Sydney mum Kate makes an extra $8,000 a month using nothing but her voice
Kate Reynolds used to dress up as Elsa at kids' birthday parties to make spare cash in uni; now she can make $8,000 a month with nothing but her voice.
The Sydney mum always had a passion for performing but didn't realise she could turn it into a lucrative side hustle until she'd been working in radio for years.
"Then I was a children's entertainer when I was at uni, so I used to dress up as Elsa, or a fairy, or a princess and host kids' parties. Performing is in my blood," she tells 9Honey.
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"Then I was a radio host and a radio copywriter, and it was then when I started to do a little bit of voice acting."
Working on a small team, Reynolds often chipped in with writing and voicing radio ads and found she enjoyed that more than her "daunting" hosting gig.
Before long, she got a job writing radio ads full-time and even got hired to voice some of them after sending samples of her voice work to the clients.
Emboldened, she sent her demos to some major voice talent agencies but the feedback wasn't what she'd hoped for.
"I thought I had a really diverse range and they were like, 'No, you sound like a radio announcer,'" she laughs.
Advised to expand her range and get more voice acting work under her belt, Reynolds signed up for Fiverr, a global freelancer marketplace.
She set up her profile in 2021 and didn't expect much, but within the year she was making about $500 a month from it while also working full-time in PR.
"I don't have to go to studios to record. I don't have clients on the phone directing me. I don't have to travel anywhere. I literally just do it at home, send out the audio file," she says.
"Ironically, working full-time really capped how much I could earn at Fiverr, so I went part-time and my work was fantastic about it."
Cutting back to three and a half days at her regular job in PR, Reynolds spent more time on her voice acting and her profile blew up.
Now, just two years after she started, the new mum can make $8,000 in a single month by voicing government ads, phone messages and digital training courses.
International clients book her to voice koalas in kids' e-books and an Aussie plumbing company recently paid her to voice an animated toilet paper roll.
"It was their in-house training and it was all about reminding people not to flush like wet wipes and stuff down the toilet," she says with a laugh.
"I also did a government TV ad about mosquitos ... my brother lives in Albury and he called me like, 'Are you in a mosquito ad?' and I'm like, 'Great, now I'm the mosquito girl.'"
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Most of the time she's hired to make pre-recorded phone messages for businesses, so if you ever hear a bubbly female voice recording when you call a local store, it could be her.
"People want a natural-sounding, friendly voice on the phone and that's kind of what I specialise in. I don't really do a lot of character voices, I don't do accents," she says.
Reynolds also turns down dodgy requests or jobs from clients who want her to record NSFW content.
Early in her freelance career, a male client asked her to send him voice samples of her talking about smoking. Despite a "gut feeling" it was shady, she agreed.
"I accepted the job and he sent it through and it turns out that he had a fetish for smoking. I felt really confronted ... I felt violated by it to be honest," she says.
Fortunately the Fiverr support team handled it when she reported the issue, but the experience taught Reynolds to trust her gut with dodgy jobs.
These days she charges about $250 per hour for her voice and though some months are busier than others, Reynolds is always able to bring home a solid chunk of cash.
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She cracked six figures in the last financial year and has even been able to extend her maternity leave with the added income.
"Traditionally if you're working a full-time role, once your maternity leave is up ... we have a mortgage to pay, so the pressure to go back to work is so high," she says.
"Then you've got to put your baby into childcare [and] the costs are astronomical ... being able to do this freelance work means that when I'm ready, I can just ease back into work."
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It also lets her be totally flexible with when, where and how much she works, as she records everything from home with a $500 USB microphone.
That means more time with her son, as well as a financial safety net if she ever finds herself out of a traditional job.
"Look at the cost of living crisis that we're living in at the moment; if you lose your job, you lose everything," Reynolds says.
"I've always been a big believer that if you have a few different jobs on the go, if you lose one, or if you're freelancing and you have a quiet month, you still have income coming in."
Now she's encouraging other Aussies to do the same by giving freelancing a go, and she has a few tips for aspiring voice actors.
Number one is to invest in your voice, practice using free online resources and get some coaching if you can. It's better to spend money on that than a high-tech microphone.
"Especially for people starting out, I don't think you need to invest in thousands and thousands of dollars worth of gear," she warns.
Learn how to edit your own audio, research SEO best practices so you can put strong keywords in your online profile and get hired, and charge market rate for your work.
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"If you undercharge, you attract clients that want to pay nothing and hot tip, they're not the clients that you want to work with," she adds.
"In my experience, the higher the price you charge, the better clients you attract."
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