We all know Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as part of the army of technology used in the search for Silicon Valley pioneer Jim Gray and for doomed adventurer Steve Fossett. But Mechanical Turk has plenty of other uses too.
Among them is podcast transcription. Casting Words uses Mechanical Turk for exactly that purpose. Casting Words takes advantage of the popularity of podcasting and the new rise in podcasting related services and technology. It works by having users submit their podcast to CastingWords which in turn sends it to the hardworking denizens of Mechanical Turk for actual human transcription. A text version of a podcast allows for keyword search and thus better rankings and hits. You can potentially target a larger audience just by having your podcast transcribed. It’s good for advertisers too. Casting Words sells search ads against keywords in the transcriptions. Advertisers can then target specific groups of people with ads that would be of interest to them. Currently, to pay the Mechanical turk workers, Casting Words sells entire podcast transcriptions. Transcriptions start from $0.75 a minute.
CastingWords.com In Their Own Words
“ All transcribing is done by people, not machines.
Transcriptions are delivered in plain text, HTML, and RTF formats.
You get an RSS feed of all of your transcripts”
Why CastingWords.com It Might Be A Killer
CastingWords is a good way to get a wider audience for your podcast. It’s easy to use and is beneficial to the folks at Mechanical Turk, for you the podcaster, and for the advertiser as well.
Some Questions About CastingWords.com
Will users want to pay such a steep cost for podcast transcription? Is the business model sound? 
