melissaharlowvo

What a great question. @kylelos267 Your demo is your calling card. Potential buyers/ clients want to hear your voice and don’t seem to care if it’s BMW or expensive chocolate reads on your demo. Most don’t get past the first :15 anyway. I have heard reputable agents say that. On Fiverr, I feel the buyers take care to find the right voice but you have to know your buyer/audience. I am not sure many scholars are coming to find that perfect voice to read their dissertation on classic literature??? Your read is nuanced and very niche. If you want to make money, create the commercial demo first and slowly build your narration demo on the side. As far as the script, write your own! You can certainly take it from the public domain but do a little DYI. I have created all my demos, scripts, videos etc. there are many sellers who will create a semi- pro demo one is @troyholden674 Look to your peers who are willing to guide you. Don’t spam people though. Reach out if you need anything.

Just a few more thoughts about this topic - voice cloning: Theft of your voice is a perfect reason you should never send a free sample or “audition” here on Fiverr. If you are working with an agent then ok, but for the typical below industry standard rates, it’s not worth the effort or potential problems…even if the project seems legitimate. I actually explain that buyers need to, “put a certain amount of trust into my ability and working with me.” It literally takes less than :20 seconds of your voice to create a pretty good quality fake. That’s what it is… fake, phony, stolen, unethical, synthetic. Some people are into fake and you can’t help them… you can just protect your own integrity. The laws in the US have not caught up with voice cloning, so for now, do not depend on any legal recourse unless you are independently wealthy and can afford the top attorneys who don’t have the law on their side anyway. Copyright law is not there either. I just passed on a “project” here on Fiverr that was stated as $5,000 USD for a 5,000 word project. In what world would even a top pro in our voice industry be paid $1 a word??? A completely unethical way to get my voice by saying they would love a “sample” 😂 Because I pay for Seller Plus, I can see a few things about this buyer and their average paid price to a seller was below $100 and they had 8 reviews. Look under the hood of the car! I had the VERY unpleasant experience of having my voice stolen on another platform. It was a good client so it was especially hurtful. They used my previous work to create a synthetic voice of me to create videos. Not only was the voice terrible, the pronunciation of certain words was totally off and you could hear bad timing… but hey, it included fake breaths! I made the client pay me for the unauthorized work and told them I would no longer be their voice. Done. I am able to at least create order requirements on Fiverr that may slow down the scammer but not if I’m giving it away… that’s on me.

They are referring to an expression and asking WHY are you a freelancer? What is your WHY?

Fiverr has been a launch pad for so many personal reasons. The platform is so tight with TOS that it has literally made me an incredible business person. I feel like I have gone to Montessori school and when I go to kindergarten and compare my skills and business savvy to my peers, I almost feel light years ahead. The personal connections I have made on Fiverr, both on platform and behind the scenes, have helped me through some dry patches of loneliness. But it all takes such a valiant effort to do well on Fiverr. It’s also been the hardest career role I have ever taken on. Fiverr is not a get rich quick platform. It simply has the tightest “best practices” I have ever seen and is superior to any freelance website. How about this? Those who spend hours and days sending out auditions and proposals without even a nibble are making less money. In my voice over beginning, I belonged to a paid audition platform. I was sending about 5-10 auditions per day. If I did get a job, and averaged out the time it took to give my work away in proposals and auditions, verses what I got in return, I was making about $2 an hour!! It didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t. I should diversify, but now I have acquired the skills to be successful, but do I go back to the low ROI just because? Not sure. What do you guys think? If things stayed the same and we weren’t challenged and pushed to be better, then how would we grow? However, sometimes I don’t respond well to being pushed but I do respond well to a challenge…as long as it’s on my terms. Fiverr is always pushing the boundaries and lucky for us!

I couldn’t agree more about the file size in the portfolio. It’s a bit like the first digital cameras lol they had storage cards that only held about 200 mb! That can easily be 1 quality file today! I have to take my time to create a portfolio entry only to find out my file is too large and I end up cutting out parts that make it sizzle!! I own a website so I understand the data storage must be massive for Fiverr. I am in the process of updating my voice over demo and I suspect a 4k resolution for a video demo is laughable 😂 so I will have to create a sub par version of the high quality just to fit. Although I love being able to transmit 2g!!!!

