The Remains of the Pay

Hiring voice actors online can save producers much time. And money. However, not all casting websites work in their client's favor. By funneling significant parts of your budget into their own pockets, you might end up with inferior talents auditioning for your projects…

Transparency has always been of paramount importance to bodalgo. Our reputation heavily builds on our open communication about how exactly bodalgo works from the inside. Consequently, bodalgo's business model is no secret either: Talents may subscribe to be able to audition for incoming jobs posted by clients. That's it. That's all.

Unlike most of the other casting websites, bodalgo does not charge the clients, i.e., companies looking for voice actors, in any way. There are no escrow fees, "processing" fees, or "professional services fees." In summary: No. Fees. At. All. Period.

That is hardly the case with any other online casting service out there, many of which will charge both talents and clients to use their platform. But – in many cases – the clients don't even realize that they are paying fees. To them, very often, it looks as if they solely paid the talent. And although some players have been forced to be more transparent, hardly any client knows that hidden fees eat up a significant portion of the budget they intended to spend on the talent.

"So what?" you might ask. "Why would a client care at all who gets the money?" – Answer: Because if they don't, they will not get what they paid for. An example makes this crystal clear:

A 1,000-dollar project with bodalgo will get you the experience, quality, and professionalism of a 1,000-dollar voice actor. The same project on other services might get you a 300-dollar talent (and a delighted CEO who cashed in the balance via hidden fees and questionable services). That is the issue: As talents only see a fraction of your budget (without you knowing), you end up with auditions from the lower end of the quality spectrum. If you had posted the very same job on bodalgo, for example, the auditions and the final result would have been far superior. And your budget would have ended up where it belongs: With the talent.

Clients are hardly aware they pay the website rather than the talent

Of course, many voice actors have complained about questionable business ethics for years. Many openly called very well-known industry players fraudulent because of their intentionally misleading business practices. To which they even have – deliberately or not – admitted to! And many more professionals have left the platforms in question.

Clients, on the other hand, are hardly aware of the situation. The primary reason for this is that talents are preaching to the choir and voicing their concerns in voice-over Facebook groups clients have never heard of. And never will. And so the fury is not heard by the ones who – unknowingly – suffer the most: clients who end up with over-priced, sub-par recordings by amateurs who are often the only ones willing to audition for jobs with fee-crippled budgets.

The system of funneling client's budgets into websites' pockets has been going on for years, and it won't stop unless clients demand full transparency about what happens to their money and refuse to work with the companies that charge clients processing fees, escrow fees, and funnel even more to their bottom line by useless "professional services." And it won't stop unless talents refuse to accept these practices and turn their back on platforms that so shamelessly exploit them.

Budgets pay professional quality

A professional voice-over does not come cheap. A professional voice-over can boost a commercial to unseen heights, whereas an amateur read can render an entire campaign ineffective. Professional quality is the most relevant thing a client's budget can buy. It must not be wasted on useless services and unnecessary fees that only help the bottom line of an unethical business.

That's why bodalgo will never introduce any processing, escrow, or "professional services" fees to clients. Because all they do is transfer your money, the money you intended to invest in the best audio possible, into the website's pocket.

If you hire talents online, make sure you know what you are paying for. Please don't fall for hidden fees and services that do not add relevant benefits and instead make it more difficult for you to understand where your money ends up.

About bodalgo

bodalgo is a multi-award-winning online casting website founded in 2008. bodalgo enables clients to find the perfect voiceover for audio/video productions. As a free service to clients, bodalgo turns this process into an efficient, easy, and fun process. bodalgo features more than 12,000 professional voiceover talents speaking more than 80 languages and has helped more than 60.000 projects find the perfect voice.

Since its launch, bodalgo has become an integral part of the backbone of the voiceover industry. Unlike other platforms of its kind, bodalgo encourages direct client-talent contact. To maintain its unrivaled quality, the platform strictly vets talents and jobs – a world-exclusive mechanism.

In 2023, bodalgo won the One Voice Award for "Best Voice Job Web Site of the Year" for the sixth time in a row.

About the author

Armin Hierstetter, born 1970, is a German entrepreneur most well known as the founder of bodalgo. Before turning to the voiceover business, Armin worked in magazine publishing for close to two decades, most notably as Editor of "PENTHOUSE" and the highly successful teenage magazine "Sugar" as well as Publishing Director for the men’s magazine "FHM".

?Armin lives with his wife and two daughters in Munich, Bavaria.