ABOUT THE MEETUP:

February 17, 2010 – 7PM at GoCatalyst.org, 430 E. First Street, Long Beach, CA

Creating a podcast is an effective way of communicating your organizations and personal opinions to a large audience. In this meetup podcasting expert, Alex Nesbitt (publisher of DigitalPodcast.com) will detail how to produce your podcast, as well as the numerous techniques you can employ at each stage of production to get your podcast to as many people as possible. We will also detail best practices for marketing and outreach for your podcast giving you optimal visibility online.

Top 5 Things You’ll Learn:

1. Types of podcast and which will best suit your needs
2. Types of platforms and how to use them
3. Best practices for creating and maintaining your podcast
4. Ways to get your podcast noticed
5. Search Engine Optimization for the podcasting community

Event should run 60-90mins.

About The Presenter

Speaker: Alex Nesbitt, Publisher of DigitalPodcast.com. Alex started Digital Podcast in 2004 at the birth of podcasting. With more that 100,000 visitors each month, Digital Podcast is now one of the leading podcast directories. Digital Podcast also powers 500,000 podcast searches each month on Nokia phones and other web sites. In addition to publishing Digital Podcast, Alex actively advises companies in the social and new media value chain who need to more successfully monetize their businesses. He focuses on turning communities into economies, engaging and activating super fans and on the advertising supply chain.

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.comBestSellingAudioBooks

1. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (Unabridged) audiobook by John Heilemann, Mark Halperin

Summary: "This shit would be really interesting if we weren’t in the middle of it."–Barack Obama, September 2008 In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama…. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton – and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama’s partner and America’s face to the world…. The mercurial p…
Click to hear an audio sample of Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (Unabridged) audiobook…

2. The First Rule (Unabridged) by Robert Crais
Summary: The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves’ code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family – no wife, no children – because only other criminals are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death. Frank Meyer had the American dream – a wife and family he adored, a successful business – until the day a professional crew invaded his home and murdere…
Click to hear an audio sample of The First Rule (Unabridged) audiobook…

3. The Swan Thieves (Unabridged) by Elizabeth Kostova
Summary: Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life–solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Ol…
Click to hear an audio sample of The Swan Thieves (Unabridged) audiobook…

4. Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged) by Stephen King
Summary: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when–or if–it will go awa…

Click to hear an audio sample of Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

5. The Help (Unabridged) by Kathryn Stockett
Summary: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman rai…
Click to hear an audio sample of The Help (Unabridged) audiobook…

6. Impact (Unabridged) by Douglas Preston
Summary: Wyman Ford is tapped for a secret expedition to Cambodia to locate the source of strangely beautiful gemstones that do not appear to be of this world. A brilliant meteor lights up the Maine coast and two young women borrow a boat and set out for a distant island to find the impact crater. A scientist at the National Propulsion Facility discovers an inexplicable source of gamma rays in the outer Solar System. He is found decapitated, the data missing. High resolution NASA images reveal an…
Click to hear an audio sample of Impact (Unabridged) audiobook…

7. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged) by Dan Brown
Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys.

Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…
Click to hear an audio sample of The Lost Symbol (Unabridged) audiobook…

8. I, Alex Cross (Unabridged) by James Patterson
Summary: Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and soon learns that she was mixed up in one of Washington’s wildest scenes. And she was not this killer’s only victim. The hunt for her murderer leads Alex and his girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, to a place where every fantasy is possible, if you have the credentials to get in. Alex and Bree are soon facing down …
Click to hear an audio sample of I, Alex Cross (Unabridged) audiobook…

9. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion (Unabridged) by Gary Vaynerchuk
Summary: Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion , Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video …

Click to hear an audio sample of Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion (Unabridged) audiobook…

10. Flip It: How to Get the Best Out of Everything (Unabridged) by Michael Heppell
Summary: It seems we’re all growing more negative. Bad news on the TV and in the papers makes us all feel fed up, and we find it easier to talk about what’s wrong instead of looking for what’s good. But imagine knowing a simple trick that you could use to help you feel better about everything. No matter how bad, how upsetting, how annoying or how frustrating the situation, wouldn’t it be great if you had the power to take it on and make it better? Well, that simple trick does exist, and it’s time t…
Click to hear an audio sample of Flip It: How to Get the Best Out of Everything (Unabridged) audiobook…

11. U Is for Undertow: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (Unabridged) by Sue Grafton
Summary: Calling T is for Trespass "taut, terrifying, transfixing and terrific", USA Today went on to ask, "What does it take to write 20 novels about the same character and manage to create a fresh, genre-bending novel every time?" It’s a question worth pondering. Through 20 excursions into the dark side of the human soul, Sue Grafton has never written the same book twice. And so it is with this, her 21st. Once again, she breaks genre formulas, giving us a twisting, complex, surprise-filled, and …
Click to hear an audio sample of U Is for Undertow: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (Unabridged) audiobook…

12. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged) by Malcolm Gladwell

Summary: Over the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has become the most gifted and influential journalist in America. In The New Yorker, his writings are such must-reads that the magazine charges advertisers significantly more money for ads that run within his articles. With his #1 best sellers, The Tipping Point , Blink and Outliers , he has reached millions of readers. And now the very best and most famous of his New Yorker pieces are collected in a brilliant and provocative anthology. Among th…
Click to hear an audio sample of What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged) audiobook…

13. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Unabridged) by Elizabeth Gilbert
Summary: At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love , Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous horrific divorces. Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which -…
Click to hear an audio sample of Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Unabridged) audiobook…

14. Deeper Than the Dead (Unabridged) by Tami Hoag
Summary: Tami Hoag is in a class by herself, beloved by readers and critic s alike, with more than 22 million copies of her books in print. With Hoag’s first novel for Dutton, she proves anew why the Chicago Tribune called her "one of the most intense suspense writers around." California, 1984. Three children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this di…
Click to hear an audio sample of Deeper Than the Dead (Unabridged) audiobook…

15. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged) by Stieg Larsson
Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller" The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…
Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged) audiobook…

16. The Lovely Bones (Unabridged) by Alice Sebold
Summary: Now read by the author, this edition also includes an interview with Alice Sebold and the first chapter of her new book, The Almost Moon . When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public-service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed things like that didn’t happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of he…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lovely Bones (Unabridged) audiobook…

17. Freedom (TM) (Unabridged) by Daniel Suarez
Summary: Here is the propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times best seller Daemon . In one of the most buzzed-about debuts of 2009, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind, Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie best seller, and left readers hungry for more. Well, more is here, and it’s even more gripping than i…
Click to hear an audio sample of Freedom (TM) (Unabridged) audiobook…

18. Pirate Latitudes (Unabridged) by Michael Crichton
Summary: From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal. The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses. In this steamy climate there’s a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease – or by dagg…
Click to hear an audio sample of Pirate Latitudes (Unabridged) audiobook…

19. Daemon (Unabridged) by Daniel Suarez
Summary: Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can’t always be said for the pe…
Click to hear an audio sample of Daemon (Unabridged) audiobook…

20. Lucifer’s Hammer (Unabridged) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Summary: The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival – a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known….
Click to hear an audio sample of Lucifer’s Hammer (Unabridged) audiobook…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times
Business Week
Publisher’s Weekly
Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

A bad disaster, a bad ad – you have to ask Intel what were you thinking?

Here’s the ad and a bit of the Sky News clip.

UPDATE:

Kari Aakre from Intel reached out to me to let me know Intel realized the issue and took action to remove the add. It’s good to see them respond responsibly and quickly. Apparently, Intel is working on technology to help deal with situations where two way communications have been interrupted/destroyed by situations like the Haiti earthquake. I hope they succeed.

