What Makes SermonScribe Different

1. Your sermon transcripts arrive ready to publish.

When your sermon transcripts are delivered to you, they aren’t rough drafts. They won’t need grammar cleanup, punctuation fixes, paragraph breaks inserted, consistency edits, or formatting work before they can go on your website.

We focus on accuracy first, then shape the transcripts so they’re clear, readable, beautiful, and ready to share.

We’ll use your template or create a custom one for you.

If you want, we’ll even download your audio files and post the finished transcripts on your website for you.

2. You’ll work directly with me, the owner.

Although I don’t promise to stay by my phone/computer 24 hours a day, most of the time, when you contact me, I’ll get back to you very quickly, usually within a couple of hours.

My goal is to make you feel like you’re the most important client at the top of my list.

Why I Built SermonScribe This Way

I’ve seen what happens when pastors and church content managers get cheap, fast transcripts. Someone has to spend hours cleaning them up, which usually means the transcripts never get used at all.

Or even worse, they get posted online anyway and grossly misrepresent what the pastor actually said.

Sometimes the transcripts are so ugly, messy, and hard to read that website visitors give up and leave. They came to get truth and left frustrated.

I built SermonScribe around one principle: A transcript should match the quality of the message itself.

That means paying attention to accuracy, readability, and formatting, because all three affect whether a transcript is actually useful.

Why You Should Post Transcripts On Your Website

Whenever you post audio or video on your website, you should include transcripts because it will help you reach up to three times as many people.

How? Think of it this way:

Search engines don't index audio or video files. The average 45-minute sermon has around 7,000 words that could be indexed. If you post fifty 45-minute sermon transcripts a year, that's more than a quarter of a million words that suddenly become searchable, which has a significant effect on the number of people who find your church when they’re searching for help.

Why Your Website Visitors Want Transcripts

So, once they find and visit your website, who says they’ll read the transcript rather than listen to the audio or video you’ve posted?

The people who are already part of your congregation probably will listen to your audio and video, but everyone else probably won’t.

They’ll make a beeline for the transcript without even thinking about turning on your audio/video.

Why?

I’m so glad you asked that!

Here are a few reasons:

1. People are busy, and it’s faster to read a transcript than to listen to an audio file or watch a video. If they are in “research mode,” and their only choice is to listen to a 45-minute file to get the answers they’re seeking, there’s a good chance they’ll move on to another resource. But…once people realize you’re a great source of the answers they’re seeking, more than likely, they’ll bookmark your page, tell their friends about you, and come back to your site for more.

2. They can print your transcripts and highlight the parts they want to study more.

3. Transcripts can be read by the hearing impaired.

4. The font can be enlarged for the sight impaired.

5. Transcripts can be translated into other languages using online text translators.

6. Transcripts are keyword searchable.

7. They can be used as study guides by small groups and classes.

8. Bits and pieces can be cut and pasted into blogs and emails to share with family and friends.

How You Can Use Transcripts

Besides reaching more people online, you can personally use transcripts in numerous ways.

1. You can use them as the basis of blogs, newsletters, magazine articles, and you can turn your sermons into books. (Your wheels are turning already, aren’t they?)

2. They can have bold, italicized, and colored text to emphasize main points and numbered lists.

3. They can include hyperlinks to your affiliate links. (cha-ching!)

4. They are keyword searchable. (No more accidentally telling the same story you just told 6 months ago.)

5. They can be archived and cataloged electronically.

6. As already mentioned, they can be indexed by search engines.

7. They will be much smaller file sizes than audio/video.

8. They can be used for closed captioning of television broadcasts, web media, DVDs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, and more.

The Real Cost of Cheap Transcripts

Some people think it will save them money if they pay a cheap $2.00-per-audio-minute transcription company to transcribe their files and then hire someone else to clean them up or to attempt to clean them up themselves.

Most of the time, this isn’t a productive strategy.

When a client sends me sermon transcripts that were transcribed by a cheap transcription company and asks me to “fix” them, I turn the work down.

Why?

Because it takes longer to correct the transcripts than it takes to start over and transcribe them from scratch.

How Can I Help You?

Sermon transcripts can be a key component of your online platform and your legacy.

My team would love to help you accomplish your goals.

If you have any questions, my email address is below. I’d love to hear from you.

Ginger Schell
Owner, SermonScribe
gschell@sermonscribe.com