How To Make Money As A Puppet Spokes Person

What is a puppet spokesperson? A puppet spokesperson can be a representative for a company or product. It can be a greeter, welcoming visitors to a webpage. It can be a tour guide, leading viewers through a video presentation.

What’s a spokes-puppet? VIDEO

A video spokesperson can be everything a human spokesperson is. Just as Flo, or the Geico Gecko have helped companies create memorable ads to build their brand, your puppet can do the same thing for your brand or for a company.

On the other hand, your puppet may do short funny videos for people to share with one another. They can act like a video greeting card sending birthday, anniversary or holiday wishes.

You can make money with your puppet as a puppet spokesperson. Professor Hans Von Puppet has made over 8,500 videos for people on Fiverr. Although his beginning rate is $10, he has $50 and $150 packages as well as other add-ons. Quite frankly, this guy has made thousands of dollars making simple, short videos for companies and individuals with his puppet and his funny voice.

Hans Von Puppet has made videos for all kinds of companies, including this video for the Salt Lake City Law Firm Schmidt & Gladstone.
You can see this commercial HERE.

OTHER SAMPLES OF PUPPET SPOKES PERSONS:

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

Videos with puppets are fun, engaging and effective. People like to but them to send a personalized greeting to a friend. Imagine getting a video in your email of a cute puppet wishing you happy birthday. Fun, right.

Companies have used puppets for years. Selling pet supplies, cars and even divorces. Despite all the advances in computer animation, people still like live-action puppets.

Whether you use a puppet you made yourself, or buy a nice puppet, you can promote and sell spokes-puppet videos. Fiverr is loaded with individuals promoting this service. They all seem to be doing well, if you look at the number of gigs they sell. Why so many different ones? because sometimes people want a specific look or voice. Some folks even offer the spokes puppets speaking in different languages.

Here is a video promoting using a spokes puppet for pediatric doctors. VIDEO

HOW TO GET STARTED
To succeed in this market, you will need 4 things:

• The ability to produce a quality video
• An appealing puppet
• An engaging  character for your puppet
• A marketing strategy

PRODUCE A QUALITY VIDEO
To get started, you will need the ability to record a nice video. You can video with your phone. This will work great for inexpensive videos for birthday greetings or low budget videos, but for working with companies, you will want a better camcorder.
You will want a nice background when you film. If you can do green-screen, this will allow you to provide a variety of backgrounds.
Proper lighting, a good microphone and simple editing skills will also be necessary. For professional commercials, you may want to hire someone to help you. College kids can come cheap and have all the skills you need.

HAVE AN APPEALING PUPPET
You will want to have a puppet that is appealing to the eye. One that creates interest just from its appearance. It doesn’t need to be expensive or extravagant, but it does need to be likable. A simple sock puppet is fine, but it must catch and hold the eye. Pets.com used a simple sock puppet dog to brand their company.

If you are a puppet builder, you can build the character you want. You ca also offer to build a custom puppet for a company, if that is within your skill set. Do not use a common off the rack puppet, like a Melissa & Doug character or worse yet, a trademarked character. Do not use Kermit. Your puppet needs to be unique.

Having a variety of puppets can allow you to offer more choices for your customer.

CREATE ENGAGING CHARACTERS FOR YOUR PUPPET
If you watched the Professor Hans Von Puppet video above, you see how he has a unique and likable character. His accent draws and holds your attention while his friendly demeanor makes him likable.

You can create character for your puppet with different voices, different accents and different motions. The clothing and accessories you use with the puppet will also add to or take away from the character. These things should compliment the character you are trying to present. With motion, your puppet can be excitable or calm and deliberate. You can create the character to meet your customer’s needs.

YOU WILL NEED A MARKETING STRATEGY
You need to determine who your customer will be. Are you going after commercial accounts? If so, a professional website like will be necessary. It should have sample videos and introduce your services and puppets to potential clients. See a great example here: http://www.spokespuppets.com/
If you are looking for simpler jobs, like birthday greetings and simple introduction videos, Fiverr.com is the way to go. With gigs as low as $5 for a 30-second video on up to literally hundreds of dollars, you can make money on Fiverr with your puppets.

In additional to the simple videos, you will also find yourself getting commercial gigs here. It does take a while to build up a following on Fiverr, so have some friends buy some gigs and give you reviews right away.

YouTube will be another place to advertise your business, creating your own commercials and also posting sample videos.

HOW TO CREATE VOICES FOR YOUR PUPPET
You will need to voice your puppet. Certainly, your regular voice will suffice for a puppet, especially with enthusiasm and action. Your puppet can be quite the character. But you will likely want a more cartoonish or exaggerated voice for your character. Certainly, a voice and accent that reflects the character you want to portray.

A doctor puppet would have a solemn voice, maybe deeper than your regular voice while a salesman might have a southern drawl or a manic, excited, fast talking voice. Your voice needs to match the character you are creating.
To come up with most of my voices, I think of cartoon characters and TV characters. My possum puppet speaks a bit like Mr. Haney on Green Acres. Whether it be a character from Sesame Street, from Warner Brothers or from any of the old cartoons that you remember, start to develop those voices, try to mimic them, and then change them just a little. Pretty soon you’re going to come up with your own voices for your puppets.

Some voices are going to be a little bit harder to learn. Certain accents can be hard for you. Also, your vocal range will differ from others. Some voices will hurt your throat when you do them. If so, avoid them.

When developing your puppet’s voice, look at the puppet. See what character is coming through their appearance. Does your puppet look like a sophisticated lady? She may sound snooty when she speaks, maybe even a little nasal. Maybe she sounds like Zsa Zsa Gabor, with an accent. Does your puppet look like a teenaged girl? Then the voice would be very different. Young, enthusiastic and she would speak using a lot of slang and teen lingo.
Is your puppet a country bumpkin? Maybe he will sound like Mortimer Snerd. Perhaps he will act educated by using big words, but using them wrong.

Just adding an accent, or just raising or lowering your voice one octave will give you brand new voices. Once you have a voice you like, try to develop a catchphrase that will easily lead you into that voice. When I do my possum, I like to remember how Mr. Haney would say, “Mister Douglas.” Saying it the same as Mr. Haney leads me right into the voice, then I can stay there. If I want a southern gentleman’s voice, I mimic FogHorn Leghorn and how he would say, “Boy, I say boy….” That little bit gets me right into character. You can create the character to meet your customer’s needs.