Chris, another option (instead of transcription) is to use voice recognition software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking. It works pretty well, although it’s not perfect. But then, neither is transcription. Either way you will need to do some editing of the text file.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 will also transcribe audio files, but I have not had as much success with that. The audio recording has to be very high quality for it to work well.

Using audio to create articles is a great idea, especially for people whose brains (and mouths!) work faster than their fingers. ;o)

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Chris, great idea! I have used audio on my sites for years and I think it would make a wonderful companion to ezinearticles. If I could not only read the author’s text, but hear their story in their own words as well.

Sometimes a writer’s passion is best understood in the way it’s actually said than just in text alone. No two people will ever read the same text article with the same passion as the writer intended originally.

Any chance of adding audio to your website? It can always be streamed from elsewhere, no pressure on your servers that way.

Best Always,

Mike Perras

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Or really go to town with vtalkradio.com, then post your transcripts on ezine.

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Mike,

Right now, we’re focused on helping our expert authors to use their audio recordings to convert them into high value text-based articles.

We could have done audio, video and images in articles years ago… :) It’s not a decision about server load or costs; but rather of focus.

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Hi Chris, great article.

Does anyone have some recommendations for reliable and economical transcription services?

Peter

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What a great idea! Now anyone can write great articles without any experience.
You guys ROCK; it’s no wonder, why you’re the top go-to article directory.

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Hi Chris,

This is an excellent strategy and I know of very prominent individuals who have used this strategy to write entire books.

I often use the content of teleseminars and interviews to create articles but alas I’m generally more comfortable writing articles the old-fashioned way.

Nickolove

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Excellent tips. I use a combination of digital recording and Dictate (Mac) for my articles.

However, I’ve never considered that I could write many more articles if I extended my sessions (rather than doing articles one at a time), and just talked, then had someone else transcribe.

That’s an AMAZING productivity enhancer. Can’t wait to try it. Thank you so much.

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I was horrified as I read this article. As someone who has spent years working as a writer – and who has viewed transcriptions of interviews – I find it questionable that anyone would think this would work – without a substantial amount of editing and polishing. And, if you are going to do all that editing and polishing, why not just write the article to start with.
Sorry to be so critical. It just seems like this is a big waste of time and money.

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Try bloggingblog.typepad.com. They are great at transcription of this sort of content. They even allow provide a java based transcription tool so you can simply talk at your computer. If you want, they will post the transcription directly to your ezine account.

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Fantastic advice Chris.

Your idea makes so much sense – and the USP of the article for me is for helping me get through ‘writers block’.

If you knew me you would know I can talk the leg off an iron table – so – look out Ezine Articles!

I can recommend Audacity, especially as it is ‘free’.

Merry Christmas to all.

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Chris, once again, you make a strong point for automation and using technology to accomplish more in less time.

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Sounds like an interesting idea. Thanks

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Chris,

Thank you for the steps to follow.

I have a question on #9:

Is there a different procedure for uploading multiple articles all at once, rather than one at a time? Where would I find it?

Thanks again.

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Great article (as always).

Your methods are sound but may I add the following:

1. I have had people do transcriptions for $15 per hour off some of the forums. It’s a bit of hit and miss sometime but you cannot beat that price.

2. If you are looking to do audio the do an INTERVIEW to do it. Then you can transcribe the interview (use bite sized chunks in the interview as a stand alone – example: ask a question and have it answered). But then you can use than interview for articles (on EzineArticles of course) but also as a stand alone lead generator, in an ebook or as part of a free report.

I am always looking to interview people.

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Excellent idea! I regularly have my teleclasses transcribed and use them for long articles but love the idea of pulling “shorter” and multiple articles from 1 hour of teleclass material! Thanks!

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This is a great article.

We work w/a host of the top internet & info marketers in the world (U.S., Canada, UK & Australia) Alex Mandossian, Armand Morin, Ray Edwards, Tony Laidig and many more.

We’re happy to be of service to you or to get you to where you need to go to best be served for what you want. I welcome readers to check out our website successtranscripts.com and get in touch with us.

We specialize in turning audio content into quality and professionally formatted written documents providing clients w/marketable products they can use to create add’l income streams in various ways.

Nothing or no one is perfect regardless of being person or machine; but we work hard at getting as close as we can always striving to accommodate for each customers needs.

