Podcast Transcript for MTG #40 - Assigning Value and Monetizing Your Podcast
Transcript for Managing the Gray #40
Assigning Value and Monetizing Your Podcast
Originally posted on August 6, 2007
C.C. Chapman: Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #40. Hey, it’s C.C. Chapman here in MetroWest Boston. It may not be morning for you, maybe night, evening, who knows what it is? Whenever you’re listening to this, I hope you’re having a good one. I hope it’s a sunny day, beautiful day, and things are going well for you and I hope you’re having fun playing on the new media playground like I am. It’s a Monday morning here in Boston. It’s episode #40 of Managing the Gray and I wanted to get this out before the week starts, before the week consumed — you know how that happens sometimes? You have goals and things and then your week just kind of completely consumes you or even if just a day consumes you? I’m not worried about the week necessarily even though I’m headed off to Florida this week, not for vacation. It’s all work, no pleasure. Well, probably some pleasure, but who knows, but heading down there.
I knew this is going to be a fun show because I know I was going to get some quality feedback in the last show where I was talking about selling yourselves short, talking about Jaffe’s iPhone and all that. Of course, no audio comment from Jaffe. I see the guy in person, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be on my show. Anyways, lots of people called in to the comment line, which, again, in case you don’t have it, is 206-309-4729. It’s 206-309-GRAY. We love hearing from you, anything you have to say. We would love to hear from you. I’ve got tons of comments today to play. They’re very long. They’re very insightful. They say a lot.
The topic of selling yourself short and monetizing your podcast and bartering and all that. That’s one thing I want to say upfront too because there was a lot of discussion on the blog as well. I have zero problem with bartering. I am a huge fan of bartering. I once did some — this was a long time ago now I think about it. I did some logo work for someone in the early web days and they paid me a Best Buy gift certificate. I don’t remember why. There was something with their accounting. I said, “Buy me some Best Buy gift cards,” and it covered the cost and I was cool with that. I think bartering is an amazing thing. It’s worked for centuries. I have something you want, you have something I want, let’s trade and I’m okay with that. I have no problem with someone giving an iPhone for an episode. I think that’s great. It was just a particular podcasting question I thought that was selling that one short. Actually, let me play that comment right here because it fits before. Can you tell I’m just kind of flying by the seat of my pants today?
Mike Wills: Hey, C.C. This is Mike Wills of Mike’s Hotdish at nextgenerationofradio.com. You were talking about selling — are we selling ourselves short as podcasters and, you know, I would honestly have to say I have no idea. I think the people who have it in marketing and people who know what advertising costs or whatever knows what they’re worth, know what their show is worth, know what their audience is worth, and so on. I think people like me who are just your average everyday person or a programmer or just a geek or whatever, we sit back and like I don’t know what my show is worth, I don’t know how to charge for it, you know, just in general that kind of information.
So, we just “Hey, I’ll give you 20 bucks to advertise on my show.” “Oh okay. Yeah, sure. Great!” That’s income. We really don’t care, but, yeah. They don’t believe the stigma of “Oh gosh, you guys are so cheap, we can have [unintelligible],” you know, whatever. Anyway, I guess it all comes down to we as podcasters, most of us don’t know what we’re worth so we don’t know if we’re selling ourselves short or if we’re too expensive. Maybe we need comparison to radio and television, I don’t know. Is the audience worth more than them? I guess those are some questions that I don’t know and hopefully someone could figure out an answer for. On that, keep up the great show. I enjoy listening and I’ll see you guys next time. Remember, the nextgenerationofradio.com.
