Podonomics

A year ago, one of my clients started podcasting. I recommended a small sample of podcast directories to submit to and one of them was Yahoo Podcasts. I just loved its simple, yet pretty design and was pleased that another major player was stepping into the podcasting limelight.

Yet, after a year, I have now stopped recommending Yahoo Podcasts. Why? It’s been neglected by Yahoo itself. Some feeds haven’t been updated in its directory in months, even though the podcaster has been producing new episodes every week.

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Tonight, Wednesday August 22, I’m hosting a fr’ee live call at 8pm ET. I’m going to interview a creativity coach who knows she needs to use the Internet to finds clients, but doesn’t know where to start. I’m going to coach her through the process and I invite you to listen in.

This call is in a series of weekly calls giving you a sneak peak at my Online Media Success Workshop taking place November 2-3, 2007 in Toronto, Ontario.

To get the call-in details, go to the Online Media Success Workshop webpage and sign up.

For years, people have asked this very important question:

“What is the purpose of podcast.com?”

Probably one of the most lucrative domain names online, podcasters everywhere are scratching their heads wondering what’s going on with podcast.com. Is it a directory? A network? Or just a placeholder for something else?

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Wow, if someone had told me that writing a book would be hard work, I think…I still would’ve written the book.

My deadline was extended to April 30th at my request, but I also promised my publisher that it would be my one and only extension. With 50,000 words still to write, I’m furiously trying to write the copy by the deadline. I know I’ll get it done as I typically shine under pressure.

I’m currently finishing up the chapter called Advertising & Sponsorship. It’s turning out to be a mammoth chapter. Without any screenshots, it’s nearing 15 pages and could top 20 by the time I finish tonight. I’m happy about this since most of the other chapters are 7 pages or less.

What makes this chapter interesting are the various advertising and sponsorship models that exist. And not all advertising and sponsorship models are the same. But one thing that stands out is Podshow, but not for the reason you think.

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There’s very little in life that pisses me off. I’m pretty open minded and I have thick skin. Yet, when iTunes is trying to sabotage me, that’s when the gloves come off.

About 6-months ago, I separated my blog and podcast feeds after getting some complaints that people couldn’t find my podcast. I thought everything was hunky doory until my publisher told me he couldn’t find my podcast in iTunes.

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There’s a chapter in my book called Launch Your Podcast where I talk about how to choose between a hosted and independent solution to publish your podcast.

A hosted solution is similiar to what Libsyn or Podomatic offers - a place you can get your RSS feed, podpage and hosting all wrapped into one.

An independent solution is where you can choose where to host your podcasts, what blog platform to use for your podpage and that you can customize the look and feel of your podpage to mirror your brand.

I know, I know, it’s not as cut and dry. I know that some hosted services do allow you to modify their template and that if you only want to use them to store your podcasts, that’s fine too.

That’s not the point of this post.

As I’m typing up the benefits of using an independent solution, one that I can think of is that you can write your own RSS feed, use the one that came with the blog, or use Feedburner. As I look at my statement, I’m now wondering what is the benefit of writing your own RSS feed.

Anyone care to weigh in?

I get emails from people who tell me about their brand spanking new, hot off the presses, better than sliced bread podcasting service. Sometimes these emails are personalized. The person will mention my blog, one of my products and one of my podcasts.

The majority of these solicitations are general, a template that doesn’t mention anything about me. The worst is when they spell my first name wrong and then ask me to point them to my podcast.

Whatever.

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Dean warned me, but after using GoDaddy for about a year with no problems, I ignored him. But every dog has its day and it seems that GoDaddy has awarded itself in pissing off yet another customer.

This time, it’s me. And here’s how the Theatre of GoDaddy Hosting unravels.

Since Thursday evening, I have not had access to my hosting account at GoDaddy. At first, the problem was a billing issue. So I called in on Friday morning, rectified the billing issue, then the chap on the phone told me to wait 24-hours for things to work through the system.

This problem affects these domains:

• cubicledivas.com
• planakillerpodcast.com
• podoptimize.com
• leesabarnes.com

It also affects about a dozen of my clients since most of their podcast files are hosted on podoptimize.com. So, I’m losing money every hour it’s down and so too are my clients.

On Saturday around 6pm, I called GoDaddy for a status since none of my sites are up. Of which the chap told me:

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Now, if you’re struggling to figure out what to buy your favourite podcaster this Christmas, look no further than my handy list below. I own (or have used) all of the products below and can recommend them with 5 stars.

Adobe Audition

Since graduating from Audacity to Audition, I’ve noticed a marked increase in the quality of my audio files. If you’ve been producing podcasts for a while and you’re looking for a more robust audio editing software, get Audition.

I’ll warn you, there’s a steep learning curve as it’s not as intuitive as Audacity, but with the right tutorials and a bit of mucking around, you’ll get the hang of this awesome editing software.

Mac Book Pro

Need I say more? It has everything a podcaster needs. Everything. I touched it. Once. I’ll just wallow in self pity as I count my loonies one-by-one to see if I can finally get my hands on one of these babies.

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Google keeps showing why it’s a billion dollar company through innovative web based services. It’s wildly popular Adsense program, which you see on thousands of blogs and webpages across the web, will soon be offered as insertions in streaming and downloadable audio, according to this guy.

While Google may be on to something and will probably do it differently from other podcast advertising services, I still preach that you can’t win offering ads in your podcasts. While you will probably make a few pennies, this model fails in comparison to the amount of money people are making using podcasts as a lead generation tool.

I’ll wait for the metrics before I even consider offering ads in my podcast.