Automated podcast to video conversion
I currently have 1 customer an old friend who I've convinced that uploading his podcast to YouTube as another distribution platform. With the proof of: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/9/20801873/youtube-podcast-creators-h3-joe-rogan-ethan-klein-hila-david-dobrik-views
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world and you receive the benefits of YouTube algorithm to recommend your content.
Personally I use a podcast app but always find myself returning to YouTube to listen to the podcasts I subscribe to.
I've been able to throw together a "some-code" mvp that pulls your RSS feed downloads all episodes, takes a 1080p image of your podcast image, combine the mp3 and image together and generate a video for every single episode.
Converting a backlog of content creates a strange pricing problem where customers could range from 50 episodes all the way to 200+. Charging the same price for both scenarios seems weird.
I could charge for just the backlog and then the optional subscription for all future conversions.
I plan to have a more useable MVP thrown together by June 1st! I have the pieces I just need to put them together for some more automation. :)
What does everyone think?
UPDATE 05/02/2020
I launched an mvp website at in the comments below.
Hey Justin
It’s an awesome idea! You should take a look at www.repurpose.io ;) It has a lot of the same features that you mentioned as well as more - maybe you can get some inspiration.
repurpose.io looks awesome and definitely is doing what I am trying to do. I need start getting on to actually compete! lol
I have a few ideas to separate myself a little bit. But that's going to take some time.
Hi Justin,
I have been looking into podcast repurposing ideas and the first one was podcast to blog, then podcast to video or podcast to blog+video, so what you are working on sounds pretty cool.
You might wanna check these guys out https://wavve.co/ as well.
Would your tool be able to add relevant tags?
Sign me up for your MVP :)
Well I just "launched" the MVP. Let me know what you think.
https://podtovid.com/
Wave is super awesome. I listened to their episode on the IH podcast. Wave is geared towards clips more than full episode conversion. Granted I could see them just adding another pricing tier and allow for longer clips. But let's hope not so I can launch. :P
When you say relevant tags are you referencing auto uploading to YouTube? YT's API costs money and would be a future phase and probably highest price tier to cover costs.
I might throw a landing page together by next week. I'm working on names. Pod2Vid is the simplest name at the moment but not necessarily my favorite haha.
I'll be in touch!
I completely understand your back catalog problem as I faced it with my closed captioning company and am currently facing it with my YouTube video spoken search engine.
My recommendation is that if there isn't a serious cost on creating these assets (which on the surface it looks like it's just server processing time since you shouldn't need to store the video asset long term), charge a one-time fee that's large enough that people will pay it but don't make adding those episodes required to start paying your monthly MRR.
The alternative strategy is to make this a surprise and delight feature. Once someone pays for that first month on the service, prep the entire back catalog and then send them an email personally explaining that you appreciate them trying it out and that you want to see them succeed so all they need to do is press this one button to push all their episodes up to the specified YouTube channel.
Finally, I would 100% recommend that you find a way to reach out to people like Jacci over at https://PodReacher.com who are already working with your ideal client base and who you could do some co-promo or affiliate dealings with.
If you want to dig into this further, happy to chat with you privately. Email addy is on my profile here.
Both of your solutions seem good. My other thought was pricing wise, is have tiers of conversion. Tier 1 $10/m for 10 episodes a month. $35/m for unlimited conversions per podcast.
From a resources perspective my code downloads all episodes and converts them regardless so it requires me to code less.
I've been developing everything with a very rudimentary MVP doing most of the stuff manually I'm the background except the batch conversion.
The automatic YouTube upload is something I'd really like to include but I have to do my research.
PodReacher absolutely is reaching the same audience as me. It could be an interesting co-promo affiliate system.
With your code being simple and there being no limit on RSS feed pulls you're avoiding some of the API limitations that I've been fighting for so long that I just assume exist in every app.
My closed captioning company ran entirely on a membership basis based on the number of expected episodes each month. 5 episodes a month, 15 episodes a month or 30 episodes a month with episodes capped at 15 minutes in duration. This absolutely can work as a recurring revenue source.
The YouTube upload API quota cost at 1600 units of a 10K limit will be a bit costly but definitely something to keep on the horizon.
All in all, there's something to be said in creating in this space so keep going.
This makes a lot of sense! I'd recommend a custom thumbnail/graphic for every episode though.
Yeah, I am working to figure that out. The hard part, is that it would require a graphic builder. Or in it's simplest form being given the custom font for the graphic and then being told where the text should be generated. All possible just trying to figure out how.
End goal and my inspiration of the product is to be able to generate something like this. https://youtu.be/CjM49zMEcoc
Yeah! That looks awesome but that custom waveform is going to take a while to generate and be a big file. Just a custom static image should work for you.
Absolutely. The plan is to launch with a static image and then work towards custom text and then waveforms. I can generate a few waveforms pretty easily but they don't look to great in my opinion.
If I did a podcast, I think I would do this. I don't have one (yet) and I'm not sure what other options/competitors there are to do the same.
A community highlight cast could be interesting. :)
So I just "launched" the MVP website! Extremely simple and gets the job done. Let me know what you think! https://podtovid.com/