C.C. Chapman: So, that’s what I was getting at. What I’m getting at is that each podcaster has determined the value for themselves and yeah, I know a lot of it, especially if you’re just starting out, you don’t have a value. Any money that gets thrown at you is more money than you had yesterday. I used to say that and I still say that that anybody who fights the idea of monetizing your podcast, what I always say back to them is, all right, take your favorite product, company or charity or cause, I don’t care what it is. Think about it in your head right now. Now, tell me. If they came to you and said, “We will pay you to talk about us. You get to talk about it how you want. We’re not gonna push an ad down your throat. We’re just going to say, ‘Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Podcaster, here’s money to talk about us and you already love us.’” There is not a person on the face of this earth who wouldn’t take that and I’m sorry if you say you did. You wouldn’t, but it’s true.
The point is you’ve got to figure out what is good for you and it is different. A guy who’s just sitting around doing this in his spare time might charge different than a soccer mom doing a podcast who might charge different than a corporation doing a podcast. Just to give you an idea, I mean when we’re talking about advertising on television or newspapers even just banner ads on major websites, you’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars for one run or a week run.
One of the things I’m suggesting to you, I’ve heard Tim and Emile Bourquin over Podcast Brothers talk about this, is if you go to a company, a major corporation, if you actually get to the point where you’re looking for sponsorship and you go to a company and you say, “Hey, would you like to sponsor my podcast for a month? It’s four episodes and it’s going to cost you $500.” They’re going to laugh at you because they’re going to know you’re not taking yourself seriously. You’re an amateur and that’s not a bad thing. You can be that way. That’s a great thing to do. What I’m getting at is if you actually go out to look for sponsors, they’re not used to dealing in those little small numbers and they’re not going to take you seriously. It’s weird. I wish I remember the company because I know Tim Bourquin talked about an example where he was going out asking for sponsorship and it wasn’t working. Someone told him, “You’re not asking enough.” He actually went out and added some thousands to what he was asking for and the first person he asked came back, “Oh okay. Sure,” because they recognize that dollar figure and it was shocking. It’s sort of weird. You see that too sometimes when you’ve been on work and whatnot. It’s not always the cheapest one. It’s sort of strange.
I was talking about bartering and what I mean is it’s a great thing and I think it’s okay. If someone wanted to give me something to sponsor Managing the Gray or Accident Hash, One Guy’s Thoughts, I’d be cool with that. Perfect example, a very pertinent example would be One Guy’s Thoughts. If Panasonic or JVC or Sony wanted to give me a camcorder to be like the official, you know, at the end I would put “camera provided by company X.” I’d be all over that. I’d be cool with that.
Heck, week two or three of podcasting ever, way back in 2004, I reached out to a musician’s friend and said, “Hey, I know nothing about audio equipment. What if you gave me a mixer and a microphone?” That’s all I was asking for, for my computer and I would say “equipment provided by musician’s friend” on every Accident Hash out there. They said, “Sorry. We’re not interested in this podcasting thing.” They blew it, didn’t they? I mean for what cost me $200, was I selling myself short? Probably not because it was exactly the perfect barter and they blew me off. They said, “I don’t think so.” I remember they actually said, “Sorry. We’re not interested in getting involved in podcasting,” at that time. Now, they have podcasting packages. That’s what I was trying to push them to do, but it’s what I’m getting at. That I thought was a perfect barter.
I still think if a camcorder company wanted to donate a camcorder to One Guy’s Thoughts, I’d be down for that discussion to talk about it because I think it’s a great thing. Now, would I automatically do it? Maybe not. It depends. It depends if it’s a brand I knew or not. I just want people to start thinking different. The key is that you’ve got to start thinking about yourself a little bit bigger, a little bit different if you’re going to monetize. If you’re one of these people who don’t want to monetize your podcast, this whole episode is probably going to drive you a little nuts because we are talking about that concept today.
Of course, my good buddy Christopher S. Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, I’m glad he called in because I knew he’d have thoughts on this.
Christopher Penn: Hey, C.C. Chapman. This is Christopher Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, PodCamp, and Marketing Over Coffee. Regarding your comments about why new media folks are selling themselves short, I think it’s a sociologic phenomenon more than anything else or a psychological phenomenon, I’m not sure which is the correct term. As individual, $1000 is a lot of money, $10,000 is a lot of money, and $1 million is a heck of a lot of money because we’re used to dealing with smaller amounts in our personal lives. Podcasting and blogging are inherent with personal media.