Here’s Kari’s comment for reference:

The timing of Intel’s ad about its disaster communications technology research is unfortunate. While the media buy was made months ago, we are sensitive to the current situation and the people of Haiti, and pulled this ad as quickly as we could.

Separately, the Intel Foundation will match Intel employee donations to help support the people of Haiti during this difficult time.

Here are a couple of charities to start with if you can spare any help:

World Vision

Oxfam

Samaritan’s Purse

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

1. Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when–or if–it will go awa…

Click to hear an audio sample of Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

2. U Is for Undertow: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (Unabridged)

Summary: Calling T is for Trespass “taut, terrifying, transfixing and terrific”, USA Today went on to ask, “What does it take to write 20 novels about the same character and manage to create a fresh, genre-bending novel every time?” It’s a question worth pondering. Through 20 excursions into the dark side of the human soul, Sue Grafton has never written the same book twice. And so it is with this, her 21st. Once again, she breaks genre formulas, giving us a twisting, complex, surprise-filled, and …

Click to hear an audio sample of U Is for Undertow: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (Unabridged) audiobook…

3. I, Alex Cross (Unabridged)

Summary: Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and soon learns that she was mixed up in one of Washington’s wildest scenes. And she was not this killer’s only victim. The hunt for her murderer leads Alex and his girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, to a place where every fantasy is possible, if you have the credentials to get in. Alex and Bree are soon facing down …

Click to hear an audio sample of I, Alex Cross (Unabridged) audiobook…

4. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged)

Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys.

Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lost Symbol (Unabridged) audiobook…

5. The Paris Vendetta: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from palaces, national treasuries, and even the Knights of Malta and the Vatican. In his final days, his British captors hoped to learn where the loot lay hidden. But he told them nothing, and in his will he made no mention of the treasure. Or did he? Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone isn’t looking for trouble when it comes knocking a…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Paris Vendetta: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

6. The Help (Unabridged)

Summary: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman rai…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Help (Unabridged) audiobook…

7. Going Rogue: An American Life

Summary: One year ago, Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage like a comet. Yet even now, few Americans know who this remarkable woman really is. As chief executive of America’s largest state, Sarah Palin had built a record as a reformer who pushed through changes other politicians only talked about: energy independence, ethics reform, and the biggest private-sector energy infrastructure project in U.S. history. While revitalizing public school funding and ensuring the state met its res…

Click to hear an audio sample of Going Rogue: An American Life audiobook…

8. Pirate Latitudes (Unabridged)

Summary: From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal. The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses. In this steamy climate there’s a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease – or by dagg…

Click to hear an audio sample of Pirate Latitudes (Unabridged) audiobook…

9. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged)

Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (“An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller” The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged) audiobook…

10. Witch & Wizard (Unabridged)

Summary: The world is changing – the government has seized control of almost everything and kids are disappearing. For 15 year-old Wisty and her older brother, Whit, life turns upside-down when they are hauled out of bed one night, separated from their parents, and thrown into a secret compound for no reason they can comprehend, except that the new government is clearly trying to suppress Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Imprisoned together in a decrepit cell, Wisty and Whit cling to the…

Click to hear an audio sample of Witch & Wizard (Unabridged) audiobook…

11. Too Big to Fail (Unabridged)

Summary: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South K…

Click to hear an audio sample of Too Big to Fail (Unabridged) audiobook…

12. Nanny Returns: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: Nan is back. After living abroad for 12 years, she and her husband, Ryan, aka H.H., have returned to New York to make a life for themselves. In the midst of getting her new business off the ground and fixing up their fixer-upper, Ryan announces his sudden desire to start a family. His timing simply couldn’t be worse. To compound the mounting construction and marital chaos, her former charge, Grayer X, now 16 years old, makes a drunken, late-night visit, wanting to know why she abandoned him …

Click to hear an audio sample of Nanny Returns: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

13. SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged)

Summary: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in 35 languages and changing the way we look at the world. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics , and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we…

Click to hear an audio sample of SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged) audiobook…

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (Unabridged)

Summary: Of all of John Irving’s books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany’s dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany’s difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys — best friends — are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t beli…

Click to hear an audio sample of A Prayer for Owen Meany (Unabridged) audiobook…

15. Breathless (Unabridged)

Summary: Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the 35-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, crafting exquisite one-of-a-kind furniture. There’s little about this strong yet gentle man to suggest the experiences that have alienated him from the contemporary world. But that is about to change. One day, while hiking, Grady spots a pair of stunningly beautiful furred animals unlike anything he’s ever seen. They flee the instant they detect his presence…

Click to hear an audio sample of Breathless (Unabridged) audiobook…

16. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Unabridged)

Summary: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue…. It’s about the disappearance 40 years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden…and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance…and about Lisbeth Salander, a…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Unabridged) audiobook…

17. Wolf Hall (Unabridged)

Summary: Winner of the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction. In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedo…

Click to hear an audio sample of Wolf Hall (Unabridged) audiobook…

18. The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged)

Summary: Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle, looms. And mankind is not ready.The final volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light , was partially written by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times best-selling author of the Mistborn books, was chosen by Jordan’s editor – his wife, Harriet McDougal – to complete the final book. The scope and size of the volume was such that it could not be contained in a single book, and so Tor proudly presents The Gath…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged) audiobook…

19. True Blue (Unabridged)

Summary: A mysterious high-profile homicide in the nation’s capital collides with the dark side of national security in David Baldacci’s new, heart-stopping thriller. Mason “Mace” Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything – her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she’s back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major …

Click to hear an audio sample of True Blue (Unabridged) audiobook…

20. Lucifer’s Hammer (Unabridged)

Summary: The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival – a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known….

Click to hear an audio sample of Lucifer’s Hammer (Unabridged) audiobook…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times

Business Week

Publisher’s Weekly

Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

1. Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when–or if–it will go awa…

Click to hear an audio sample of Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

2. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged)

Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys.

Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lost Symbol (Unabridged) audiobook…

3. Good Omens (Unabridged)

Summary: The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch , the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist. Put New York T…

Click to hear an audio sample of Good Omens (Unabridged) audiobook…

4. The Copper Bracelet (Unabridged)

Summary: LIMITED-TIME OFFER: The Copper Bracelet is on sale for only $9.95 till November 24, 2009. A peaceful picnic in the French countryside explodes in violence. A mysterious assassin hisses a deadly threat. And events are set in motion that could propel India and Pakistan down the road to nuclear confrontation. Two years after the events of the Audiobook of the Year – The Chopin Manuscript – former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton and his Volunteers once again must crack a secreti…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Copper Bracelet (Unabridged) audiobook…

5. True Blue (Unabridged)

Summary: A mysterious high-profile homicide in the nation’s capital collides with the dark side of national security in David Baldacci’s new, heart-stopping thriller. Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything – her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she’s back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major …

Click to hear an audio sample of True Blue (Unabridged) audiobook…

6. The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged)

Summary: Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle, looms. And mankind is not ready.The final volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light , was partially written by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times best-selling author of the Mistborn books, was chosen by Jordan’s editor – his wife, Harriet McDougal – to complete the final book. The scope and size of the volume was such that it could not be contained in a single book, and so Tor proudly presents The Gath…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged) audiobook…

7. Nine Dragons: Harry Bosch, Book 15 (Unabridged)

Summary: LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life. Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store’s owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li’s family that he’ll find the killer. The world Bosch steps into next is unknown territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with translation–not just of languages but also of the cul…

