AP 0511: Is It Worth Getting My Podcast Transcribed?

03/2017 Update: My team uses Rev.com for all the AskPat Podcast transcripts.

AskPat 511 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What up everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 511 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

All right, here's today's question from Sebastian.

Sebastian: Hello Pat, this is Sebastian from Austria calling in. I'm running the community Project Phoenix. Actually it's Projekt Phoenix in German. And where I work with multi-passionate people and help them translating their passion into a real business. I do run a very successful podcast and videocast show, thanks to you by the way, because I followed your podcast tutorial series. I just recently had my 15th episode so, awesome. And lately I've started to research in how people actually consume my content, and there was the feedback that people would also like to have a transcribed version of my podcast which also appear on YouTube actually.

I looked into the topic of transcriptions and I'm not sure actually where or if there is enough value for me to spend money on using some podcast transcription service. I've seen that you've been using or still use transcription PDFs in your podcasts as an attachment, but honestly I'm not sure if I should spend the money and the effort on actually providing that repackaged type of content for my audience as well. Looking forward to your thoughts and opinion on that and talk to you soon. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey Sebastian, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. Transcriptions, taking the audio or the video or the audio and the video, excuse me, and actually turning that into text. Is that worthwhile?

Now, of course, the obvious answer is, well, it depends. And I'm glad you're thinking about this, I'm glad you're thinking about the value of it for you. Because a lot of other people see other people do things and they just do those things without considering how it might affect or what the ROI would be, the return on investment would be, and it is indeed an investment to get transcriptions done. It does cost quite a bit of money, anywhere between 75 cents to a dollar all the way up to two or three dollars per minute of your show, depending on who you end up working with. There's a lot of people who do transcriptions on places like Fiverr.com also on Elance.com—actually, excuse me, it's not called ‘Elance' anymore, it's called Upwork.com; oDesk and Elance combined to create Upwork.com. Or you could find people on Craigslist and there's a lot of people in the online space who are offering transcription services.

There's also a company called Rev which I like to use. I like that because I can literally record using my mobile device, hit a button, and then somebody on the other end, an actual human being, transcribes that and puts it into a file that I can then use and I can repurpose that however I'd like.

Now what are the benefits of using and conducting transcription work for your shows? Whether it's a video show or a podcast or like you, Sebastian, you have both. The benefits are, well there's the obvious, of course, because some people like to read and other people don't like to listen or don't like to watch. I've found that a lot of my audience loves the transcriptions even though they could watch and they could listen, they just aren't able to sometimes. Sometimes people are at work and maybe they're not supposed to be consuming podcasts, but the only way that they would be able to do it at work is not to listen to it but to read it. So that's kind of cool and that makes sense.

I also have a lot of hearing-impaired audience members which I care about quite a bit. Not to say that those who don't do transcriptions don't care about them, but I know I do have quite a number of hearing-impaired people in my audience and I think it's fair for me with where I'm at in my business that for them I have to do that.

The other benefits of it are if you include that on your website, some people do that, and not in the PDF, it also helps contribute to SEO or Search Engine Optimization which, you might be wondering, well Pat then why don't you do that? Well, because I like to include the transcription as an extra download. A PDF file that adds a little bit more value to the show and a little bit more professionality, that's where I'm coming from.

Some people, and this is where the value can start to come back in your way a lot bigger, some people have the transcriptions available but they are available only through when people send their email address through. So it's used as a lead magnet. I believe James Clear, or James Shramko, maybe it was, does this and does it very well. And you get a lot more people subscribing who want that transcription if they haven't subscribed already. That is very, very beneficial for both parties when that is the case.

