Podcasting Is Alive and Well

Posted on December 30, 2008 by Mignon

A podcasting company called Podango announced a couple of days ago that they’re going under (rudely giving all their podcasters just three days notice — during the holidays — to back up and move their files). And now a few people in the industry are wringing their hands that podcasting is dead.

The Quick and Dirty Tips Network is Thriving and Growing

It’s kind of ridiculous, but I feel as if I need to come out and say my podcasting network is doing great. I’m always uncomfortable tooting my own horn, but really, we had a FANTASTIC 2008.

  • Traffic and revenue more than doubled.
  • We’ve seen an increase in interest and commitments from advertisers, and the people who advertise with us say they are very happy and come back to advertise again.
  • We used the podcasts as a base to launch a New York Times best-selling book, and in the process proved that we could use our podcasts to turn out people in the real world for book tour events.
  • Our new show launches have been very well received. For example, The Sacramento Bee called one of our newest shows, The Nutrition Diva, “the best nutrition podcast available.”

There Are Many Success Stories

It’s not just Quick and Dirty Tips that is doing well. I keep wondering why nobody is asking me to be a guest to balance out all this talk of doom and gloom, but they could also talk to other successful podcasters — Todd Cochrane (of RawVoice, Geek News Central, and more), Leo Laporte (of TWiT and more), Rob Walch (of Wizzard, Today in iPhone, and more), or Andy McCaskey (of SlashDot Review), just to name a few. These people are making money.

People should ask what we are doing right in addition to what the few failures are doing wrong.

Interesting Twitter Success Stories

I posted my frustration to Twitter and got a few great comments that I’ll share here. They seem to fall into categories:

Maybe It’s Just a Few Bad Companies or Business Models

mehwolfy @GrammarGirl they say that about blogging. It’s crap. the only podcast/blog that’s dead is lame marketing blog/cast junk.

corkymc @GrammarGirl Could it be blame shifting by those who have failed or are just too lazy to make the effort?

mattdattilo @GrammarGirl There will always be someone who wants to be on the edge by claiming some medium is dying. More people listen than ever, IMHO.

nycwatchdog @GrammarGirl Your comment on the Jaffe Juice article was absolutely dead on. Podcasting is far from “dead”. It is just evolving.

braindouche @GrammarGirl it looks to me like a contraction of podcast *services*.

WickedGood @GrammarGirl Podcasting’s clearly not dead. I think the question is whether networks that grab unrelated shows to sell ad space are dead.

Podcasting Meets All My Needs Very Well, Thank You

docdez @GrammarGirl Podcasting is dead? Someone should tell my iPod. It will be quite disappointed to hear that.

andycaster @GrammarGirl I think the “old” school idea of podcasting replacing radio is dead. I hope it rests in peace and people smarte[n] up! 🙂

xinli11 @GrammarGirl Who is saying Podcasting is dead? My ipod usage time is 60% podcasts, 30% Audible, and 10% music.

dpeach @GrammarGirl Podcasting is doing fine. It may not have the new factor going for it, but there are still new shows and excellent old ones.

artful72 @GrammarGirl i agree, i think podcasts are great and more and more people are using them its like an instant interview or mini seminar!

My Podcast Has Been A Success

jeremyfrandsen @GrammarGirl I totally agree. My podcast was the sole reason we we made 6 figures last year. Podcasting is dead for crummy podcasts maybe.

CostaVidaFred @GrammarGirl as a matter of fact my GoFarPodcast Podfaded and I still had the most downloads of any year.

CostaVidaFred @GrammarGirl plus got asked to be official media for primal quest 2008 and 2009. guess I need to keep it going

darklyfey @GrammarGirl – Me too! My show keeps growing, for cryin’ out loud. No funeral march for me!

snoonan @GrammarGirl I wholeheartedly agree! Learning Indonesian had its 2nd biggest $$ in dec-We’re *TINY* and we pay the bills on it. marketing???

Small Companies Are Always at Risk

I don’t know why Podango failed or Podshow needed to change its direction, but I’m reminded of some of the best advice I’ve ever received at a venture capital seminar many years ago: Don’t be afraid to fire people.

At a startup (and I still consider every podcasting company a startup), one bad apple can bring the entire company down. It’s even more important in a bad economy. One non-performing salesperson, incompetent programmer, or bumbling manager can be enough to tip the scales against success.

We had a problem with a person in early 2007 that held us back. When that person was gone, things quickly picked up.

So maybe Podango and Podshow had bad business models, but it could have just as easily been poor execution by one or two key people. It’s usually impossible to know unless you were there.

If you have an opinion or a success story, please post it in the comments.

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Signed Books for the Holidays

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Mignon

People have been asking if they can get signed Grammar Girl books for the holidays, so I checked with my publisher and got a green light!

WHAT YOU GET

Here’s how it will work:

I’ll sell each signed book for about $18.00 $19.00. (That’s the cover price plus ~$4.00 $5.00 for postage, PayPal fees, and a book-sized envelope. Yes, I will give a discount for combined shipping. Two books shipped together will be ~$36.00. I’m just charging actual costs; no markup.)

I’ll giftwrap your book or books for an additional $10 per book. (Why so much? I hate gift wrapping, but if you desperately want it, I’ll do it and try to make it pretty.)

HOW TO ORDER

If you want to buy signed books, send an e-mail message to mignon [at] behindthegrammar [dot] com with the following information:

  • How many books you want
  • What you want each signature page to say (I’ll be happy to just sign my name or write a short personal message.)
  • Whether you want giftwrapping
  • The shipping address or addresses

I’ll write back and tell you exactly how much it will cost.

You will pay through PayPal.

I’ll sign and send the books.

