What, you might ask?<\/p>\n
Well, my answer would be pretty much everything!<\/p>\n
It seems that I\u2019ve been giving away my knowledge when I should have been charging for every single bit of useful information that I know.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve confirmed this only recently, but have suspected it for a while now. I chose however to live in denial, comforting myself by believing that what I knew, or had to say was of little to no value.<\/p>\n
How did I come to this epiphany?\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a slightly interesting tale. I was looking at starting a podcast. In the course of that investigation I was led to the more important question of how do I monetize a podcast. After all, I\u2019d like to earn some cash…<\/p>\n
The easiest ways are to charge a subscription fee, or come up with some advertisers. Okay, that makes sense, but as always the devil is in the details. To monetize, you\u2019ve apparently got to use some payment processor like Stripe, Venmo, or Square. Each of these folks take a % and often they add a flat fee too.<\/p>\n
Some transaction processors will charge 2.9%+0.30 per credit card transaction. Wow! I should start a processing center!<\/p>\n
If my math is correct that works out to about 0.33 per dollar. Meaning that if you charged a dollar for a subscription you\u2019re only getting \u00a00.67. By the way, that doesn\u2019t account for normal taxation Federal and State which works out to about 30%. So in the end you, the person actually doing the work, end up with about 0.47 of every dollar you make.<\/p>\n
But wait! There\u2019s more! A podcast requires specialized hosting services, Figure around $20 a month, So before you\u2019ve gotten your first subscription you\u2019re already in the hole $240 just for a year of podcasting hosting services. It\u2019s better to purchase a year than to pay month to month because that\u2019s about 3% higher.<\/p>\n
Some of the podcasting directories which typically are not hosting services may add even more fees. Apple for example might charge 30% if someone subscribes to your podcast via their podcast application. So that immense wealth of 0.47 you\u2019ve made may get whittled down again to 0.17 of every dollar.<\/p>\n
That depends on how Apple takes their 30%. I\u2019m assuming they\u2019re going to take it right off the top at 30% per dollar, because\u2026 They\u2019re Apple! Then the payment processors may also take their fee on the original transaction amount and so on. I could see a scenario where the person doing to podcasting ends up losing money on subscriptions.<\/p>\n
Amazing!<\/p>\n
So all these podcasters absolutely have to come up with additional sources of income besides subscriptions and at the same time have to produce content that is entertaining enough that the listener count is pretty high for the podcast to be worth an advertisers time.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, pennies add up, but as the pennies add up, so too do the taxes and fees.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to keep looking for a combination of systems that net the largest potential amount of $$ in my pocket. Now I know why some of the popular podcasts have commercials for something every 6 minutes.<\/p>\n
This made me think, “How long have I been writing my blog?” All that time with no subscriptions, 13 -14 years? I should have been selling advertising space, and figuring a way to create more engagement. I thought it was a labor of love and that people would enjoy it on its own merit. Some have and to those loyal followers you have my profound thanks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I realize that Blogging, Podcasting, & Social Media engagement are all potential income streams. Now I begin to understand the difference between me & folks that have been doing these things for a while. They know or believe in their value. For them, engaging in these things are actually a business and they charge for their time one way or another.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never had that kind of faith in myself, or that what I brought to the table was worth a damn. To some degree, I think that is a function of a career in corporate America. After 20 or 30 years of shitty bosses, policies, and being ground under someone’s heel it\u2019s tough to believe you have any value, especially when you\u2019re thrown away on a whim in layoffs, or when you or your department are pawns between to executives settling old scores.<\/p>\n
Corporate America\u2019s mistreatment is not the only reason I never had faith in myself, but they sure helped cement my lack of faith in myself.<\/p>\n
This year because of that lack of faith in myself, \u00a0I almost terminated my blog and my web hosting entirely. Part of my reasoning \u00a0was because instead of charging a reasonable fee for 3 years as they had done in years past the hosting service wanted almost $1000.00.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to do that. I renewed for one year and am in the process of comparison shopping for a new web hosting service. The current company I\u2019ve been using for years, maybe 13, has relocated their help services to the Philippines. They\u2019ve made changes to the web control panels and their billing panels which have made the service far more difficult to use, and to top it all off, They\u2019ve decided that I don\u2019t need to see invoices or have the ability to look at past invoices.<\/p>\n