After years of doubt on this topic, I decided to leave no review if I feel the buyer was less than stellar. I feel a bit dirty leaving a good review for someone who didn’t deserve it. What completely stumps me is a buyer who gives a 3.7 but the actual narrative couldn’t be better. So I just try to think back on my misinterpretations or lack of flowing exact direction or whatever it was. But at least not leaving a review is my subtle way of wiggling out of my real opinion. I also feel that someone who gives a lower score must have some kind of internal guide that makes them feel bad or regret it when giving someone such a score. And… it’s ALWAYS the ones you bend over backwards for.

Same here. I noticed all the sellers on the first page have also had their rating dropped. Very few 5 star sellers now. Definitely frustrating and confusing.

I made a simple mistake in my initial chat and the person seriously thought I was from Russia lol!! Buyers are so afraid of getting “chatted” that the initial chats need to be very authentic. He also said that I responded so fast, he thought I may have been a bot. Oh dear!!

Julia, Congrats on your new gig. Once you get an order, your dashboard and order will guide you through it. The most important thing is to respond quickly, be professional, kind and have solid order requirements so your buyer knows what you need. You should read all the Fiverr help guides that you can. You should find them easily at the bottom of the website in the footer. Fiverr is an amazing platform and gives you so many tools to succeed but it starts with you.

From a seller’s perspective, I agree about messaging that seller. When a buyer reaches out to me and doesn’t engage with me or have a willingness to answer my questions, then I always feel this buyer won’t work with me as a collaborator. Since Fiverr is an online platform, we have to collaborate to get the best result for the project. We have chat or video so we have to use either. Otherwise, I always feel revisions are coming my way. Because the buyer did not communicate with me. Rarely do I not have at least a question after I get an order. You have to communicate with your seller…period.

Wow everyone! And @cyaxrex you ARE an amazing writer. Although my gigs are voice over, I take the same stand. I say that “this is not an audition platform, rather an order platform.” I think asking for FREE work on Fiverr should be against the Terms of Service. That is what a great portfolio is for.

This is the perfect reason why you need to be vigilant about checking your stats and overall account. I check at least 10 times a day! I have spotted things and when brought to Fiverr’s attention, they swiftly take care of it. Thank you @breals for adding your scare to the forum! My heart would fall right out of my chest if I saw that!! I appreciate that you told us your situation because if I see this on other gigs or my own, I will report it ASAP!

For the first time since 2018 I fell below a 5 star rating on a new Pro gig. I only have 6 ratings because the gig was new. After this new rating system, I received a custom request and they insisted on a directed session which takes at least an hour. Plus editing and delivering the file. It was all amazing and I even added some takes of my own for free. It took hours to edit the file and deliver it how she wanted it. I charged a directed session fee of $100 because this is VERY time intensive to conduct a directed session. I can make $100 in about 10 minutes so my value for the money was VERY LOW on my end as the seller. I proceeded anyway with a great and positive attitude. The buyers narrative review was glowing and perfect, but she gave me a 3.7! What? Ughhhh! Shocking! The value for service was average (3) So the challenge now is, my gig now says 4.8 and that is unacceptable for me and to be honest embarrassing in my Pro status. I even asked what I could have done to improve my work…and crickets. She even said she would be coming back. I don’t think so! No more custom offers from me. My public response was, “part of growing is trying to listen and foster honest feedback.” So yes, this makes me very nervous!

I think over time people will start knowing what a ChatGPT script sounds like. I already get orders to re-do an AI voice because it sounds so terrible. It’s a real skill to take a ChatGPT script and make it sound conversational as a voiceover. Now everyone thinks they are clever by using chat when in reality unless you know and understand prompting, then you will just get a regurgitation of everyone else’s script. I wish more people would chime in to this conversation but thank you!

I am seeing more and more scripts sent to me that have been created by chat gpt. They are cliche and wordy and no one talks like that!!! I’m going to start charging to edit a chat gpt script. The buyer will say, “feel free to edit” and in my head I am thinking, “so you want me to make this conversational with cliche wording and sentences that are meaningless and sound like everyone else’s wordy stupid scripts?” I don’t mind a word or two but seriously, these scripts are so bad. “Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed?” ”What are you waiting for?” ”Take charge of your destiny!” Need I say more? How are other creatives working around the awful ramblings of Chat GPT?

@chelseavo yes And so far, I have not had any issues. Go to the NAVA website as it’s a huge help! You do not have to be a member to get the AI rider.