Click to hear an audio sample of Nine Dragons: Harry Bosch, Book 15 (Unabridged) audiobook…

8. Open: An Autobiography (Unabridged)

Summary: From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography. Agassi’s incredibly rigorous training begins when he is just a child. By the age of 13, he is banished to a Florida tennis camp that feels like a prison camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. He dyes his hair, pierces his ears, dresses like a punk rocker. By the time he…

Click to hear an audio sample of Open: An Autobiography (Unabridged) audiobook…

9. Pursuit of Honor: Mitch Rapp Series (Unabridged)

Summary: The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friend…

Click to hear an audio sample of Pursuit of Honor: Mitch Rapp Series (Unabridged) audiobook…

10. SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged)

Summary: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in 35 languages and changing the way we look at the world. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics , and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we…

Click to hear an audio sample of SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged) audiobook…

11. The Lacuna (Unabridged)

Summary: From the Mexico City of Frida Kahlo to the America of J. Edgar Hoover, The Lacuna tells the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations. Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lacuna (Unabridged) audiobook…

12. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged)

Summary: Over the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has become the most gifted and influential journalist in America. In The New Yorker, his writings are such must-reads that the magazine charges advertisers significantly more money for ads that run within his articles. With his #1 best sellers, The Tipping Point , Blink and Outliers , he has reached millions of readers. And now the very best and most famous of his New Yorker pieces are collected in a brilliant and provocative anthology. Among th…

Click to hear an audio sample of What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged) audiobook…

13. The Help (Unabridged)

Summary: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman rai…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Help (Unabridged) audiobook…

14. Ford County: Stories (Unabridged)

Summary: John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, A Time to Kill . This wholly surprising collection of stories reminds us once again why Grisham is America’s favorite storyteller.

Click to hear an audio sample of Ford County: Stories (Unabridged) audiobook…

15. The Scarpetta Factor (Unabridged)

Summary: It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta – despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN – to offer her services pro bono to New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Scarpetta Factor (Unabridged) audiobook…

16. Kindred in Death: In Death, Book 29 (Unabridged)

Summary: In this novel from number-one New York Times -best-selling author J. D. Robb, the newly promoted captain of the NYPSD and his wife return a day early from their vacation, looking forward to spending time with their bright and vivacious 16-year-old daughter, who stayed behind. Not even their worst nightmares could have prepared them for the crime scene that awaits them inside. Deena has been brutally murdered in her bedroom, and her body shows signs of trauma that horrify even the toughest of…

Click to hear an audio sample of Kindred in Death: In Death, Book 29 (Unabridged) audiobook…

17. The Lincoln Lawyer (Unabridged)

Summary: New York Times best-selling author Michael Connelly delivers his first legal thriller, an incendiary tale about a cynical defense attorney whose one remaining spark of integrity may cost him his life. Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood in front of him. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, to defend clients at the bottom of the legal food chain. It’s …

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lincoln Lawyer (Unabridged) audiobook…

18. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged)

Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller" The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged) audiobook…

19. Too Big to Fail (Unabridged)

Summary: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South K…

Click to hear an audio sample of Too Big to Fail (Unabridged) audiobook…

20. The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller (Unabridged)

Summary: 15 thriller masters. 1 masterful thriller. Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy f…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller (Unabridged) audiobook…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times

Business Week

Publisher’s Weekly

Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

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1. Kindred in Death: In Death, Book 29 (Unabridged)

Summary: In this novel from number-one New York Times -best-selling author J. D. Robb, the newly promoted captain of the NYPSD and his wife return a day early from their vacation, looking forward to spending time with their bright and vivacious 16-year-old daughter, who stayed behind. Not even their worst nightmares could have prepared them for the crime scene that awaits them inside. Deena has been brutally murdered in her bedroom, and her body shows signs of trauma that horrify even the toughest of…

Click to hear an audio sample of Kindred in Death: In Death, Book 29 (Unabridged) audiobook…

2. The Copper Bracelet (Unabridged)

Summary: LIMITED-TIME OFFER: The Copper Bracelet is on sale for only $9.95 till November 24, 2009. A peaceful picnic in the French countryside explodes in violence. A mysterious assassin hisses a deadly threat. And events are set in motion that could propel India and Pakistan down the road to nuclear confrontation. Two years after the events of the Audiobook of the Year – The Chopin Manuscript – former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton and his Volunteers once again must crack a secreti…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Copper Bracelet (Unabridged) audiobook…

3. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged)

Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys.

Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lost Symbol (Unabridged) audiobook…

4. Ford County: Stories (Unabridged)

Summary: John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, A Time to Kill . This wholly surprising collection of stories reminds us once again why Grisham is America’s favorite storyteller.

Click to hear an audio sample of Ford County: Stories (Unabridged) audiobook…

5. The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged)

Summary: Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle, looms. And mankind is not ready.The final volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light , was partially written by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times best-selling author of the Mistborn books, was chosen by Jordan’s editor – his wife, Harriet McDougal – to complete the final book. The scope and size of the volume was such that it could not be contained in a single book, and so Tor proudly presents The Gath…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time (Unabridged) audiobook…

6. True Blue (Unabridged)

Summary: A mysterious high-profile homicide in the nation’s capital collides with the dark side of national security in David Baldacci’s new, heart-stopping thriller. Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything – her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she’s back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major …

Click to hear an audio sample of True Blue (Unabridged) audiobook…

7. Nine Dragons: Harry Bosch, Book 15 (Unabridged)

Summary: LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life. Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store’s owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li’s family that he’ll find the killer. The world Bosch steps into next is unknown territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with translation–not just of languages but also of the cul…

Click to hear an audio sample of Nine Dragons: Harry Bosch, Book 15 (Unabridged) audiobook…

8. The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller (Unabridged)

Summary: 15 thriller masters. 1 masterful thriller. Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy f…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller (Unabridged) audiobook…

9. Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when–or if–it will go awa…

Click to hear an audio sample of Under the Dome: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

10. Pursuit of Honor: Mitch Rapp Series (Unabridged)

Summary: The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friend…

Click to hear an audio sample of Pursuit of Honor: Mitch Rapp Series (Unabridged) audiobook…

11. SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged)

Summary: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in 35 languages and changing the way we look at the world. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics , and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we…

Click to hear an audio sample of SuperFreakonomics (Unabridged) audiobook…

12. The Lacuna (Unabridged)

Summary: From the Mexico City of Frida Kahlo to the America of J. Edgar Hoover, The Lacuna tells the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations. Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Lacuna (Unabridged) audiobook…

13. More Information Than You Require (Unabridged)

Summary: Welcome to the paperless (or "audiobook") edition of More Information Than You Require , a further compendium of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE assembled and illumined by John Hodgman, a Famous Minor Television Personality. It contains all of the half-truths, fake trivia, amazing made-up facts, and molemanic lore as the paper edition, narrated here almost entirely by Resident Expert John Hodgman, occasionally interrupted by this veritable extravaganza of illustrious and sometimes presumptuous gues…

Click to hear an audio sample of More Information Than You Require (Unabridged) audiobook…

14. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged)

Summary: Over the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has become the most gifted and influential journalist in America. In The New Yorker, his writings are such must-reads that the magazine charges advertisers significantly more money for ads that run within his articles. With his #1 best sellers, The Tipping Point , Blink and Outliers , he has reached millions of readers. And now the very best and most famous of his New Yorker pieces are collected in a brilliant and provocative anthology. Among th…

Click to hear an audio sample of What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Unabridged) audiobook…

15. The Help (Unabridged)

Summary: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman rai…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Help (Unabridged) audiobook…

