Content Creation

Are you one of those people who loves designing, but can’t quite get to grips with the likes of Photoshop? Are you looking to take your website to the next level? Well, Canva could be the design service you are looking for.

While some of us are looking for the most powerful design software, there is no shame in admitting that we like the idea of shortcuts that still look great. If you are looking to make incredible infographics, website graphics, social media posts, posters, and much more, Canva might just have everything you need.

What Is Canva?

At this point you are probably wondering what Canva is, or you know and you just want me to get on with the article (if you do, feel free to skip ahead).

Canva is a design service that gives businesses, organisations and individuals a simple design platform that helps them to create professional looking quality graphic designs. It has a whole host of powerful design features that can make creating quality graphics easy.

Canva users have the option of over one million quality photographs, graphics and fonts, and there is even a paid version with more options for $12.95 a month ($9.95 a month if you buy a year subscription. We are going to get to the paid version later.

It’s design tools let you easily turn an idea into a stunning design, whether that is for your website, social media account or a physical product.

How Did Canva Start?

Canva’s story started in 2007 when Melanie Perkins was studying at the University of Western Australia. Melanie taught students how to use programs like Photoshop and InDesign, but found that many struggled with the complicated nature of some of these programs.

Melanie, Cliff Obrecht (co-founder) and some others got together to build a simple to use online design tool, that would go on to become Canva.

How Does Canva Work?

The first thing you will need to do is make an account on Canva, which is a straightforward process. There are various options for accounts from education to personal and business. You can sign up with your Facebook, Google, or email account, which makes it nice and easy.

Once you have created an account, you will be greeted by the homepage of Canva. This is where you can dive straight into making your designs from a blank page, or you can opt to follow a template.

Before you start, there are some other things you should take note of. The left side bar is where you will find all your account information and other information like designs that are shared with you, other templates and a place where you “create a team.”

The main page will also show a number of pre-made templates that you can customise, along with designs that you have previously made. Some of the templates include the following:

• Social media
• Presentation
• Facebook post
• Infographic
• YouTube Channel Art
• Poster

If you don’t want to use a template, you can start from a blank sheet and use your own customised dimensions.

Picking A Template

When you pick a template you will be taken to the design screen. This is where you can let your creative juices flow and is the heart of Canva.

As an example we chose a social media template. This comes in at 800×800 pixels and you will be greeted by a blank, white page on the design screen.

On the left of the screen you will have some pre-set templates you can drag and drop onto the blank page. You can modify this to your liking, from changing the text to pictures and everything in-between.

The other option is to search for graphics, images, vectors or text in the search bar. This will give you a range of options to choose from that you can simply drag and drop onto your design. You may notice that some things have a price next to them or a ‘pro’ sign. This is because they are either only available for Canva for Work members or at an additional cost. We will get to Canva for Work later in this review.

Starting from Scratch

If you want to start from scratch and not use a pre-set size or template, it’s as easy as entering the dimensions you want. You will once again be greeted by a blank white page, where you can drag and drop anything you want from the search section.

Uploading Your Own Images & Graphics

For those who don’t want to use the images, graphics and other bits and pieces Canva provides, you can upload your own. This gives you complete creative freedom over your project and it is as simple as selecting the ‘uploads’ tab, and then selecting the image you want.

In the ‘uploads’ tab you can see all the images you have uploaded to Canva already, and they are all available for any of your projects.

Finishing Your Design

When it gets to finishing your design, there are a few options you can choose from. If you simply want to download your creation, you will be given the option of downloading it as a JPEG, PNG, or PDF.

Another option is to share your design with other people (there is also an option that lets them edit it). You can also share it to your social media accounts and link it to your website or blog.

The last option is to make it public, so other Canva users can view your creation.

Other Things You Can Do with Canva

Make a Team

Canva gives you the option of creating a team of members, which makes it easier to share designs, folders and projects. Up to 50 people can be added into a team for free, with more being able to be added if you sign up for Canva for Work.

Build a Brand

Another feature of Canva is that it lets you build up a brand. This brand can be used to essentially ‘sell yourself’ and let other users see the amazing designs you have done.

We haven’t delved too deep into these features as what we really needed Canva for is to make some nice looking designs.

Is Canva Any Good?

At this point, you are probably thinking is Canva for me and is it any good? We have found that Canva is an excellent addition to our arsenal of design software. Is it the best? Certainly not, but it is great if we need to make a design quickly or a design that is relatively simple.

The intuitive drag-and-drop controls make adding, editing and removing elements on your canvas as easy as can be. This means that even the clueless will be able to produce some amazing designs relatively simply.

We managed to make this simple infographic for our website DogOPedia in a short timeframe, without any help from more complicated design tools.

While Canva makes designing easier, it is by no means only aimed at amateurs. We can see a real benefit for more experienced designers and the simplicity will keep you coming back for more every day.

Problems We Encountered

Canva is an excellent tool, but we have run into a few problems with it. When we made an infographic with an absolute ton of assets, we did find that Canva experienced some significant slowdown on the design page. The search functions and menus of Canva worked perfectly fine, but the slowdown was more than a bit irritating.

We tried this on a few different machines and internet connects, and found the result was the same on all of them.

Now, you could say that a program like Photoshop would be better suited for creating large infographics, but we wanted to see what Canva’s capabilities are.

Another problem we encountered was that lining up assets can be a bit of a pain occasionally; however, if you are keeping the design simple you shouldn’t have a problem.

The last issue we really want to cover is that it can feel a bit limited at times. Canva is a free to use program, so we can’t really knock it here, but it can be a bit frustrating when you really want to do something exciting.

All these issues are really just nit-picking in all honesty. Most users are not going to be making massive infographics and the limitations of the drag-and-drop system only show themselves on rare occasions.

How Does Canva Compare to Something Like Photoshop?

So we’ve discovered that Canva is an excellent, simple design tool that has a few drawbacks, but how does it compare to something more powerful?

Comparing Canva to Photoshop is interesting. While these two design tools are vastly different and can be used for very different designs, there is some crossover. Photoshop is undoubtedly more powerful and you can do so much more, but if you are just looking for something for social media pages or simple website graphics, Canva comes surprisingly close.

We found ourselves reaching for Canva in situations where we wanted to create quick, simple graphics that look pretty good. This shows that there is some merit to Canva’s simple approach and we see ourselves continuing to use the tool for a range of different designs.

When it gets to something more complicated, we were obviously choosing Photoshop, as it is so much more capable.

For those who lack any experience with more complicated programs like Photoshop, or are new to using design tools, Canva is an excellent place to start. It is free and you can master it in lightning speed compared to a program like Photoshop.

What About Other Alternatives to Canva?