I also know a lot of people who take the transcriptions and then combine them and repurpose them into some sort of ebook and sell that on Amazon. Or give it away for free as another value add or combine those transcriptions and turn that into a lead magnet. Again, when you get into the collection of email addresses, and selling things on Amazon, and ebooks and things like that, that's where the ROI would come from. I would consider if that's something that makes sense for you and your audience. I don't do the compilation/compendiums of my podcast transcriptions because honestly I just haven't had the time to do that, and I haven't found a way to make that something that I feel like would be representative of the brand in a good way. I just obviously haven't thought about it very much and there's a lot of other things on my plate. So I haven't thought about that, but the transcriptions are free and they're available as a PDF. I do know it adds value to the listeners.

Now what I would recommend you do, Sebastian, is do a test run. Try one episode and see what, for example, the price would be. That'll give you a good baseline, and then see what the return is, if any, directly from that. If there is, you'd be able to obviously see if it's worthwhile or not. If you do, for example, have emails coming in from people who download the transcript and then those emails if you were to track them convert into sales, well then you could see directly and quite quickly whether or not that works out or not.

But oftentimes it's not a direct and immediate payback. You'll have to talk to people who download it and actually I would include in that first transcript an honest message that says, “Hey, this is the first of potentially many transcripts. I just want to make sure that this is something that I want to continue to do, and in order for me to continue to do it, I need to make sure that it's worth the money that's required. Because it is expensive and if this is something that you'd like to continue to receive send me a message back and let me know how valuable this is to you and how you use it, and also if you'd be willing to pay for it.”

Honestly, some people, I'm sure, in a way that's similar to what people do on Patreon.com, they might want to pay a couple bucks to five dollars, however many, you'd have to gauge. But some people who want to consume your content and will get benefit from it, and know there's an ROI with taking the time to consume your content in the way that they can and conveniently consume it, they might end up paying for these transcripts too.

So there's a lot of things you can do, and you can be creative with it too, but I would do a test run. This is sort of the theme for me moving forward is, especially with my upcoming book called Will it Fly? This is what it's all about. It's about validation, so instead of going full scale like human beings want to do. We either go all in one way or all in the other way. It doesn't have to be like that, it can be hey let's just dip our toe in the water and see how warm it is. And if it's warm, then you can jump in, if not then you can heat up the pool first or anyway, this analogy has gone bad. But you know what I'm trying to say. Go small scale, test it out in a small scale version before you go large scale.
Again, try that out. See what happens.So Sebastian, I mentioned the tools at the beginning that you can use. Again, that's Fiverr or Upwork.com, Craigslist, and I would start with your community too. If there is anybody there who would like to do the transcription work for you, that's actually a great place to start. And also Rev.com, it's also a mobile app that you can use to transcribe your mobile phone recordings and then turning that into a transcription.

So Sebastian, I mentioned the tools at the beginning that you can use. Again, that's Fiverr or Upwork.com, Craigslist, and I would start with your community too. If there is anybody there who would like to do the transcription work for you, that's actually a great place to start. And also Rev.com, it's also a mobile app that you can use to transcribe your mobile phone recordings and then turning that into a transcription.
Anyway, you get the idea. Sebastian, I wish you all the best of luck. Thank you so much for the question today. I'm going to send you, yes all the way to Austria, an AskPat t-shirt. I would love to see a photo of you wearing it and on Twitter, send it over. I love seeing people wear the AskPat t-shirt. So we'll send that to you, you'll hear from my assistant in the next couple weeks, and I appreciate you asking the question.

And everybody else who has asked a question on the show, obviously this show wouldn't exist without your questions, so keep them coming, head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on the page. Just hit the record button and ask your question. It's as easy as that and you might earn yourself an AskPat t-shirt.

I also want to mention that my new book, like I said, is coming out February 1st, less than a month now, which is incredible. It's been such a long journey and I appreciate all you who have been very supportive of me and my book along the way. Just head on over to Willitflybook.com, you can get more information about that there.

Again, I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much and here's a quote to finish off the day by Jim Rohn. He said “Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better.” Powerful.

Cheers, take care, and I look forward to serving you in tomorrow's episode of AskPat. Bye.