Hey Jesslisteners
Friends, Steemians lend me your beers or ears whichever you can spare first. I've been thinking about this ALOT lately, like almost to the point of obsession and I really think that this could be a winning idea. Podcasts have been around for some time now and recently started to gain popularity as a medium with the introduction of Smartphones.
Most Podcasts creators don't really have a place to call home and often cross post their content across SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes and YouTube hoping to reach as many people as possible and with that sort of fragmentation its hard to know where to place your efforts.
Some may download to listen later, some may bookmark it, some may listen sporadically, some may subscribe but you don't have access to all this data, making podcasts a shot in the dark for many and they do it because they love to talk.
Image source: - nytimes.com
Stats
As I mentioned before stats is a problem for podcasters and the funny thing is, it doesn't take much info to make them happy. If we look at the businesses people have built around a few metrics with a YouTube channel or an Instagram profile you can see that a decent dashboard gives people the confidence to keep creating and even make a real go of it as a business.
They basically become ambassadors for your platform and these superusers are the ones that keep your user base loyal and coming back for more.
None of the current Podcasting platforms really give you a dashboard you can effectively turn into a rate card and sell off to advertisers which is why Podcasting isn't as popular in my opinion.
Monetisation
I know SoundCloud is seen as the “YouTube for audio,” but they’re still a long way from being the comprehensive provider that YouTube is for video. Podcasts offer a range of revenue opportunities such as that no site has yet to provide creators with such as:
Overlay sound bite ads
Just like YouTube pauses videos to provide ads, audio can do the same and very easily this can be bumper ads before the audio starts or mid audio ads based on the content.
Visual banner ads
The site that you're on may also run display ads somewhere on the page that is refreshed while the user listens and we can provide a CPM return on these ads or block out a single channel with a specific ad for a premium price.
Tipping $ Donations
You could allow listeners to tip in various fiat or cryptocurrencies
Subscriber fees
Subscribers could pay a small to listen to podcasts for ad-free. Let's say $5 a month and they can pick 10 channels who will get a pice of that subscriber fee
Cost
I think the big issue would be the cost hosting all of that content along with all the metadata and various databases around it would cost a fair bit.
Creating the product would be one thing and then marketing it would be a whole other ball game altogether, but I do think it's achievable.
As I mentioned before Podcasters are already cross-posting their content and without an outright leader in the field, they will continue to try out any and all platforms looking for one to make their home.
While the marketing costs to gain users may be astronomical in the beginning, it can reduce over time as new creators bring with them new audiences.
I really do think this space is up for grabs and if someone centralised or blockchain-based made a good go of it, they could be the next tech unicorn.
YouTube is there to be stripped down
YouTube has been the go-to for all media but it isn't the perfect system and niche sites have proven they can start to use YouTube to grow their own platforms.
We saw YouTube blow up with lets plays and game streaming and that evolved into a community in switch
We saw creators looking for a way to create pay wall premium content and that evolved into a Patreon community
Why shouldn't podcasts be a similar case?
Let's connect
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