Now, Photoshop isn’t really a direct comparison to Canva. It’s much more expensive and requires a lot more training, but what about design tools that are similar to Canva?

Admittedly, we haven’t tried that many, because between Photoshop and Canva we have everything we need. This is a testament to how good Canva is, and useful it is.

Other programs you may like to look at include Stencil, Snappa and DesignBold. There are even design tools specific to mobile systems like Desygner and Adobe Spark.

The main benefit of these apps is that they offer some new templates, graphics and images that you may not be able to find on Canva. All of their design tools are fairly similar, and they are all great for making some excellent looking designs.

While these other programs are excellent, we can’t say that they offer us much more to pull us away from Canva.

So What’s the Difference Between Canva, Canva for Work and Canva Enterprise?

The simple answer is, a lot. The three options all have their benefits and you can view the differences below.

Obviously, Canva for Work and the Enterprise version offer vastly more than the free version. The 1GB storage limitation of the free version can be quickly used up if you are regularly using Canva (although you can always delete designs).

Access to an extra 400,000 free photos, illustrations and templates is also handy, as sometimes it can be little bit difficult finding the right one in the free version.

The real benefit of Canva for Work is when it comes to working with other people on designs and if you need to regularly resize work as well. There are a few other differences as well like the ability to export designs as GIFs and upload your own custom fonts for your brand.

The Enterprise version offers all the bells and whistles of Canva for Work, but with a bit more for large teams of people. It is limited to teams consisting of more than 30 members and you’ll need to contact Canva for pricing.

Is Canva for Work Worth It?

Now, for the real question. Is Canva for Work worth the monthly subscription fee? At $12.95 a month or $119.40 a year, Canva for Work certainly isn’t going to break the bank, but you don’t want to waste your money as well.

If you are someone with a large stockpile of royalty free pictures and graphics, we personally don’t see a massive upside to Canva for Work. Additionally, those with design tools like Photoshop probably won’t see a massive benefit as well, although the 400,000 photos and illustrations can come in handy.

For those using Canva as their only design tool, Canva for Work is definitely a cut above the free version. It will let you create some tremendous designs and is so simple to pick up. We can definitely recommend it for people who want to improve their social media pages, websites and much more!

The great thing about Canva for Work is that you can try it for free for 30 days, to see if you like it.

Summing Up

Things We Like About Canva

It’s incredibly easy to use. The ability to quickly create good looking designs with little effort is a big plus in our minds. Canva can save you a lot of time and its simplicity means that anyone with half a brain could probably operate it. If you don’t want to learn to use complicated programs like Photoshop, this is the design tool for you.

Access to a wide range of photos and illustrations. The massive quantity of excellent images and graphics is a big plus of Canva. It is so handy being able to quickly search for particular vectors, photos or illustrations that look great. These can then be dragged and dropped into your design. For those who need a bit more, you can either pay for individual designs or subscribe to Canva for Work.

You can use it anywhere. The ability to create great looking designs from anywhere in the world is a great bonus. Sometimes we don’t have access to our own computers, but we can always get to Canva.

Setting up an account is easy. Making an account on Canva is dead simple. Either use your Facebook or Gmail account to speed up the process.

It’s great for teams. The ability to create a team of Canva users and then work together on designs is great.

You can use it to get exposure. While you are obviously going to get more exposure on other platforms, the ability to build your brand on Canva is great.

It’s fast and works well. We have only experienced a couple of hiccups when using Canva, and it has almost always been responsive and fast.

Great pricing for Canva for Work. If you need a bit more out of Canva, the paid version definitely adds a lot more for its small monthly or yearly cost.

Things We Don’t Like About Canva

It’s not great for large infographics or designs. If you have a lot going on in your design, Canva can begin to become a bit unresponsive and laggy. While this is annoying, you will have no trouble with less complicated designs.

The range of photos and illustrations in the free version can feel a bit limited. We can’t really complain here because its free, but we do find that good free photos and illustrations can be buried under a load of paid ones. With a bit of patience, you will probably be able to find something suitable for free. The other option is to pay for the designs individually or get Canva for Work.

Limited design tools compared to more complicated programs. Canva’s simple design tools are both a blessing and a curse. The drag and drop system can sometimes feel a bit limited and its harder to make something really special.

Conclusion

We are big fans of Canva. Not just because its free, but because it is genuinely useful and has helped us save time. The ability to create amazing designs with the simple drag and drop system is excellent.

Canva can really help those looking to improve their social media accounts, website or any other thing where they need great looking visual designs.

While Canva won’t replace more complicated designs tools, it is an excellent addition to our arsenal. It is used for more simple creations and when we don’t have access to programs like Photoshop. The great range of photos and illustrations also come in handy, and some may find that the paid version is worth it for that.

We don’t really have any major issues with Canva, and the ones we listed above are really just nit-picking. It is definitely worth checking out and we recommend you try out Canva for Work as well.

NB: This review is largely re-published from my original here (linked for your convenience). I have made some updates relevant for 2019, and re-worded the content just to avoid any duplicate content problems. I also talk a bit more about the user comments I received on my original review … and you’ll notice that my conclusion is quite a bit different.

Hirewriters.com review begins here:

Following the success of my popular iWriter review, I’m coming at you today with a detailed, honest, and accurate review of a content writing service called Hire Writers (I will refer to it variably as Hirewriters.com as well).

Full disclosure as well … this review is only written from the perspective of actually buying content. I haven’t done any writing for Hirewriters.com in order to try and make extra cash. However, later on in the piece I will chime in with some information supplied to me by people who have written articles for Hirewriters.com.

Way back in 2013 I heard about Hire Writers after receiving an email from a guy called Brandon, who was one of the founders of the platform. He had read my old iWriter review and was keen for me to give his new service a look over. I agreed to. I was given a $10 credit with which to buy an article to evaluate its quality and the ease-of-use of the platform. However, this did not sway me in terms of providing an accurate and honest review of Hirewriters.com

Now let’s begin with my Hire Writers.com review, and see if you can get good quality content for decent prices. Remember that content is the foundation of all good websites, and writing your own content takes a heck of a long time (heck, it will probably take me about five hours to write this one blog post… so you had better damn well enjoy it).

Now that I’ve got all that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get down to the main business of the review and see whether or not it is actually possible to get any decent content for the kind of prices that Hirewriters.com claims. As we’ve seen in the past with my iWriter review, big promises are made but generally these “content mills” simply don’t deliver the goods very well.

If you’re interested in signing up for Hire Writers.com yourself, then you can do so here. You will get a bonus on your first deposit, in order to help you get more content for your money.

Back in 2013, I commented that the interface for Hirewriters.com was quite professional and slick. However, the past three years have not been overly kind to it, especially when you bear in mind that the site’s design basically hasn’t changed in literally years (iWriter is the same … I just don’t know what it is about these content mill sites that prevents them from having modern, clean interfacew).

