Premium Bitter At Just $4 A Month

Paul,

I agree with you in your above statements about Dan's options. I am also a firm believer that Premium Podcasts have a place in the market. I do think that archives should not be offered at every level, they should be an add on opportunity that has an small additional cost. I agree that this is not the path to become popular, but it is a driving value to both the listener and content creator. Like other paid audio and video content today it must drive some premium value to the purchaser. In the Premium Podcast space it is not about audience size, it is about revenue. I would rather have 5,000 weekly paid consumers of my show then 500,000 free listeners. If the podcaster keeps costs down and is able to get $2-4 per month for that subscription offering then that is $10-20,000 per month in revenue and your bandwidth cost is less, no ads to insert or create or ad sales costs and months that go by without any revenue as well. Sounds like a good strategy to me. It then all becomes about creating very valuable content and being able to market it.

Rob Greenlee

We'll find out.

I think the biggest issue isn't "will there be enough demand" - the issue is, will this model make Dan enough cash? Pill Premium won't be the gangbuster numbers that Pill Free will be.

Lots of folks think they'd never pay for HBO too.

A lot of people say HBO is "too much."

If Dan is in this to pay for his habit, I think he'll pull it off.

if Dan is in this to remain popular, it won't happen.

Hope that makes sense.

Obviously my "schtik" in this world is the profitable podcaster so obviously I'm prejudiced towards this model but ... quite simply ... I think what Dan does has value and he deserves to see that value. He doesn't want to sell out his audience to advertisers (a model I've never thought made sense in this space) but he wants to keep providing what he can provide and send his daughter to, as he puts it, a "school where she won't get shot."

I got nothing wrong with that - no matter what my schtik is.

Re your questions on ala carte "missed" episodes, the option is there in Premiumcast to sell - em. Dan just needs to decide if he'll go that route.

I suggest he does.

But this is his game. I'm just listening, and laughing,

and feeling good at where my $4 a month are going.

Paul

Don't know if you saw my comments on Dan's blog - but if you haven't
taken a look, please do. I WANT to be wrong - for Dan's sake because
I love the show, and for the monetization of podcasting. But I don't
know that there will be enough demand for his show that folks will pay
for it at the current pricing structure.

Maybe you have an answer for this question I posted:

>>>>one last question about how it all works. If I choose not to pay
for a particular month =- but then pay for the next month - can I
"catch up" on the episodes I missed? Or do I also have to pay for
those as well? It would seem that a subscriber is only paying for a
particular month of episodes - but the beauty of podcasting is that
the archives of shows are always available - and that you can get
behind on a show and then catch up when you have time. But in your
case if you don't initially pay for the monthly podcasts, but then
decide a month or two later you want to catch up on what you missed -
what recourse is there? Or are those episodes just gone and a listener
can never catch up?