16. The Scarpetta Factor (Unabridged)

Summary: It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta – despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN – to offer her services pro bono to New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Scarpetta Factor (Unabridged) audiobook…

17. An Echo in the Bone: A Novel (Unabridged)

Summary: Diana Gabaldon’s immensely popular Outlander saga soars to new heights with this seventh novel, which takes listeners on a breathtaking journey to 1777 America. Jamie Fraser knows from his time-traveling wife Claire that, no matter how unlikely it seems, America will win the Revolutionary War. But that truth offers little solace, since Jamie realizes he might find himself pointing a weapon directly at his own son – a young officer in the British army. And Jamie isn’t the only one with a torme…

Click to hear an audio sample of An Echo in the Bone: A Novel (Unabridged) audiobook…

18. Too Big to Fail (Unabridged)

Summary: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South K…

Click to hear an audio sample of Too Big to Fail (Unabridged) audiobook…

19. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged)

Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller" The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged) audiobook…

20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Unabridged)

Summary: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue…. It’s about the disappearance 40 years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden…and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance…and about Lisbeth Salander, a…

Click to hear an audio sample of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Unabridged) audiobook…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times

Business Week

Publisher’s Weekly

Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

I found this video on Robert Scoble’s blog. I thought it was a great overview of the Blogworld event. They do a great job of bringing the life of the event to everyone who couldn’t be there.

To start, let’s compare the lists.

My List included

1. Sell you content
2. Donations
3. Run ads within the podcast
4. Promote a sponsor within your podcast
5. Run ads on your webpage
6. Sell your own product
7. Sell professional services
8. Sell training
9. Affiliate sales
10. Affiliate lead generation

David’s list included:

1. Use a podcast network to get sponsors
2. Get your own sponsors
3. Beg for donations
4. Give some away, sell the rest
5. Partial show free, full show paid
6. Build a network of programming and sell advertising
7. Build your brand to sell your services
8. Sell an iPhone app
9. Integrate sponsorship with the show’s editorial

While number nine and two on the list seem to be the same thing, David’s list does add a few ideas to my list. I particularly like the addition of selling an iPhone app.

On the flip side, I think his list is pretty focused on advertising related business models and is really missing the most important opportunities for podcasters who want to make money – selling products and generating leads.

It was clear from the takeaways at the Blogworld Expo that this is the most successful way to make money, unless you have a really huge audience.

If you have other ideas for monetizing new media let me know.

I thought it was an exciting announcement as I have written a lot about how to make social networking profitable by turning communities into economies.

Julie describes how Ning’s 1.6 million social networks can now start making money by selling virtual gifts. The net revenue(after Paypal fees) from the gifts is split between Ning and the social network.

Ning’s virtual currency called credits, converts into US funds at a rate of approximately 1 credit to $.02. To help get users started with virtual gifting, Ning will give 100 complimentary credits to all users. All Ning virtual gifts will be priced at 75 credits each, so Ning hopes that each user will get to send one virtual gift as a way to try out the feature.

I hope Ning finds more ways to extend how social networks can use the currency to pay users to take surveys or other actions that will help the networks make some real money.

Here’s the interview with Julie:

Brent Mitchell, MediaFly’s Chief Technology Officer, explains how the system works in this video interview from BlogWorld Expo.

So how is the US Army dealing with the messy, distributed, un-controllable social web? It’s doing what it does best. It’s developing processes, tools, roadmaps and training to deal with ambiguity. I don’t think there’s any one better at taking potentially complicated, almost always ambiguous, and frequently dangerous situations and preparing its people to perform at consistently high levels.

In another social track, Social Web Analyst Jeremiah Owyang answered my question about who is putting processes around social web and he points quickly to the military. In his case, he pointed to the US Air Force’s response roadmap. (BTW, The US Army has one too.)

The star of the Army’s social media efforts on display at BlogWorld was ArmyStrongStories.com, a blogging system that lets anyone in the Army post to the blog. It can be used to help recruits see what it’s like from first hand accounts by people like themselves and to bring the soldiers’ voice to life for all of us.

Major Mary Constantino was kind enough to share a few minutes explaining ArmyStrongStories.com.

Here’s the video:

Go Army! Follow the US Army.
Blog: http://ArmyStrongStories.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/goarmy.com
Myspace: http://myspace.com/usarmy
Twitter: http://twitter.com/armystories
YouTube: http://youtube.com/armystrongstories
Press: http://armyaccessionsnewsroom.com

At the BlogWorld Expo,

Here’s the quick video version of how he did it. The longer post summarizes the rest of his presentation about how to grow your audience on the web. He has some excellent advice, which may be one of the reasons he has been able to realize such a return on his efforts.

Jason is an expert in new media and internet marketing. He is also the author of Promoting Your Podcast.

Jason starts out by discussing goals. The end goal is an action, something we want the audience to do because of our efforts. But we have some work to do to earn the action.

We need influence to make the action happen, and we don’t get influence instantly. We have to bank influence overtime and then we can make the withdrawel.

Before influence, comes engagement. We need an audience that this active and engaged with the content and the subject.

Before engagement, comes permission. We need the audience to opt-in in some way, to sign up for our email list, subscribe to our podcast or blog, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. We need them to take a step to give us permission to send them stuff.

Finally, before permission, comes attention. We need to get their attention to get the process started.

Jason describes these steps as the New Media Money Map:

1. Attention
2. Permission
3. Engagement
4. Influence
5. Action

Jason then dove into the subject of attention in more detail.

He pointed out that we live in an attention economy and that competing for attention is the focus on new media marketers.

Jason went on to describe the components of new media magnetism that can help you gain more attention.

He described the components as relevance, reciprocity, authority, trust, convenience and desire (either urgent pain or rational passion). Building these components into your content and behavior will help you gain more attention.

He went on to describe what he called the preeminence principle. This is all about making sure you are the expert everywhere your users go. This ubiquitous expertise helps reinforce your position in the users mind.

Jason provided some great tips on how to be ubiquitous. He described how high rankings in search engines is essential and how it’s not just Google, but also iTunes and Youtube. He described how all search engines use relevance and authority to drive their rankings. In iTunes, he has found that keywords are what drives relevance and subscriptions, ratings and reviews help to drive authority.

Some other tools to use include Feedburner and Tubemogul to help with distribution. He also suggested Webcam Max and Camtasia as software tools to help generate content.

Moving on to permission, he described how your email list is still your most important list, but now you have Twitter followers, RSS followers, Facebook fans etc. Don’t overlook building those lists as well. He pointed out that you should make your opt-in one of the most prominent parts of your web page and make sure it’s above the fold. Aweber and iContact were his two suggestions for mailing list management.

He suggested GotoWebinar as one of his key tools to convert people on Twitter and Facebook into email lists and conversion opportunities. Don’t sell on Twitter, use it for sending invitations.

Jason then described his thoughts on engagement. The drivers of engagement are knowing you, liking you and trusting you.

You want your audience to resonate with you. He also said that telling stories is a method that works exceptionally well.

He suggested The Story Factor by Annette Simmons as a great resource for improving your story telling.

At this point, we started running out to time, but you can get more information from Jason at his blog.

From those tracks, I came away with four key takeaways for bloggers and podcasters who are trying to become commercial successes at what they do.

1.  You have to be willing to work hard.  Whether you’re trying to break through or already well known, you need to put in the hours to make it work.  The evidence suggests that the most successful bloggers 3-5 times every day.  Whether it’s blogging, podcasting, video, or micro-blogging, consistently producing lots of content is a key component of success.