But it is fairly easy to work your way around. All you need to do is select either “Register Now” or “Get Content Written Now” and you’ll be able to register your account and get underway.

Once your account is created and approved, you can go through the motions of setting it up with your preferred payment option and such like.

If you’ve ever used Hirewriters’ main competition – iWriter, then you’ll probably feel immediately at home. In fact, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it turned out that Hirewriters.com and iWriter were using the same CMS or something like that. This really is quite an easy interface to navigate your way around.

So, once you’ve got your account credited, it’s time to actually get some content written. In order to do this, start by clicking the button that says “get content written”. Then you’ll see a screen like this:

Once again, if you’ve ever used iWriter, then you should find this system extremely straightforward to use. All you need to do is enter the key project information and you’re away. I’ll break this down for you:

• Project description. What the potential writers are going to see when browsing the available projects page. Something descriptive like “niche name + articles” works well enough here.
• Article category. Not really that important.
• Article length. Very important … this directly influences how much you pay. Remember that content mills are focused on articles around the 500-1000 word length as a general rule.
• Language. Does this need explaining?
• Writer’s time limit. What is the max amount of time a writer should be allowed to complete an article for you to approve? The longer you leave this, the more likely you are to find that the writer
• Writer skill level. Once again, this is a very important. The better the writer ranking, the more money you will actually pay to get the content. Of course the trade off is that you *should* get better, more readable articles. The cheapest tiers on these content mill websites are invariably GARBAGE … unless you’re lucky enough to get an up-and-coming writer who is trying to grind their way to the higher tiers.

 

 

Hire Writers & Writer Treatment

After I first published my review of this platform back in 2013, I caught a lot of shade from pissed off writers who claim they had been mistreated by the Hirewriters.com management … notably being denied their rightful earnings and having accounts terminated for no reason:

 

Although I have never written for Hirewriters.com myself, I think this does warrant a great deal of attention. And, if you are thinking of writing for them, then you need to proceed with caution. Don’t allow too much money to pool in your writer account – as soon as you are able to make a withdrawal to Paypal, you need to go ahead and do it.

As I discussed in my iWriter review, I’m not really a fan of writing for content mills anyway. If you are a native English writer, and live in a Western country, then it’s going to be a monstrous grind to actually be able to earn a decent amount of money (unless you find some clever way to game the system … in which case your account will probably just get banned anyway).

You are always better off to try and find clients an independent manner, so you can give proper quotes for jobs and negotiate your rates. If this scares you, then even selling your services on a platform like Source Market or the Warrior Forum Warriors For Hire section is a better idea.

If you’re a remotely competent writer, then steer clear of these content mills for your own sake. Leave them to overseas (usually Indian or Filipino) writers who are willing to grind out 500 words for just a couple of bucks. Especially steer clear when it seems very apparent that there are issues with actually getting paid, and accounts being terminated with zero good reason.

 

Introduction

At the heart of every website or blog lies content. Without content, you’ve not got anything to offer your visitors. And if you have nothing to offer your visitors, then why on earth would they want to be on your website?

Please note that this iWriter review contains sections for both buyers looking to purchase articles, as well as writers looking to sell their content. I’ve tried to make this flow as well as possible, but if you find it hard to follow then please leave a comment and I will consider splitting it out into two reviews.

What Is iWriter?

iWriter, to put it bluntly, is what you call a “content mill”. Basically, people seeking content for their websites, blogs, or whatever (the buyers) can submit a list of articles that need written, and then writers can take those jobs.

It’s designed primarily for getting articles 300-1000 words in length that are tightly targeted around a specific keyword, such as “dog training tips” or “how to reduce mortgage repayment”.

iWriter isn’t just a popular destination for buyers either. It is also popular with people looking to write articles for money; whether that is to supplement their existing income, or to simply make ends meet.

Because people are so interested in iWriter from both sides of the fence, I thought I had better do a detailed review of it. This iWriter review is all up-to-date and relevant for 2019 as well.

How To Sign Up To iWriter

Start by heading over to iWriter.com – here’s the homepage (NB: the site has recently had a makeover, so I will update the screen shots in due course)

Now from here you need to pick what you are looking to do with iWriter. If you want to get content written for you, then select to “have articles written” from the option on the left.

On the other hand, if you want to write articles for money, then select the “write articles” option.

Depending on which option you choose, you’ll see a signup form a bit like this:

Buying Articles

If you’re looking to purchase articles, then you’ll want to pay close attention to this section of the review, which is coming soon.

Selling Articles

If you’re looking to write articles and get paid money for doing so, then you’ll want to pay close attention to this section of the review, which is coming soon.

iWriter Alternatives

• HireWriters.com – pretty much the same platform, only smaller. I’ve generally found the articles are higher quality than iWriter for the price. However, the owners are rumoured to treat writers poorly. You can read my review of Hirewriters.com here.
• Fiverr – another place to hire $5/500 word writers. LOADS of competition and you have to actively sell – you can’t just go and grab gigs from an open jobs list. You can actually find reasonable content writers on Fiverr.
• Constant Content – much more high end. Writers charge anywhere from $5/100 words and up. You can browse pre-written articles and purchase, or request custom gigs. I used to write a bit for Constant Content, but found that their system of writing for buyer requests wasn’t fantastic, and that I just didn’t see the results I was getting from writing for clients I found independently. You can read my review of Constant Content here.
• Peopleperhour – a newer entry to the fray. This is a cool gig marketplace site. Lots of flexibility for setting your own prices and then working hard to get clients. Solid escrow-type payment system as well which is neat. Good opportunities for buyers as well. Much better than Fiverr in my opinion.

There are loads of other places to either find buyers for your content, or to find sellers offering content for sale. Just do a bit of looking around.

Conclusion

iWriter Review For Buyers

The only thing cheapie iWriter articles are any good for is getting dirt cheap content for PBN sites, buffer Web 2.0s or pump n’ dump affiliate sites. If you are using them as the basis of a serious informational website (or, heaven forbid, promotional content such as affiliate reviews or sales page copy) then you deserve to fail. That’s not me being rude, it’s just the harsh truth.

The quality of the content just isn’t very good, because the only people really writing for iWriter are either those who aren’t good enough to get paid clients elsewhere, or people who just don’t care about the quality of their work. There may be some exceptions to this in the higher content tier, where you pay a much higher price per word. However, in my experience you still don’t get anything particularly good in terms of content when paying the higher prices.

I must admit that the functionality of the marketplace is very good from the perspective of a buyer. You get fast turnaround time, and everything is designed to ensure you get the article you want – even at the expense of the writer. I’ve never had to wait more than 24 hours to get an article returned to me.

iWriter Review For Writers

Let’s make this straightforward: Please don’t. You deserve better than this.

