subject: Is It Smart to Charge For a Podcast? [print this page] Is It Smart to Charge For a Podcast? Is It Smart to Charge For a Podcast?
A whole industry has grown out of a problem with podcasts and videocasts. There are major companies that exist solely to provide storage and bandwidth for these tools. They are designed to broadcast podcasts efficiently but they really aren't that different from your own website.
In fact, podcasting is so huge, that even financial expert Suze Orman uses it to promote her business. For every episode that she has, she extracts the audio and places it on iTunes for people to download for free. This is what I love about podcasts. I can load them into my MP3 player and get awesome content for free.
The only drawback of a podcast is that people can't "click" to your website. You will either have to spell out your website on your podcast or say it very slowly for your users to go to. When I used to do my YouTube videos, I had a graphical display of my web address at the bottom of the screen for users to go and type into their web browser. But with podcasts, you don't have this option to do so.
If you're new to podcasting, then you will be pleased to know that podcasting can be done in a snap. I used to easily create my podcasts when I used to make my YouTube videos with a web cam. I couldn't afford a camcorder at the time so I used a web cam to do my YouTube videos. Then I would take the video and extract the audio from it and create a podcast.
Once you have a blog and follow Feedburner's simple step by step instructions for creating your RSS feed, it's now time to start getting the word out about your podcast. I know of one lady named Suze Orman, she invites all of her followers to download her podcasts for free at iTunes.com. If you didn't already know, Suze Orman is a financial guru and has her own show on CNBC. I'm a loyal follower of her and I love her information, and I can't wait until a newer podcast of hers becomes available.
More than likely when you make your podcast on your computer, your computer will turn it into a large.WAV file. This is a high quality file type that takes up a lot of space on your hard drive. When you convert it into an MP3 file, the MP3 is a compressed format that doesn't sound as good as the WAV file. Nevertheless, the result of the MP3 will still be good enough to distribute on the internet.
The other side of the coin is over-marketing. Not everyone is going to be interested in your podcasts. That's fine. Some people don't like podcasts. Some people don't like free information. And if you're selling your podcasts that just means there are more people who don't want to listen. You need to be careful that you don't over market your podcast and drive your customers away. In short, don't bug your email list about the podcast.