2. You need to be the expert, or a least perceived as the expert.  And you need to put in the time to stay ahead of others in your field.  Expertise leads to credibilty which can lead to trust and conversion.

3.  You need to develop and follow a process for successful new media marketing, capturing attention, engaging your audience, building influence and ultimately getting your audience to take action.  I saw a great presentation on the topic from Jason Van Orden and will be providing detailed notes in a later post, so stay tuned.

4. Most of us need produce a signature product to be commercially successful.  Making money via advertising just doesn’t seem to pay enough to make it work unless you have a huge audience.  Whether it be an ebook, a coaching class or a continuity program, product seems to be the way people make good money.  If you can develop a successful continuity program, that seems to be the most lucrative product.

In his keynote, Tim updated the audience on the current state of Pandora and his thoughts on the future of online radio.

Tim started his speech by observing the how the when you book a flight on Expedia you get a slew of other offers for hotels, cars, shows and even pedicures. He stated that their might be a lot of lessons for the music industry that can be learned from the travel industry.

The focus of his talk was “From Competition to Interdependence”. He observed that in the arduous discussions of royalties and the subsequent compromise everyone had to give to make it work for everyone.

Broadcast radio is a big guerilla in music. Of the 20 hours people spend listening to music each week, 17 are listened to on radio. Music will go as radio goes.

Artists and labels have organized themselves around the radio industry. All the effort goes into getting on the air.

Broadcast radio is gradually being replaced by online radio, driven heavily by the mobile revolution. This is changing the relationship between radio and artists.

In online radio, it’s much more democratic and inclusive thousands and thousands of artists can now be included.

And the money flows are changing too. The money broadcast radio collected from advertisers mostly stayed with the radio station. In contrast with online radio a large percent of the money flows through to the artist. Of the $40 million in revenues that Pandora collects a 75% will flow through to artists via royalties.

The industry structure is also changing as artist services are growing fast.

The missing piece has been scale. How do you get this new interdependence to work at scale?

Pandora is now starting to reach scale. Pandora now has 36 million registered users,
12 million mobile users, 65,000 new registrations a day and providing 2 billion hours of radio in 2009. This is an example of online radio starting to reach the scale tipping point where they attract national advertisers who want to reach large markets. This means that more and more money can flow through online radio to the artists.

He also sees a day when services like Pandora can become a really rich source of information to bands about who is listen to their music, what they listen too, where they are etc all provided via a dashboard.

Tim’s ultimate vision is to have 1 billion users listening to music on Pandora creating a global scale that provides lots and lots of money to artists.

Panelists

• Dave Conway, Founder, Little Radio
• Johnie Floater, General Manager, Media, Live365
• Kurt Hanson, Publisher, RAIN / CEO, AccuRadio
• Jim Rondinelli, SVP of Strategic Development, Slacker
• Moderator: David Oxenford, Partner, Davis, Wright, Tremaine LLP

Why is Internet Radio relevant?

Kurt Hanson, of RAIN, points out that radio is how the average music fan finds music.

Johnie Floater, from Live365, the most important aspect of internet radio is bandwidth to support huge diversity of content.  Even the classical music of the Canary Islands can have its own channel on the internet, something which is not possible on terrestrial or satellite radio.

Jim Rondeinelli, of Slacker, points out that most people don’t want to program their own music flow and radio provides that programming.

How do you make money on a radio focused on a micro segment?

According to Floater, subscriptions are about 50% of the revenue coming into Live365 radio stations.  Rondinelli seconds the subscription model as being an important part of Slacker’s revenue.

Is advertising on internet radio working?

From the discussion on the panel, it seems to be hard to find advertising for internet radio due to the small size of each channel’s audience.  Sponsorship seems to be a model that the panel sees as having more success.  Slacker seems to be having more success with advertising selling out their inventory in the first quarter.  Floater says that they get their advertising on traditional channels focused on popular music.

Rondinelli points out that local advertising pays a lot better than broadcast advertising.

What about internet royalties?

The panel dove into the discussion without hesitation.  Rondinelli describes the major differences between the royalties paid by satellite radio, terrestrial radio and internet radio, with internet radio paying much higher rates.  He goes on to say that paying different royalties based on method of delivery is ludicrous.

Hanson points out that if the music industry got the royalties they want then the entire internet radio would shut down.

Is Internet radio competing with terrestrial radio?

Hanson says that it is both a competitor and a supplement to terrestrial radio.  When Live365 etc are built into the car, then it acts like a competitor. Floater says that if you look at the entertainment pie, music is just one slice.  Over time the internet is gaining an increasing share of the music slice.

Rondinelli says it really is location dependent.  If your in your car, you’re most likely listen to terrestrial radio.  Hanson points out that with an iPhone you can get internet radio right in your car.  Rondinelli says its not so great with the AT&T network in many places.

In the Susan’s first guest post, we talked about various show formats that are possible with a podcast. In this installment, we’ll dive more deeply into Show Format, giving you an actual structure you can customize for your needs. This include some good language for intros and outros and commercial breaks.

Your Show Format
Once you know how long you think your show should be for your audience and your style, you need to plan for the intro, breaks (if any) and the outro. I recommend starting your show off exactly the same way every time, and ending the same too.

Every episode of DishyMix starts this way:

Welcome to DishyMix, This is your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you are going to meet Clark Kokich, global president and CEO of Razorfish…

Sometimes I do a little “tag cloud” of subjects we’re going to cover. Sometimes I top line a person’s bio (if I think my audience would benefit) and sometimes I just jump right in to bringing them on the show if they are well known. “Welcome to the show, Clark!”

What I think is most important for my audience is for me to GET TO IT! I don’t dilly dally talking about the weather, we get right to our dialog. I respect them as busy people.

Dialogue versus Question and Answer Format
Speaking of dialog, one of the mp3 files you get with “72 Secret Master Talk Show Host Techniques,” is an audio lesson with Duncan Campbell, host of Living Dialogues, called “The Art of Dialogue.” Duncan has a very unique interview style he calls a “dialogue.” Where most talk show hosts ask questions, driving the discussion and expecting the guest to answer and be the expert, dialogues are a more integrated discussion between two parties.

You can hear this difference if you listen to an episode of DishyMix and then listen to an episode of Living Dialogues.

Living Dialogues Stream/RSS/Download
Living Dialogues in iTunes

Creating Your Unique Style
I like to take a few moves from Duncan’s playbook but still keep mostly to the question/answer format. Duncan’s approach gave me the courage to dialogue with my guests. Your audience consumes your content because of YOU, not the guests you have on. You are the central character in the lives of your fans. It’s your filtering, your curating, your questioning and what you get out of your guests they they come for. It’s ok to engage in a little “parry and thrust” with your guest. It’s actually predictably boring to settle too routinely into simple Q&A. I encourage you to mix it up. Get in there and get dirty. More about what happens inside the container of an interview is covered in Talk Show Tips.

Show Flow
Here’s an example of a typical single Host, single Guest Format, thirty minute show. You should create your own personalized version of your show flow using this as a guide and customizing it for your own preferences.

Start the Show with Your Personalized Opener
Welcome Guest Name
(hi, great to be here)

Give a quick overview of who your guest is.
Guest is known for:
Attribute 1
Attribute 2
Attribute 3

Establish the theme of the show.
I’m pleased to have you with us today – I think our listeners really care about xxx and want to know more about xxx.

Tell your listeners the “game plan” for the show today – format and theme.
Today I want to talk to you about:
Subject 1
Subject 2
Subject 3
Get right into the meat by starting the discussion.

Let’s start with a few questions about xxx.

