SaaS to help commuters get through their reading list - new website. prepping for PH launch for the Chrome ext

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#1

While posting my introduction, I’ve shared my project with the forum. (it’s a article-to-speech service that updates a podcast feed of article URLs you’ve selected)

That was before I started work on my Marketing page, which is what I want to show you guys here.

http://MyOrator.net (I cheated a bit and used a template, though I had to edit the css/html and make new mockups… I’ve never experienced so much OCD)

But what I really wanted to feature is the Chrome extension which will email you the text of the current page with the keystroke Ctrl Alt Space - my idea was to keep the ‘article text-to-inbox’ feature free and charge (per use) for the text-to-audio playlist conversion.

tour-1-withblur

Planning to launch it once I figure out the pricing, let me know what you think of the pricing - if it doesn’t work for you, let me know what I can change about it. I really want to have an enticing offer to convert users from free to paid.

I appreciate any thoughts/feedback!

Thank you guys a lot - esp @limedaring @rfctr @SteveMcLeod who took the time to leave some comments on my introduction post. I appreciate that.

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#2

I don’t like the name, sounds very formal and dull.

I would have went for something with talk or similar. Talkbuddy, talktome, texttalk.

But I just checked my pocket app and it has a text to speech feature already? Why would I use yours?

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#3

thanks for your first impressions. Those are good names.

Re: the pocket TTS - that is a good question that I should address on my FAQ page, thanks for that.

the TTS on your phone is not as good (too robotic) compared to the TTS from Amazon Polly - perhaps this might change in the future.
the TTS on your phone drains the battery because of the TTS processing is done by the phone
my service will also extract audio .mp3 content (if any) that is embedded on the page - not implemented yet

What I still haven’t figured out is how much users would be willing to pay - maybe I will have a freemium version with less features…

(btw, i’m going to have to try out your word converter - a few people asked if they can convert pdfs/word docs to speech and I didn’t really want to write a converter myself)

#4

I’m still not ready to pay anything, but I’m not reading internets much, so that says nothing.

However, that doesn’t free me from having an opinion - and that opinion is that for the smallest tier the subscription is a barrier:

As you put it in the tier description “I’d use it occasionally”. Say, once a month? And for that one use I’d have to pay $5. And some months I would not listen to any article at all - my listening habit is not set in yet. So I’d see the subscription price as an unfair deal, and would not sign up.

For an occasional use I, as a user, would prefer to have a pay-per-use plan.

For higher plans the subscription can be fine because those consumers already have a habit or need to consume larger volumes of TTS.

Re: TTS on the phones. Well, for you it is an uphill battle, and it will become worse with time. If TTS catches up, the phone apps will also be doing conversions on the servers, so all your arguments won’t be valid anymore. However, it is still not common - my Firefox on Android doesn’t have TTS, for instance.

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#5

That’s a good point - I’ll keep my pay per use plan then. Will have the users start with $1 for 1 hour (because that seems like a low barrier to entry) and have it auto-refill when the balance gets low (i.e. only if the user actually uses it).

When I implement the plans, I’ll upsell it to the active pay per use users. and I’ll give a better rate than the pay per use plan like $1 for 2 hours…

I appreciate your thoughts, it helped me finally pick some kind of pricing.

#6

Apologies i never seen your reply, I have made sure to turn on notifications in preferences.

I have never heard of Amazon Polly, what a cool product.

Yes you need to explain the natural voice is the main feature. Voice systems have been around since the 80,s but Polly does sound more natural.

Also happy to help you if you want to try word cleaner.