Provided you can actually write a decent quality article (I mean something that is readable and provides at least a little slice of value to the reader) then you should be looking to ply your trade elsewhere. I would suggest trying to independently find clients, or go through a marketplace like Upwork or Peopleperhour that at least gives you a little bit more flexibility to earn decent cash.

The only exception to this rule, from my perspective, is if you’re on skid row at the moment financially and need some fast cash. You could potentially eek out a meager existence writing articles at the lower tier, but it certainly wouldn’t be fun. However, if it beats starving, then by all means go ahead.

I guess you could also justify writing for a content mill like iWriter if you live in a country where  the local currency is grossly undervalued versus the US dollar. If $5 USD equals half a day’s wages working a regular job, then you could no doubt make an okay living from iWriter or similar content mills. However, if you live in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ etc, then you’ll really struggle to make ends meet.

Of course the crap pay is not the only thing wrong with iWriter from the perspective of someone being a writer. There are other nasty downsides to contend with also:

For example, there have been reports for the longest time of buyers rejecting articles (which, ostensibly means they don’t pay but shouldn’t get the work) and then actually keeping the article by taking the “text image” you receive for proofing, and putting it into an image to text converter. This text image is meant to protect the seller and buyer by allowing the buyer to check the article before sending funds, and the seller by preventing their content from being copied/pasted and then rejected.

Furthermore, the kind of buyers who actually go and spend their money on iWriter tend to be very difficult to work for. Back when I was a poor uni student I did a bit of writing on iWriter, and it wasn’t uncommon to get some total cheapskate loser who was paying $3 for a 500 word article to reject it – despite perfect grammar, spelling, and following their instructions – for some kind of nebulous reason like “not enough depth”. Guess what? You don’t deserve “depth” in your content for $3 per 500 words. All you deserve is a somewhat coherently-arranged set of words that bear a vague resemblance to the topic you wanted to have content written about.

As you can tell, I am still kind of salty about this. However, iWriter is a textbook example of what I like to call the “pricing paradox”. As a rule, the more money you are charging for your services, the less prone to complaining and more satisfied the customers/clients are. On the other hand, bargain basement clients who feel like they are forking out the big bucks when paying $5 for a 500 word article are more likely to complain. I’m sure most people who have done freelancing work, either in the real world or online, will agree with me here.

Conclusion

Overall, iWriter falls down in a number of key areas.

However, iWriter does have some merit as a source of fast-turnaround dirt cheap PBN content, or something that you could put through a spin syntax to blast with GSA or RankerX or something like that.

As a seller, iWriter only makes sense if you are desperate for income or living somewhere were a couple of measly US dollars equals a princely sum in the local currency. Even then, you’re going to have to put up with being treated like DIRT by many iWriter buyers.

The interesting thing with this platform is that there are some good writers on here, and there are also some good buyers who treat the writers well, don’t make unreasonable demands, don’t cheat the system (i.e. rejecting the article but downloading the preview of it so they can get free content). The problem really comes from the fact that most of the time, you either seem to get stuck with terrible buyers who expect far too much for what they are willing to pay for, or if you’re a buyer you tend to wind up having a dreadful writer ignoring most of your instructions and delivering you steaming hot garbage.

If you DO manage to find a good buyer (or vice versa) then the functionality of the platform makes it a total breeze to use. You can quickly and easily write your content, and iWriter is reliable at paying out. As a buyer, you can get fast turnaround and you don’t have to deal with the manual handling of payments etc, as well as enjoying a good level of protection.

If you’re willing to put up with the pitfalls/shortcomings, then there could be potential for you on iWriter, especially from the buying side of the equation. Although it’s generally better to work with independent freelancers who are “off platform”, it’s also handy to be able to get content turned around so incredibly quickly and with minimal fuss. If you build up a list of writers you like working with as well, then your process can become even more streamlined.

You can check out iWriter for yourself here, and register either as a buyer or writer. NB that as far as I can tell, you need a separate account for buying and writing. Check whether you’re registering as a ‘client’ or ‘writer’ depending on what you want.

One of my favorite types of software/application is screen capture software. It’s immensely useful for creating training videos, product reviews and more.

A simple screen cap video can save a whole lot of hassle when trying to explain a task to a freelancer, client or colleague.

There are loads of different screen recording software options out there. Some of the most famous (which I plan to review in due course) are Camtasia and Screenflow.

However, both Camtasia and Screenflow are relatively expensive. Screenflow is also for Macs only. Both require the installation of software.

There are also free options out there – such as OBS or Camstudio – but they can often be clunky to use.

What if there was a better option for someone looking to make basic screen recordings? Something like a Chrome browser extension? Well, luckily there is!

What Is Screencastify?

It’s a Chrome browser extension that allows you to record your screen. You install the extension, and then you can get started making recordings!

Basically, you can make a video that shows what you are doing on your screen, as well as record an accompanying audio track (useful if you’re narrating a tutorial or something) or you can use system audio.

How Much Does It Cost?

Screencastify offers two pricing plans:

• Free
• Premium – $2 per month (paid annually)

The free version allows you to record the screen, record audio etc. However, you have fewer export options, and your videos will also have quite a prominent watermark in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

I used the free version for about half a day to test it out. I was impressed enough to purchased the premium version, and am very glad I did. I’ve already produced a number of videos using Screencastify premium, and the extra features and lack of watermark make it well worthwhile, especially when you consider the competitive price.

Pros

• Automatic saving to Google Drive
• No software install required
• Export as MP4 (premium version)
• Competitive pricing
• Easy to use
• Record desktop
• Overlay webcam
• Works on Chromebook
• Basic editing features

Cons

• Can be a bit fiddly
• Not the smoothest framerates
• No lifetime pricing option

Conclusion

Overall, I’m a massive fan of Screencastify. It’s helped me turn my Chromebook into a machine that I can use for ~90% of all work I need to do on a daily basis (in fact, only intensive Excel work and video editing is off the cards now). It’s very impressive how much you can do with a basic browser extension.

As a solution for recording my screen, and overlaying narration or system audio, it’s so easy and effective.

Is Screencastify as powerful or fully-featured as something like Camtasia? No – of course not. It’s probably going to be a long time before a browser extension can really do the “heavy lifting” that an installable software can. However, for what it is, Screencastify is incredibly impressive.

If you’ve got any desire to make screen recording videos (for training, business, or pleasure) then I strongly recommend that you install Screencastify and give it a try.

Use the free version first to get a feel for how it works, and I think you’ll find yourself upgrading to the premium edition in no time. At just overt $20 per year, it really is exceptionally good value.