Ask 12 minutes of questions here (see Do’s & Don’ts on questions, bridges and transitions in the main eBook)

Make sure you unfold a story and delve deeply into their particular expertise. What do they know that nobody else in the world knows? Unfold this revelation…

Go to Break if you want a mid-roll ad slot
We’re going to take a short break to support our sponsors. I’d like you to listen to these ads. These are ads created by my sponsors for my show and they help me bring my work to you. If you can support them, I’d really appreciate it.

This is Host Name and I’m with Guest Name and we’ll be right back to talk about “something intriguing.”

NOTE: To keep your listeners or viewers from abandoning your show at the break, tempt them just before the break with the most juicy content you are saving for the end of the show so they’ll be compelled to stay with you!

5 second bumper with show identity (I use only a music bed here)

Break (silence for the count of 5)

5 second intro bumper (again, a music bed)

Bring Yourselves Back Into the Show
We’re back and I’m your Host Name and we are talking to Guest Name about xxx.

House Keeping
This is where I let listeners know about the DishyMix Fan Club and any other actions, like listener surveys or requesting iTunes reviews.

Before the break we were talking about xxx. I want to ask you about xxx.

Another Cluster of Dialogue if your show is longer than 30 minutes.
Questions for 12 minutes
(Follow same format for break and return if you want more ad slots.)

Engage Your Audience
Ask listeners to send you email or call to leave you a message. (I recommend K7.net for a free voice mail box.)

Wrap Up
We are almost out of time but I would like to ask you one final question – ask something that is a benefit to the listener and leaves them with an inspirational thought or feeling. Or however you want to end your show each time.

Thank you Guest Name for joining us and sharing your wisdom/insight/etc.
(You are welcome.)

Sign Off
Address listeners: join us next week on Show Name when we talk to Guest Name or we’ll be covering theme.

That brings us the end of the show, thank you for listening. For text and transcripts of this show, and other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, please visit our website at www.personallifemedia.com.
This is your host, Host Name
Your signature close here

Show ID – Closer
Personal Life Media Bumper

You can reformat this show flow to work for your show. It’s a great help when you’re first getting started. I always follow the same format so my guests can just listen, rather than wondering what is going to happen with format.

Now you know about the myriad options for formatting a show and how to move through your show flow with ease. If you haven’t listened to my interview with Susan about Commercial Podcasting, click here now.

Don’t forget to sign up for Susan’s free Mini-Course called “Easy Question Generators” where she gives you ten tips for coming up with killer questions for every interview. And, if you’re impressed with this bit of detail excerpted from her training system, maybe you should just go ahead and treat yourself to Talk Show Tips right now.

Happy podcasting!

In this guest post, Susan writes about Show Format and how to use it to build trust and engagement with your audience.

Here’s part one of advice from Susan Bratton, author of Talk Show Tips:

Show Format
In order to create trust with your audience, you have to consistently deliver both in frequency and format. Once you pick a schedule, keep to it. (I work ahead 3-5 episodes so I always have a significant buffer to weather guest cancellations and my own busy life.) The same with a format – keeping it consistent pays off by generating a level of credibility, professionalism and certainty. Sure, you can morph the format over time. I’ve tried show highlights and removed them because of audience feedback that they were confusing. Choosing and sticking with a show format allows your audience relax into the content, rather than wondering what the game plan is for every episode.

The 5 Divas: Sharon, Suzanne, Carrie, Julie and Amy

Carrie Runnals, Words to Mouth

Ryan Oelke and Vince Horn, The Buddhist Geeks

On our network, we have many formats and lengths:

• The DivaCast and Business Success Tips are a group of hosts who convene to discuss salient issues. The DivaCast is five “forty-something” women discussing life. Business Success Tips is as many as six male hosts talking shop.
• Family History and Tantra and Kama Sutra are single host/guest format.
• Joy of Living Creatively, Inside Out Weight Loss and Your Purpose-Centered Life are single host spoken word shows with huge followings.
• Camera Dojo, Buddhist Geeks and Digital Photography Life are dual-host and single guest format.
• Music for Midnight is very lightly hosted and mostly ambient and lounge music.

Some of our shows are 8-12 minutes long, some go over an hour! Some are loosely formatted discussions and others follow very organized question/answer formats. There are hundreds of formats and styles successfully employed. Don’t just choose one of the styles we use on our network, choose the one that supports your content, personality and Persona. (more about Personas in the main eBook.)

There’s a style for everyone. Some people love the conversational nature of our multi-host shows. That drives others crazy and they vehemently reject it. You must develop your style and find your audience. Your future fans are out there, as long as you keep your show tight, the content valuable and you don’t waste your viewer’s time.

Your Show Length
First, select your show length and format. My weekly show is about a half hour. I’d like to do a twenty minute show, but I can’t get as deep as I want in that amount of time. A hallmark of my show is depth, so I need that extra ten minutes to fully develop the character of my guests. My audience gives me that time because they like that character development too.

I also need to have pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ad slots because a big part of my income is advertising revenue. Sometimes I run six or eight ads in a single show. (My audience is marketers and they understand the sponsorship model. I never get any negative feedback on this number of ads because my audience “gets it.”) To generate the revenue for my show, I need thirty minutes of content with a break fifteen minutes in. I don’t believe my listeners, who are busy professionals, have more than a half hour, but there are a LOT of popular shows that go longer. Some of the shows on our network are always over an hour. If you are working in video, your duration is significantly abbreviated — typically :30 seconds to 4 minutes… You have the luxury of overlay ads on your video, whereas audio is more linear.

So pick a length. Then stay within that by 20% every episode. Internet shows have the luxury of being approximate, rather that exact in length. But don’t take advantage of that and go off format. It’s sloppy and erodes audience trust. Ninety five percent of my shows are thirty-ish minutes long. A really long show I did with Tim Ash about landing page conversions recently was a show with a lot of listener questions. I got great feedback on that show from many people. But I like those “bonus material” shows to be the exceptions, not the rule.

On the next guest post, Susan will show you exactly how she handles her show flow and give you a cheat sheet for customizing it to your needs.

************************

Susan has launched Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques as a training system for anyone who hosts a podcast, vidcast, radio or talk show or for experts who create information products that include interviews as material.

Susan has launched Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques as a training system for anyone who hosts a podcast, vidcast, radio or talk show or for experts who create information products that include interviews as material.

In her new system, Talk Show Tips, she focuses on training you on everything you need to know to empower your audience (fans) to promote your show for you. She shows you how to consistently develop well-produced interviews so that your audience keeps on growing and increasing your chances for attracting excellent sponsors (if that is you want).

Even without focusing on getting sponsors, growing an engaged audience is the reward for the effort you put into producing your content. Susan’s Talk Show Tips provides a roadmap to make that happen quickly.

Susan has put together her best advice for establishing a show format and managing the flow of your show. Even expert radio show hosts and podcasters have complimented her on this thorough approach to shoring up their productions and making them more professional.
Talk Show Tips as a learning system, is chock-full of techniques that make perfect sense, the minute you hear them. Susan has a way of explaining things simply but with a lot of insight and detail. With her system, you can immediately integrate powerful new strategies into your show that include:

• Solidifying Your Show Format, Personas, Intros/Outros/Breaks
• Booking the Big Name Guest and Prepping Them for a Stellar Show
• Developing Great Questions No One Else Asks
• How To Do In-Show Bridges, Segues, Reframes, Power Pauses, Opens, Affirmations and Graceful Interruptions
• Managing Show Notes, Transcriptions, Editing, Contests, Google Mojo, Cross Promos, RSS and Free Widgets
• Using Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TweetLater Pro and Trackur to Promote Your Show
  Getting Featured in iTunes, SEO and Five-Star Reviews

Susan is even making ten of her best tricks and techniques available to everyone for free. Just go and sign up at TalkShowTips.com and she will send you the ten free tips.

