open to people starting out.

Which of these is worth paying for depends on the work you want and where you are in your career, and anyone answering that with "all of them" is not answering it. Ask people doing the kind of work you want which ones actually book them.

Meaning two: your own site

The second meaning is a site you own, built around your demos. On a marketplace you are a row in a list of results, described by the fields their form allows, next to two hundred other voices. On your own site you are the only voice, and nothing is competing for the play button.

That is the entire difference, and it decides what the site is for. A marketplace profile is built for a buyer who does not know you yet. Your own site is built for a buyer who already has your name, from a referral, an agent, a conference, or a job you did two years ago.

Why the marketplace alone is not enough

Marketplace work is real work and there is no snobbery worth having about it. But it has a shape: you audition against many people, the rate is largely set by the platform, and the client relationship belongs to the platform rather than to you.

Direct booking is the other half of the business, and it cannot happen without an address of your own. When somebody is given your name, what they find when they search it is either your site, or whatever a search engine decides to show instead. If it is a marketplace profile, you have handed the introduction back to a platform that will show them other voices beside yours.

The demos are the product

This is where a voice site differs most from any other kind of portfolio. Nobody reads a voice over website. They listen to it, and they decide in about fifteen seconds.

What separates a reel that earns that decision from one that gets skipped is its own subject: the first ten seconds, the length, and one reel per category rather than a single mixed one.

1. Above the fold, on the first screen. A buyer should not scroll to reach audio. If they have to look for the player, you have already lost some of them.
2. One click to play, with no sign-in, no download and no autoplay. Audio that starts on its own gets a tab closed, because these pages are opened in offices.
3. Lead with your strongest ten seconds. Not a slate, not music, not a montage of station idents. The voice.
4. Keep each demo short. Sixty to ninety seconds per category is plenty. A three-minute reel is not more convincing, it is less likely to be finished.
5. Label every clip with what it is: the brand, the format, the read. A buyer matching a brief wants to know which of these is the thing they need.

Where to host the audio and how to embed it without breaking on a phone is the same problem as hosting a video reel, and that page covers it.

Split the demos by category

One mixed reel asks the buyer to do the sorting, and a buyer with a brief and a deadline will not do it. Separate demos, plainly labeled, are worth more than a longer single one:

• Commercial, the one most people arrive looking for.
• Narration and corporate, which is where a great deal of the steady work is.
• Character and animation, if you genuinely have range there. If you do not, leaving it out is stronger than a thin one.
• E-learning, which buyers search for by name and which many artists never label.
• Audiobook, where a longer sample is the exception to the length rule, because stamina is the thing being judged.

Say what you can actually deliver

Two artists sound equally right for a job. The one who gets booked is the one whose site already answered the practical questions.

• Your studio. What you record in, treated or not, and what that means for broadcast use.
• Formats and delivery. What you send, how, and whether you can do a live session and on which platforms.
• Turnaround. A realistic one you can hold to on a bad week, not your best ever.
• How to reach you, and your agent if you have one, in one step.

None of this is glamorous and all of it removes a reason to email somebody else instead.

The part that quietly decides it

A voice site fails by going stale, not by looking wrong. The demo is two years old, the new categories are not on it, the client list stops at a job you barely remember. Nothing appears broken, and a buyer reads it as your current standing rather than as an out-of-date page.

So when you choose how to build it, weigh what it costs to add a demo. Not the first one, while you are still enthusiastic about the site. The tenth.

More on the voice career around your site: how to become a voice actor, the demo reel, a home studio, and what to charge.

We build the second kind of voice over website and not the first. We have no connection to any marketplace named on this page, are not paid to name them, and earn nothing if you join one. They are here because they are the honest answer to half of the question.