In today’s lesson, I’m going to assume that you already have a website on the internet somewhere.

Perhaps it’s a blog, a simple squeeze page, a mini-site, or even a full-blown membership site.

(If you don’t have any of these, you really should watch FirstWebsiteTutorial.com so you can see how easy it is to get started).

The lesson today focuses on using Audio on your website.

With today’s internet, your visitors need to know that you stand out from the crowd. The two best ways to do this are to use video and audio. For now, I want to focus just on audio because its the easiest to use and the quickest to put into action.

When you include an audio message on your site, you instantly make it more likely to connect with your ideal customers.

Simply by introducing yourself and/or the main benefit of what they’ll get from reading the page will make it more likely for your potential customers to stick around and take action.

Audio is pretty easy to include on your website as well. All it takes is for you to record your voice (or have someone else do a “voice over”) in about 1 minute or less.

Then you publish your audio file so that your users can listen to it.

To record my voice, I speak into a microphone on my computer, and use the free audio editing software Audacity in order to edit the file. I then upload my MP3 recording to BYOAudio and use their service to play the recording for every visitor that comes to my site.

(There are flash player maker software programs out there, but I’d rather not fight with them)

Now, you should feel perfectly comfortable being the one that speaks on your webpage. However, if you want to kick it up a notch, you can hire someone (or barter) to do a voice over for you.

This is where you write out a short “commercial” that describes the main benefit of your webpage and the call to action you want your visitors to do, and the voice over actor reads it for you and gives you the MP3 to publish online.

The best voice over talent are professional actors or TV personalities who are professionally trained to communicate effectively in a short span of time - and with just their voice. They can use their voice like a finely tuned instrument, and give your website a very professional edge. You’ll often find plenty of demo recordings on their websites, but what you won’t find usually are prices.

Depending on your particular needs, a 1 minute audio could run you about $150 for a real simple job from a good amateur, on up to $1000 or more for the best talent with intro and exit music. This may seem like a big investment, but since the audio will be “selling” your website for you and resulting in a lot more conversions (hopefully), it will pay for itself.

Whether you do the audio, or you hire someone, you should see better results than from a stale, silent webpage. Give it a go - you might just surprise yourself with the results!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. My friend Todd Gross has a free Audacity training video for you at his new website, VoiceOverProfits.com. He’s an Emmy-award winning weatherman and excellent voice over talent himself. Learn from his free video so you can edit audio with Audacity (it’s free, too) - and if you ever get a chance to hire Todd for your website, make sure you do. I hired him recently to do a voice over at my new Social networking tutorial site.

p.p.s. Still have questions about using audio? Do you have a story to tell about how using audio helped your sales and conversions on your website? Tell us about it with a comment below!