Hendry Lee weighs in on how to promote podcasting. He uses Paul Saurini, an early adopter, as an example. Saurini received a $40,000 investment from his father for his podcast, Barefoot Radio, but doesn't know how he'll monetize it. Hendry weighs in on Saurini's reservations, wondering why Saurini expects his listeners to do his work for him, in terms of promotion.

Hendry also links to an Ad Age report that NPR (National Public Radio), has been successful getting sponsors for podcasts. Their CPM ranges from US$20-60.

My feeling is that, aside from NPR and CBC TV (in Canada), etc., the only way audio podcasts are going to do well is to offer something unique. And they have to be promoted the same way that a radio show would, which includes any or all of word-of-mouth, unusual stunts, antics, original programming, and advertising on other shows (podcasts, radio, TV, etc.) and media.

Plain audio has too much competition with visual media. The Golden Age of Radio is long gone, and most human beings are visually-oriented. Audio podcasts also have to compete with the virtual cheesecake of ultra-popular vodcasts like Rocketboom. The vodcast reportedly makes in the high 5 figures in weekly sponsorship, and sometimes in the low 5 figures for a single minute of ad time. People may be too politically-correct these days to say anything, but given that a high percentage of podcast/ vodcast subscribers are male, visual media probably has an edge over aural media. Agree or disagree?

Guillaume du Gardier points out that the new Talkcast service (online voice discussion podcasts) can earn you money for hosting. The monetization option is not yet available, however.

Steve Rubel notes that Nokia has free software that allows podcast downloads to the Nokia N91 cell phone. He also recently posted 35 uses of RSS. Arc 90 posts 25 New Ways To Use RSS.

In case you don't check Arc 90's list, you'll miss Mailbucket. Mailbucket's email-to-RSS service does one of the things that I'd hoped to do with my webfeedmail.com site (but haven't because I'm always trying to do a million things at once). It currently only generates publicly-accessible RSS feeds from the email stream that you direct at it, but private lists are on the Mailbucket to do list.

Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/