Turn any online article into audio or a podcast

Why do you think audio books are so popular now? I think it’s because people want to read, but they simply don’t have time to sit down and visually read a book. With audio books, you can “read” a book while you’re driving, or biking, or walking the dog.

But here’s the problem. There are lots of blogs and articles on the internet that are full of amazing content – but they are only available as text. Not audio. So you might miss out on a lot of good stuff, just because it takes too long to read and you don’t have time.

Now there’s a solution for that.

I recently discovered a service called Blog Reader. You can get it at blogreader.com.au.

Turns out, this service was created by a guy in Australia, Matt Segal, to solve his own problem. This is what he wrote on the website:

The way it works is pretty simple:

1. You find a web page with content you want to listen to, and copy that page’s URL
2. You submit the URL on the Blog Reader website
3. The site reads the content on that webpage
4. The site converts that content into an audio file
5. The audio file gets added to a podcast feed that is only for you to see and use (use any podcast player)
6. When you open that podcast feed, you see it there automatically.

If you’re not into podcasts – you also have the option to download the audio or listen to it right in your web browser.

Unfortunately this is not a completely free service, but it is very affordable. The cost is 2 AUD for each hour of audio (this currently converts to about $1.43 in US dollars). But you are able to try it out for free and see what you think – you get 5 free hours of audio when you create an account.

I tried it by sending it one of Seth Godin’s blog posts. I was actually surprised at the quality of the audio – the narration did not sound robotic, even though the voice was a computer reading it. The quality of computerized voices has really improved recently. You can also listen to a sample right on the website, without sending it any content to convert.

If you try it out, let us know what you think in the comments below!