As a bonus, Susan has written to posts for me sharing some of her expertise with show format and show flow. I hope you enjoy them.

And as a special bonus from me, Susan and I have created a special bonus audio download for you where she’s interviewing me about how to set a strategy and get started in commercial podcasting and new media publishing.

Check out the interview and go sign up for Talk Show Tips.

The problem is declining advertising revenue. The auto industry, one of the biggest buyers of newspaper ads, is in the tank. Craigslist et al have devastated the classified monopolies that provided huge profit margins for newspapers in days gone by.

This trend is not restricted to newspapers. TV is seeing the problem as well. According to Jack Myers, an industry consultant:

“2010 advertising spending is heading toward record-setting declines of 13% to 15% in 2009, according to the new Jack Myers Media Business Report forecast due to be released to subscribers September 14.”

And the trend is not just an offline phenomenon, online the price advertisers are willing to pay for impressions is dropping as well. Consider the following from the media focused MultiTasker

Cost-per-thousand ad impressions for online publishers are generally off about 20%, according to several people on both the buying and selling side, and sell-through rates are dropping. And where publishers used to unload 60% of their inventory, some are now able to sell only 30%.

What we are seeing is the law of supply and demand at work. The amount of available advertising space is growing fast and much faster than the demand. When supply goes up faster than demand that means prices will drop. And prices for impressions are dropping fast.

That means that anyone who tries to make a living by selling advertising impressions is going to feel the hurt. Offline, online – it doesn’t matter. Impression based advertising prices will continue to drop fast for just about everyone.

There will be exceptions. Big events will command good prices for impressions and may even do better. There is only one Super Bowl, one Academy Awards, etc. These will be situations where what is being bought is actually getting scarcer. Huge audiences all gather in one place at one time. This is what big TV shows used to be able to do. Now, that is the exception, and therefore will will likely see impression pricing rise for this shrinking segment.

Some will also point to Google as an exception. But in fact Google doesn’t make its money by selling advertising impressions, they make their money from people who pay them for potential leads (people who click on the ads). For the most part, you don’t pay for impressions on Google, you pay for clicks. In fact, Google won’t even let you get huge amounts of impressions without your ad being highly relevant to topic. Just do a search on any celebrity and for the most part you won’t see any ads, with the exception of Bing ads (Microsoft must has given Google a lot of money to promote Bing.) No, Google’s revenues are not driven by the economics of impressions, their revenues are driven by the economics of lead generation.

It is time for every media company to figure out life beyond impression based advertising. If you think you are going to make your living by selling advertising impressions, stop and think of something else.

I believe we are seeing the collapse of an media era driven by the economics of impressions and the emergence of an era that will be based on the economics of community.

Media is a beautiful social object. We love to watch, listen, talk about it, play with it. Media has the power to draw us together, and that can be used to create community.

We can and should recast the discussion from economics of impressions to the economics of communities. And what are the economics of communities? They are micro-economies where trade, commerce and personal interaction are all intermingled with each other.

I’m not talking about clicking on someone’s purse in a web show so you can buy it (although that might work), I’m talking about create real economies where consumers can trade with other consumers and trade with the media creators. Who knows what the audience will buy or sell. We won’t know until we see it. Our job is to find ways to enable it.

Here are 7 steps I think every publisher should be taking.

1. Cherish your audience – Your audience is your most precious asset. It should be cherished as such. Without your audience you are just a tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear it. Your audience is what makes what you do possible.
2. Engage your audience with you and each other – Don’t just talk to your audience, listen, listen and listen some more. Find out what they enjoy. Find out what their problems are. Make it easy for them to talk to each other and listen in on what they have to say. A good engaged audience will give you enormous number of clues as to how you can serve them better.
3. Serve your audience – It is through the gift of service that we show each other how much we care. If you serve effectively, the audience will respond. Some will seek more and more from you which will provide the opportunity to provide them with premium services and products.
4. Think like a marketer – It’s time to realize that marketing and publishing are merging. Brands now publish, publishers now market. Marketing may be new skill for publishers, but it will a major element in there survival. There are lots of ways to make money from publishing that have nothing to do with selling impression based ads. I mapped out ten ideas here that any publisher can pursue. Fundamentally, it’s about taking charge of your own destiny.
5. De-average your pricing – It’s time to stop selling every album at $13.99. Some will pay nothing, some will pay vastly more. Segment your offerings into free samples, low cost bite size morsels and really premium products (eg, personalized, autographed posters included, limited editions etc). Check out what Nine Inch Nails have done to see the power of de-averaging.
6. Give them games – Great games are addictive and bring your audience back even when you have nothing new in the way of content. It also gives you the opportunity to introduce virtual currencies and sell virtual goods, a massive untapped revenue opportunity.
7. Invest in a trading platform – There is a great deal of money to be made enabling trade amongst your audience. Just look at eBay – it’s a huge community that is monetized through a trading platform. I’m sure some members of your audience have things to trade and if you can take a small commission on the trade, or use your virtual currency the cash can add up.

These are my thoughts, what about yours? Is the future hopeless for media? Do you think media companies can make money in the future? What other steps should publishers be taking.

I hope the 17+ million viewers have been able to make a serious donation to the institute.

On the commercial side of things the video is set to R&B star Chris Brown’s hypnotic dance jam “Forever.” And that’s been a real business bonanza for the rights holders as reported by Youtube.

As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the
massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” —
in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have
skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on
the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other
Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this new found interest in
downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding
Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music
video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last
week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies
around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional
and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But
in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s
“Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on
the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.

Quite a story. As my Aussie friends would say Good on Ya Jill and Kevin! I hope you have a joyous and marvelous life together.

If you’re a content producer of any kind, his new report is a fast 18 page read that’s worth getting and reading a couple of times. He focuses on the value of authority and it’s role in building your “tribe” (audience). He goes on to provide 10 rules for how to build authority on the web.

Here’s the list:

1. The Winning Difference – What makes you and your content unique and valuable?
2. Don’t Sell.. Teach – It works better.
3. Cornerstone Content – Some awesome content that your audience loves and loves.
4. Headlines and Hooks – A killer headline is the difference between 2 of 10 reading your stuff or 8 of 10.
5. Win Friends to Influence People – What other people say about you matters a lot.
6. The Money’s in the List – I’ve said it myself, build your list.
7. SEO Matters – Optimizing your content for search engines makes it findable and ranks you higher
8. Code Google Loves – Google likes good code and helps those that provide it.
9. Design Makes the Site – Pleasing packages build trust
10. Tend to Your Tribe – love and protect your audience – they trust you.

So what’s missing? What would you add to the list?

Phil did his usual, incredible job of helping great athletes focus and perform. He did it for Michael Jordan and he’s done it for Kobe. Congrats on #10.

Orlando put up a great fight. They played hard all the way through, but in the end just did not have the depth to beat the Lakers.

Pau showed how tough he really is, going up against Dwight Howard. He could not have faced a stronger challenger.

Kobe showed some amazing leadership. It is his time.

Goooooo Lakers. It’s celebration time.

Here’s my list.  I’ve ordered the list from the what may be the most obvious ideas to the not so obvious ideas.  Read to the end to find something you may not have thought about.

If you have another idea add it with a comment.  Or you can comment on these ideas.

1.  Sell your content

This seems like it should be the most obvious idea of all.  Make content, sell content.  The execution however may be somewhat more difficult.  The easiest way to do this is to put your content onto CDs or DVDs and sell them on your site, like Ask A Ninja and Will It Blend.

