The Open Source Marketer

If you want to put audio on your blog but don’t know where to start then the next few articles in this series will introduce you to some of the available solutions for adding audio to your blog. In this article we’ll start by looking at a text to speech option. Then in the next few articles we’ll look at podcasting, paid services, and a free conference call solution. When we’re done you should have enough information to mix and match to get what you want.

Text To Speech

If you just want to add audio to your blog without the need to record audio files, convert them to MP3, upload them to your server, and include the code in your post for playing and downloading the file, then using Talkr.com to convert your text to speech is probably your best option.

Talkr.com offers a free text to speech conversion service that let’s you turn your text blog posts into an almost human quality voice recording. The service uses your existing RSS feed to read in your text content, which is then converted to audio.

They even offer statistics on the number of downloads for each audio file, a podcast RSS feed that supports the podcast enclosures tag, and an opportunity to revenue share if you opt into their inline advertising program. Let’s talk about the advertising for just a moment and then we’ll take a look at the statistics.

Using In-line Advertising

The advertising is voluntary and they state that they don’t allow adult content or profanity. But don’t worry, if you still want to opt-out of the advertising the service is still free and you still get the reporting services and the podcast RSS feed.

Using Your Own Advertising

If you’re interested in generating revenue from audio versions of your blog posts then I recommend you place affiliate links in your posts with some form of text that says something like “This post is sponsored by xyz product, for more information visit xyz.com”. The web address you give in the sponsor text can be your easy to remember web address that redirects the listener to your affiliate link. You may have to work a little harder to get them where you want them to go, but if you include the advertisement in a series of articles then the listener will hear the web address multiple times which is a good start. If you want a direct payment for the playing of your audio, then you might consider using the inline advertising that the service supplies.

Tracking Audio Listens

If you want to know how many times your blog post audio has been downloaded, then Talkr supplies reporting on that too. You can report on the number of downloads by date range. The report shows the individual audio downloads that way you can tell which article is most popular as an audio download. This information could be useful as a way to tell which audio should be converted into a PDF as a bonus download in future promotions.

Using The Wordpress Plugin

To make the whole process really simple Talkr provides a Wordpress plugin that automatically puts a download link at the bottom of each of your blog posts. So, essentially all you have to do is post your text content like you always do and you automatically get the benefit of offering a downloadable audio version of your blog posts for free. Take a look at the podcast link at the bottom of this post for a good example of how the download link looks and functions.

In the next article we’ll look at how to use podcasting as a way to add audio to your blog and we’ll look at how to use a popular Wordpress plugin to allow readers to play your audio files right from your blog post.

Until then;

Keep reaching for success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Be sure to catch the second article in this three part series, How To Add Podcast Audio To Blog Posts