According to Alex Nesbitt with Digital Podcast, even though podcasting has been around for about over four years, people still trying to figure how to make money podcasting.  Some of his suggestions have links which if you click on them, Alex makes money. He warns you about this and at first it may sound weird, it was worth it.  Here are the ten great ways to make money podcasting according to Alex.

1. Sell your content

One easy way to do it is to put your content onto CDs or DVDs and sell them on your site, he suggest Ask A Ninja and Will It Blend.  Another way is to sell your content via a subscription basis, he recommends PremiumCast or Wild Apricot.

2. Donations

He urges us to think Public Television or NPR.  Asking people to donate money or buy  your merchandise from Amazon Wish List. He suggest to get the donation button code from Paypal and Amazon Wish Lists.

3. Run ads within your podcast

An obvious idea according to Alex, but involves selling some ads and can represent a problem for podcasters.  This is hard work. There are Podcast ad networks you can join.  He provides some links

4. Promote a sponsor within your podcast

Alex mention that Leo Laporte does a good job of this.  He has some deal with Audible and promotes a book every week.  “I have seen presentations where people behind Grape Radio and Endurance Radio talked about selling sponsorships for decent amounts of money.  To execute this, find someone who would really benefit from some exposure and sell them on how great it would be to promote them to your audience”.

5. Run ads on your webpage and use your podcast to drive traffic

He suggest Adsense , Yahoo Publisher,  Chitka, Adbrite and Adengage and suggest not to run Adsense on the same page as something similar because it’s against Googlerules. Another options are banners you can run like ValueClick and ClickHype.

6. Sell your own product

If you sell other non-podcasts products, use your podcast to sell your product. You can sell ebooks or your own ebook using Clickbank. To sell your own T-shirts, cups, pens etc. use CafePress

7. Sell professional services

If  you do not make a product , you can sell your time.

8. Sell Training

If you don’t know how to build an online training course you can  get some information at Bill Myers Online.

9. Affliate Sales

Make money by selling other people’s product, services, ebooks or time.

10. Affliate lead generation

Get pay by just providing a lead. There are programs that pay you for providing traffic that turns into leads.

If you want more information and access to the actual links, please visit Digital Podcast

The blog GothamCast: A New York City Experience is a good example of show notes for a podcasting blog.  It contains a summary of what each show is about, it has a captivating title (other than episode number) which is important to attract new audience, it has on the top of the blog a list of popular/related words and phrases for easy search access, it also includes written links mentioned in the podcast for easier accessibility of the listeners (as it can be difficult for the audience to memorize all this information), the images complement the podcast, and lastly it contains a MP3 download button for direct access to the podcast.

A blog that could use some work on good show notes is Internet Business Mastery.  Even though it provides an image to visually enhance the podcast and provides a brief summary of each episode, it does not provide an MP3 download easy access link right away, it has it all the way to the end instead of at the beginning (this is important for audience accessibility) and  it includes a Click Here link which it is advised not to use.   See below.

“Good show notes enhance your show by offering a convenient outline of the contents of each episode. A good title and well-thought out show notes will bring new visitors to your site and entice people to listen and subscribe to your podcast.”

(How to podcast/Writing your podcast show notes)

If you decide to enter to the creation, production and distribution of you own podcast show, it is important to have a better understanding of the copyright law. Since I decided to take on this task, I found a couple of resources and news.

Cpyright 2.0 Show: This show offers the latest news of what is happening in regards of copyright.

Podcasting Legal Guide: This guide offers useful information that can help you to avoid infridgement, however it only offers podcasting guidance according to the USA copyright law.

There is nothing like creating your content and see it published and available to the entire world! I cannot described this feeling (yeah, I am a writer and I cannot find the right words).  This has been a dream come true for me.  My mission was to find out how and where to posts my podcast/short stories.  Today I found Podbean, it took me two minutes to sign up and to have my first short story posted!

I also found out that I can created may own sounds, special effects and music, just by using a key board and my imagination.   Audacity has tools that makes it even easier.  These are the tools that I liked the most:

Echo

Noise Removal

Normalize (for when I messed up)

Change speed

Fade in

Fade out

My podcast has many sound effects and music, so I had to add new audio tracks which helped me to delete, move and add sounds or music without messing up the other tracks.

Summary of a Podcast:

It has been a great learning experience to follow the Grammar Girl podcast. The Grammar Girl’s podcasts have helped me tremendously in the improvement of my English grammar skills (Spanish is my first language). The way that she introduces the topics and the examples she provides to support them are very helpful in my learning experience. For example before I listened to her podcast programs, I used to think that all abbreviations were the same, but they are very different.

Acronyms and initializms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms or initializms. All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms like in Oct. or Dr. which are abbreviations, but they are not acronyms.

One way to differentiate acronyms from initializms is that acronyms can be pronounced as a word like in N.A.S.A. but in the case of F.B.I. that is not pronounced as a word, therefore is not an acronym, it is an initializm.

Summary of Blog:

This blog has articles about current events that have to do with digital media tools and podcasting (vodcasting for video). The latest vodcast really caught my attention and I have to confess, I was part of the game.

On April 14, Ashton Kutcher started a Twitter race against CNN. The purpose was to show CNN that he could reach up to one million followers in Twitter (micro-blog with a 140 space character). He made a home video look alike in which he explained that one of the reasons why he was doing that was to prove to CNN that now, it is not necessary to be a part of a big network to reach a large audience. He also mentioned that CNN invited him to one of the programs and the reason was only to increase the number of audience of CNN, so he decided to show them that he could reach a large audience by using Twitter. In the video Ashton receives a phone call from one of his collaborators and is informed that he has close to nine hundred thousand followers.

This is the part in which I became a participant; I think that it is important for the big networks to get the concept of two way communication and to forget their old business one way communication. They need to listen to “us” the audience, so I took 45 seconds of life to go to Twitter, look Ashton Twitter’s account up and click on follow.

This is a site that provides tips and tutorial that cover most of the steps you need to start making a podcast.

How to Podcast

If you interested in continuing your formal education you can also find many educational podcasting programs from universities like Stanford University and more with  Mobile Learning.

We learned that ambient sounds can be a very important part of podcasting as much as music.  Does this means that you have to produce your own sounds? Maybe, but there is a source for free download sounds website that you can use for your podcasting projects: Freesound

This is a great resource put together by the Music Technology Group in Spain.

What is a podcast?

According to Wikipedia a podcast is a series of digital media files, they can be digital audio or digital video, however some people will call the video content a Vodcast.

Podcast Facts:

Podcasting is not radio.

Sometimes a podcast can be short or long depending on the audience that is being targeted.

Podcast files can be downloaded via Web syndication.

Podcast is for audio content and Vodcast is for video content.

An RSS feed icon is used to indicate the Web feed for a podcast.

Where to Find a Podcast:   Podcast Alley

For more information on podcasting see the two videos below:

Podcasting in Plain English

How To Create A Podcast

Visit Digital Podcast to Learn How to Podcast in Skype