Original Audio Version

Go here to learn about how my reviews work (and why you should listen to/watch the original audio or video version first).

Review Transcript

Hey guys. Me back again. I just want to do another quick review of a product that was a free product that I stumbled across in looking for a alternative to a paid product, so I was looking at Camtasia, which you might be aware of. It’s one of the sort of leading screen capture software, and they had a really good Black Friday sale recently, or maybe … No, it was Cyber Monday, sorry. Yeah, Cyber Monday sale, and unfortunately, I just totally forgot to place my order, and I missed out on this deal, and then their customer support weren’t particularly helpful in terms of saying, “Oh, well look. We’ll give you the deal.”

You know, I mean, I worked in a retail business here in New Zealand, doing marketing for quite some time, and we had a simple rule, that if someone missed a promotion, as long as they had a genuine enough reason, you want the sale. You know, if you could afford to sell it at 30% off on the Sunday and you can’t do it on the Monday, well, then you obviously couldn’t have afforded it in the first place.

So anyway, I was a bit annoyed about that. I’m still going to buy Camtasia, but I’m waiting for another special, because it’s just a bit too expensive for me at the moment, in terms of the recording I need to be doing. So I looked around for free options, and I came across Camstudio. So, I’m not going to give a long review here. This is going to be short, but look, what is Camstudio? It’s a free software for screen capture, so if you want to record anything on your screen, like a PowerPoint presentation, or record yourself using a piece of software, anything like that, well you can use Camstudio, and it’s totally free to download.

It’s a small download file. It’s fast to install. You do need to be aware of the fact that it will try to get you to install a whole bunch of freeware during the install process. I imagine that’s where the software makes its money back, is through bundled installers. There was about three or four different options I had to click no to, in terms of installers, so that’s a little bit frustrating, because obviously, I don’t really like having a software I don’t want forced on me, but look, just make sure you click out of that. I’ve never seen anything worth it that’s included in one of those bundled installer windows, so yeah, just be careful of that. Install it.

Look, as far as free software goes, it’s very functional. If you need to do basic screen recording, it is pretty good. I mean, I’ve used Camtasia in the past. I had it. Camtasia is the free … Sorry, the paid version. Camtasia is a paid product that costs about 200 US dollars normally, and Camstudio is free.

And in the past, I used Camtasia a lot, so I got used to how it works and how easy it was to work with, and when I had a Mac, two or three years ago, I used to use ScreenFlow as well. I think ScreenFlow is now a paid software. I haven’t had a Mac computer in quite some time. I wouldn’t mind one, actually, for some audio stuff I want to do, but ScreenFlow is not compatible for Windows, so it’s besides the point for me anyway, at the moment.

But yeah, look, Camstudio. What do I think about it? Because I want to keep this review nice and short. Overall, it’s pretty good, for free. I mean, if you just want to do some basic screen recording, it really does work. You know, you can select the whole window. You can select the whole screen. You can drag an area to record. Just getting a basic recording done is actually very simple with Camstudio. You’re not going to struggle with that too much.

The downsides of it from my perspective are firstly that there’s a lot of options that obviously you need to have a bit of an idea of what you’re working with or do some Googling or YouTubing of solutions, to get better results. What I’ve found is that the Camstudio files are simply too big, compared to what I would get with Camtasia. I mean, I’ve got a high resolution screen, so I suppose that’s a factor, but I recorded about a two minute video, maybe even less than that, a minute video of me scrolling through some webpages and clicking through some tabs on my computer, and the output file was enormous. I think it was, like, several gigabytes.

So, you know, if I was doing a 30 minute presentation or wanting to do a video review … The reason I want to get into screen capture is so that … At the moment, I write my reviews just by speaking into Audacity, a recording software that’s free, and then I have the audio transcribed by rev.com. I’ve pretty much stopped writing reviews just in text, or just in sort of Word and then copying them over to my blog. I much prefer speaking, but what I would like to do is actually kill two birds with one stone. I would like to make sure that every product I review, if it’s relevant, has a video version as well.

So if it’s a software, I’ll show you key things in the software. I’ll show you little tricks or tips I’ve learned. You know, if it’s an info product, well I’ll show you what you actually get with it, so that those flashy looking bonuses, if they’re just crappy, little eBooks, well, you know, you’ll learn that without having to spend the money. I mean, that’s my tagline, “I waste my money so you don’t waste yours.” And it’s a fun hobby for me. But look, I want to get into doing video screen capture, and then I’ll have the audio from that transcribed instead of doing a separate audio version.

So look, I thought Camstudio would be suitable, but my videos are going to have to be reasonably long, and even though I’ve got a good computer, you know beefy processor, lots of RAM, big hard drive, the other thing I’ve found about Camstudio is that it doesn’t feel that smooth. You know, I can remember Camtasia working very nicely indeed on maybe about five years ago, an older version of it, when I used it through a job I had, and I was running a pretty crappy machine. I think it was like a Core 2 Duo laptop, with four gig of RAM, and Camtasia felt pretty good.

The recording was smooth, and the playback of the video was smooth as well, whereas the Camstudio videos I’ve got, I’ve done, they’re a bit choppy, even though I’m playing them back on a fast computer. They don’t look particularly good. Fine for something really brief, but not good enough for what I want. I’m not happy with them.

But look, that’s probably just me not having the correct settings applied. There are all sorts of different codecs and things you can download, and you can pick different options, so I guess, to be honest, it’s probably more of a reflection on me and my lack of willingness to spend time getting used to using Camstudio.

I think if you’re in business, you know, the most important thing is optimizing the efficiency of your time. Obviously, you don’t want to piss money away for no good reason, but at the same time, you do want to be efficient with your time. Now, I could spend ages learning Camstudio, and working with it to get better results, but I know that if I spend 200 US dollars, plus tax, so about $400 in my local currency, which is a lot of money, but if I spend that on Camtasia, what I know is that I’m going to wind up with a software that does pretty much everything I need it to do, and it’ll do it faster, and it’s even got some pretty decent, but basic, video editing functionality in it.

So Camstudio, is it worth using? If you want to save money, and you want to record your screen, yes, I think it is. Just, you will need to allocate some time, and get stuck into actually learning how to maximize the results you get out of it. On the other hand, if all you want is the easiest option for recording a screen, and you just want a software that’s so straightforward to use and get good results with, well, no, either buy Camtasia, which I think works on Windows and Mac, or if you’re on Mac, you can also consider ScreenFlow as well. I found ScreenFlow very good to work with back in the day, and probably one of my biggest regrets of selling my old Mac Mini that was a great little workstation was that it had a free version of ScreenFlow on it, and it worked well for me.

