Giving the Internet a voice: Jonathan Griffit, founder of Bnarrator.We all have those same dreams when we start an online business – to make enough money from our website or blog so we can retire to the Bahamas.
Whether you are publisher with an online newspaper to sell, a marketing blogger who’s out to change the world, or a grandmother in Idaho writing about her prize-winning cocker spaniel, the big question is always the same: how do you reach peoples’ eyeballs to generate ad revenues?
According to the Israeli company Bnarrator, it’s not eyeballs you’ll want to be reaching in the future – it will be ears. Serial entrepreneur Jonathan Griffit, 29, has developed a sensational new widget-based platform that gives voice – a real human voice – to websites everywhere. He has already launched his application in 50 beta websites and blogs around the world, among them the popular community-based site, Mashable.
The robots of companies such as Odiogo are already narrating web-based content, but the human touch is lacking. One problem is that robots will never be able to fully transmit humor, emotion or excitement in narrated content.
Bnarrator, on the other hand, enlists real live humans to narrate any written content you have to offer. It could be your company’s “about” page, breaking news on your blog, your entire collection of political essays, or just something you want the whole world to hear. In effect, Bnarrator can turn your website content into an instant podcast, or your blog into virtual radio within hours, or days, while making you money.
The company’s business model is attractive to everyone. Thirty percent of ad revenues presented at the beginning of the narration sequence goes to the narrator, 30 percent to the website owner and 20 percent is given to referrals, agents and distributors, while the remaining 15% are the company’s source of income.
The last five percent is given to charity – either to an organization that supports the hearing impaired or to environmental causes. Giving back to the community, a universal value in Judaism, is essential for Griffit’s way of doing business.
Griffit explains the rational for starting the company: “Eighty percent of the online content out there can be brought to life with narration,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “Not only will this create new kinds of accessibility for lazy web surfers, it will also make it possible for the blind, illiterate and people of multiple languages to access stories and information locked in the Internet.”
It seems like Bnarrator could shift the way we consume content. Bnarrator will be able to let you send narrated Internet content to your cell phone and handheld device, in the coming months, allowing you to “see” beyond the computer monitor.
Bnarrator also provides a special opportunity for small businesses who want to advertise, but who don’t have thousands of dollars to wage a massive online campaign.
And it doesn’t take a techie to activate the service. The content owner can place the small narration bar, through an easy “embed” code into a website or blog. From here, the listener either clicks to listen, or grabs the code which can be sent to cellular phones or published elsewhere on the net – all the while earning the website owner, narrator and referee money with every click.
Founded in 2007, Bnarrator is a subsidiary and the first product of the widget factory XYwidgets, owned by Griffit, who is now looking for financing. He believes Bnarrator is an attractive opportunity for investors.
“Not only is Bnarrator theoretically able to give thousands of jobs to narrators around the world, we are giving accessibility to the large percentage of people who find it hard to surf the net – due to medical disabilities, age, language difficulties or lack of education,” he tells ISRAEL21c.
“Consider that more people in developing countries have cellphones than they do Internet and computers, this application could revolutionize education,” Griffit adds.