Monetizing podcasts is hard, very hard; as lot of other startups in the podcasting space found out. The best way is to get a sponsorship from someone who is interested in marketing to the niche you are targeting. If you cannot do that then there’s always Google AdSense. We at CallGraph believe that the best way would be to sell transcripts of your podcasts.
It sounds counter-intuitive. Podcasts by definition are something people would only want to listen to; not read. But as we have seen and experienced, a lot of people already get their podcasts transcribed and provide the transcript along with the mp3 file. Why? Because reading is faster than listening; the transcript is good for SEO purposes; effective contextual advertisements, to list a few reasons. But transcription involves its own time and effort and therefore, cost. Hence not every podcaster gets their files transcribed and gives it away for free. This is where our Podcast Publisher Program comes in.
It enables you sell transcripts of your podcasts directly at your website without doing much. You have to host your files on CallGraph and use our widget. Your listeners can still download the file and/or listen to it online. But if they want, they can also buy the transcript and read instead of listening to your podcast. The money that you earn from each sale is then credited to your CallGraph account where it accumulates. You can withdraw your earnings to your PayPal account anytime you wish. We keep 20% of the sale value as our cut.
The widget we provide is basically a player for your podcast, along with the transcript. To get the widget you first have to sign up as a podcast publisher on CallGraph, host your files on CallGraph and order a transcripts for them. You can then embed the widget into your site or anywhere else (YouTube like). The ‘Transcript’ button on the widget provides a sample transcript and options to buy the full transcript. We host the files and transcript and ensure that your customers get what they pay for.
You can also set a base price for your transcripts, offer discounts, packages etc. to your listeners. You can also offer it for free if you want. We just handle all the complexity and do the transcription work. We also provide a RSS feed which you can use as your podcast feed. It is also compatible with iTunes.
Sounds interesting? Go here and sign up now for the private beta. We will be rolling out the private beta shortly. See you there!