At one time, to put audio on your web pages you would either have to put up $99 for a software package or join a membership club for $19.95-$29.95 per month. All the pros had audio and they refer to it in advertising as an "Attention Capturing". Now we can all have audio very inexpensively with the click of a few buttons.

First off you will need a program to convert your audio into an MP3 file. I use Impact Web Audio which is $5 from Online Business Alliance, a far cry from the $99 I almost threw up. And of course you will need a computer microphone.

If you have the gift of gab you may be able to rattle off your script off the top of the head and if you have that ability more power to you. If you're like me, you will want to write a script before hand. I find it much easier to do that but you need to make sure you:

1.) read slowly

2.) talk naturally in a conversational tone

Basically, you don't want to sound like you're reading and you want to sound friendly and knowledgeable. With that said, let's begin.

Step 1 - Record/Create Audio

In most cases you will be recording your audio for the first time. Some people use other people's audio files which come in .MP3 or .WAV format and they simply upload them to the audio software.

They will have various options for recording such as the Sample Rate(Hz), Channels (Mono or Stereo), and Bit Rate (kbs). When in doubt, use the defaults. With your script in hand or on in a separate window, press the record button and go for it.

Step 2 - Add a Background Loop

Adding an audio background loop to your vocal message serves two purposes:

1.) It makes your message sound professional

2.) It covers up imperfections that might have occurred during your voice message

These types of audio techniques have been used for years by professionals and have only just been made available to the general populace.

Some audio programs come pre-loaded with sound files you can select from. Others allow you to import your own if you'd like and dub your voice message on top. You can fade in your loop and fade it out and set the amount of seconds you would prefer this to take place.

Step 3 - Select Player Style

Next you will need to select your player style. By player style, I mean the audio playback buttons that will appear on your web page. Sometimes they are square and sometimes round. Either way they look like the play buttons on your electronic devices with a right arrow as your play button, two parallel lines as the pause button, and a square as the stop button. Many come with the color chart or a box to enter the hexadecimal color code to match your webpage.

Step 4 - Set Player Options

Here you will decide if you want your player to start automatically when someone clicks on the page. When used for advertising purposes, most people opt to start it automatically. On the other hand, some people find it intrusive so if your point is to educate and get out information you may want to let people decide for themselves.

Secondly, you will want to decide if you want to send your listener to another page when the audio is complete. Again, this depends on the purpose and placement of the player. Nonetheless, you should have a place to enter a URL to send your listener to should you elect to do so.

Step 5 - Preview Audio Player

You will want to see and hear what your player will look like by itself before you place it on your web page. Have your earphones ready and try out the play, pause, and stop button. If you used a background loop, make sure the music doesn't drown out the audio. You can adjust and mix levels on both tracks for the optimal sound. Some audio generator software allows you to mix for surround sound if that is of interest to you.

Step 6 - Generate Audio Player

Next, you will want to name and save your audio player. For organizational purposes you probably will want to set up a folder beforehand specifically for audio generators so you'll know where to find them.

The software will create a flash player file and an HTML file. All the files should be kept in th same folder or subfolder. This will make it easier (if not functional) when you upload this data to your web page. You can save your audio player to different locations, with different project names in case you would like to use your audio player on different web pages.

Step 7 - Upload Your Audio Player Code

The final step is to take the HTML code generated by your audio software and copy it into you're your webpage source code.

The tricky part here is to make sure the files you created earlier are accessible by the code you copy. In your webspace, make sure you have a specific subfolder or subdirectory for your audio files. You will have to make sure that the code on your webpage points to your audio folder or subdirecty in your webspace for it to work properly.