We have our individual shows. So, if somebody shows up at the doorstep with $1000, it seems like a lot of money to us. Corporations are used to dealing with things that have 7, 8, 9, 10 digits in them and $1 million per ad spent is like the [unintelligible] cream cheese budget for Manhattan banks. So, for podcasters and bloggers to get out of the mindset of small sponsorship, they have to start thinking like a corporation. It may even help to sit down and legally separate out your podcaster, your product from yourself. Look at it as a company will look at it. Okay, here’s the ROI, here’s the AdSense, here is the operations budget, and things like that. Then with a more dispassionate look, understanding that you are not your show and vice versa, you can start to ask for more competitive sums of money as other forms of media.
Like I said, it’s a big part of the fact that it’s personal medium and we treat it as such, but it’s also a corporate professional medium as well. I know the Financial Aid Podcast, $20 million in loan volume last year is a heck of a lot of money and more than I’ll make this year or in the next several years combined, but for a loan industry that’s still a small amount of money. Even so, it would be worth it to a bank to acquire that $20 million worth of loan or whatever it is going to be for this calendar year. So, the money is definitely there as long as you think of yourself or at least your show as a corporation and do business to business work as opposed to business to personal work because that’s going to lead to trouble. Talk to you soon. Take care. Check out my stuff at financialaidpodcast.com, marketingovercoffee.com, and podcampboston.org. Take care, C.C.
C.C. Chapman: Thanks Chris, yeah, and quick plug for PodCamp Boston. We’re up to 324 registrations as of this morning. So, please check out podcampboston.org and register. It’s going to be a huge event, October 20… Chris is going to kill me. October 26 I believe is when it is, October 26 through 28, [unintelligible] VON Boston. It’s going to be a really good time. Chris reminded me of a trip. Ewan Spence and I were on a train in Germany talking about the fact that more people need to think about themselves as businesses. Now, I’m not talking about you have to go out and get all incorporated and all that, but what I’m talking about and Chris was kind of talking about is to treat yourself like a business. If you’re thinking about monetizing your podcast, you need to make business decisions. You need to think long term. Don’t sign a contract that locks you into five years unless it’s some really good money because the world’s going to change. I mean really think long term. Yeah, right now I might have 10 to 50 listeners. Where might that be in a year? I don’t know, but you got to think about that and just think about growth, especially if you’re going to sign a long-term sponsorship deal. Really think about it.
One of the things too that I see people do sometimes is they just take stuff for free and advertise it on their podcast, which is fine, but think about it. What are you getting out of it? Not much. Maybe you’re getting some free product. It depends on what it is really. I would give away lots of things on this show if it was something I personally believed in. I don’t want people to think about that. It’s funny. Part of me, I’ll be honest, was a little jealous of Jaffe that somebody actually came to him. I think that’s great. I was trying to think of what could people give me to sponsor an episode. I don’t know. I was trying to think of something I wanted and nothing came to mind. I don’t need the Xbox 360 or the big screen TV in the living room. I would take both of them, you know? I still think if Canon stepped up and gave me lenses or Sigma or someone will give me lenses for my camera to play with, I would even return them. I think they would be cool, but not really pertinent to Managing the Gray, but that’s another thing. It has to be pertinent to your show. Whoever the sponsor is should be pertinent to you. Think about it.
I have turned down sponsorships that I wasn’t interested in because — the ones that I’ve turned down have been personal reasons, I didn’t believe in the product or something I didn’t want to be showing. That’s something you have to think about too. So, one of the things I told you, there’s going to be heavy comments. Again, if something just clicks in your head, what was that number again? It’s 206-309-4729. It’s fun because I got a lot of different comments from a lot of different markets. This one was talking about music.
