Podonomics

I get emails from people who tell me about their brand spanking new, hot off the presses, better than sliced bread podcasting service. Sometimes these emails are personalized. The person will mention my blog, one of my products and one of my podcasts.

The majority of these solicitations are general, a template that doesn’t mention anything about me. The worst is when they spell my first name wrong and then ask me to point them to my podcast.

Whatever.

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Dean warned me, but after using GoDaddy for about a year with no problems, I ignored him. But every dog has its day and it seems that GoDaddy has awarded itself in pissing off yet another customer.

This time, it’s me. And here’s how the Theatre of GoDaddy Hosting unravels.

Since Thursday evening, I have not had access to my hosting account at GoDaddy. At first, the problem was a billing issue. So I called in on Friday morning, rectified the billing issue, then the chap on the phone told me to wait 24-hours for things to work through the system.

This problem affects these domains:

• cubicledivas.com
• planakillerpodcast.com
• podoptimize.com
• leesabarnes.com

It also affects about a dozen of my clients since most of their podcast files are hosted on podoptimize.com. So, I’m losing money every hour it’s down and so too are my clients.

On Saturday around 6pm, I called GoDaddy for a status since none of my sites are up. Of which the chap told me:

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Now, if you’re struggling to figure out what to buy your favourite podcaster this Christmas, look no further than my handy list below. I own (or have used) all of the products below and can recommend them with 5 stars.

Adobe Audition

Since graduating from Audacity to Audition, I’ve noticed a marked increase in the quality of my audio files. If you’ve been producing podcasts for a while and you’re looking for a more robust audio editing software, get Audition.

I’ll warn you, there’s a steep learning curve as it’s not as intuitive as Audacity, but with the right tutorials and a bit of mucking around, you’ll get the hang of this awesome editing software.

Mac Book Pro

Need I say more? It has everything a podcaster needs. Everything. I touched it. Once. I’ll just wallow in self pity as I count my loonies one-by-one to see if I can finally get my hands on one of these babies.

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Google keeps showing why it’s a billion dollar company through innovative web based services. It’s wildly popular Adsense program, which you see on thousands of blogs and webpages across the web, will soon be offered as insertions in streaming and downloadable audio, according to this guy.

While Google may be on to something and will probably do it differently from other podcast advertising services, I still preach that you can’t win offering ads in your podcasts. While you will probably make a few pennies, this model fails in comparison to the amount of money people are making using podcasts as a lead generation tool.

I’ll wait for the metrics before I even consider offering ads in my podcast.

I’m on the look out for good help. As the number of projects grow in my pipeline, so too does my need for people with the right skillset to complete these projects.

These positions are ideal for those of you who are producing your own podcast and are looking to supplement your current income. You’ll work from home using your own equipment and you can decide how much or how little to take on.

What am I looking for? Check out this page for more. Some training is provided, but you’ll learn how to do it the Caprica way. I won’t be spending time teaching you how to use Audacity or how to interview like Andersen Cooper as I’ll expect that you already know how to do this stuff.

Technorati: podcasting, podcasting jobs, careers, employment

Here are some very important questions to ask a podcasting consultant before you hire him or her.

1. Do I even need to hire one? Assess your needs and figure out if you can produce a podcast in house. No need to hire on a podcasting consultant if you have the staff to do it. The big question is can you manage a podcasting strategy in addition to your full-time duties at your company? If the answer is no, get a podcasting consultant on board.
2. Can you show me yours? Find out if the podcasting consultant is podcasting, how long he or she has been producing his or her own podcast and when’s the last time it’s been updated. This is important because in order to hire someone to produce your podcasting strategy, you want to know that they’ve done all the mistakes and gone through the headaches themselves.
3. Have you done this before for a business that’s similar to mine? Producing a podcast for an entrepreneur is different from producing one for a non-profit organization. Both have different goals. Compare apples to apples by asking the consultant whether or not they have developed a podcasting strategy for a company similar to yours in sales volume, in number of employees or industry.
4. Is podcasting your main focus? Your business can’t afford to hire a consultant who also does technical writing and graphic design, all while holding down a full-time job as an insurance agent. You have the right to inquire about their other interests. If anything, use Google to find out more about the consultant you want to hire.
5. Who owns what is created? Even though the podcasting consultant is producing your podcasting strategy, you must own the creative pieces. If a podcast cover is designed for your podcast or if a script is written for your podcast, your company owns it, not the consultant. If your files are being hosted on the consultant’s servers, don’t ask for the passwords though. Just remember that you own the creative and the consultant owns the technical pieces in your podcasting strategy.

