In recent months, I dived deeper into content creation. I follow multiple successful bloggers, many of whom mentioned how vital deplatforming is as a content creator. When your followers or readers are users of a different platform, you risk losing all of them because your account gets banned, your content is demoted, or the platform disappears. You have no control over what can happen to you. Your best choice is to take your followers somewhere else: a newsletter, a website, or a blog.
For this reason, I decided to go with a custom solution for my blog instead of creating one at Medium, Substack, and others. But there was one feature I have always loved on these platforms: the ability to listen to blog posts in audio format. It is as simple as clicking a single button, but it makes the site look more professional and helps in reaching more people:
- Busy individuals on the go,
- Those facing reading challenges,
- And finally, anyone who simply prefers listening over reading.
I also wanted this on my blog while keeping it self-hosted, so I started building it myself because I haven't found any fitting solutions. All of them used robotic voices and required yet another subscription. I have enough subscriptions already and prefer the pay-per-use model much more.
When I had a proof of concept ready on my blog, I figured this might also interest other bloggers with custom solutions. It was the moment I decided to turn the idea into an app. That's how ReadSonic was born.
I aimed to make transforming posts into audio as easy as possible for everyone. Right now, it is a single click. I simply have to write the post. The first user (or me) who presses the ReadSonic button on the post will turn it into audio, and every subsequent user can listen to it almost instantly — no need to record anything. Once you install it on your blog, your posts are automatically available to your readers in audio format. Both existing and new posts.
Press the Listen button at the top of this page to check it out in real-time.