Rob C: Hey, C.C. This is Rob from the Fixion Media Advertising Network. That’s fixionmedia.com. I’m just off the hills listening to your recent podcast, “Is New Media Selling Itself Short?” I have to say it is. I liken it to the independent music scene where there’s a lot of great artists, a lot of great people who are trying to start independent companies and whatnot, but nothing really connects unless you’re connected to big business. At the end of the day, it’s an inferiority complex that we have to deal with as a smaller niche or subculture or underground movement of sorts.
In my case, it’s been an uphill battle since I deal with hard rock and heavy metal music and we’re only recently starting to look for publishers to expand within more of a demographic range, you know, the male 18 to 49 and whatnot, but at the end of the day, those corporate buzzworths said the demo, the male demo, the age group, or this and that, we’re not focusing enough on coming together and on operating together. That’s one of the reasons why I started my ad network. I started publishing an online music site called blistering.com in 1998. I find it pretty hard getting advertisers and really just surviving. Pre-dotcom boom is a lot easier to make a dollar off a banner ad and everything just kind of came crashing down at one point. So, what I did was I teamed up with another site called blabbermouth.net and we basically split everything down the middle. His site was about five times bigger than mine, but we just split all the advertising revenue down the middle. He had more traffic than I did. We aggregated our audience and a couple of years later, we ended up signing a couple more sites and now we’re representing 20 websites in the music space and interest is improving. I guess people are picking us up on Nielsen, on comScore, word of mouth, through our properties, and so on and so forth.
So, we represent an audience of millions now and from the client or brand agency perspective, we’re more of a viable source to deal with. I think podcasters and bloggers, anyone involved in social media or creating social media tools or interacting in any way whatsoever is truly the old adage of networking and know your neighbor. Team up and start a site with 10 amazing marketing bloggers or whatever the case may be. That’s the only way you’re going to get your voice heard. It’s the only way you’re going to have some sort of authority in the industry. At the end of the day, your words will speak for themselves, you know? And everyone’s words will speak for themselves, but that affiliation is that creating your own mafia or something like that. It’s a smart way to go in the business sense. That’s pretty much what I have to say about this. I love the podcast, C.C. Keep Managing the Gray going strong.
C.C. Chapman: That ends real fast. That’s another way to do it. I thought that was another great concept, the fact of affiliation and bringing yourself together. This is why things like Blubrry, PodShow, Kiptronic, Tripod, I know I’m going to forget a whole bunch of them, but these networks formed to pull — that’s exactly the model. I mean those PodShows are part of the model. I know guys, part of the model, and all these other ones from day one was pull these shows together and then when you go to an advertiser, you can say, “Look, you’re not just gonna buy on this one. Sure, you’re gonna buy across these 10 shows, 20 shows,” depending on who the advertiser is. It’s a great model and there’s nothing to say that you can’t do it on your own. Blogs have done it for a while. Why haven’t podcast? Rogic is the only one I can think of that has done a completely independent network. They’re personal friends. I’ll put that out there right now, Nico, Bob, Cat, Matt, all those guys, Mark. I’m forgetting a bunch of people, but the fact that they pulled together and they banded their shows together… I don’t think they’ve ever pulled together just for advertising. They pulled together for a lot of reasons.
The concept of tribal communities that cavemen did in the old days and we’ve been doing ever since, why can’t it work in new media as well? People cluster together. They work together. This goes beyond just monetization. You can work together. I know I have my small core group of people that I bounce ideas off when I want to cause some trouble or try something new. I have these core little groups of people that I trust and know and share similar interests with. Why not do that out in the podosphere? You can do that right now. If you do tech podcast, there’s plenty of people you can connect with. Maybe you have a super uber niche, but maybe there’s somebody else out there. People shouldn’t view things as competition. There’s room for everybody. Look at how many music podcasts are out there and here’s people pulling them together. You look at the parenting podcast, that’s a perfect one that should be pulled all together so people can come and get a parenting channel, I don’t know what it will be, about parenting something. You would go to one website and they could get a combined feed of all these select parenting podcasts. Marketing is another perfect example. I know we talked about Kapow at one point. Is there something we could put together on master feed to pull all of Kapow together so people could just describe the Kapow — I love saying that for you, thank God for the pop filter — and get all the shows. There’s a lot to do with pulling together and banding and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’m talking about niches. One of the things I also talked about was the concept of the ADM, the Association for Downloadable Media. Evo Terra, God bless his soul and God bless his beautiful wife, she’s a sweetie, had some thoughts on that as well.
