Making Podcasts That People Will Pay For

I ran across a very interesting article by David Spark over SocialMedia.biz.  In it, he interviews Paul Colligan, CEO of Premiumcast.com, as part of his “Making Money from Podcasting” series.  From his interview with Colligan, Spark writes:

Colligan’s top advice is to have an audience first before you try to sell a podcast.  If you don’t have one, don’t try to sell a podcast.  Gathering an audience can be done in multiple ways.  You can build an audience by running a free podcast and use it to promote your paid podcast, or you can spend the money on search advertising and build an audience that sees your paid podcast.

Here are Paul Colligan’s top three tips on how to successfully sell a premium/paid for podcast:

Know exactly what you’re delivering and what its value is.

Know exactly who you’re delivering it to.

Paint a message of the value of the content, not the technology that’s delivering it. (e.g. call it a “training program” not a “podcast”)

You can download the entire podcast/interview here.

The last tip of not selling your podcast as “a podcast,” is especially important. It would be much harder for me to want to buy something if I feel like I can get the information free from somewhere else. Promoting  important (read: exclusive) information would be the best selling point. But that’s just my opinion.

What would a podcast have to offer for you to pay for it?

Share on Tumblr