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Further Thoughts on Making Money Through Podcasting

Thanks for all the feedback to my Turning Point blog post! Even though I was characteristically loquacious in that post, I still have a lot to say on the topic.

This morning, I received an e-mail from a listener and media professional who I’ll call Dee. Below is an edited version of our e-mail discussion, posted with permission. I thought people might find the details instructive.

***

Dave,

I think you need to refresh your view on your entire situation. You are in the rare position to actually have a large, passionate audience that actually gets mad if you post the podcast late, or if you don’t post an After Dark (see, I’m a regular listener, I hear you). While you may know some others with a similar passionate user base, the fact is that this is EXTREMELY RARE. What you have is valuable. Your statement here is key to your problem: “the money that we get does not come anywhere close to equalling the amount necessary to sustain a person for a living (nor should it, really).” YES IT SHOULD, actually. You need to realize you are in a great position that is hard to attain outside of major media. Buckle down, realize that no matter how uncredentialed you think you are, or how busy you are, you have a real BUSINESS at your fingertips that is simply not monetized. Buckle down and find a salesperson and get AD SPONSORSHIPS. It is no longer credible to say you can’t get Ads when major directors and critics are coming on your show and you have studios treating you to viewings as they would mainstream publications. Stop ignoring the fact that yes, if you take the Filmcast seriously as a business, you will prosper, but yes, it will likely cease to be a hobby and take on a smell of a job.

Also, I see that you have a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of $7,000 to fund your personal photo project. This makes no sense after reading your post. As far as I know, you are not a well known photographer, so anyone donating to that project would be doing so probably because they know you rather than because they think you are great photographer. So rather than using Kickstarter for that, why not use it for the Filmcast??? Hellooo? Make your goal $50k to start (no, you can’t pay Devindra and Adam, hard choices need to be made). I would bet anything that you reach $25,000 in less than 6 months. If that happens, then that should be enough to convince you to stop thinking fatalistically about the Filmcast and GO OUT AND GET SOME SALES PEOPLE!

I love you guys. I don’t always agree, but I love your show. I grew up with Ebert and Armond content, I prefer Filmcast. If you are considering letting it die on the vine simply because you didn’t want/or could not conceive of approaching it like a business, then I feel on some level you are betraying the loyal patronage of your passionate users, but most of all you are betraying Yourself.

***

Dee,

Thanks for your e-mail. I’ve thought a lot about some of the factors that you describe.

I’ve thought about your Kickstarter idea but there are a number of problems with that plan. I agree with you: I am pretty sure I’d be able to raise $30,000, $40,000, maybe even $50,000 to do the /Filmcast for one year. But that is not a sustainable way to do things. Kickstarter has this thing where if you don’t reach the funding goal, you don’t get ANY of the money. I definitely wouldn’t be abe to live year to year with that amount of uncertainty. And giving up my life for a year to do the /Filmcast would be fun and rewarding, but what would I do afterwards? I need to be looking towards a future, where there is hopefully a wife/family/mortgage coming up.

With regards to Devindra and Adam, I want to honor them, in the sense that we came into this enterprise together and I would not want to cut them out of any financial arrangement. Ironically, this desire to not be a dick to them will probably one day end up leading to the end of my involvement in the /Filmcast: In the most ridiculously optimistic circumstances, the podcast can probably make enough money for ONE person to survive off of. And since, in my mind, any money made from the show would have to be split three ways, I probably would rather see my involvement with the show end than deal with any attempt of my own to retain full monetary benefit from the show. There are more important things to me than seeing the show continue, including being a decent human being (side note: On the other hand, if Devindra and Adam were to give their blessing to any sponsorship/kickstarter arrangement, that would change things, obviously).

As for getting an ad sales person, it’s a real chicken-and-the egg problem: We don’t have enough money to pay an ad sales person because we don’t have ads. We can’t get ads because we don’t have an ad sales person. And so on.

