Doug Kay, the creator of IT Conversations has posted his business model dilemma publicly and he is getting feedback from his listeners. This is an important discussion as it is currently difficult to keep and online radio show funded and operating. I am interested in hearing any of your thoughts on the topic of podcasters making money to pay for the bandwidth and content production time. Dana and I are generally covering our time and costs, but that forces us to host other websites and streams to pay for our 5 web servers and bandwidth.

Here is my comments about the dilemma.

Doug, the ad insertion model that plays a short 15-30 sec sponsor ad at the beginning of each streamed program would work, but most of the IT Conversations audience downloads. You would need to voice a very short program topic tease and then play the streaming sponsor ads. This is a similar model that is currently working with streaming video ad’s.

The problem is that advertisers do not value downloads as much as streams right now. The model for sponsor advertising only really works for streams. Getting sponsors for downloads or podcast is virtually impossible right now until download file playback can be tracked. I am getting streaming sponsors for WebTalk right now - download and broadcast radio distribution is just a bonus. So the Ad model for IT Conversations is not a very good option and thus leaves podcasters high and dry until mp3 playback on a mobile device can be tracked. Somehow this tracking and network ad insertion technology needs to be developed and embedded in downloadable media formats.

I also like Joshua’s comments about The David Lawrence Show. David was the pioneer in using BitPass for his show archives. I think micropayment per ad-free download or annual subscription is the only way IT Conversions can generate revenue from these shows. Doug will need to sell RSS ad’s and generate AdSense revenue from page views on his website. The short term revenue solution is a donation button and a roll out of BitPass on selected programs and conferences that have the highest value. I have thought about the integration of BitPass links into Bit Torrent RSS feeds and think it would work well, but the iPodder software will not work with it yet. Podcast feed readers need to support micropayment and featured podcast directories of feeds that offer pricing, audio sampling, listener comments and media file metadata display as all part of the point of sale. We are seeing the beginnings of all this at PodcastAlley and with iPodder software.

Live streams should be event sponsor supported. I agree that selling the complete audio from conferences is valuable and is a great idea. I firmly believe that revenue from advertising inside podcasts is not viable unless the podcast is also streamed and thus able to gain a large streaming or broadcast radio audience.

I think this is a valuable discussion and from these types of discussions will come the technology solutions to this current problem.

Please post your ideas on how WebTalk is doing in the area of advertising placement in our show. Has it been too much in the past? Should we stay ad supported or go subscription?