Idea to optimize your commute and monetize your blog
The other day, I was thinking about how many great blog articles there are out there and how I don't have enough time to read them all. I also have about half an hour commute each day to work, which is often filled with listening to the radio, or an audiobook if I can find one. I was just thinking about how great it would be if I could listen to all of the blog articles I don't have time to read. It then occurred to me that I could create something that would allow commuters like me to listen to this great content. As a side note, I've also been trying to come up with a way for bloggers to monetize the content they create, so it all came together. Thus, the brain child "BlogPods" was born.
BlogPods is a website/app that allows bloggers to upload audio recordings of their blog articles or pay a nominal fee for BlogPods to narrate them. Bloggers are then payed on a per unique listen basis. For consumers, BlogPods is a subscription based service, with different tiers. Based on what tier consumers pay for, they are able to listen to a corresponding number of blog articles per month.
Before going further on this idea, I was hoping to get some validation.
Would you be willing to pay for a subscription service to listen to great blog posts like those found on IndieHackers?
If you're the author of a blog, would you be willing to either record or pay to record your posts as a way to monetize them?
I'd appreciate any feedback!
This idea reminds me of this article I read recently: http://gaps.com/startup-challenge/
I think it's a good idea, I also like what mpvvliet suggested (on-demand narration). I already listen to podcasts were bloggers read their on articles, so I guess I would be a user of this ;)
Good luck with the project :)
Wow, I definitely notice some similarities here and the article you sent. I'll keep that in mind as I continue forward. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond!!
Hey they,
I'm only a low-level blogger at the moment so I don't know if I could honestly comment on whether I would one day be a customer or not, but I think it's a cool idea.
Don't know if you've got some competition out there from Medium. The recently started doing audio versions of members-only articles:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/medium-launches-audio-versions-of-stories-for-members/
I'd definitely listen as a consumer though!
James
I came here to post just this. @thuey, I did tell you that most ideas aren't unique, and you should assume someone else out there is working on your exact idea right now :-)
Anyway, instead of looking at Medium as competition, you could look at them as a business opportunity. For example, will this new launch lead to higher demand for narration services from bloggers? Most likely. Are any other narration services targeting blog-related keywords and building features specifically for that audience? Maybe not.
I find this idea really interesting for a few reasons:
Also it would be interesting if this BlogPods had unique persona voices, so you knew a bit about the actual few common folks behind the content they read - so it's almost like listening to a close friend/colleague.
Thanks for the response! I really appreciate the feedback and suggestion! When you say "unique persona voices", do you mean make it so the narrators are quickly identifiable because their voices are so distinct?
Also, if this service existed, would you pay for it? Either as a blogger or as a listener?
Sorry for the late response (notification emails aren't coming through).
With the "unique persona voices" I mean that you may have a team of say.. 10 people. Those are the only 10 people who do the narration. It would be cool to have those narrators as part of the online community and possibly share similar interests with the target audience.
I'd pay for this as a blogger (extended reach + quality) and as a listener (if it meant it saved me hours a week reading them myself). :') Also means I'm getting a good personal news digest on my own interests whilst stuck in traffic.
Fantastic idea.
Reminds me of Podcast Engine (think that's the name) that will do all the editing, intros, outros, and show notes for podcasts for a monthly fee.
Or a bit like Jordan Gal's Audience Ops, which does content creation and editing for a monthly fee.
You could charge X dollars up to 1000 words/month, and increase pricing for the people who create the most content. I bet there's plenty of bloggers who are nervous about their own voice who would pay for such a service.
I think this is a phenomenal idea with huge potential and you should go for it.
All that being said, you can technically already accomplish this using Pocket, which will reads saved articles back to you using text-to-speech technology. But it sounds like Siri.
Thanks so much for the positive validation! It's really encouraging to hear to keep me motivated.
I agree that there are lots of bloggers out there who prefer to stay behind typed words, but are missing out on a huge opportunity to get their content out there and make a little money while they're at it.
I also personally haaaate current text-to-speech technology. Maybe someday it'll get good enough that I'll be able to enjoy it, but it is not this day.
If this service existed, would you pay for it? Either as a blogger or as a listener?
I don't blog so, and am not your target market at all, but I think you could get $300+ dollars a month for this service.
Find some prolific bloggers and do a few of their most popular posts for free and see what they think.