As for people not knowing me as a photographer, my hope was that people would see the Kickstarter campaign who know me from all my other pursuits, and try to help me out out of the goodness of their hearts. This is typically the way a lot of Kickstarter campaigns work, only oftentimes, people DON’T know the people they’re donating for at all! Tons of people are paying completely unknown people to make documentaries and create albums. But, apparently my plan hasn’t worked in your book 🙂

Sincerely,
David

***

Dave,

Agree with all your points, sounds like you have a clear perspective on the matter after all. I do think your great co-hosts would be willing to go without pay on a trial 12-month basis if you presented it to them the right way (particularly if they understand that a future alternative may be no podcast at all).

As for the Ad salesperson issue, good point. I’ve worked as an editor in various levels of publishing. Even at the lowest levels, the salespeople get a base salary of about $1,500 plus sales commission (typically 10-15%) per month. Without a base salary, it would be hard to get someone, but in your case you might be surprised. There are tons of salespeople selling inventory they don’t like, or that’s too hard to sell. You have the numbers, high profile, and celeb guests, I think offering a salesperson a larger upfront commission (say 35%) on a trial 6 month basis would actually get you a good number of candidates. Contract that 6 months trial in writing. After 6 months, if you have healthy Advertiser interest, you renegotiate the salesperson’s commission. If you don’t know where to start looking my suggestion (other than posting an ad on Craigslist–which still works great) would be to poach talent from someone else in a similar vertical. Salespeople are always looking to move to a better deal/product, and the deal I described + plus your strong brand/penetration makes a pretty attractive deal…

***

I am open to your thoughts, questions, and suggestions in the comments.

Making Light of Sexual Assault

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan was brutally assaulted in Egypt. Mary Elizabeth Williams has a handy guide of what NOT to say about the situation:

In a stunningly offensive blog post titled “Lara Logan, CBS Reporter and Warzone ‘It Girl,’ Raped Repeatedly Amid Egypt Celebration” for LA Weekly, writer Simone Wilson managed to mention Logan’s “shocking good looks and ballsy knack for pushing her way to the heart of the action” before getting to the assault itself. She then went on to imagine how it happened: “In a rush of frenzied excitement, some Egyptian protestors apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.” Well, sure, what other motive for an assault could there be, given that Logan is, in Wilson’s words, a “gutsy stunner” with “Hollywood good looks”? And how else do Egyptians celebrate anyway but with a gang assault? It’s not like she deserved it, but well, she is hot, right?

Turning Point

The recent death of the IFC News podcast has gotten me thinking a lot about my own endgame and what it will look like. I currently host and produce two major podcasts (plus one side project). On top of this, I work a full-time job and am getting my Masters degree part-time. I am fortunate to have had bosses/professors that are pleased with my work, yet understand that my other pursuits consume a great deal of my time. But my current arrangement cannot last forever.

The fact of the matter is, it is very difficult for me to justify these podcast pursuits as anything more than a hobby. They will never make me a full-time income. I am grateful for countless of people that have donated money to the /Filmcast to keep us alive, in addition to the sponsorship offers we have gotten. They have provided significant help during a time of need and have helped to justify the amount of time that goes into the podcasts.

But the money that we get does not come anywhere close to equalling the amount necessary to sustain a person for a living (nor should it, really). And that goes double or triple when you’re splitting the money with other people. I surmise that the only people on the internet who ARE able to make a substantial amount of money from podcasting are people who a) have a large enough audience to attract major sponsorship dollars (e.g. Adam Carolla), b) broadcast daily, so as to multiply the number of impressions generated (e.g. Adam Carolla again), or c) make a sustained fundraising effort each year (e.g. The Sound of Young America, which wouldn’t be successful if (a) were not also true for them). I would not be opposed to broadcasting daily, but don’t currently have the numbers to justify it. Carolla (and people like him) built his empire on the back of his broadcasting career. I don’t have such a history or reputation yet.

For most people, including me, podcasts are something that people do for fun and/or because they’re passionate about it. And as a result, like the IFC News podcast or the Scene Unseen podcast or countless other fun, lovable podcasts before them, they can end at any time.

Having podcasted for a couple of years now and spoken with several of the best podcasters/broadcasters in the country, I’ve learned that often times what ends up happening is podcasts get too big to quit, but too small to derive any significant financial benefit from. They suck up massive quantities of time and cause untold amounts of stress, but do offer some rewards in return: the pleasure of interacting with an engaged fanbase; the pride of producing quality work; the various other perks that come with being a known quantity in your particular field.