Evo Terra: Hey, C.C. It’s Evo Terra of podiobooks.com and funanymore.com, listening to your comments regarding the Association of Downloadable Media and some other organization you mentioned. I share your same concern. We need to make sure that not only these things happen for big, huge podcasts, but also little podcasters as you mentioned, but my take on this is if it all goes in one direction and we continue to look for what happens for the big guy, well, what happens for the folks that are big or maybe they’re small but they’re doing something different.
Podcasting can be more than two dorks in a microphone or even one dork in a microphone. Not that I’m saying it should be you, but there are some people not to mention like podiobooks.com, for example, I’ve got about 137 different titles up there right now where people are using podcasting, the medium, to get their audio books in front of a brand new audience for free. I guess what I’m trying to say is [unintelligible] and the reason that I’m thinking of joining one or both or all that come across is to make sure that we don’t pigeonhole podcasting into something. There are a lot of different things that I’ve seen that are completely unexplored out there in this magic podcasting. I think the distribution method itself is interesting enough that we need not just make it something very basic. On the other side, I think it’s very important that we do have standardized ad units. I work in online advertising as that’s what brings me most of my income and I wouldn’t be able to do my job if it wasn’t for the Internet Advertising Bureau. I would be going through and figuring out what would were the standard sizes of units that we should be using and how long they should be and the file size and a lot of things like that.
So, yes, we do need those standards, but I want to make sure that, as you mentioned, the little guy is taken care of and like I’m concerned with that people are doing something unusual and different with the podcasting method, I want to make sure our needs are met as well. So, that’s why I’ll be in there fighting my flag and making sure that all voices are heard. Ciao!
C.C. Chapman: Amen. Amen! That’s why I love Evo Terra. He’s like me. He wants to make sure everybody’s voice is heard, not just the big guy. I agree with you. If you’re not familiar with the Podiobooks model, podiobooks.com is such a killer idea. I’m talking about the network idea where Evo and I know there’s other people involved and I’m sorry to them because I don’t know their names on the top of my head, pulled together audio books. Everyone knows the Sigler and the Hutchins and the Nemcoff names when it comes to Podiobooks, but there’s a whole bunch of other authors out there that people may not know about. If you go to podiobooks.com, you heard, he said they have 137 I think titles up there where you can get these audio novels and they’re getting at it all the time. That’s just screaming for appropriate advertising to put into it. It also seems like a lot of possibilities for acquisitions and if I was a book publisher, I’d be listening there to every book that came out because you could get a feel and find some new authors, but that’s just me. Hint, hint.
I agree with you, Evo, about the Association of Downloadable Media sense. I was really hoping I would have a comment from them for the show, but I didn’t unfortunately. That’s why I kind of held off hoping certain people would comment on this and they didn’t, but that’s okay. I talked to several members because I am officially a member of it because I want to see what they’re doing and keep an eye on it and be involved with it. Not only are they going to try to standardize some metrics and whatnot — it won’t work for everything, that’s for sure. I know the way Financial Aid Podcast measures their success versus Podiobooks versus me is very different, but at least getting some metrics out there. Just the number of listeners, I would love to have a standardized way of doing it because everybody throws numbers out there. “I’ve got 10,000 a month” or “I’ve got 100,000 requests per day.” Those are very different numbers. They don’t mean the same things. If we can just even get some standard things like with web stats, it took a while to get hits, page views, unique visitors. It took a while to get that type of stuff. We need to get there from podcasting to make people talk numbers across the board easier.
