Your wish is our command... · Nov 22, 05:04 AM by Ken King
It’s nice when people validate your hunches. Michael Arrington posted about companies he’d like to profile (but don’t exist), a top 10 wishlist for enabling software and services for his ideal web.
Podcast transcription was one of them:
8. Podcast TranscriptionsPodcasters need transciptions. Many people don’t have the time or inclination to listen to every podcast they want to. Search engines can’t index the content. Transctiptions fix both problems.
Hire transcribers in a low cost country. Offer podcasters reasonably priced transcriptions (bonus: in multiple languages). I’m thinking $10 per half hour. Partner with the podcast directories, search engines and tool providers. Mint money.
His reasons are exactly our own, and our plans for growth echo his suggestions as well. However, I have some reservations about the pricing suggestions. As much as I agree with Michael that it would be nice to get transcripts at 33¢/minute, I just don’t think it’s in the cards anytime soon.
Here’s where I’m coming from:
The going rate for general transcription services is $1/minute, but that is usually coupled with minimum lengths or caveats about audio quality. My research into spoken work podcasts (other than those produced by media networks with enough resources to contract directly with transcribers) came up with an average length of around 5-7 minutes. Minimum charges would put the cost of such a transcript at about $3-4/minute.
UPDATE We’re experimenting for the next two weeks with lowering the price to $1/minute
We’ve started things out at $2/minute so that we don’t have to deal with the minimum charge issue. I expect that as we build our relationship with our transcription providers, they’ll become accustomed to dealing with shorter clip lengths and become comfortable with the range of quality, allowing us to bring the rate down to $1/minute, still without a minimum charge. This will be made easier by having the same person transcribe a given podcaster’s feed on a regular basis.
While there is potential to further reduce the rate by offshoring the work, I’m wary of doing so simply because of the desire to provide quality service to our clients. I have had very poor experiences with offshore transcription, while the work produced by our U.S.-based transcribers has been flawless. One route we’re considering is having the initial work done offshore and then editing locally.
What can be done, then, to reduce costs for the hobbyist podcaster? We’ve got a couple of things in the works that may help:
- TranscribrNow – offer a tipjar so your audience can contribute. Using PayPal’s new micropayment system (which is not quite what most people mean by micropayments, but closer than ever before), they can chip in small amounts to get the work done.
- As Neil Halelamien said in one of the comments to Michael’s article, microchunking the work might yield some cost savings. We hope to experiment with Amazon’s mechanical turk in the next few weeks.
One other thing of note in Michael’s article – he laments the lack of good software to email blog entries to list subscribers. And so, we made another addition to the list. UPDATE I’m taking this off the list as comments to Michael’s article have made it clear that there are already a bunch of viable solutions to this problem in existence.
I can see corporate podcasters doing it, but bandwidth fees seem to be the biggest priority for hobby podcasters these days.
— Nick Ciske Nov 22, 05:16 PM #
I appreciate that for many people podcasting is a labour of love. We’re trying our best to provide tools that will help those hobbyists reduce costs.
However, without the potential for profit, any expense is difficult to justify – profit puts the R into ROI. Our service is primarily targeted to podcasters who can see a return on their investment, generally those using podcasting as a promotional vehicle for their businesses.
— Ken King | Enablr Nov 24, 08:09 AM #