Podcasting is all the rage among the really cool people these days. And it’s not enough just to be listening to podcasts. (omigod, if you aren’t even listening to podcasts, then you definitely can’t sit at the cool people’s table in the lunch room) In order to be especially cool you’ve got to be creating your own podcasts.
Podshow, a startup company backed by over $8 million of venture capital funding, has apparently created an entire business model based on the desire of millions of us wanting to be especially cool. They want us all to become podcasters and then to be able to quit our day jobs, making enough money off of our creative audio content so that we can pay the bills, take vacations and set aside cash for our retirement.
Now, I absolutely LOVE the encouragement to people to start their own dream business. Hey, that’s what StartupNation is all about. I’m just not sure if enough people can be able to create podcasts that can sustain them with full time income. I expect that there are a few who will make it into that rare air, but the podcasting streets will be littered with those who fall by the wayside in an attempt to build a business around podcasting. Hey, I wanted to play major league baseball, but I’m glad I had a backup strategy. It’s just too much of a longshot.
What I think is a much more viable business model is to start your business with a traditional revenue strategy and to use blogs and podcasts as marketing tools to put yourself in the public eye as a subject matter expert. For instance, a dry cleaner should podcast about clean clothes or an accountant about tax strategies to catch the attention of customers who then pay for dry cleaning and tax services.
I wonder what the cool people think?
