Audio + Pictures = Yodio
I met Clay Loges at a business networking event last week here in Seattle. Clay’s motto is, “Look for an area of change — then you get to make up the rules.” He’s been living by this for years and has become quite successful along the way.
A former banker and serial entrepreneur who once owned a text paging service in the new Russia - and was a pioneer in the 10-Minute Oil Change service station business and a GPS business — Clay’s latest venture is called Yodio.
Yodio stands for “Your Audio” and is a service which allows people to add audio tracks to image slide shows. The basic idea reminded me of the narrative my Uncle Mitchell gave as he went over his trek through Nepal slide by slide.
He must have given that slide show 20 times or more over the years. If he had Yodio, he could have recorded the soundtrack easily and shared the slide show in seconds with hundreds of his closest friends.
The idea for Yodio came to Clay when he took with his daughter on a road trip a couple of years ago. While driving from Seattle to college at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, the two found the drive to be less than stimulating. As a result they started talking about how to design a way to make the same long drive more interesting and educational for others traveling the same route.
They came up with Yodio as a way to harness the knowledge and enthusiasm of local experts, and allow them to share their travel experiences easily with others.
The key to unlocking this information was to create a system that any local expert could easily use to create audio guides. Their solution needed to be efficient, easy and simple for users located most anywhere.
With the advances of iPods and mp3 players. it became clear to the two that the audio guides could be used to empower individuals to personally access the information about their areas of interest while riding down the road.
The service has expanded beyond travel guides to over a variety of categories, including hobbies, architecture, weddings and many more.
It is very easy to use. Complete the simple registration form including your cell phone number (or the primary phone you will be recording from). Yodio uses this phone number to recognize you and get your recording to the right account.
The next step is to create the recording. Do you have an interesting topic, recent trip or story about a photo or business idea to share? Dial into Yodio’s voice recording line to record a story. Or upload a pre-recorded audio track up to the Yodio server. If the story is about some photos, return to your online account and upload the images. Then use the online production tools to put it all together.
The service makes money by inserting audio advertising into the free yodiocasts. It also allows creators to sell their programs without ads.
Yodio then rewards authors with a 20% royalty based on the price they put on the yodio. For example, if they post a yodiocast for $1 and sell 10 of them, then they can receive $2 royalty. The more Yodios that are purchased, the percentage increases.
I called my Uncle last night and told him about Yodio. He was very excited about it; he just got back from another trip to Asia and had a lot of photos to share with the family. I’m looking forward to his yodiocast any day now.
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