Another way is to sell some or all of your content via a subscription basis.  This can be accomplished by making members only sections of a website or using a service like PremiumCast.  If you want a members only section to a website, there are ways to do it using Wordpress, or you can use a forum or a membership website from someone like Wild Apricot.

NOTE: If someone buys something, get them to sign up for your mailing list so they can get your PodZine Newsletter.  Don’t have a list?  START NOW.  DO NOT WAIT. DO NOT PASS GO.  GO DIRECTLY TO START A MAILING LIST.  IT COULD BE YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET.   Ok, enough screaming about getting a list.  I use Aweber.  It’s inexpensive, easy and works great.

2.  Donations

Think NPR.  Think Public Television.  Ask people to donate money or buy you things from an Amazon Wish List.  Both of these ideas are easy to execute.  You can get donation button code from Paypal and Amazon Wish Lists are really easy to make an publish.  Here’s my Wish List.

And if you want to make a donation to Digital Podcast you can do so using my PayPal Donation Button.

If someone donates, give them a free subscription to your PodZine with some bonus, like a personal thank you picture or some other creative thing.  See mailing list comment in idea number 1.

3.  Run ads within your podcast

Another obvious idea.  But you have to sell some ads.  Bummer.  This is often where this becomes a problem for podcasters.  Selling ads is hard work.  There are some Podcast ad networks you can join, although I have no idea how much they pay.  If this is for you try here or here or here.

If you want to run ads, but don’t want to sell ads or use an ad network stay tuned, because the last two ideas on the list may be what you need.

Make sure you have an ad in your podcast with instructions on how to sign up for your free PodZine subscription. See mailing list comment in idea number 1.

4.  Promote a sponsor within your podcast

This is one of my favorites.  Leo Laporte does a great job of this.  He has some deal with Audible and promotes a book each week. I have seen presentations where people behind Grape Radio and Endurance Radio talked about selling sponsorships for decent amounts of money.  To execute this, find someone who would really benefit from some exposure and sell them on how great it would be to promote them to your audience.

Give people who sign up for you free PodZine some bonus from your sponsor as another way to promote your sponsor.  See mailing list comment in idea number 1.

5.  Run ads on your webpage and use your podcast to drive traffic

This should be easy to do, if you don’t mind low CPM rates.  Adsense and Yahoo Publisher are worth trying.  Other Adsense like programs include Adbrite and Adengage. You can also set these up as a way to sell ads on your site.  Adbrite and Adengage will also work with explicit content.  Just be careful not to run Adsense on the same page as something similar.  That’s against the Google rules.

Chitka is another option.  They run ads on your site with specific products within categories.

There are also online ad networks that have lots of banners you can run.  Adsense can be set up just to run banners and you can find lots of other banner ad networks such as ValueClick and ClickHype out there.  CPM rates tend to be very low however.

If you want higher CPMs, you will have to get busy selling your own ads or get creative in creating your own high paying ads which I will explore in the last two ideas on the list.

Don’t forget to advertise your PodZine on your webpage. See mailing list comment in idea number 1.

6.  Sell your own product

Maybe you make blenders or some other widget.  Use your podcast to sell your widget.  Don’t make a widget?  Make and sell an ebook that would appeal to your audience.  You can also set up affiliates to sell your ebook using something lick Clickbank.

If you want to sell your own T-shirts, cups etc. get a CafePress store.

Or maybe even sell a premium version of your PodZine with special content. See mailing list comment in idea number 1.

7.  Sell Professional Services

If you don’t make stuff, you can sell time.  Not very scalable if it’s just you, but depending on what you do you may be able to make good money.

Create a contest for people who sign up for your podzine subscription.  Winner gets 30 minutes on the phone with you.  Or some such thing.

8.  Sell Training

Training is another great way to make money selling time.  If you don’t know how to build a training course, then take a course about building a paid membership training site.  If you are looking for some help in making an online course or a information product Bill Myers Online is a good resource for developing online products.

Promote a 30 minute training session contest for people who sign up for your PodZine.

9.  Affliate Sales

This is where things get really interesting.  You don’t have to sell you own products, services, ads, ebooks or time.

You can make money selling other people’s products, services,  ebooks or time.  You can find an affiliate program for selling just about everything.

An affiliate program is where you make a commission or a fixed payment when someone buys something that you linked them to. If it can be sold, you can probably find an affiliate program for it.

For example, here’s an affiliate link to a book, a record, and a microphone.  You can even use these tools to build yourself an online store for you site.

I’m working on a page with affiliate sales links that would work for different podcast categories. I will post it when I’m done.

Even better, if you don’t want to sell ads, you can run ads on your podcast or website to promote your affliate store or the products you are selling via the affiliate program.  This way you have sales cost, you control the ads, you control the presentation and you get the full commission.

Good affiliate programs to check out for products are Commission Junction, Amazon, and  ShareASale.   There are lots more if you look around.

You can also sell ebooks if you want.  ClickBank is the king of ebook sales.  Just be careful in there as they also have a lot dubious quality products.  I’ve found I have to buy the product first to make sure it’s not bogus or some consumer rip off.

Many companies also have their own affiliate programs.  You can usually find a link to the program at the bottom of websites if they have a program, although sometimes you have to ask via an email.  If there is something you think you can sell, get in contact with the maker and cut a deal.  For example, I wanted a sound effects package for podcasters and got the link by asking.

Don’t forget to tell your PodZine subscribers about the great products you’re now selling.

10.  Affliate Lead Generation

Selling stuff can be hard.  The good news is you don’t have to sell to get paid.  You can get paid for just providing a lead.  There are tons of programs that pay you for providing traffic that turns into leads.  Some are great, while others can be a bit dubious so beware.

What kinds of leads can you make money on? If a lead is worth something to someone, you can probably find a way to get paid for providing it.

For example, here are lead generation programs for

• Controlling diabetes
• Controlling sleep apnea
• Selling timeshares
• 1 Cent Business Cards
• Free gift cards from Walmart, etc
• and the list goes on and on.

Some of these,like the control diabetes offer, are really good offers for consumers , others are not so clearly good for consumers. For example, the free gift card offers harvest lots of info and funnel the consumer into a lead generation process which sends them off to some other affliate program without ever giving the consumer a gift card.  So be careful with what you recommend.  My recommendation is to only recommend what you would use and what your audience will find truly valuable.

I’m also working on a page with affiliate lead generation links that would work for different podcast categories. I will post it when I’m done.

If you are interested in this kind of program, here are links to programs to lead generation programs I’ve used:

• MaxBounty, RevenueLoop, Advaliant, and you can Google for many more.  By the way, those are affiliate links too.

Bonus: Mine Your Podzine

If done correctly, your PodZine list could turn into one of your biggest assets.  First, you get a direct channel to your audience in addition to your podcast.  Second, unlike your podcast, your PodZine can carry links.  Links to the products and services you recommend.  If you like something, make it a habit to tell your audience – put it in your PodZine.  Be sure to check to see if there’s an affiliate program for it, because then you will get paid to promote stuff you like.  I suggest only promoting stuff you really like.  It’s more fun, more genuine and probably works better over the long haul.

And some programs are email only.  For example, there is a free business card campaign that pays our $12 per lead, but is email only.  This is something that might fit nicely on a business oriented podcast’s PodZine.

If you need help setting up your PodZine, I recommend Aweber.  If you want an alternative, I’ve also seen people use Constant Contact, but have not tried it myself.

Let me know what you think.  Which of these pays your bills?  Got other ideas.  Post a comment and let me know.