And here we are to my I want to say favorite but also least favorite at the same time I have a love hate relationship with this way to get work and if you have any like experience online or in forums, you'll see that it is very debated topic and that is pay to play websites or rather online websites. If you're just starting out. It's a wonderful way to get work. It's not great money. But I mean, if you're just starting out, you can't expect to book the big Home Depot campaigns today. You can't expect to have a series regular in an animation that is like worldwide broadcast today.

So what are those little jobs that you can do now? Well, I think that those pay to play websites are great. The first work that I ever got regularly was on voice 123 dot com and on voices.com. And within a month, I earned enough to pay for that annual fee. The annual fees vary now, it's gotten a bit more competitive now. But in the meantime, other online websites have popped up.

So let's say you started voiceover work yesterday, you maybe have a little bit of recording capabilities, and you want to get some experience in just doing voiceover jobs, even if it's a little one like for some car dealership in the Philippines. Right. Well, fiver has a voiceover section. Now up work has a voiceover section now. And that stuff wasn't available when I was first starting out. But if I was starting out today, you bet I would go on there.

It isn't amazing money, but it's within your own feet. of work. So if I had to have a day job, while I was trying to become a voiceover actor, I would much rather it be those little voiceover jobs on fiverr.com and upwork.com. Then a job down at Starbucks, you know, I mean, it's going to be the same money at the end of the day and one you're making coffee, which has nothing to do with your dreams and the other you're doing voiceover work, you're getting experience with recording and editing and microphone technique every time you do that job. So if you've never done any voiceover work, I would recommend going to those websites voice bunny comm is another one. I haven't used it that much.

But I have seen that people are able to book regular work for themselves. So then once you're ready to step it up a small notch or if you want to get started right away, you can go to voice 123 dot com and voices.com there's a few other websites that exist to in Europe is fidalgo.com. And then the There's a couple of other websites that they are up for debate. Some of them are new, some of them are just kind of struggling. But all of these are ways to get work for yourself. And the difference between these websites and being on the roster of a production company or getting work through an agent is that you have to pay to be listed on this website, which is essentially if you think of yourself as a small business, and this is your product, your voice, you want to diversify your income streams and not just have it all be relying on your agent.

You want to have jobs coming in from your agent and the production company and being on this person's roster and these different pay to play websites. You pay them one annual fee. I think it's like 395 bucks. And then anytime you book a job, they get nothing, at least voice 123 dot com gets nothing. So it's now just a relationship between you and the client. You can even take it away from the site and just email each other directly from there on out.

And then you just have a client for yourself. That's another reason why I like these online websites because they don't just get you jobs, they can get you long term, ongoing clients. And that's where the sustainable income really comes into play. So voices.com now, they will have this system called sure pay, they like to keep all of the job within the site. So the corresponding between you and the client is inside the site, the negotiating the contract, everything is inside the site. Once a client has decided to hire you, they make a deposit into the voices.com sure pay escrow account that takes a 10% fee, like an agency would I guess?

On top of the annual fee that you pay them, however, it ensures that there's no way you will get burned and you will get the job. Voice 123 comm has no insurance for that. But at the same time, they don't take any extra money. So you can have your own sort of system in place to ensure that you don't get burned. Because I have before and it really sucked. But it was a long time ago, and I haven't in a long time because I put those systems into place.

So online websites, I say, if you're just starting out, it's a great way to get experience. It's a great way to get credits. It's a great way to get some material to go on to your demo in addition to some stuff that you make up, and it's a great way to get yourself started and desirable for an agent later down the road.