The other thing too is I hope these associations take it to the global concept because podcasting and new media in general is completely global. It’s not a US-centric thing and most of these associations and networks for that matter seem to always start very US-centric, which I’m fine with. I’m sure there are legal ramifications and corporate ramifications, but you got to remember this is a global concept. There are people around the globe and podcasting is borderless. What I mean by that is I know of several major sponsors and one comes to mind that sponsored several podcasts, but turned down another because of where it was recorded. It was recorded in Europe and they said, “Oh, we only want US-based podcasters.” Completely missing the point that there are people around the world right now listening to this.
Yes, I am in Boston recording this, but who cares? I could just as easily be in Singapore like Mitch Joel just did on the beach. I could be Mark Hunter up in Scotland. I could be somebody in China, maybe not China. I don’t know if they allowed podcasting yet. I could be in Cape Town, South Africa, like the ZA Show. I mean I could be anywhere, but the fact my listeners could be global and advertisers need to wake up. One of the things too while I’m thinking of that, advertisers are more clueless than podcasters are as far as selling themselves short. Marketers don’t have a clue what they’re doing with podcast. I’ve seen very, very few sponsors do it right, realize that this isn’t just another media buy. It’s not the same thing as buying television. It’s not the same thing as buying a print ad. It’s not a 30-second middle-of-my-podcast radio spot. That doesn’t fly, people. Advertisers have got to figure out that this is a unique medium and work with the podcasters in the community to figure out a way to do it right, to do it in a way that people are going to pay attention and actually care about your product.
That’s where I think things like when I was talking about the camera idea for a video podcast — I know when Kevin Smith did his Train Wreck, which were his video diaries leading up to Clerks 2, it was sponsored by Panasonic. At the end, it said “cameras provided by,” that made sense. If there was a 30-second commercial at the beginning of every episode advertising Panasonic cameras, I would have flipped it off. I know MTV does that. It drives me nuts. MTV has these little 30-second podcasts, video podcasts, kind of like highlighting news and I love watching them, but at the beginning of every one, there’s a 20-second — I’m not going to name the product, it’s like a moisturizer thing, but there’s a commercial and I’ve now gotten to it. I know how long it is. I just fast-forward through it. I just skip it. I’m like “I don’t want to watch this.” It’s stupid. They could be much better done. So, advertisers, wake up.
One more audio comment.
John Havens: Hey, C.C. This is John Havens from Blog Talk Radio and also PodCamp NYC. I wanted to comment about your show “Is New Media Selling Itself Short?” from July 27th. My answer is yes. Period. We are all selling ourselves short as content producers if we do not look into ways of monetizing, if we want to monetize. I did a show on about.com with my podcast. It’s still up. I think it was April and I’ll look for the episode number if anyone wants to go there, episode #33, I interviewed Justin Kownacki from Something to be Desired. He’s got an amazing videocast. One of the things we talked about was whether or not content producers should charge. So, people listening, the universal answer all of you will say I know is “no, of course you shouldn’t charge.” The second you charge for your podcast even if it’s a buck, you will lose your audience. Okay? So, first of all, I want to say I understand reality. This is the nature of what the era of the Internet, where we are right now.
Right now, if you charge as a podcaster, if you were to call it the premium podcast and you say, “I’d like $1 per episode,” the majority of people will say, “Well, you’re an idiot. No one’s gonna buy it,” and they might even get offended, “How dare you charge for your content?” First of all, there is someone who I do respect. It’s the guy who runs a show called The Roadhouse Podcast. I believe that’s the right title. He charges $1 I think it is, forgive me if I have this wrong, but I really like this model so I want to give him full credit. He charges $1 for a version of his show with no ads and it’s a higher quality sound rate because it’s blues music or he lets you listen for free, but he has ads and the sound quality isn’t quite as high. Now, I think that’s brilliant because what’s that saying to a listener is — that, to me, what it’s saying is, “I’d like to get paid and if you want a version that’s really listener-friendly, pay me a buck and that helps pay for the cost of the effort it takes to make it.” I think that’s a great model. Okay? So, he is monetizing. Most people when they hear about that, podcasters that I talked to, think it’s fantastic. However, now, if he just said, “Please pay me $1 for my episode,” again, most people would say, “What are you talking about? Of course not.”
