Podcast Riches?

Heather

What do you base this idea upon, that there won't be much money to be made with podcasts?

Has there been a major Internet technology that hasn't offered disruptive business opportunities?

While only a small percent of indie podcasters will make money, that will still be thousands of podcasters, along with forward thinking media producers that create podcast content.

Elle, just because something is disruptive, popular and powerful, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will be an enormous moneymaker. Look at the Linux operating system. Look at blogs. They're disruptive and powerful as can be, yet I'm sure their combined revenue is piddling. This doesn't diminish for one minute their importance or potential.

I am always reading about the big dollars in podcasting through advertising.

I sure would like some direction on this.
It seems to me that there are only a few advertisers hopping on the podcasting band wagon.
Acuvue, Go Daddy, Earthlink, and HBO.

Where's the money? Where are the advertisors?

Somebody show me some good news about the present and stop predicting the future.

Our podcasts get thousands of downloads a month
(and growing by the day!).

What would be the going rate for podcastng ads?

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Steve

You might not be aware of this, but Linux services are a billion dollar industry for IBM and other companies.

Blogs are still very new, from an advertising standpoint, and there are companies making millions of dollars a year from them.

When ABC or PBS or HBO start delivering ad-sponsored podcasts of popular content, podcast advertising will be a big business.

Concertblast - pull a number out of the air and try it - then work with your advertisers if they balk at the cost.

There is no going rate yet - advertisers have to figure out how much podcast ads are worth, and that won't happen until they've experimented with them more.

Heather-

Putting aside iTunes... Podcasting strikes me as time shifted (tivo'ed) am radio (which will be much more consumable than written words - b/c it will be portable, humans listen to words several times faster than they can read, and some folks prefer voice over text as a communication media).

The commercial market for podcasters will not be ordinary folks, commercially relevant content will be the work of passionate hobbyists and paid journalists - ordinary people are maxed out by v-mail.

The people that will most likely find podcasts interesting on the consumer side are those that care about the podcast's subject matter... but, that demographic will be immensely qualified and targetted for that subject matter - advertising on that subject (so long as it not obnoxious) will be highly valued; think +$10 CPM.

Within 36 months, more than 50% of the world wireless subscribers and 100% of the pc base will have podcasts *easily* available to them. That's a TAM of +1B users, and if probably marketed to, at least 50% will be exposed to the equivalent of a podcast home/landing page per day. At a 5% CTR on the landing page, and taking a $10 CPM on that second page, we have a 250M dollar market in 3 years.

Good thought provoking post!

Hi Heather,
I am big fan of your recent work as a podcaster. Your interviews are both entertaining and insightful. I am learning a lot from you, hoping to eventually launch a podcast series in my country, PERU. Thank you very much. Keep up the good job.
By the way, my name is Mario. I lived in Chicago for a couple of years and fell in love with the windy city, leaving some dear friends over there.
Take care.
Mario

Hi Mario,

Thank you very much for the feedback. It's so hard to know with these podcasts whether people find them interesting, so it's great, great, great to hear from you!