Migrating Your 'Saved for Later' Articles and Bookmarks

You don't need us to tell you how to read. But we've spent a lot of time listening to articles and fine-tuning the experience here at Podcast Later. There are some non-obvious, surprising tips and tricks you can leverage to get the most out of Podcasts Later.

If you have many articles saved up in your web browser's bookmarks, at Instapaper or Pocket, or any of the other myriad places you can save articles and links for later on the internet, then we have some tips for you.

If you don't yet have an account set up at Podcast Later, check out our Getting Started Guide before you continue.

10 Tips for Moving to Podcast Later

1. Narrative-rich articles or the latest news? Decide what you want out of our service. Do you like to keep up with the latest news and trends? Are you looking for long-form articles and content that you can dive deep into? Podcast Later works well for both. But think about what you want from your private podcast feed before stacking it with saved articles.
2. Steer clear of code-heavy and formula-heavy text. Our service excels at reading technical and scientific content. In fact, we're constantly tuning the spoken voices to correctly pronounce technical terms and acronyms. Even so, hearing the syntax of programming blocks or mathematical formulas read to you is not a great experience. Podcast Later actually redacts these to some degree so that listening to the article doesn't get overwhelmed by a bunch of symbols. You might want to read articles that are very heavy with code or mathematical formulas directly.
3. Be wary of data tables: Like code and formulas, complex tables or spreadsheets don't translate well to audio.
4. Leverage-categories-or-tags: Organize stored articles by topic or relevance, and move the most valuable ones into your Podcast Later workflow first.
5. Cull outdated or irrelevant items: This is a chance for house cleaning. When moving items into Podcast Later, consider which ones are worth keeping at all. If it doesn't make sense to listen to them, and you haven't read them in half a year, do yourself a favor and just archive them away.
6. Spot test-with-short-reads-first: Try short articles or summaries to get a feel for how they sound before committing to longer or more complex pieces. This makes sense for just getting used to the service and figuring out what works well. But remember, you're limited to a certain number of pages per month with your plan (think printed length of the article). So don't burn them up on a 50-page article you might not listen to.
7. Focus on personal relevance: Unless you really must listen to this article or paper for work, if it doesn't resonate with you, skip it.
8. Plan for offline listening: It's worth building up a big enough backlog to do batch listening while offline. If you're going to go for a 30-minute walk, make sure you have at least 30 minutes worth of content. Maybe more, because you might not be inspired to listen to one of them at that particular moment, so keep a little in reserve as well.
9. Save the original article's URL: Some Read It Later sites allow us to navigate through their save URL to the original articles. Others don't. Navigate to the original document or page for the best outcome and save that.
10. Keep an eye on your monthly credits: Your plan comes with a certain number of page credits for saving articles each month. If you want to see how many you have and how many you've used, just check out your account page. There is a progress bar showing you the status. Keep a few credits for those last-minute articles that you really want to read before synthesizing your entire back catalog of articles.

There you have it. Ten tips for better listening at Podcast Later. Enjoy the freedom to catch up on your reading while away from the screens.