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 Plenty of podcast purists believe
that podcasting is an art form and that a person should do a podcast for
its own sake. Bravo to someone so selfless, because podcasting is hard
work. The prep is hard work; the recording, editing and mastering is hard
work and the encoding and updating blog entries is hard work. So why not
get paid for it?
There's been a lot of talk about
"monetizing" podcasting (apparently, a term for "turning it into a
business.") People have been fretting over how to ‘monetize’ this new
medium since moments after its inception. So, why all the fretting?
Podcasters can easily borrow from the tried-and-true business models that
have served radio, TV and independent artists for decades. Now, if you
have an advertising sales staff in your basement, you're probably fairly
clear on how you could sell some time on your podcast. But for everyone
else, we'll discuss a few simple ways to earn, perhaps not millions, but
at least enough money to cover your expenses.
Making Media Money
Your audience is
your greatest asset, bar none. Without your audience, it's just you, a mic
and some audio equipment. They actively participate in your podcast,
whether by e-mailing in comments, phoning you, or simply downloading and
listening to your show. Offer your listeners something they would pay
money for; Offer them as a target market to someone who is dying to reach
them; Offer them to businesses as proof that you know how to actually
reach and build an audience and hire yourself out as a podcast producer.
Who
is your audience?
This is an important question to be able to
answer, because from it comes all of your marketing,
your merchandising and every sales pitch you will
make regarding your show, whether it's to your
audience or to the head of a media company. As
you sit back and enjoy your daily barrage of fan
mail, take note of who's sending it and what they're
attracted to about your program. Are they mostly
male or female, or is it an even mix? Are they married,
single, American, European, Asian, tech-savvy or
tech newbies? If your show has a narrowly defined
focus you'll be able, with a little work, to define your
audience. If for instance your podcast is a movie
review show, it's safe to assume that your audience
is made up of movie lovers, right? For the podcasters
who do shows about religion, movies, sports, beer,
sex, Windows, Mac, Linux, sci-fi and so on, it's easy to
make certain assumptions about their core audience.
For others, you have to ask.
Implementing Donations &
Memberships
In mid-June 2005, Jason Evangelho from
“Insomnia Radio” (www.insomniaradio.net) sent a
dollar to a PayPal account out of the blue. Why,
you might ask? According to Jason, “I'm sending a dollar each month to all the podcasts I listen to.
Maybe it will catch on.” Now, yes, this is a testament
to Jason's good nature, but it's also a shrewd and
forward-thinking move. Many podcasters have had
a PayPal “tip jar” on their podcast sites for ages.
The striking thing about Jason's gesture is that it is
a small but regular contribution to his favourite
podcasters and because of his (and other podcasters')
kind gesture, eventually some money will start
coming back to him. If all of Jason's listeners did
what he has vowed to do, he would no longer have
to cover his storage and bandwidth costs himself.
Actually, he could devote a lot more time to working
on his fantastic podcast and a lot less time to working.
PayPal (www.paypal.com) is an online service
through which you can send money over the
Internet. Owned by eBay.com, it's a secure and
well-protected service. You might use it if you're
accepting donations, selling merchandise that you
stock at your home or office, buying equipment
through their auction site, or doing any other
transaction that doesn't involve a major online
retailer.
PayPal makes it very easy to set up a donation
button for your website. (see illustration above)
People can simply click that button and send any
size of donation they choose.
Paid subscriptions
You always have the option to directly charge
listeners to receive your podcast. At the time of this
writing, there is no clear-cut way to easily set up a
paid subscription feed without having some
serious technical savvy. That being said, now that
PodShow and Odeo are opening up shop and
Apple has included podcasting functions in its
iTunes music player, the day may be close at hand
when a podcaster can easily set up a subscription
channel that requires a per-download payment. (In
fact, we're positive this functionality is coming-it's
just not yet available.) How much will listeners be
willing to pay for a podcast? That remains to be
seen. People all over the world are paying the
equivalent of $0.99 for a single 3 to 4 minute song
from iTunes. What might they pay for a 30-minute
podcast?
For more on Podcasting, you could try Podcast Solutions: The Complete
Guide to Podcasting by friends of ED an Apress company. ISBN: 1590595548
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