Update: Here we go. (via Tom Coates) Create Your own podcast:
Who else wants to learn a simple step-by-step system for creating your very own 'cash machine' using an audio blog or 'podcast'?”
It looks like this "how to make money" with user generated content (if you are the user) conversation is happening everywhere.
That is a really interesting subject--what kind of new revenue models --and platforms--can we (in the community sense) develop to help grassroots journalists, bloggers and others in the long tale of niche/micropublishing make money?
I had breakfast this morning with a couple of private-equity investors who are looking into the media field. They, like many other people, are wondering what's going on with grassroots journalism.
Like any other venture, you only get out of it what you invest in terms of time and effort. Do little, and the return is minimal.
If a person expects potential buyers of products from a blog to appear in a puff of smoke, then a complete lack of sales should arrive as no surprise.
In my previous post on the subject of making money via podcasting, Jason Calacanis responds to my question:
>> Will audio advertising the be the next
>> traditionally-old-media-domain... to
>> move online?If it does it's going to take a long, long, time... it's take 10 years to make banner and text ads work, and there really hasn't been major demand for radio online like there have been for webpages.
How many web pages do you load a day v. how many stream you tune into? Put another way, how much time does the average web user spend on the web/RSS vs. listening to Internet-based radio?
No audience, no business.
However, the number of iPods and broadband connections out there, coupled with the ease of creating niche content you can't get anywhere else is cracking open a window to the future... how big it will be? who knows.
So, based on my recent experiment with podcasting with Gregory Narain, and my business interest in turning entertainment events into interactive shows, bringing reality-tv-style show filming to your neigborhood bar, restaurant or ski resort and broadcast through the net, and selling it to corporations as experiential marketing...
I've been thinking about the obstacles that are in the way of making podcasting/webcasting more user friendly from a consumer's perspective. (I anticipate that the tools for creating podcasts will also get better, but for now, I am content that they take more work than the average blog post.) And if the consumer is there, the producer will be there.
So, my thought is that the consuming side needs to be there first.
After the Worcester Beercast, we received some interesting feedback via a discussion board.
It's nothing but the unedited recording of knobs bullshitting.
Any 12 year-old can play recordings from/on the Internet.I thought that Beercasting.com had actually come up with an efficient way to distill the good parts of "bar-bullshitting" and make them entertaining or informative in publicly listenable packets.
What is the point of the site if they can't do that?
Originally, I was a bit pissed that this guy was this unappreciative. Especially, after Greg drove up here and back in a snowstorm from NYC. And I have no idea where this guy got this expectation. Nonetheless, he definitely has a point.
So, it got me thinking: how do we make podcasts more digestable. How do we know which ones to listen-to? Here are my thoughts on the matter: A few lessons I think we need to learn from blogging.
1. Metadata. Do you turn on the tv and flip around until you find what you are looking for? Or do you use the TV Guide (paper or electronic)? We need some written metadata attached to the file. Things like actors, producers, topics, summaries should all be attached to the file. Maybe we don't need a separate podcasting-blogging tool, but it'd be nice to attach that information with the metadata when it is published in some type of structured way.
2. Tags. The recent hubbub about tags is pretty appropriate to this post. Let the rest of the world describe it throug tags del.icio.us or spurl style. Then, making it searchable Technorati Style.
3. Ranking and Rating systems. I am not saying we need the ebay-style 1 to 10 ratings or amazon style stars, but we atleast need something like blogdex for podcasts to filter out what the good stuff is. Let the cream rise to the top. And a metafliter style community would be a good idea too, sort of what Greg is gradually building with beercasting.com.
4. Freelance Editors. Just like I can take a blog post, mix it in with other content and add my own opinion and republish it, people should be able to do that with podcasts.
5. Programming. Take podcasts, take the best of them and create internet radio stations with the content. Hell, NPR is as boring as your average podcast half the time and they are always struggling to raise money so they can produce content. Why not take the best from the masses for FREE?
6. Making it mobile. Maybe this is already easy. But, I am a bit lazy about it. I still buy cds and listen to top 40. Somebody has to make it easy and cheap for me to get the podcasts to my car, where I listen to audio the most. We gotta get it into the car and into my headphones at the gym.
7. Podcast to Written Word Translation. I know this is a bit far away. But, what about closed captioning for podcasts? Somebody in the developed world might be glad to transcribe your ramblings, or atleast make the corrections after some speech recognition technology took a shot at it.
8. Podcast Search. I know John Battelle is looking for an opportunity to explore in 2005. Searching audio could be huge.
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