So, the cost of my narcissism in terms of cash and annoyance to maintain has exceeded my ego\u2019s ability to justify. That being said, I\u2019ve got an organization that I\u2019ve been providing hosting for, and moving my stuff and theirs would have been a Royal pain in the ass. So I\u2019ll wait until they find a new host and someone to do their web site. I\u2019ve got a year to plan and handle the move.<\/p>\n
All of this kind of underscores the fundamental truth.<\/p>\n
I have not been valuing myself.<\/strong><\/em> I\u2019ve been giving away too much of myself in various forms, for free, for years.<\/p>\n Jerry had it all over me in that regard. He knew what to charge. He was often not charging the full price he could get, but at least he was charging more or less fairly for his services. To be fair, he\u2019d charge more for weddings and he almost never discounted them.<\/p>\n He knew he was going to have to deal with a monster bride or worse, the bride\u2019s mother! He really could take or leave a wedding. He once said that playing funerals was more satisfying because he wasn\u2019t going to hear the deceased bitching & complaining, trying the wheedle a discount after services had been rendered, when it came time to write the check.<\/p>\n I saw him on multiple occasions tell a bride he was refunding the deposit because the whole wedding had become such a pain in his ass the price he was charging was insufficient. He hated outdoor weddings, especially those in the Palm Springs area. Oh, they paid pretty well, but often the bride would expect the musicians to be sitting with their instruments in the blazing sun and gusting wind blowing sheet music all over the place.<\/p>\n Hint to any soon to be brides\u2026 Put the musicians under an awning. Acoustic instruments don\u2019t like sitting in scorching sun for hours. They tend to fall out of tune when heated. The musicians are also none too pleased to be sitting in formal attire usually black out in the desert sun. Jerry would say I know that it\u2019s the Bride\u2019s special day, but she doesn\u2019t have to make it literally hell on earth for everyone else.<\/p>\n Jerry was on the verge of putting a clause in wedding contracts that charged for broken harp strings incurred at an outdoor wedding. One of the last Palm Springs weddings he played, due to the heat, humidity, and lack of awning or any shade he broke 9 strings on the big harp.<\/p>\n In addition to him having to remap the music in his head avoiding the notes that he couldn\u2019t play with broken strings, while he was playing, the cost of replacement strings almost wiped out the fee he charged for the wedding.<\/p>\n I wish I\u2019d had more confidence in myself. I could have learned a lot more about putting myself \u201cout there\u201d from Jerry. I tried to handle all the technical stuff and let him be a Musician. Now that he\u2019s gone, I\u2019ve got a lot of technology laying around and I\u2019m wondering if I should sell it, or do I have enough of value to say, that putting the tech to work could turn into a profitable enterprise?<\/p>\n I put together a prototype podcast episode just to see if I could. I liked the result, and the one person I\u2019ve shared it with liked the effort as a first step.<\/p>\n That same person has floated the question of having fun in a podcast in the flavor of the old Mystery Science Theater TV show. That show hearkened back to earlier SciFi shows on Friday Nights or Saturday Afternoons. One of the most famous was \u201cElvira Mistress of the Dark”<\/p>\n Depending on subject matter, that could be fun to do and perhaps entertaining to listen to.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got a leg up because I already own the audio tech, so if I push forward into podcasting, the investment would be pretty close to zero. Although the technology for producing voice tracks has become dirt simple and cheap. A lot of the audio gear I have laying around may be overkill now.<\/p>\n There are USB mics that have a shit ton of intelligence built in. If you add some decent audio processing software, it\u2019s as simple as just having a computer, one of these mics and you\u2019re going to produce high quality results by default.<\/p>\n Some of the podcasting hosts have the recording software on the server side of the equation. That means that your computer doesn\u2019t have to be terribly powerful, all it has to be able to do is get the audio stream to the hosting server. Then all the processing is done there. Thinking about that, I suppose you could do a podcast from a dang phone with zero investment in equipment at all.<\/p>\n Jerry and I had been looking into \u201cSmart\u201d Mics. During COVID Jerry was doing a ton of Zoom sessions. He was using a borrowed USB mic to capture the harp music. Eventually, he started using the USB mic all the time because it did a fine job and could be powered by his iPad and \/ or his computer.<\/p>\n There\u2019s one of those kinds of mics that I\u2019ve considered. I was thinking more toward working from home and knowing that I\u2019d have to deal with conference calls. This particular mic also works on video game consoles. Those were my original use cases. But if I were to find a suitable podcast host, subject matter, and start podcasting too. It might be a win all around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What, you might ask? Well, my answer would be pretty much everything! It seems that I\u2019ve been giving away my knowledge when I should have been charging for every single bit of useful information that I know. I\u2019ve confirmed this only recently, but have suspected it for a while now. I chose however to live … <\/p>\n