All right, now, here’s the thing. As C.C. pointed out, on your episode C.C., when you create a show, it has inherent value because of who you are and how well you produce it. Okay? I say how well you produce it because we’ve all listened to a musician who may not be the best technically, but we still love their music and we’ve all listened to musicians for instance who are great technically, but we don’t feel they have the heart. Okay? So, if you are producing content that people loves and they want to download, first of all, amen. Awesome. Keep it up whether or not you want to monetize. But if you want to monetize, talk to your audience and tell them. Be honest. “I would like to monetize. I would rather do my podcast and work at, whatever, Starbucks or at my corporate job. If this is something you’re willing to pay for, let me know.” Always talk to your audience. I would never say just start charging. Okay, C.C. If this records for some reason, I left like four long messages. [Unintelligible] We all know I talk too much or leave long messages. So, I’ll talk to you about this. Bye.
C.C. Chapman: I hadn’t listened to that one all the way through. John, that’s the only one that came. But there was good stuff in there. There was very good stuff in there. I didn’t realize, what’s his name, Tony was doing that with The Roadhouse Podcast, which by the way, if you guys like blues at all, The Roadhouse Podcast is amazingly blues. I’m not a big blues guy, but I can dig it and he does an amazing job. I’m talking about a well-produced podcast. Check that out. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Great, great show. Good guy too, very standup individual, which I like. John bring up some good points there too about different models for monetizing. It doesn’t have to be advertising and seriously, we are in the puppy days of this world. Remember when people said no one would ever buy music online, Apple is doing horrible from that. Forget the DRM question. That’s a whole other question, but people are buying music.
It’s the same if you want to buy podcast because let’s face it, you’re listening to podcast right now, but we’re still in the echo chamber where maybe we wouldn’t pay for it, but I guarantee you if I made it so that someone could do pay-per-view subscribe on their television set — I bet a lot of you people have TiVos and DVRs that pre-record stuff that’s automatically there. I would lay money on the fact that if you could stand in front of your television and say, “I want to subscribe to Tiki Bar TV,” I’m trying to think of some big, you know, or GeekBrief.TV, come on, any of these things, it will go “Okay, that will cost you 5 bucks a month” whatever if you get premium packages, people would do it and it would just show up on their television sets. That’s podcasting. People, it is. That’s where things are going to go. It’s going to get to that point.
There are certain shows I would pay money to subscribe to. Maybe I get them early, I’ve seen that model before. What I’m getting that is people outside of the podosphere, people who are not producing podcasts, those millions of people who haven’t found out about it yet, they would pay for these things. Part of me says because they don’t know any better, but part of me says because that’s the model they’re used to and it is a model that we’re going to get to at some point. There’s going to be a point where you’re going to pay — a video podcast is a perfect example where maybe I can download the iPod version for free, the little screen, but I thought if I want the Apple TV version, I’d pay something for it. It’s a higher res, it’s more bandwidth. I see that model working. I think it’s a great model and I’m waiting to see someone try it. Now, for me, it’s got to be the right content or I won’t buy it, but that goes for anybody.