So, yeah, Camstudio, it’s not amazing, but it is a solid, little free tool. Just make sure, firstly, you don’t accidentally install any crap during the installer process, and secondly, you will need to have some time spare to learn the ropes. Once you’ve done that, though, you should have a nice, little tool, and if you want to record videos off your screen, because you want to do tutorials, or info products, or anything, well it might be a good option, so it’s worth giving it a try.

Hey guys, it’s Sam here from Reviews Boss again. Just coming at you with a really, really quick review today of a product … I’ve only started using it just in the last 24 hours, but it’s so cool I have to share it with you. It’s called Repurpose. The URL to access it is repurpose.io. If the “.io” domain name extension means anything to you, then you’ll probably have guessed that this is a software as a service. That “.io” extension is often really popular with software as services.

But anyway, what is Repurpose? It’s a really simple little platform that allows you to turn podcast audio or just audio in general into videos that can then be posted automatically to YouTube and to Facebook pages and groups and even other places like Dropbox and Google Drive. You might have read on this blog and places that basically what I do to create my content is I narrate a review using either my PC or just talking into my phone. I’m parked up in the car right now, actually, and I’m literally just talking into my phone recording with the rev.com mobile app. Then I upload that to Rev and I have that transcribed and post it on reviewsboss.com.

The next thing I wanted to get into was turning those audio review files into videos as well. So currently I just upload the audio file to SoundCloud as a sort of podcast, but I also know that YouTube is a place where a lot of people go for information and reviews of products, and YouTube videos rank really well. But what I was looking for was a time saving solution. I just happened to stumble across this doing some Google searching.

Basically repurpose.io is very, very simple. You register an account; you can get a free trial account that’s actually got some fairly detailed features in it. You connect up your SoundCloud RSS feed or you can use a different feed, I think, but I’m using SoundCloud. I’ll have to double check and I’ll add a comment to the review in written form. But yeah, I upload all my podcasts and review audios to SoundCloud, grab the RSS feed. There’s a little bit of work involved in just ensuring that each podcast episode or audio track you upload to SoundCloud is actually allowed to appear in your RSS feed.

Then what you do is you take that RSS feed and you plug it into repurpose.io. Then once you’ve connected a YouTube account, you’re basically able to automatically tell Repurpose to turn those audio files … Repurpose them into videos. The videos, you’ll see one embedded in the transcript of this audio they’re pretty cool. I mean, they don’t really have moving pictures, what you get is a template that shows a picture … My one is a picture of myself embedded in a frame that looks like an iPhone or smartphone. You get the little moving audio frequency bar as well. It’s really basic stuff; it’s not super attractive or anything but it gets the point across. The main thing is it allows me with no almost no additional effort to turn podcasts and audio files into YouTube videos.

What’s more, I can also now post them directly to Facebook pages as well. So I’ve got a Reviews Boss Facebook page that I’ve just set up, and now as soon as I upload a audio track to SoundCloud, so a new review, it will become a YouTube video and it will automatically also become a Facebook video that’s posted to my Reviews Boss Facebook page. I can even do this with say a Facebook group as well, so if I decided to make a Reviews Boss Facebook group and invite people to join and discuss their favorite products. Guess what? They’ll automatically get new videos in that group as well, which is pretty cool.

There are a few other things you can do as well, like you can pull content or repurpose it into say Dropbox, Google Drive. I think you can also turn a YouTube video into an audio file as well. I haven’t tested that.

Pricing-wise it’s very reasonable; I pay $12 a month US for the middle tier plan, which allows me to basically do enough for one brand really of the Reviews Boss brand. For $20 a month there’s the current special pricing you can go unlimited, which I think is actually capped at five different accounts. So something like that. I’ve added a screenshot of the pricing into the transcript of this review anyway, so you won’t miss out.

Basically, repurpose.io … If you’re looking for a way to syndicate audio content to video and post that video automatically to YouTube and even to Facebook, then also create backup copies if you’re interested into Dropbox and Google Drive, it just doesn’t get easier than this. Yeah, these audio-generated videos they aren’t as good I guess as a properly made custom video, but if you just want to have that extra exposure that YouTube brings, the chance to rank organically with parasite SEO from YouTube videos, well then you’ve got to be trying repurpose.io. One of my reviews within I think about two hours of posting, my video was already on the first page of Google about halfway up for the particular keyword I was targeting, and now it’s at position three. That’s just amazing. How easy is that? It takes no additional effort.

Repurpose.io is very reasonably priced; I’m paying $12 US a month. I’ll probably bump up to the advanced plan as I start to expand for content on my other websites as well. Basically what I’m trying to do is get into a flow of saying, with one recorded piece of audio how can I turn this quickly and efficiently into a video? Into a blog post? Into a podcast? Into whatever syndicated across the internet and basically try and get as much reach as I can out of it.

If you want to turn your audio files into videos, repurpose.io. Go check it out. It’s absolutely awesome.

What Is Buzzsumo?

Buzzsumo is a content search engine that helps you find the most “virally successful” content. Let’s say you have a website about natural health, and you want to know what types of content work well with your prospective audience – how would you go about finding this?

One option would be to go through content on competing sites, Facebook pages etc and manually checking social share counts.

But imagine how tedious and time-consuming that would be! Even a VA would find this to be absolute torture.

There must be a better way. And Buzzsumo is that better way. Or at least it claims to be.

How Does Buzzsumo Work

At the most basic level, Buzzsumo works like this. You log in to your account, and then you make a search for a topic.

For example, “natural health”.

The app then works its magic and sets out to find a list of content related to natural health with the highest number of social shares (I’m talking Facebook likes, Tweets etc).

There are some more advanced features available – I’ll go into more detail shortly – but for now suffice it to say that the core focus of Buzzsumo is on finding top performing viral content for any niche or keyword, so that you can take inspiration and create something even better!

The whole idea is that you get a data-driven feel of what content is performing, so that you can make a better/fresher/more-engaging version that will hopefully perform even better.

Buzzsumo Pricing

Rather than type out the Buzzsumo pricing structure (as it’s quite complicated) I’ve just posted a screenshot below. Bear in mind the prices as shown are broken down per month but paid monthly. You have to add on another 20% for proper month-to-month pricing:

What I Like:

• Super easy to use. Buzzsumo is seriously one of the easiest applications I’ve ever used. You just load it up, enter the topic you’re interested in, and then get to view a range of leading content for your inspiration. It can’t be any easier than that!
• Good results. This app does seem to return very accurate results, even on some obscure searches.
• Great interface. Buzzsumo has a fantastic interface and user experience. It’s so clean and efficient, and makes the application a joy to use.
• Excellent features

What I Don’t Like:

• High price. Plans start at $99 per month, and that is quite a high price for any startup or budding Internet entrepreneur. I suggest that a better option for low-volume users might be to offer a credit-based system. E.g. $5 gets you one credit, which equals one search.
• Limited free trial. By limited, I don’t mean in terms of time. 30 days to try Buzzsumo without paying is very fair indeed (and I love that you don’t need to input any credit card details). However, not allowing data export on the free trial feels a bit cheapskate of the vendor.