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This is an excellent technique. I recommend it to all of my clients, some of whom are writers and have also written books using this method. And of course I use it myself even though I am a very fast typist (and I end up transcribing it myself).

If you have a problem recording, practice will help. You can also have a friend “intervew” you or ask you questions. You can request that your transcription service leave out the questions in the transcript.

Most audios are too long to attach to an email. There are several free FTP sites which work. Contact your transcription service, they’ll be able to help you, or they may have an FTP site available to you.

It’s true. It may not be for everybody. Nothing is. And you may have to do some editing. But it’s still much faster than writing, re-reading, editing; writing, re-reading, editing, and so. After all, you speak at the rate of about 150 words per minute. How fast do you type?

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I once tried that record your voice and place a link to it from your website, however, it was a pain trying to edit it so I gave up.

Has anyone come out with a better design yet that is free?

The other one had a short ad before my voice came on, so it was not so bad.

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I would like to suggest Vise Versa. That is to say reading your articles with impact into audio files for another punch and chance to reach your target audience. Indeed, I have noted that often there are folks that really really want the audio versions. And just think how many people have trouble with reading or are visually impaired?

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always good comments provide good knowledge and information for visitors.So i am using first time ezine blog service becouse i always love ezine article services.

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What a fun idea. Since the movie 2001, many enthusiasts have been wanting to be able to talk to their computer, and have it talk back.

Now we are asked to “talk to paper” and have it respond through conversion into customers. It almost sounds magic doesn’t it ;-)

Well, when I get around to it, I will give it a try. Thanks for the idea and the input.

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Kathryn,

We have a bulk article upload process if you have 50-100 or more articles to upload at a time; but other than that, sorry, it’s one article at a time.

I can tell you that we have a new article submission interface that is done and in testing phase right now that will speed things up vs. the current one. I hope we’re able to release it before this year ends.

–

Mary,

The greater majority of our members are not professional writers… which means that to them, they can’t participate on the same level as a ‘writer’.

Encouraging them to record their audio and then have it transcribed/edited into coherent articles gives them a chance to use their expertise in a medium that was previously unavailable to them.

–

Lance,

As this blog entry was being created yesterday, I was thinking briefly how absurd it was that I was educating/training our members how to use audio to produce more articles; yet this blog entry was only an article without any audio recording to go with it.

I’ve got a series planned for 2009 on this topic that will include audio/video & live/prerecorded interviews, etc…

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Besides being a great idea, this method is such a time saver.

Did you know that recording 8 minutes will yield about 1000 words? Imagine — 8 minutes, and as you get better at recording, you’ll be surprised how much less time it will take for editing. You can do this on the way to a meeting if you use a hand held digital recorder.

At Great Transcriptions we strive to cut down on your editing time by leaving out filler words such as “you know,” or words that some people tend to use as crutches, “so,” “okay,” and run-on sentences.

Try it, you’ll like it.

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Have you tried Dragon Naturally Speking or other voice to word transcription program? If not what do you think of the idea? I am tempted but have not taken the plunge.

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I am not a fan of Dragon. It takes a lot of time to train, still makes lots of errors. Because it requires you to constantly be watching for misspellings and then to go back and orally correct them, it takes more time than straight dictation transcribed by a real person.

I have been dictating my blog posts for years and speak frequently about dictation solutions and approaches. It allows you great flexibility with portable dictation you can dictate from anywhere. That means worthless windshield time can now be spent generating A+ content for ezine or your blog. Most phones are dictation compatible today, and the Blackberry curve comes standard with dictation built in.

Chris: you should give me a call. Few people have as much experience in this area or as much passion for digital dictation for the web as me. I have written, trained and spoken on the topic extensively.

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What is the bulk article upload process you mention Christopher?

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Mark,

Contact our member support team (from within your EzineArticles membership interface for fastest response) for more information on working with us in bulk article submits of 50-100+ articles at a time.

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After you’ve archived the file, save it as an MP3 for faster transport/transit to your transcription service provider.

Question: if one has already saved the file, how do you save it then as a MP3?

As you can tell, this idea is new to me.

Shirley Bass

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Shirley Bass, Just resave it to a .MP3 extension

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I have never submitted an article, but today I blew the dust of the mp3 and wrote two articles.