I guess what I’m trying to say is — we’ll wrap this all up because it’s going really long for a Managing the Gray — the key things I want you to take away is if you don’t want to monetize, don’t worry about it. There’s nothing saying you have to monetize at all. I love the people who have no aspirations to monetize. It’s fun. You’re doing it strictly for the pure fun of it and get the information out there and podcasting and new media is a whole [unintelligible] gives you a voice. That’s okay and that’s cool. Those of you who do want to monetize, start thinking like a business. I’m not saying you have to go get lawyers and accountants, but just think and what I mean by that is always think long term. Think “what if my podcast suddenly explodes and get hugely popular? Do I want to be locked into a contract for $50 an episode?” or whatever the number is. I’m not going to focus on numbers. Assign a value to yourself. If you have questions, talk to like-minded people and they will help you. “What do you think about this?” Maybe band together. It’s funny.
Managing the Gray has been around now for over a year and it sort of saddens me that it has never had a sponsor, not kind of saddens, it does sadden me. Have I actively gone out looking for sponsors? No, I haven’t, but it sort of bothers me as having a new media and a business-focused podcast, I seem to think that my audience would be a perfect audience for the appropriate advertisers to reach out to and I’m extremely open to advertising, sponsorship of the right type. Seriously, email me, managingthegray@gmail.com or cc.chapman@gmail.com, happy to talk about it, happy to barter. I’m open on all sorts of things. People seem to miss the opportunity a lot. You know me. Come on. I work for Crayon. We live and breathe thinking of creative solutions. So, I’m more than happy to figure out something that works for my audience because I’ll tell you, somebody comes, “Hey, I wanna drop a 30-second spot on your show,” it better be a product I’m really into and it better be a really good 30-second spot, and even then, I don’t think so. I’ll stick it at the end. You know? That’s the way we roll. I just want to put that out there.
One thing too before I go. I got an email, trying something new here. I’m not endorsing this because I’m still playing with it, but there’s this new company that is testing out podcasting on-demand via cell phones. This episode would be long to listen to on a cell phone. If you’ve got a pen and paper, here’s a number I’m going to give you. If you dial +1, because in the US, 5637735510, if you call that number, you can listen to Managing the Gray on-demand. Say, “I want to listen to this episode.” Now, what I’m curious about is when this episode is going to be up there. I’m not sure if they’ve set up a way that they get notified yet. This is brand new. Someone who reached out and said, “Hey, C.C. Would you be interested in playing with us?” and I said, “Yeah.” It sounds pretty cool, especially if it was a short podcast. People could do it sitting in an airport, “Oh, C.C’s got a new Managing the Gray. I can get it off my phone.” You just dial it up and you listen to it. So, try it. The number is 563-773-5510. I just want to put that out there in case you want to try it. Please give me feedback because I want to give it to the company because I tried it out. The quality is obviously not the same quality that I’m recording because it’s going on the phone. I get that it gets compressed.
Also, I’ve had for months, I don’t know how many of you listen to it that way, phoneshow.com. On the left-hand side of managingthegray.com, there’s a place where you can put in your phone number and as soon as I upload, it’s usually a couple of hours after I upload, they will send you a message to your phone with a link to listen to the show, which is cool too. Phoneshow is doing some very cool things. I dig those guys. All of these, unpaid. I hate now.
By the way, I will put this out there right now. Any time I’m being paid to say something, I will say so. If I don’t say so, it’s not paid. I had someone the other day, I forget what I was getting giddy about, some product, and like, “Hey, C.C. Is that a paid endorsement?” No. The rule of thumb is I’m not going to tell you every time it’s not paid, but if it is paid, I will tell you. When somebody gives me a sweet hi-def big ass camera to film my video podcast or someone gives me a new toy or something, I will tell you. When I get the iPhone paid for, for a year. I don’t know, I don’t need anything, the Sony VAIO laptop, I don’t care, I will say it’s paid for. That’s my promise to you. That’s transparency. All right?
This has been a really long Managing the Gray, definitely a different one. Next time, we’ll be talking more about new media. We’ll be talking about all kinds of fun stuff, not all about the money because it’s not all about the money, but I’m going to get out of here. Again, comment line, 206-309-4729, or managingthegray@gmail.com. Everybody take care. Have a good one. Hope summer is going well for you and I’ll be back really, really soon.
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