New Muse...REVIEWS PLEASE

[jpstephens]

Hey Everyone....

Just got done building my website and setting up my test page.

www.scribebot.com

The idea is to offer a transcription service for people with audio mp3s...aka podcasters. The angle is going to be that a text transcription of your shows will provide massive SEO benefits.

I am setting up my Google test campaign now and will be starting it within the next week. Hopefully it converts and if it does....I have the project planned to begin production right away.

Let me know your thoughts please.

[David-Andrew]

Wow, looks really good!

[jpstephens]

thanks so much man...I am trying hard to get the splash page right so when I run the ads I get a high conversion...

Hopefully I will and I can get the rest of the site developed...

[sub8hr]

My first thought when I saw the page was "who would pay by the minute when they could just get a voice recognition software package for $40?" It made more sense when you said the target audience is pod casters. If indeed that is the target audience you might do well to change the tagline to specify pod casts rather than just audio. I haven't really looked into voice recog that much, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are already cheap, fixed cost software packages that could do the same thing. If there are, you'd want to include information about why they should choose your service over potentially much cheaper options.

[Matthew Connors]

My first thought when I saw the page was "who would pay by the minute when they could just get a voice recognition software package for $40?" It made more sense when you said the target audience is pod casters. If indeed that is the target audience you might do well to change the tagline to specify pod casts rather than just audio. I haven't really looked into voice recog that much, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are already cheap, fixed cost software packages that could do the same thing. If there are, you'd want to include information about why they should choose your service over potentially much cheaper options.

I had the exact same thought. Whats is the benefit over voice recognition. Plus voice recognition is a once of expense where as yours is a new expense for every podcast.

This doesnt mean its a dud, but thats one major mindset you need to change.

[jpstephens]

interesting....

so...

1 - change the tagline
2 - add more copy associated with the advantages? something along the lines of it saves you time and money and its more accurate? some help?

Thanks,

[FreedomFinder]

I think it looks great... Just to be clear, the order your doing is 1) Build the site, 2) Test with PPC etc., 3) Build the actual product/service?

It looks great, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a huge success, but don't get stuck on the word "ScribeBot" if it fails the PPC tests, try slapping on a few different names. As Tim has pointed out, people judge a book by it's cover, so it's all about having the right cover. :-)

[jpstephens]

yep thats exactly what I'm doing....just going to test the conversion rate with PPC first...see if its something I can scale...

I am halfway through setting up the adwords campaign...except google just went down for maintenance haha

[Darren]

I had the exact same thought. Whats is the benefit over voice recognition. Plus voice recognition is a once of expense where as yours is a new expense for every podcast.

This doesnt mean its a dud, but thats one major mindset you need to change.

However, I am sure that there is a HUGE group of podcasters (and others) that have no idea that there is even voice recognition software out there. That is who you target.

[blackhatontherocks]

One quick thing that just went through my mind.

A 30-second screencast video of you trying to say something into a voice recognition software that screws up the recognition consistently. Best would be something that's kinda funny, but a very critical mistake at the same time.

The old "an album cover" -> "anal bum cover" gag comes to mind if any of you remember that video.

This would go a long way in showing why and for what you're service is.

Also, when running your real traffic tests, you should vary the pricing model between your current and a flatrate/volume-rate kind of approach (for example 2, 6 and 10 podcasts a month for 10, 22 and 35 dollars a month, or a fixed price like 30 bucks for up to X podcasts every month, with a secure pay-back-if-not-used policy to ad convenience for the user).

Site looks great btw.

[Matthew Connors]

Blackhats video idea is awsome - because then you can go use it on youtube as a stand alone promo video as well

This will overcome the mindset of one of expense v pay per transaltion

If you dont want the video option then you need some strong bullet points that say how crap voice recognition is and how its a waste of time and money, how its frustrating and then lead into some bulle t points about how your product overcomes these

[jpstephens]

So heres my update....

I have been running adwords campaigns for the last 4-5 days and I have gotten 49 clicks and 1 conversion....and spent 36.95.

My goal now has to increase the conversions on the traffic.

I am open for suggestions to get this # up way higher. Please do not try to submit an mp3 because I hav a live PPC campaign running testing conversions and I do not want to skew the results. Please provide feedback on the homepage and what would help drive conversions.

www.scribebot.com

Thanks,

[tbone2345]

wow, nice site
what are you using in the backend to drive the site or did you custom build?

[jpstephens]

I developed it custom, the backend isnt built yet...currently it is just running the conversion test to see if the idea is something I should pursue.

I need suggestions on how I can drive conversions from the homepage to the submissions.

ideas?

[ynewmedia]

You need to optimize this site for search engines. What keywords did you bid on? Whatever you bid on should be repeated as much as possible on the landing page. You should add a submit form to this page to squeeze information out of the leads. You need privacy policy, Terms and conditions, About Us and Contact us pages to convince Google that this is a legitimate Web site. If I were you, I would add these to your site and run the PPC campaign for at least another week to get better stats. You cannot make a decision on the biz with small data like that.

[boxmanboxman]

Wow. Really impressive website. But since you wanted feedback I highly reccomend checking out this website for mentoring:

http://personalfriday.com/theworld.html

This website nearly had my clicking "buy now" and thats saying something since I am die hard penny pincher and ruthless at being frugal. The point being that during your ad campaign try setting up another domain that has a video of someone saying what you want them to say.

To get an idea of where I'm going go to apple.com and watch their video product presentations for the macbooks and ipods and such.

The cost will be more obviously because you will be paying someone to recite a few lines but the ROI could be awesome.

Good luck and clever product.

[bgbg]

Unless "Jesse Login" is a real person, consider changing her name :)

[sierranewrich]

Greetings,

Very good idea and could be very useful, depending on how accurate transcription would be with this. I have seen two other price quotes when doing some research of services I would need for my own muses and came up with much higher rates for transcription than 75 cents per minute -- the best I think was 1.25 per minute. So that is good.

The quality will be hard though unless perhaps you have testimonials of people speaking about the accuracy or people just taking a leap with a short transcription to test out the service.

Now, I am not too familiar with voice recognition technology -- because as of a few years ago when I was looking into it the last time all those programs had to be trained to *your* voice and this process was a pain in the neck. Even if now they are better, they would still have a hard time transcribing a meeting of multiple people, a tele call or even more than one person making an audio... as such your service could be shown as being better than the average voice recognition software. After all, saving time AND money is of essence for many of us.

At 75 cents a minute, just having a few really loyal people using the service consistently can help make you some good muse money. And heck, while 45$ per hour of recorded does not seem a lot, this can add up to profits for you and great savings for those who use it.

Now, this leaves me with just two questions that others are likely to use as well -- is this done by superior technology or a program or via human transcribers.... and how could you assure accuracy in transcription?

For things like that and automation, a good FAQ will go a long way with that :).

Good luck, keep us updated on how things go...
If there will be a service here I recorded it for MY future use!

Sierra ---

[Bourgi]

I bet you will use voice recognition software to transcribe the audio files you recieve :D