Conclusion

If you’re in to producing viral or link-bait type content, then Buzzsumo really is worth your attention. It’s hard to say if it’s worth staying a member long-term, as the price is quite high. But it’s certainly worth joining for a month or two so you can build up a big database of top-performing content in your niche or for your keywords of choice.

The only thing I don’t like about Buzzsumo is the price. Everything else is spot-on and totally fit for purpose.

Considering that you can get a decent free trial (albeit without export options) I highly recommend you at least take up the free option and see how you get on.

Original Audio Version

Go here to learn about how my reviews work (and why you should listen to/watch the original audio or video version first).

Review Transcript

Welcome back, another review coming at you today. We’re looking at a really cool little service actually that was recommended to me by a member of a business networking education group that I’m a member here of in Christchurch, New Zealand.

But anyway, there’s a member of that group who’s got a really good grasp on emerging digital technologies and software solutions and software service and all those kind of things that can make running a business easier. And a couple of months ago now, he got up and spoke and he recommended a whole bunch of different software solutions for, I guess, various different business tasks that you might want to carry out.

And one of the ones that stuck with me was the service he recommended for audio transcription called Rev. It’s R-E-V, rev.com. And I made a mental note of going to use it because I immediately it jumped out to me how it would be beneficial for the work I do. For example, on this particular blog here, in the past, I’ve done all my reviews simply by writing them out. You know, sitting in front of the keyboard and typing away. But I find is actually I can get my thoughts about a product or a service down much better if I can just speak freely into a microphone. And yeah, you do get the filler words and the slightly unusually structured sentences that I guess are more organic and come with natural speech. But overall, I prefer that communicative style anyway. I think it really does help get the point across. And it’s a lot faster as well.

So I made a note to go try Rev but things got in the way and I got busy. But recently I did do my first sort of full content piece using Rev and that was my review of You Need a Budget. You can click the link here to go check that out. And now I’ve decided to do a review of rev.com and funnily enough, I’m doing this review by talking into a microphone, giving my thoughts, and then actually having it transcribed by Rev. So that’ll be fun. A bit of ‘Revception’ really for the people who are going to be transcribing it or who have transcribed it.

What Is Rev?

Anyway, what it Rev? Rev is a service that as I just mentioned, it’s an audio transcription service. So you upload an audio file. Whether that’s an interview session you’ve done with someone or a speech or anything like that. And then, you pay to have that audio file transcribed into written words. So, into a Microsoft Word file or a text file or something like that. And the reason that you might want to do transcription is well, it’s easy. It’s a lot better to pay someone else to do it as well than type it all out yourself. Unless you have a pretty small business and cash flow is super, super tight. Something like Rev can be very beneficial for turning spoken words into written words and saving a lot of time on content crash. And so that was why I was interested in trying it out.

And so, there are some other services that Rev offer. I think they offer translation as well but I haven’t tried that and haven’t had a need for it. And so I’m specifically talking about Rev as it stands and as it relates to audio transcription here. So what I would do first is talk you through the basic process of how you actually get a transcription set up.

How To Use Rev

Firstly, you go and create a Rev account. Really straightforward, easy process. Not too much personal information required or anything like that. Once you’ve created your account, you upload your audio file. And it’s cool, you can upload multiple files at once as well so if you’ve got say 20 different MP3 clips or web file clips that you want transcribed, just make sure that they’ve got unique names and then you can upload them all in one go as a bulk drop. So that’s good as well. I was a bit put off at first if I thought, all right, you’ve got to upload every single file separately because I like to record the different sections of the reviews I do. Often I’ll record them as separate audio tracks just so that I’m not speaking for ages and ages. And it helps me focus my thoughts. So that was a really refreshing thing to see.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get the audio processing through the Rev platform. And that’s just to work out how long the audio is. The price you pay for transcription is tied directly to the link that the audio. So it’s a dollar, one US dollar per minute, of audio. So, I mean, I think that’s a really fair price to be honest. You could probably go on somewhere like Upwork or Fiverr and get it done for cheaper but I’ll mention shortly why you might not want to even bother with that. A 10 minute audio file might contain … It could, depending on your speech, right, contain potentially about oh maybe 1,500 words if you speak reasonably quickly. So 10 minutes to speak it and $10 to have it transcribed. And maybe another 10 minutes to just do a bit of editing and half an hour of your time you’ve pretty much got a decent length article sorted and for $10.

So look, the pricing is, I’m just going to come out with it now. The pricing is very sharp. And the other thing is that your transcription is done by a real human as well. I wouldn’t be half surprised to see Rev down the track add like a budget option that would be using some kind of automated speech-to-text software. And that could be potentially like a sort of entry level option that might be 50 cents a minute or something like that. But for now, you’re getting a real human transcribe your words which is pretty cool.

So anyway, you upload your files and then you’ll be shown what the price is for that job. And it’s just a straight $1 equals one minute of audio. So if you’ve got 30 minutes of audio, it’s going to cost you $30 US dollars. There are a couple of other options as well. You can pay a little bit extra per minute to have time stamping put in. I’m not quite sure why you’d do that. I’m not going to speak much about that because I don’t really understand it. The other one is you can also pay extra to have filler words put in. So that’s your um’s and ah’s. The thing with that is if you just want a verbatim transcription of something then you’ll need to pay for it. Otherwise, I don’t bother with either of those additional options. I just do the standard transcription.

There’s also an option to include things like funny abbreviations or specific words you’re using in your audio that your transcriber might not be aware of so just so when they hear the sound, they know what they’re typing down. So if you’ve got a … Say, you’re doing something about aviation and you’re talking about an instrument landing system, an ILS, well, you would add that as an ILS, you would add that as a note so they know when they hear that what to type down. That’s a cool little feature as well. It helps make things easier for the transcriber.

And then from there, you confirm the pricing and everything and you hit submit. And you pay, you can pay with credit card or PayPal. And then you’ll get an order confirmation. And you now wait for your audio to come back. And that’s really the process. Once the audio is returned to you, you’ll get … each file is transcribed as its own document. You can choose to either have a Word document or a text file. And then you can download them and review them and write them and everything like that. So it really is quite simple. It supports things like multiple speakers. You can give speakers their names or if it’s like male and female. They’ll note where it’s the male speaker or where it’s the female speaker.

