Okay, this is the free way to enable audios on your site. If your site is not selling products, if you just want to do one audio, or have an audio blog, this is for you. If your site had a professional image to maintain, pressed for time, not a techie, or you want to experiment with easier ways to have audio all over your site, you’re much better off with the next tip, or the last one in this first series.
We’re going to go over 3 ways that you can do this. The first two ways involves your computer, a microphone, a text file, some space for an upload on your site and some free downloads. The drawback for method one is that not all people have this format installed on their computer.The drawback for method two is that you may have to purchase software to complete the job.
The second one involves a blogger account, some space on your site and your phone.
We’ll. go from hard to easy. These are quick overviews, so if you get lost, you’ll want to go to the site I refer you to at the end of this post for more information.
Method One: Record on your computer and convert to mp3/m3u.
On most computers, there’s a way to record audio in .wav format. This is the biggest file size, so you’ll probably want to convert it to mp3, but we’ll get to that in a second.
If you’re on windows, go to Start –> Programs/All Programs –> Accessories –> Entertainment. You should see a program called Sound Recorder. If not, you should be able to install it from the control panel in add/remove programs in any Windows version after 98. Macs have this capability too, but as much as I love Macs I don’t have one handy to tell you where to find the program.
Launch this program, plug in your microphone, and record. Some older versions of Sound Recorder will only give you a minute of air time.
You’ll probably want to do a test audio, and perhaps even write down what you’d like to say beforehand. When you’ve got a good one, save it to My Documents or the Desktop for now.
The next thing you’ll want to do is convert this to mp3 format, so it will be a smaller file that won’t have much quality loss.
The one I use is Mp3 to Wav Converter.There’s a free trial, but again, I believe recording time is limited to one minute or a certain number of conversions. If you’re willing to wait for a longer download, get a free trial of Sonic Foundry’s Acid Pro. You’ll be able to record directly into that program – it’s full use for 7 days.
There’s one that is totally free that will convert rm files to wav but it’s not as user friendly. It’s a programmer’s personal site, so email them if you need help. From there you’ll be able to use the converter above to get it into .wav format. Some versions of Windows Media Player will also do this for you free.
Now, once you have your file, upload it to your server.
The only problem now is that not everyone is on hi-speed and some people don’t want to wait to download the file. The solution to this is to stream your mp3 file – this also amounts to less bandwidth for you.
To stream the file, open up a text file. Cut and paste the link to your mp3 file on your server into the text file. Save it to a similar file name, but change the extension to .m3u.
This will give the dial-up people a break. You’re done. Just link to it from the page you want the audio to come from like you would any other file.
Method Two: Real Producer Basic (free download)
This method is more user-friendly, but not everyone has the Real Player installed on their system – if you’re doing this for anything money related, I suggest you stick with mp3 format.
First, download the free version of Real Producer, Real Producer Basic.
Plug in your mike and run the program. It even helps you test the microphone volume before you start.
It will walk you through naming the file and inputting information that will help the end listener classify your recording if they wish to.
Find the file location and upload it to your server. Real’s format compresses audio into smaller files, so you should have no problems providing both a downloadable and streaming file.
To stream it, use the same text file method above, only name the file with a .ram extension.
Method Three: The Easiest Free Way
First, get a blogger account.
Next, get an audio blogger account.
Call the number and record your post. (up to five minutes)
Your audio post will appear on your blog immediately, so go over and edit your post subject to say what the post is about and add some text to the post so your feed subscribers will know what you’re blathering bout.
After it’s posted, you can go back and edit the post, find the file location and download it to your desktop for streaming from your own server.
If you don’t want to use blogger, you can also go to AudBlog and sign up for their fairly cheap service – that link takes you to the free trial. For $3 a month you get 12 four minute posts. Not too bad.
Sounds like a whole lot of extra work doesn’t it? Even with calling them in, your talk time is limited and you have to download, upload, stream, and all that if you want it on your own site and not just your blog.
The next resource will let you cut and paste code for a nominal fee. I’ll tell you all about that and give you a link to a free audio seminar they gave that will help you generate ideas for using audio on your site.
Before I forget, there’s a free ebook at Internet Audio Guy that will walk you through the do-it-yourself basics.
