Thanks for the mention of The Roadhouse in MTG #40 – just caught it today.

Some clarification on John Havens’ comments. The high-quality versions of The Roadhouse are $14.99/yr (”Premium”, 160 mp3) or $24.99/yr (”Deluxe”, 192 chapterized m4a). The free version is 128 and _is_ ad-supported.

I’m into the second year of this model, and it’s worked better than I expected. The ad revenues are not high, but they nearly offset the effort. And, the ads are a) intentionally unobtrusive and b) tightly targeted to the audience. They’re not jarring and out of place – they are, I think, tolerable.

The pricing for the for-pay versions is, really, pretty low. It calculates to $.29 per show, Premium, and $.48 per show, Deluxe. I rolled the Deluxe version in September and 85% of the subscribers upgraded from Premium to Deluxe.

(In modern ads terms, that’s an average $385.00 CPM … not bad.)

In short, virtually every copy of the show that’s delivered is fully monetized, either by ads or by subscription.

As both you and John hinted in your comments, podcast monetization, like every other commercial transaction, is about value to the customer. It’s basic econ; if you can offset your customers’ negative of cost with the positive of benefit, that’s value. Because podcasting is still “in the puppy days,” the cost side of the customer value equation still has to be pretty low. And, to some extent, the features and quality delivered for that cost still have to be pretty high. If, as a podcaster, you find that mix, even those who say, “I’ll never pay for a podcast” _will_ pay for a podcast.

One more quick thought. In my experience, John’s thoughts on the importance of talking with your audience are exactly spot-on. I let listeners know for months that ads in the show were coming. I didn’t just drop them in. They told me by email what would be acceptable. Many also clearly told me they’d be willing to pay for a show without ads. In other words, preparing my listeners allowed them to prepare me. I might not have thought about “dual delivery” without their comments. And, I certainly wouldn’t have gotten the comments if I’d pissed them off by dropping ads without warning. They’d have just unsubscribed, never to be heard from again.

That’s the type of dialogue you’ll never find in traditional media.

Keep up the great work with Accident Hash. I’ll try to catch MTG more often.

He’s currently converted about 15% of his free podcast audience to paying subscribers, and continues to convert about 1-2% more a month.

The MU podcast uses the SubscribeCast secure podcasting app as its backbone – http://www.subscribecast.com