Any others?

Technorati: podcasting, corporate podcasting, sales, consultants, Business

I was over at Mathew Ingram’s blog reading his comments about why podcasting may be worst than vlogs. Mathew isn’t crazy for saying this, but I do agree with him that there’s alot of really bad podcasts out there. I even presented on a podcast gone bad at Casecamp back in July.

And while I’m not the one to kill people’s enthusiasm for podcasting, I cringe when I hear one that’s poorly recorded or edited, especially if it’s being used as part of a company’s communications strategy.

The #1 reason why podcasts are poorly produced or lack a purpose is because the podcaster who hosts the show is also the one who does everything to produce it. They plan, record, edit, mix, publish and promote their podcast and eventually become exhausted. Something always suffered when you have to do everything all the time.

Some of the best podcasts out there isn’t being done by one person. They may plan the content, they may even record it, but the technical aspects of their podcasts - the editing, mixing and publishing parts - are done by someone else.

One of the commenters on Mathew’s blog, Rob Hyndman, a technology lawyer based in Toronto, said something that really stuck out:

“Content may be king, but it’s also quite the taskmaster.”

Ah, and it’s for this reason why podcasting is a good business for me. I know that eventually, the company that starts off podcasting on their own will podfade or want to hire out the complicated, technical stuff.

Does that make me a pariah? Preying on the what will eventually become the downfall of many companies who podcast?

No, I call it good business for all. And that should help lessen the number of pointless podcasts out there. Perhaps Mathew will have a different view at that point.

Technorati: podcasting, mathew ingram, rob hyndman, corporate podcasting, marketing

For about a month now, I haven’t been able to submit any feeds to Yahoo Podcasts. Everytime I do, I get “System Error.” I tried when I was in Boston, thinking it was an IP thing, but got the same error.

Anyone else having Yahoo Podcast submission problems?

Technorati: podcasting, yahoo, yahoo podcasts

Today, I got 2 press releases in my Google Alerts from 2 companies doing the same thing. Voices.com and Voice123.com both announced major developments in helping to connect voice talent artists with podcasters.

Voices.com announced that people can use their services to not only find voice talent for their projects, but also to advertise their podcast production skills for hire. While Voice123.com used a press release to reinforce its #1 position in the market.

This is most interesting. Not only are people competing with each other to build the largest podcasting community so they can target advertisers, but so too are those who supply voice talent.

Technorati Tags: podcasting

I use GoDaddy.com to host and serve my podcast files. They give alot of space for really cheap and in the the 8-months I’ve been with them, I’ve had no downtime.

So, it’s no surprise that GoDaddy.com is now offering podcasting service at $5 a month.

What’s the benefits of using GoDaddy?

1. You get statistics
2. You get an automatic RSS feed
3. You get a ton of space and bandwidth
4. You get to create a webpage to publish your podcast

There aren’t many drawbacks, save one. Paul Colligan mentions it on his blog. Jon Watson also comments.

More or less, I pay $6.99 per month for a hosting plan that gives me 100 GB of space and 1000 GB of bandwidth. The drawback is that I still have to publish my own blog using blogger or Wordpress and I have to use Feedburner for my feeds.

The GoDaddy.com Quick Podcast plan give you 1 GB of disk space and 100 GB bandwidth for $4.99 per month. The benefit is that this package includes all the tools I need to publish my podcast. The big drawback is for just $2 more a month I get 10x the space and 100x the bandwidth.

My recommendation? Spend the extra couple of bucks on getting more bandwidth.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, godaddy, Hosting, wordpress, feedburner