I did court transcription years ago, never dreamed of recording me. I am ecstatic with this idea.

Thanks

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Good to see someone supporting the Virtual Assistant industry by recommending transcription. Although, I will say the rates in US$ are quite expensive. I would say that of course because I’m a VA and part of a large network that provides this sort of business. It’s the backbone of our industry. Most will charge an amount per audio minute – so if your audio is 30 minutes long and say the cost is $2 pam, then it will cost you AU$60, no matter how long it takes the typist to transcribe. It’s a very efficient way of getting your work done and as has rightly been said – will have you producing articles so fast you will amaze yourself!

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One great thing about using dragon 10.0 to voice dictate is that it forces you to carefully re-read and edit what you have written to look for small errors or misuses of words. This extra time in editing helps make more perfect articles. When you write by typing it takes 3-4 times as long and you so often read right over any minor mistakes meaning you have to have someone else edit and re-read it for you to find mistakes or slow yourself way down causing you to use another 2-3 units of time, so 3-4 plus 2-3 = 5-7 units of time.

While with Dragon 10.0 you will use 1 unit to write it and 2 units of time to carefully edit and so you are still at 3 units of time instead of 5-7. Meaning you can write far more articles spending 3/5ths the time or less. 60% of the time is 40% less time and that is at a minimum. It helps to save time, especially with folks constantly complaining they do not have time to write more articles.

Think on it.

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I wrote my book Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships by talking into a tape recorder on daily walks to the beach. Worked for me creatively as I could captured flow but later transcribing was so horrible I went back to working at the computer.

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Dr. Molly Barrow,

I totally believe in your concept. I am practicing now to ride across the US on my bicycle and on the longer rides, I’ll be thinking and talk into my digital recorder. I am going to hook one up to my helmet for the bike ride across the US. I can have several books written by the time I finish (3-4 weeks) and summarize my travels for a nice book too.

These digital recorders are awsome and with Dragon 10.0 it has a blue tooth option, so in essence it is like using a digital recorder too, walking around the house out on the patio, looking at the view while dictating your writing. I think this is a wonderful technology to use for article authors, EXCELLENT POINT.

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Gary Wollin of http://www.garywollin.com/ had this comment to add to the conversation that he asked me to post on his behalf:

I believe that I can save the Macintosh computer users in your audience a great deal of time and money.
There is a program for the Macs called DICTATE which is speech to text.
I speak into the microphone, the words appear on the screen.
It’s just that simple.
After about 20 minutes of ‘practice’, the program gets it right about 98% of the time.
I write all of my articles using DICTATE.

Please keep these interesting and informative articles coming.
Warmest regards to you and your readers in this Holiday Season,
Gary

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there is service called..

copytalk.com

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I’ve used Dragon Naturally Ver. 9 to write some of my articles. I’ve “trained” the software however it still makes many errors. I would love and try DICTATE for Mac but they don’t have a version for Windows. I liked what Lance had to say (#33).

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Thanks for those 10 tips that break down this process so easily.

I’m doing Alex Mandossian’s TSS course now and he LOVES this audio to articles method. Will use shortly.

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I agree with Cathy that Dragon Naturally speaking works great for pumping out articles. Mind you it does cost $100 bucks or so.

But for less technically minded people, a transcription service is a great idea!

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@Chris Cliff, you can sometimes find Dragon Naturally Speaking for much less if you are willing to accept a previous version. When they introduce (or are about to introduce) a new version, there are often sales and rebates. If you are willing to sacrifice a few bells and whistles, you can often save some $$$.

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If you purchase a Sony digital recorder found at many electronic stores, many of the newer models are bundled with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.
That’s how I got my DNS copy. You’ll have the recorder to capture notes and sync into computer and transcribe with Dragon Naturally Speaking software. I prefer to do it this way as sometimes I record my notes on the go (in car etc). You’ll want to be in a fairly quiet environment for best recording quality.

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The comment made earlier about -for less technically minded people use a transcription service is a great idea- quite honestly is offensive and insulting to those in that line of work.

Technology in any instance isn’t better than a human being.

There are several software programs available that can be of assistance, but nothing works as well right now as a live person listening to your audio, who can depict emphasis in your speaking to know when and how to translate it to a Word doc with the proper punctuation, grammar, spelling, formatting, inserting graphics and more to create a truly professional document.