In my own experience, I’ve been blessed to receive thousands of e-mails from people writing passionately about my podcasts and about the subjects that they cover. I’ve been able to see a lot of movies for free and to meet some of my heroes in the filmmaking industry. All of this has been incredibly gratifying. But it’s also exceedingly evident that the overwhelmingly vast majority of fans have no conception of what my life is like. And there are far more people that complain when one of the 4-5 hours of free content I put out onto the internet each week isn’t precisely on schedule, than people who say “thank you” when it comes on time.

The world of broadcast media has instilled an attitude of entitlement in all of us. We expect our media to be free and for there to be an excess supply at all times. These entertainers should do what we want! Dance for us! Play us the music that we love! Discuss interesting topics! In the world of podcasting, the expectations are the same as for radio and TV, but the financial rewards for the people involved are infinitesimal by comparison.

I hope that my podcasting projects will survive the transitions my life will go through over the course of the next few years. But the purpose of this post is to say that for me and for many other podcasters out there, the podcasts we produce exist and continue to exist because we love doing them. The things that keep podcasts going are frequently subject to the whims of fate. If you have podcasts you do love, be grateful while you have them.

Government Programs Infect Every Aspect of American Life

American idiots calling for less government have no idea how much government they depend upon (via NYTimes):

The most comprehensive data appear in the Census Bureau’s Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2009, but the data is very aggregated and doesn’t tell much about how many people benefit from various programs or to what extent. The most recent study I could find that tried to do that was published by the Tax Foundation in 2007. It found that in 2004, a typical middle class family in the middle income quintile received $16,781 in benefits from the federal government.

Reminds me of this piece on the Tea Party by Matt Taibi:

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They’re completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I’m an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I’m a radical communist? I don’t love my country? I’m a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

Because you don’t need a $3000 camera to do legitimate photography

Damon Winter took a series of amazing photos using the iPhone’s Hipstamatic app, and created a feature that won third place from Pictures of the Year International. Naturally, this has led to a lot of unwarranted bitching about whether or not the photos are legitimate. Winter’s written up a thoughtful response:

I have always loved shooting in a square format. This program allows you to shoot and — most importantly — compose in that format. I could not have taken these photos using my S.L.R. and that perhaps is the most important point to be made about the camera phone in this story. Using the phone is discreet and casual and unintimidating. The soldiers themselves often take pictures of one another with their phones and that was the hope of this essay: to have a set of photos that would almost look like those snapshots — but through a professional eye.

The beauty of a new tool is that it allows you to see and approach your subjects differently. Using this phone brought me into little details that I would have missed otherwise. The image of the men resting together on a rusted bed frame could never have been made with my regular camera. They would have scattered the moment I raised my 5D with a big 24-70 lens attached. But with the phone, the men were very comfortable. They always laughed when they saw me shooting with it while professional cameras hung from my shoulders.

I’ve always defended iPhone photography since the outset. It’s good to see someone with actual credibility doing so as well.

Gawker’s Sources Have Problems Staying Anonymous

Joe Coscarelli has a great summary of the problems that Gawker sources have in staying anonymous after they give the blogging empire a massive scoop:

[I]t’s not that the Gawker Media reporters hoped to have their sources outed. It happens to every news organization. But the way Gawker’s narrative sensibilities work, the account of the unnamed is crucial to the storytelling, thus littering the features (which also often include photographic proof with faces barely edited out) with clues. Then the entire internet latches on to the anonymity and won’t stop until they have their own piece of the pie. In some cases, like the Christine O’Donnell leak, it’s because the anonymous source comes off like an ass, and the hive mind is out for revenge. In others, like for Callahan, it’s merely a thirst to have the knowledge which has been withheld — a good detective-like hunt for any hungry journalists. In an age when almost everyone has something of an online trail, it’s not even very difficult! But Gawker tends to make it even easier.

I’m fascinated by this stuff every time it happens. What are the consequences for people like Dustin Dominiak, who has to live with this Google search any time he wants to land a date from now until forever? I’d like to know…Maybe a future episode of The Chencast? Either way, the price of that can’t be worth the $5,000 he was paid for the story.