So yeah, really easy platform to work with. Very straight forward and very fast. And that’s the basic process. So what I’m going to do now is talk about the benefits and downsides of the platform.

Things I Like About Rev

The benefits of Rev are really simple. Firstly, it’s very quick and easy. I mean, I was actually blown away, to be honest, by how quickly I got my first transcription back. I submitted about 25 minutes of audio, I think it was. It came to about four and a half thousand words by the time it was transcribed. And I had that returned in under an hour. I mean, that’s just incredible.

You know, that’s why I mentioned before. You could probably save some money by going on Upwork or Fiverr or Reddit Slave Labor forum, or whatever it’s called, and getting the transcription done there. But you’re going to hae a longer turn around time. Especially on Fiverr, you know, turnaround times seem pretty horrendous these days there. So I mean, look, unless you’re absolutely penny pinchering, $1 a minute to get turnaround that quickly. I mean, it’s not always going to be in less than an hour. But the turnaround time is fast, very, very, fast. And time is money so look, huge points to Rev for how quickly you get your audio back.

Next thing is the transcription quality is by and large very good. I have noticed the odd mistake usually it’s just words that are slightly wrong or sentences that are slightly off. But probably, to be honest, that’s also to do with my Kiwi accent and the fact that I’m not particularly a good speaker. I think if you had a sort of clear American style accent which is probably what the transcribers are expecting to hear, the accuracy would be better. It’s not bad at all. I would give the accuracy rating for the audio I’m having transcribed about a 95%. So I’m more than happy with it. If you do focus on speaking really clearly and making sure that you don’t mumble or anything like that, you should get an even higher accuracy percentage.

Another thing is the ability to rate and review the person who’s done the transcribing. So you just give them a star scoring and if you score them less than three stars, I think it is, they won’t work on any of your projects again in the future. To be honest, the transcribing I’ve had done, all the people I’ve rated really highly. So, that hasn’t been a problem for me. But it is good to have that ability to say, “Hey, I’ve got a bad transcription back and I don’t want to work with this person again.” You don’t get to pick. The platforms just sorts it all out for you. But it must have a way of keeping track of who’s worked with who. So, that’s really cool.

Yeah, and then the next thing I really like about Rev, as I’ve mentioned before, is the pricing. $1 a minute. You know, 10 minutes of audio if you speak at a decent pace, that’s enough to produce a good length blog post. And you know, even if you’ve got to spend another 10 or 15 minutes editing what comes back to improve the sentence structure for writing and things like that. I mean, probably in half an hour, you can have a really good blog post or article done. I just don’t think that unless you’re really good at it flowing with your writing, you just can’t do it as quickly with just writing. Speaking and then having it transcribed and then editing it is just so much better. It’s so much easier to get your thoughts down, in my opinion.

And other things that I like about Rev are just small things. The platform is very nicely polished. It’s easy to use. It’s clear what you need to do. The instructions are great. There’s good support. All that kind of thing. There’s lots of payment options available. So overall, yeah, really good, I think.

Things I Don’t Like About Rev

Of course, down sides, for some people it might be too expensive. They might want to only pay 50 cents a minute. I think at that price you’d be getting some pretty average transcription. You know, if money really is a concern you might have to look for a cheaper option.

Other things I don’t like about it. I have heard from the perspective of people actually doing the transcription, it’s not a particularly good service to work for. Basically, that they keep having pressure put on them to bring their rates down and increase the turn around time and everything like that. You know, I guess it’s sort of endemic in the whole gig economy, or whatever people call it these days. It’s an issue too big for this review and I do review products and services from the perspective of the people using them as the customer. But I think that’s it’s worth noting.

So, if you do get someone do a good transcription for you, make sure you give them a really good review just so you know they’re being appreciated. I actually think there should potentially even be a tip option added so if you’re really impressed and you got you got your transcription back fast. You know, if I’m spending $20 on a transcription and the job’s done in less than an hour and it’s pretty much perfect, I’m happy to tip them $5 or something like that as long as I know that tip is pretty much all going to the transcriber, not to Rev. Because I have heard that they aren’t the most generous with pay. That’s something to bear in mind if that sort of thing’s really important to you. If you go find an independent contractor and pay them a dollar a minute, are they going to be getting that full dollar a minute. So yeah, that’s just something to bear in mind.

Another thing to consider is there will be mistakes in your transcription file so you do need to allow some time for editing as well. Unless you’re just happy to throw up the content as it is or you want verbatim transcription. But look, I think I don’t need to keep this review too long so I’ll jump straight to the conclusion.

Conclusion

Rev.com, is it worth trying? Is it worth spending money on? If you need audio transcription done. You know, you want to create content for blog posts or articles or you want to turn a video series you’ve done into a written version and add it as a bonus to your product. Even if you do things like reviewing client websites. Let’s say you do SEO audits. I think it’s much better or much easier to actually sit there with a recording software running and your SEO tools open, and the client’s website in front of you and talk through it rather than just typing. Typing just does my head in. I’m even, I’m fast at it. I find that I just get distracted and sort of broken in my stream of consciousnesses way too easy.

Humans are made to speak. I think we all know that we learn to communicate verbally before we ever did in writing. If you back many thousands of years. And I don’t think anything’s changed really in terms of fundamental human nature. We are better generally at speaking than we are at writing. So, if you have a need to turn audio into words, spoken audio into words, rev.com is the place to do it. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s fairly priced in my opinion. It’s not the cheapest but cheap and fast and good don’t tend to go together.

So yeah, look, rev.com, give it a try. It will honestly speed up your content creation process so much. What might have taken me two hours to write, maybe even more, I’m thinking of my Wine Up review. You know, that’s come out at about seven and a half, eight thousand words I think. Now if I wrote that all myself, just typing on the keyboard, that probably would have taken me the best part of the day, to be honest. Even though I’m a fast typer in terms of the speed on the keyboard. It’s that getting the ideas down in a sort of very conscious stream. Instead, it’s probably been an hour’s worth of talking time in front of the microphone and then maybe another hour of editing and adding images, which doesn’t really count anyway. And so approximately a quarter of the time it’s taken and what, a cost of $50, $60 US to have the audio turned into words. That’s unbeatable in my opinion. It’s so fast and easy.

So yeah, look, rev.com. Absolutely worth using. Fantastic service. Just make sure you do rate your transcribers highly if they do a good job for you and hopefully they’ll get to work on future projects of yours. Go try it out. Just record something. Just record a minute of you talking about something you enjoy doing on the weekend or whatever. Or do your next blog post as a bit of a podcast type thing and have it recorded. It’s just so cool. It’s really one of the best services that I’ve used in a long time and I’ll be using it pretty much on a weekly basis now for as long as I can.

So yeah, rev.com. Check it out. You won’t regret it.