BusinessWeek To Podcasters “Don’t Quit Your Day Job!”
Apr 4th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Commentary, Making Money with PodcastsBusinessWeek is telling podcasters “Don’t Quit Your Day Job“, painting a bleak picture of current prospects for professional indie podcasting. They cite a lack of advertising support and modest growth in listeners.
They also take a look at what it takes for podcasters to turn podcasting into a career:
In the absence of consistent advertising support, indie podcasters have to be inventive. Keith Malley and Chemda Khalili, the couple behind Keith and the Girl, an engaging, sometimes raunchy Howard Stern-like podcast, have cultivated a devoted online audience. (Six fans have already had Keith and the Girl tattoos done.) The show, which has 35,000 daily listeners, is just one part of the brand. Just as important to fans are the online forums and MySpace.com (NWS ) pages where they gather to talk about the show and their lives. As a result of this devotion, the audience last year was willing to snap up about $80,000 worth of T-shirts, key chains, and other merchandise emblazoned with the Keith and the Girl logo, showing a stick figure boy and girl.
It’s an interesting article, but their take on current opportunities in podcasting boils down to this:
- There aren’t a lot of indie podcasters making money at it;
- Those that do make money have to be creative and work hard to be successful.
That doesn’t seem that different to us than any other small business startup – it takes hard work and most small business fail. There are many examples, though, of hard-working, creative podcasters that have turned their hobby into businesses or careers.
Interesting. I’ll think about that while i’m doing my new XM shows and my tv show.
Your pal,
Wichita
I don’t know why no one will say what’s really going on here. Maybe everyone is afraid Apple will pull their podcasts. Hopefully this wont get pulled if I say it here, but Apple’s iTunes is the independent podcast killer. Everyone was extremely happy when Apple took podcasting mainstream. Podcasters reported record downloads. Recently Apple hid thousands of podcasts where newbies to iTunes would not know is there. Most featured podcasts are commercial based from old media with few exceptions.
The indies built podcasts, and now that Apple has placed them in the back room it’s impossible for the medium to grow or attract interest. Big media prevails again.
I just thought this need to be said.