LIMITATIONS

U.S. and Canadian orders only. Sorry. (Why? I’d have to physically go to the post office and stand in line to mail them. With U.S. and Canadian orders, I can buy stamps and drop the envelopes in any mailbox.)

Place your order by December 18, 2008.

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How to Download Podcasts from Your iPhone

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Mignon

The new iPhone update includes software that lets you download podcasts right from iTunes to your iPhone. No longer must you hook your phone up to your computer, download podcasts to the computer, and then transfer them to your iPhone anymore. This will be GREAT for people who travel.

Unfortunately, the workflow isn’t hit-you-over-the-head obvious. Here’s how you do it.

From your iPhone home screen, hit the iTunes icon.

If you know what you’re looking for, you can tap “Search” and enter the podcast name; if you want to browse, you can tap the “Podcasts” icon.

Once you get to the show you want, you’ll see all the recent episodes listed with their length, release date, and a “FREE” button next to them.

Tap the “FREE” button, and it will turn into a “DOWNLOAD” button, which you have to tap again.

Here’s where it gets kind of tricky. After the file downloads, the episode title will turn gray. To play the episode right then, you click on the grayed out title.

If you want to play the podcast later, tap the “iPod” icon on your home screen:

Tap “Podcasts,” and you’ll see all the shows from which you’ve downloaded episodes. Click on the show to go to a specific episode.

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What People Forget About Twitter

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Mignon

[Note: I’ve had this post in my drafts folder for seven months, and now the Motrin fiasco has prompted me to finish it.]

I sometimes hear from business people who believe Twitter isn’t that important because even the most popular people only have a few thousand followers. With so few followers you’re just wasting your time there, they say. It’s a distraction. A game. (OK, seven months after I started writing this, the most popular users have ~20,000 followers, but I still hear the same sentiment.)

And They’ll Tell Two Friends, And So On

But those people are ignoring the amplification effect. I often retweet interesting posts and so do others. Remember that annoying Breck commercial from the ’70s? “And they’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on.” It’s like that, only real and more powerful.

The Motrin Flap

Motrin posted an ad babywearing moms found offensive:

One mom with about 1800 followers on Twitter posted a message:

PR hell broke out. Moms began tweeting about how angry the ad made them, and their friends tweeted, and their friends tweeted. At the peak on Sunday there were over 400 tweets PER HOUR about the “bad” Motrin ad. (And yet it was Sunday, so nobody officially with Motrin seemed to be paying attention.)

A Small Group (Even Just One Person) Can Quickly Reach Many People

My main point relates to that amazingly rapid explosion of PR: One message from one mom with ~1800 followers turned into a firestorm of posts. I’d love to see someone’s analysis of how many people these Motrin Twitter messages reached in two days. I bet it was a lot. That’s the power of Twitter. It can be bad or it can be good, and it is not to be discounted.

Constant Vigilance

A secondary point is that there are no off hours. Business — especially PR — doesn’t stop at 5:00 p.m. It doesn’t stop on Saturday and Sunday.

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Are You So Busy That You Write Sloppy Messages?

Posted on November 16, 2008 by Mignon

If you think you’re too busy to keep your e-mail and text messages feeling professional, think again. You can’t be as busy as Obama was during the campaign, yet he still managed it.

According to the New York Times, despite the fact that “His BlackBerry was constantly crackling with e-mails” Obama’s outgoing messages “are generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons.”

So if you want to be the leader of the free world, kids, be like Obama and keep your electronic communication top notch.

On another note, the main point of the article is that Obama will likely have to give up e-mail because of security concerns once he’s president. Oh. The. Horror. I used to think nobody in their right mind would want to be president because of all the stress and invasion of privacy, but surrendering e-mail takes the cake. They’re all loony.

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Political Speech

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Mignon

The opening sentence below from an AP article today got me thinking about political speech. “Cease-fire” doesn’t mean what I would think it means if the countries have been shooting at each other all week and the cease-fire is still considered to be in place.

Hamas militants bombarded a major southern Israeli city with rocket fire Friday, unleashing their most powerful weapons yet in a week of tit-for-tat fighting that THREATENS TO DESTROY a five-month-old cease-fire [emphasis added].

I suppose the point is that it is “rogue elements” who are fighting and the agreement is between the goverments, but the wording still strikes me as odd.

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“Crazy Sarah”

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Mignon

Meet Sarah, a copyeditor with a little too much passion:

Note: Since a lot of people didn’t get the joke, “Chicago 6.18” refers to the Chicago Manual of Style section on commas. Having to explain the joke seems like a sure sign I wasn’t meant for humor writing, but I thought it was hilarious. 🙂

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When I Twitter

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Mignon

There’s an interesting new tool at Xefer that makes a chart of your Twitter messages (tweets) so you can see the times and days when you are most active on Twitter. Here’s my chart:

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Book Burning

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Mignon

Book burning memorial in BerlinWhat would politicians call a book burning?

Cellulosic biofuel research.

Image of the book burning memorial in Berlin by Venana. Some rights reserved.

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30,000 Words Every Month

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Mignon

This fact was pointed out to me a few days ago and continues to blow my mind:

  • We produce 30,000 words of edited copy every month at Quick and Dirty Tips.

Thirty thousand words — about half a book or a whole magazine, every month — and I am the only full-time employee.

I’m not saying I do it alone; we have nine other show hosts, regular guest writers, and two freelance copy editors. But I manage those people and also edit nearly every word, and that is a hellofalotta quality copy.

Suddenly it doesn’t seem so weak to need a project management system to keep track of everything, and I don’t feel quite so bad about not answering every e-mail immediately or not being able to keep up the twice-a-week Grammar Girl schedule.

Here’s my tip of the day: step back and think about what you do every day. You may be surprised by the amazing things you accomplish and take for granted.

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