I added a few phrases in my order requirements to challenge this issue of people using my voice for other purposes or outside of the project they paid for. Although it would be difficult to enforce, I think it slows down and prevents someone who wants to steal my voice. I think it makes them nervous to agree to such statements. The first statement is: You agree to not use or extend usage to any party of any recording or performance of Melissa Harlow VO, in order to train machine, learning, and The second statement: You also agree to not create any synthesized or digital double voice, or likeness of Melissa Harlow VO from this order. The buyer cannot move forward to order without agreeing to these statements. Also, thank you for NAVA and the industry work it’s doing on behalf of all voice artists. Some of the wording was taken from their contract rider. They give open permission to use any and all parts of the rider. www.navavoices.org

I frequently use music that I have the rights to use. However, it clearly states in most music services that you cannot just sell the song. It based to be used as part of a project. So if you were sold anything except an original work by that seller, you may have been sold something that was not permitted. The seller may not know this so if he/ she doesn’t, they are about to learn a valuable lesson in music copyrights. The seller should also be able to provide you some type of statement of copyright use if it’s from a service but it won’t stick unless it’s used in a project… NEVER ON ITS OWN.

What an interesting question. No not really. I admit that I need to listen to more music. I get stuck in news. What can you suggest?

Your writing is pretty clever. Yes the Whisper room is so heavy it’s ridiculous! But all that weight makes it very stable. The chirping isn’t an issue it’s mostly low frequency rumbles. We have so many dogs and wildlife and it’s not an issue but live right under a flight path to a small airport so the planes fly low. We also live about 30 miles from Camp Pendleton and I have to stop recording for the c-130 planes! ✈️ You can disassemble the WR but not planning on it anytime soon. if your space works who cares!

@mandyzines there are many sounds that can run through walls and floors.. even with a Whisper Room, planes, trains, tractors and jack hammering are still sounds that travel through the best of treated recording spaces. Yes, Bill Dewees has a Whisper Room. You learn to watch the sound waves for any low frequency sounds. Many times the human ear can’t hear these low frequency sounds but they will be obvious in the wave as you record. Some of the noise can be filtered out but you run the risk of making your recording sound artificial. Having a clean recording is like taking a good picture. If you don’t have the right light to begin with and then try to photoshop everything, you spend way too much time trying to make a Picture look right rather than just take a good picture to begin with. Same with a recording. Just start with a clean recording. After a while, it becomes instinct and you know what sounds to stop and wait for until they pass. Be aware that when you are new as a voice artist on Fiverr, that you really must have a quiet and clean recording space before you can expect to get the high paying orders. The platform is now very competitive and certainly not what it used to be. But with that said, we all started out with one order at a time.

Ok this drives me crazy!! A translation file larger than 2G??? Yeah right! Fiverr allows 2G of file transfer per message! That’s more than enough to pass any creative file within the Fiverr platform. Recognizing and reporting spam is critical for any online activity. Don’t waist your time and energy with spam, trust your instincts and just report it.

The plumbing went out in the ranch house where I live and they were literally jack hammering 10 feet away from my recording space. So temporarily I had to use our RV as a makeshift studio. Ughhh it was awful lol! I could not make it work in my environment. After that experience, I saved up for a whisper room and never looked back! @ericwrightmusic You are a rockstar for making it work!

I would love to see Top Rated Sellers highlighted, similar to a Fiverr’s Choice but on a deeper level. Hand pick a Top Rated Seller and ask them questions to uncover honest and thoughtful answers. I don’t think the community truly understands what being a Top Rated Seller means. It would be lovely to hear raw and honest stories from a TRS to empower other sellers to be kind, hard working and empathetic towards everyone on Fiverr. Not just how to improve ratings and get more sales but uncover the stories that promote authentic people who have families, hardships and still manage to make it work despite difficult circumstances and trauma. These are the stories that inspire me to keep working hard because I value the worldwide presence of Fiverr and would love to know more about overcoming the challenges of life. We all have families and different reasons for freelancing and learning about other TRS would be so empowering. Grinding through the grit of life is what drives many to be a Top Rated Seller. I was on a Zoom call with a wonderful buyer who lives in Israel. His daughter was home and I saw her in the background because it was too dangerous to go to school. Despite the insurmountable hardship, he was still trying to work and create projects even in the midst of daily trauma. I think of this often and it keeps me going when I think I am having a rough day.

To be honest, I love seeing what tests and courses people have taken. It’s more of a curiosity but somehow it helps me feel confident in the seller. I am not a great test taker but those of you who are, should always show your test skills.