Voice Acting Adventures: Accidental NSFW Voice Over?

Yikes. I’m sure you’ve read the title, and yes, this is a true story. I’m sure telling you it happened on Fiverr, will more or less prove that in itself.

Voice Acting. The ideal hobby and side hustle for those who need cash both on the go and for those staying wrapped up and cozy inside their home. It’s described as an easy job, talk into a microphone, and bam, you’re finished. This is not the case, among the editing disasters, the recording nightmares, and forgetting how talking works, one thing to especially look out for in a Voice Acting Career, are those clients. Yes, the ones that send you weird vague offers. They don’t tell you what their for, why they need them, or any other important details. Usually, these are spam requests. Ignore them and move on. However, the previous version of myself, always hungry for that extra $5(College student life and all that). thought it was a great idea to accept ALL of them. Most ended up never getting back to me, but like this story, there were a few real gems.

A customer contacted me one day, asking for a few simple lines of dialogue and some noises(giggling, laughing). Nothing too out of the ordinary. In fact, when I read the script was so ordinary that I never second-guessed anything. The seller had a shady vibe, but I chalked it down to typing. One thing I learned in voice acting, is that sentences can be read in many different ways, so I figured I was imagining the weird vibes. Anyway, I recorded it (twice as I recall, as the first time I was a bit too enthusiastic), edited it, and sent it in. Nothing exciting happened, an increase in seedy customers, sure. I continued to do voice work for them too, dipping my toes into NSFW and deciding that it really wasn’t for me.

As times changed and I felt confident to ask for more, I raised my prices a whole $5, making my voice work worth a whole $10. And poof, the weirdos, the shady sams, and the seedy seans completely disappeared. Since I was no longer asking rock bottom (Okay, $10 is still bad, but it’s higher than $5) prices, it seemed like they could no longer afford it.

Two years passed, and I’ve worked more, increased my prices, and obviously know a lot more when it comes to what I’m doing. Because of this, I thought I would ask all my pre-employers where my work ended up, as I could use it as a selling point for the future buyers. Oh boy, did I get some weird answers. But my favorite was a special link from That customer. They never said anything, never replied. The only thing they sent was a link. That ‘beautiful’ link, send me to that person’s pornhub collection. Homemade collection, specifically. All the innocent phrases I’d said now being used to comment on the content of several different videos. He had been using my phrases as everything from commentary, to sound cues to the intro (Yes, he had an intro for every video in his ‘collection’). With around forty videos of different settings and partners, I suppose my voice overs were really the only thing that kept it uniform.

Well, obviously I was shocked. And the worst part was I sold the rights and I had no power to withdrawn my voice. So what did I do? Well, professionally, I blocked them and made sure I couldn’t be traced to their ‘channel’. Personally, I continue to show my friends and family for a good laugh every now and again. It’s a real party trick. I’m still on fiverr to this day, but no weirdos ask for jobs anymore. Every now and again I get bored and make a $5 gig to bring them back, hoping for another fun story, and they do come. But I usually stick to my shows and audiobooks now.

So what did I learn from this? One, ALWAY knows what your voice acting for. Two, Know your worth and keep weirdos away by charging more. Three, no matter how you start off your voice acting career, you will most like be tricked into doing a porno.

~Purplethorne VA

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