Category — Advertising

I was just reading Paul Colligan’s latest post about growing your podcast’s audience. He made some great points and I agree with all of them. It prompted me to discuss my view of how to make money with podcasting.

“One legged stools don’t work very well.”

Producing a podcast and waiting for the big bucks to roll in is a failed strategy. The podcast can’t be the sole “product.” When I talk to people about starting a podcast, I make it make it clear the podcast can be a product, but it is ALSO a channel – a tool. It has to be part of a bigger plan – one leg of a many legged stool. The podcast has to point to other legs of the stool – a website, vidcast, forum, book, Facebook page, email sign-up, meet-up… There can be many legs to the stool. Each of these legs must support the other legs of the stool. It is the combination of all of those channels and spaces (read: legs) that will help build stable platform where you can build a following that can lead to income.

Notice I said “following” and not “audience?” You may have people who don’t listen to the podcast, but read the blog. Or, who discover, buy, and read your book. Or, who follow you on Twitter and buy your next book.

As Paul Colligan points out, it is very hard to generate a real income just by advertising in podcasts. If advertising in your podcast is your main focus, then you are selling your audience’s attention to the advertisers. Your audience is your product. If you don’ t have an audience, you don’t have a product. Your efforts should focus on audience generation. As Paul points out, you can’t depend on anyone else to do that for you. Your focus should be on building an audience outside of the podishpere.
If your income generation plan is broader, to include premium services, books, affiliate programs, paid gatherings, then your time should be spent on fostering the relationship with your narrower, niche, following. A smaller faithful, following can produce more income than a larger transient audience.

With all this said, we are still VERY early in the growth of new media. Tell me how you do it…

“Brilliant!” I say. I wanted to be the first to say that.  I want to talk about why I think it is so good. I’m not telling you the link to the video, because I don’t want you to get caught up in the message and miss the elegance of the method.

Separating the message from the method, here are the reasons the creator(s) got it right. They carefully:

• picked a controversial subject
• leveraged someone else’s celebrity
• kept the call to action very subtle, but clear
• made it easy to spread virally
• made it easy to spend money

Before I give you the link to the video, set your personal beliefs aside for a few minutes [Read more →]

I just read an interesting article in Wired magazine called “Free” by Chris Anderson. The timing was perfect. I’ve had some conversations with people on how to monetize their podcasts. They are considering making their podcast a “premium podcast” with a price.

I try to look at the world as a big, bell shaped curve. In other words, the world isn’t black and white, it is mostly gray. If I remember my stats correctly, two-thirds of everything exists within one standard deviation of the mean. So how does my view fit with the article? I think there will be many ways to monetize podcasts and new media. I just think most people will find a similar method. There will be fewer at either extreme, but they will be there and they, too, will be successful.  Can I predict what will be at the extremes?  No.  Can I predict what will be in the middle of the normal curve?  No.  I just know that there is room for all methods and room within the same business for different approaches. [Read more →]

It’s starting. Here is a very interesting article at eMarketer. How they come up with the growth rates is anyone’s guess. I do want to point out my post about non-linear growth. I think it could grow at a much faster rate than described. I just can’t say when.

As we approach the Super Bowl, hints of some of the upcoming video advertisements are hitting the news shows and the net. The question for me is: Are the advertisements effective? Do people just remember the ads or do they go buy the product. Same thing with viral videos on the net – do people take action because of the video, or do they just pass it on.

Is this video going to make you buy a domain name? Are you going to remember GoDaddy for some time into the future? Obviously, all the advertisers with these kinds of videos think so. According to an eMarketer article , there are an ever increasing number of online video viewers, but I still want to know: Are people actually taking action because of those videos?I’m a podcaster and I’m fascinated by how strong the relationship between the podcaster and the listener is. There are also a number of video podcasts that have a strong relationship with their subscribed viewers. It is this relationship that I think will shape advertising in the future. Other people have pointed out this relationship marketing. I’m certainly not the first to talk about it. What I do think is going to happen in the near future is that there will be new tools to specifically measure the effectiveness of video and audio podcast advertising. Then when the hard numbers show the strength and value of the audio and video podcast medium, advertisers will flock to podcasters to capitalize on the relationship.Just as internet banner ads and Google ads have siphoned advertising money away from print and radio, podscasts with their relationship marketing will siphon more money away from the traditional “broadcast” advertising mediums. Advertising, will get more and more targeted with built-in tools to measure their effectiveness.

This article in Advertising Age really demonstrates one of my favorite terms – corporate inertia. Nothing new in the concept of corporate inertia – just lots of people with a slow rate of change. Organizations that can adapt quickly to change, win.

This article shows the corporate inertia in the advertising industry. As a podcaster, I “know” there is an incredible relationship that is fostered between the podcaster and the consumer. The strength of this relationship is real, but hasn’t be measured, yet. Advertisers are using the metrics they know. Exposure, Eyeballs,… Advertisers are buying “exposure to” consumers not the “relationship with” the consumer. I do think this will change as the strength of the new media – podcasting relationship will be measured and fed back to the advertisers. The ADM – Association of Downloadable Media is working on this. I’m also sure PodShow, Podango, and Wizzard Media are all gathering their facts and figures to change the opinions of the advertising world.

If a conventional advertising conversion rate of 2% could be upped to 5% through the relationship strength of a podcast, I see huge advertising money moving into the new media arena. That’s why I’m playing in this sandbox.