My Experiences Featured in 'Fiverr Online Gig Economy' in The Atlantic, written by award-winning journalist Alana Semuels
Some of my experiences as a VO actor for a couple years on Fiverr are featured in this article published in The Atlantic, written by award-winning journalist Alana Semuels, with whom I have been corresponding for the past few weeks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/fiverr-online-gig-economy/569083
"Genevieve Hannon used to be a voice actor in New York City, where she was a member of SAG-AFTRA, which meant that she sometimes made $500 for a quick session doing TV voice-over promos. She made about $85,000 to $100,000 a year, she told me. She eventually left the East Coast to become a veterinary tech in Utah, but when she decided to supplement her income by doing voice-over work online, she had to dramatically lower her rates to find work on Fiverr. At first, she charged just $5 for 100 words of script, which made her feel guilty because she knew she was drastically undercutting union rates. When she started getting good reviews, she slowly raised her rates, and eventually made $17,000 one year. But she felt guilty doing work for multinational companies that had previously hired union actors for much more money, she told me. She was stuck: If she rejoined the union, she wouldn’t get much work, because so many buyers had gone to digital-work sites. But Fiverr didn’t earn her as much money. She eventually got kicked off Fiverr for listing her website in a correspondence with a client, she told me, and in the end, she was glad to leave the site. “It was a real relief to feel like I’m not doing something harmful for the overall good,” she said. Still, now that she’s banned from Fiverr, she’s had to resort to other digital-work sites to sell her services, which she says don’t have the reach of Fiverr."