Steve Jobs’ (CEO of Apple Computers) announcements about podcasting at the 2005 WWDC (Worldwide Developer’s Conference) may have been a minor part of the Keynote Speech, but I think they have huge ramifications. Long has there been talk about the mon…

I’ve had feedback from around the world, been mentioned in a newspaper in California, and exchanged promos with a number of like-minded podcasters – it’s terrific fun! As has been pointed out, this is a great way to extend one’s skill set – but few aside from Adam Curry are likely to make serious money at it, and you’d be silly to expect it. But profit? I can’t complain.

The per listener monetization shows how really inexpensive it is to do a podcast. It permits more experimentation from individuals and companies. Small money in television is huge money on the internet, from that perspective, a podcast is a very low-risk experimental marketing tool.

At the same time, the economics of podcasting are so small, anyone can use it for the same purpose. $1/listener/show is an easy way to describe how approachable podcasting is. Can the majority of podcasters get their listeners to support them directly? I don’t think we have the tools yet to find out.

In the race to the niche, there’s an inverse relationship between value and number of listeners. Thereby making individual listener support far more feasible with the right tools.

Actually I was using that quote to the “podcasting isn’t really new” crowd, not the kind like Stephen. Stephen’s is a different but equally fallacious thread – the “I don’t like it therefore there is no market.” You know, I personally don’t like coconut or cherries, therefore I extrapolate that there is no market for coconut or cherry pies. He says “I have listened to a few podcasts, and most of the ones I have heard are just boring, ramblings.” So what? I turned on the TV and the first few shows I tuned in weren’t to my taste. Does this invalidate TV as a medium? There’s 5000 and climbing shows out there, all of them are of interest to someone. His problem isn’t that the medium sucks, just that he needs a better way to find what matters to him.

As for the economics, I think it doesn’t matter to the pricing what you need to live. I don’t think dividing your costs by the listeners is a reasonable way of pricing. Better is to arrive at a price that is reasonable via the value of your show to the listeners, divide by what you need to live and use that to arrive at the number of paying listeners you need for this to become your day job. If your listenership gets cut in half, do you plan on charging twice as much?

More and more, I’m thinking that directly charging for podcasts in anyway is a dead end. That Leo was able to acheive it is probably not replicable because he’s got a karma bank to draw on that few others have. That’s why all my efforts to monetize are orthogonal to that. Yes anyone can create a podcast, but only you can create yours. The key to making it of value to a sponsor is to make it something they couldn’t do and is of value to them.

For the aspiring audio personality, podcasting is an effective way to; build an audience, find your voice, and experiment. As I mentioned in my If You’re a Guru, You Need a Podcast post, podcasting is an extremely intimate and inexpensive marketing channel for all professionals.

In the end, mainstream acceptance doesn’t really matter. Podcasting is about the producer and listener connecting more directly on their own terms. Critics, analysts, and mainstream acceptanace aren’t required for it flourish. Just ask Ron Popeil.

I echo Dave Slusher’s sentiment: “Being able to have 50 different ordinary yet compelling people to listen to whenever they choose to publish a file is what excites me. This part is inarguably novel because it wasn’t happening and now it is.”

He sums up the typical “podcasting isn’t interesting” arguments (some of which were in this comment thread) well with, “What you say is entirely correct, entirely factual and entirely irrelevant to me.”

When compared to existing radio – podcasting is not only interesting, but a compelling alternative. When compared to radio, the ‘obscure subjects’ you consider a weakness is the greatest strength.

Podcasting gives everyone access ‘drive-time’ radio without a transmitter – rather than listening to the same overplayed hits from the 80s and 90s, I now listen to any number of real people talking about topics so niche no one program director would put on the air during the day. This is where podcasting will flourish, in the same way weblogs have flourished as an alternative to traditional newspapers.