Putting audio on your web site

I have been bit by the audio bug! This past week, I was thinking about information products and web site content (as usual) and I decided to see if I could figure out how to get my 1 hour interview on Awesome Entrepreneurs onto my web site in the easiest way possible. It was in MP3 already - but a BIG file. And, to listen to it, one would have to have a player installed. Too many steps and people don't do it.

So I started researching tools. I found MP3 Stream and downloaded the demo. Within minutes, I'd created a little flash gizmo to put on my site which provided the play and pause buttons, and compressed my 107 MB file down to ELEVEN MB! You simply can't beat that with a stick!

You can see what I did, right on the blog.

Emboldened by how easy it was, I went out and bought a basic microphone/headset - Altec Lansing brand, about $19.99 at Staples. I figured I'd start cheap and see what I needed to improve. I then needed something to record and edit audio with. So I did some more research and learned Audacity was highly recommended and FREE.

So I recorded some of my written material with that. And then edited out my boo-boos. I found that if I made a mistake, and then just repeated what I'd said poorly again, I could go back and delete out the things that sounded wrong. I added silence where little blips in the audio occurred, and polished it up. Saved the file to MP3 format, which took the installation of another add on to Audacity, and I had a big fat file to run through MP3 Sound Stream. Moments later, I had another file to put into an HTML page and upload, if wanted.

It's no secret that I love to talk. If I had any idea how easy these tools were to publish audio, I would have done a lot more of it, a lot sooner!

That said - there are some cautions. There is a learning curve to do anything fancier than what I've just described. Not everyone has a good speaking voice and it takes some serious effort, even for those who do, to sound natural. Just like with copy writing, if your words aren't hypnotic or interesting, and your content isnt' good, you can blah blah blah on forever and there is no point to it. And of course, audio files are still hefty in file size so you will probably need to look at more space on your web server. And if you get popular, greater bandwidth allowances.

I've got some great ideas now on using audio for myself and my clients - still mulling around my options and paths. But if you've ever thought about it - what are you waiting for? Tools like Audacity and MP3 Sound Stream make it so simple!

Disaster Planning for Small Home Offices

Along with the horror of watching Katrina's aftermath, I've been dwelling a lot on what I would do if I lost everything in a disaster. As a virtual business, I could carry on with my widely scattered clientele, even if the entire region around me was wiped out - assuming I planned ahead. I guess this whole event made me realize how sorely UNprepared I really was. So I've been looking around online for disaster planning resources and information. There is a lot of scattered information online but these are two of the best I found aimed at small home business disaster preparedness.

Open for Business is a government web site with good information for helping you anticipate and plan for disasters that might affect your business. It looks like it is all free, but requires more work to dig around and piece together what works for your business.

Home Office Recovery Plan is a different sort of product with the same goal - it is a downloadable workbook with information and step by step guides and forms for small home based businesses to plan for disasters. Considering how organized and well thought out it is, it is a very affordable investment of only $19.99.

As time consuming as it might be, preparing for the possibility of my home business surviving a disaster is going to have to be one of my new goals. I urge you, too, to think about this, wherever you live. My understanding is that after a disaster, only 40% of SOHOs survive to start up again. I'm sure you want to be one of them!