I had the exact same idea a few months ago! Same reason, I spend time on the road & would like to listen to articles while travelling.
The only thing is, I want to listen to my articles which may be different from what other people want. On-demand narration of only the articles I want to listen to is prohibitively expensive and you may run into legal issues, too.
BTW, the narration market seems to me a losing battle as text-to-speech becomes better. Eventually your phone will simply read the text to you in a voice that does not sound like a robot.
In the end I kind of left the idea there, but every day I drive into work (when there is no IndiaHacker podcast episode to listen to) I still ponder how I can get my reading list in audio format on my iphone. :-)
Thanks for the response! It's good to know I'm not the only one who wishes something like this existed. I will hopefully be able to get enough popular bloggers onboard the platform that the articles that are available are the ones you want to listen to :)
If this service existed, would you pay for it? Either as a blogger or as a listener?
Actually, I built a prototype of this service before getting distracted with other things. Seeing your messages here and the enthusiasm of others motivates me to dust it off and take another look at it.
Since we're both passionate about this idea, would you be interested in connecting outside of this forum to discuss?
Yeah, definitely! My email is thuey100@gmail.com
Yes, I would pay $10-$15 a month to have the articles I care about in audio format.
This would be good for medium and quora. Not sure what the legal issues would be though.
Thanks for the response. It would be at the author's request, so I don't think there'd be any issues. If this service existed, would you pay for it?
At the moment I would say no. I already have enough trouble staying up to date with podcasts as well as audible books. There's also a service that transcribes articles for free (with ads). Forgot the name though.
UPDATE: I was wrong. It's a paid service and it's called Audm: https://www.audm.com/
Thanks for the followup! It's god to know what's out there, and what I'll be competing with!.
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Turning text content into audio is an intriguing idea. I would strongly consider doing that for Indie Hackers interviews. There are lots of people who, like you, don't have time to read stuff but would happily listen while walking/driving places.
However, the business model might need work. It's notoriously difficult to get people to pay for content. As you said, there's a ton of content out there for free, and people already don't have enough time to read or listen to all of it.
That said, I was considering charging for some form of content before I joined Stripe. Ben Thompson over at Stratechery was my primary source of inspiration — he has quite a few paying subscribers, more than enough to provide him a living.
If I were determined to work on this idea, I might focus on charging for the narration service, and leave the hard problems of hosting, marketing, and monetizing the content to the creators themselves. As Warren Buffett said (and I'm kind of quoting this with tongue in cheek), "Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them."
Thanks for the response. Just providing a narration service is an interesting idea. I have two concerns with that:
That being said, I like the simplicity of just focusing on narration. Also, I might be misjudging the market for it.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this idea, if it were targeted to just provide the narration service?
timely - look what product hunt just put out yesterday: https://www.producthunt.com/ask/2126-what-s-the-best-tool-for-listening-to-articles
My dad has been asking me to build this for him for years, and would certainly pay a Netflix sized monthly fee for the service.
I would use it myself but probably wouldn't pay for it.
I've had this idea too! I think there really is consumer demand for this, but I am not sure you will easily get consumers to pay. I would think you might want to (eventually) do an advertising-based revenue model, or figure out a way to provide enough value to the bloggers that they want to pay to be on the platform.
I would definitely use this both as a consumer and as a blogger (and I'd be willing to do the work of narration myself as a blogger), but I doubt that I would pay for it with either hat on - never as a consumer and only as a blogger if I could see the value I was getting through it via increased outreach/engagement/etc.
Agree with others that it's really important to be able to personalize this. As a consumer what I really want is exactly what pocket has, but without the crappy TTS narration. If you can solve that problem I think you can get loads of people on board.
I was literally just searching for a way to convert online articles to podcasts so I can listen to them on my commute! I ended up coming across narro.co, which is similar to your idea except that it uses TTS and not human narration. I have yet to listen to a full article, so I'm not sure how much I'll like the TTS reading. They also let you create podcasts of any text, so it's not only for bloggers to create podcasts to release to the world.
Like henryw374, I am not subscribed to any blogs, so for me, a service that is tied to specific blogs doesn't interest me too much, though I do like the idea of human-read content since it would be much easier to listen to! If I was able to get podcast versions of any articles I find online, I would be much more interested and might consider paying up to $10/month for this service.
I think this sounds super cool but...
ok something exists in this form for medium: https://medium.com/topic/audio?ref=producthunt