You could spend a lot on high-end audio recording software to create your sizzle call but there are two great programs that can accomplish the same thing and they're both free.



The first one is called AudioGrabber. You can do a Google search and quickly find the AudioGrabber website.

AudioGrabber is nice because you can use it to capture any audio that goes through your computer speakers. To do that, just go to File | Line in Sampling. You can save these audio files as WAV files.

If you want to save them as MP3s you have to install a special DLL (called the LAME DLL) on your computer. To find out how to do that, go to the Links page on the AudioGrabber site.

I've used AudioGrabber to turn phone teleconferences into MP3s that I can listen to on my iPod. To do that, I hook up a microphone to my computer's audio input, place it next to my phone headset, turn on Line In Sampling in AudioGrabber and start recording. Then I save it as an MP3 (because I have the LAME DLL installed) and transfer it to my iPod.

The other free audio program you should get is an audio editing program called Audacity. You can download Audacity from the SourceForge website.

Now you can open one of the audio files you created with AudioGrabber and edit it with Audacity. You can do pretty much anything you can imagine: you can delete dead spaces or unwanted sounds, add noise effects, copy and paste sounds together, work with multiple tracks, etc.

Give yourself some time to become familiar with how Audacity works. If you can cut and paste and delete in Microsoft Word you can start working with Audacity. But it has a ton of features so don't get intimidated.

I've used AudioGrabber and Audacity to put together lots of sizzle calls. Basically, I find testimonials of people talking about my products or business and I record them with AudioGrabber. Then I pull those recordings into Audacity and clean them up (get rid of dead silence and "ums" and "ahs").

I record myself giving a quick intro and quick outro for the testimonials. I record myself directly into Audacity but I could go through AudioGrabber, too. Then I use Audacity to stitch all the tracks together.

Once you have the audio for your sizzle call you need to have a good voicemail service to use it with.

The voicemail service I use is with VoiceNation. I like VoiceNation because they have toll free voicemail for about $5 a month. The features of their service include unlimited length greeting, Caller ID, monthly call detail reports and you receive an e-mail every time someone leaves you a message.

Once my sizzle call is ready, I record it as my outgoing greeting with my VoiceNation service and I'm ready to start taking calls.

Follow these steps and soon you'll be creating your own sizzle calls, too!