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I would like to add this to the discussion;

http://www.worldthinktank.net/art128.shtml

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I agreey with Janette, avoice reconnition program is only as good as the talker.

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David,

Great Point, Absolutely! Right on the money and folks should realize that your articles will drastically change when you talk them instead of writing or typing them. You really have to know your subject matter to do it correctly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Don’t think you are going to churn out tons of articles quickly using voice unless it is a topic you are completely professionally immersed in or something you know like the back of your hands. – Lance

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I agree with Janette, David and Lance. I have had this thought since the beginning of this blog, but I’m willing to give it a try.

Lance, thank you for all the info at the ‘Think Tank’. I am excited about studying the Microsoft Vista Operating System w/Voice Recognition feature. Yeah!

Shirley Bass

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Friday Funnies for you all

(from the files of Reader Digest)

Mixed up Nursery Rhyme

Learning to use a voice-recognition computer program, I was excited about the prospect of finally being able to write more accurately than I type. First I read out loud to the computer for about an hour to train it to my voice, then I opened a clean page and dictated a nursery rhyme to see the magic.

The computer recorded: “Murry fed a little clam, its fleas was bright and slow.”
– Carrie E. Pitts

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The comment quality would have to be really good for it not to be recognized as spam. For the prices quoted, it may actually rise above the normal level of comment spam, especially if they’re hiring third-world spammers with some education.

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Is anyone using audacity? Love to hear feedback on this software. Have been thinking of audio and audacity for a while. Love to get some feedback.
Thanks
annie
twitter/annieblawrence

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I recommend Audacity as a shareware (Free) audio recording application for your PC. It is great for recording your voice and saving into various formats.
I havealso used it to record from streaming audio on the computer. Often I have used it to record music from LPs to make MP3 files. You can see the waveform of your recording and can select and remove unwanted bits to clean up your audios. There is filtering available so you can remove noise, add bass, compress and change volume of the whole recording or just the bits you select.
I’ve used it for years with no complaints.

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I believe this is excellent information for anyone to speed up the process of article writing.

Thank You,

Gary Cooper The Runner

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Great tip!

There are services like audio acrobat/Byo audio that help you record audio using a telephone. You can get mp3 format within minutes. Thereafter you can use elance.com to locate affordable top quality transcribers.

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I was about to spend a lot of money on a new versionof dragon naturally speaking when I discovered that the Vista software on my new laptop has vista speech recognition.

It seems to work very well and transcribes very fast. Microsoft has apparently made a big investment in speech recognition and the people who sell specialized microphones etc think highly of the new program.

Interestingly, the Dragon people sell a medical edition for $1000.00. Vista sells a medical add on for $299.

Editing with speech recognition is slow but I am learning. Perhaps I should just dictate fast and go back and manually edit.

Brooke

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Great tip Brooke! Since I have the vista software on my new laptop, I also have speech recognition. That means, one of my goals will be met sooner than expected.

Thanks!,

Shirley Bass

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This is very interesting. Thank you for the valuable tips!

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Of course, I like this idea and have been using it myself. At my company, we have found that from one 1-hour audio, you can probably get about 3 articles. Plus as has been pointed out, these audios can also be repurposed or combined to create other information products.

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This has been a long running article with many comments, which have provided great information. I would think the most important point is basically to just get out there and do it.

If you’ve already recorded do whatever it takes to get it transcribed. If you haven’t recorded, but have something to say, then say it. Record it. Anything worth saying is worth transcribing, because you never know where it will lead you once it’s out in the marketplace.

So whether you use a software program like Audacity, Dragon, go to Elance, what have you the main thing is to get off your duff and get it done; stop talking about it.

With that said, I’ll put our company out there. Feel free to contact us; we can provide you w/the services you’re looking for. And know this, if we can’t help you we’ll find someone who can.

Our goal is simply to help people get to where they want to be- successtranscripts.com we’ll get you started!

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Thank you for the inspiration. I think the tip is to keep things at a reasonable length – get your point across in a short time to ensure people access the required information without wasting much of their time. If you transcribe and have it in writing, it makes it easier for you to adapt and amend. (Blatant plug for my business here as I do transcription/virtual assistant work officesupportonline.com.au).

Great article, keep up the good work.

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