Several years ago, we created some
book review podcasts. We put one "chapter" into the main podcast stream, and the rest of the chapters we put into a bundle for purchase out at scubbly. We also published all of the bits of the
sepp holzer permaculture book review in the regular podcast stream AND put them into a bundle.
Over all time, sales of the bundles have been:
11 podcast review of botany in a day: 84 sales ($175, total income of $16 per podcast)
21 podcast review of sepp holzer's permaculture: 81 sales ($168, total income of $8 per podcast)
10 podcast review of "Just Enough" by Azby Brown: 57 sales ($126, total income of $13 per podcast)
I think they have each been up for about four years. So, maybe over the next eight years, I will end up with a total that is three times greater than what is listed here. An okay amount of money for the time and expense of zipping up those files and putting them up on scubbly. Not fabulous wealth, but certainly better than minimum wage.
So the lesson here for the people interested in
residual income streams is: if you look at BIAD and pretend that over 12 years it will bring in $525 ... and I think I have about 46 hours invested in making it, that works out to about $11 per hour. So, not a big winner in the world of residual income streams.
Maybe if I built a library of 25
books processed like this, then interest in BIAD would be about double. So my BIAD stuff would end up at $22 per hour. Not bad, but still not a huge win - from the perspective of "residual income streams."
There are two huge upsides:
1 - i have infected more brains with
permaculture and my wacky angle on
permaculture. Which I am pretty obsessed with doing. So actually, I infected brains AND got paid a wee bit.
2 - the podcasts have proven to be quite a money pit. At the same time, the podcasts are also the core of the pseudo-gift-economy thing. Large, immeasurable positives have come from the podcasts.
So, to those people that might be exploring the path of making their own podcast and building residual income streams ... Yes, I think it is generally a positive thing. But it mostly falls into the category of "good luck comes from hard work." The benefits are not necessarily directly obvious or measurable.
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So, a few more bits of information to mix in:
bit-98 About four years ago we took about 260 of the old podcasts and made them no-longer-free. You could only get them by buying them out at scubbly. About two years ago, I decided that that was a lame idea. So Cassie and Adrien started bringing some of the old podcasts back as free. With each one we tried to make a really good
thread for it, and properly announce it on the dailyish. Now, Destiny and Adrien are working on continuing that. In time, we hope to have all of the old podcasts available for free again. Some podcasts need more work than others to meet our current quality standards.
bit-99 Jocelyn has set up one day a week to record new podcasts. She has scheduled time in my calendar, is organizing notes and has also roped Fred into doing this. Adrien has been a huge help in making sure the podcasts get processed and put up for general consumption in a timely manner.
bit-100 Jocelyn, Ryan, Tom, Adrien, Fred and several others have put a lot of emphasis on breathing life into my
patreon stuff to get the podcasts, articles and videos rolling again. So far, the podcasts are easiest for me because all I have to do is show up.
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So here is what I want to do:
todo-220: I want podcasts to go out no more often than every other day. Any more than that just seems like too much to me.
todo-221: Old podcasts that were made not-free and are now free-again will not trigger a
patreon pay-out. These podcasts have the lowest priority, but there MUST be at least one per week. I think there are about a hundred podcasts in the queue to be processed.
todo-222: The book review podcasts that have never been free can be released into this stream. Each time one is released, it will trigger a patreon pay-out. (a patreon patron can sign up for $1 per artifact with a maximum of $1 per month. so 15 podcasts per month for $1?). But one of these podcasts does not have priority over a new podcast. These podcasts will be "filler". It could be a few months until they are all released for free. Of course, if folks are impatient, it only costs $3 to get all the podcasts for a book through scubbly.
todo-223: New podcasts will trigger a patreon pay-out. The patreon people are already making a lot of excellent suggestions at the hidden patreon thing.
todo-224: I liked doing the book reviews in the fashion we did. I would like to do a lot more of those. I like the idea that this might become the core of the future podcasts.
todo-225: I am going to post to the hidden patreon thing about what books and movies to review in this fashion.
todo-226: We already have a bunch of podcasts reviewing
gaia's garden. We need to do the last chapter and then
Toby Hemenway says he will listen to the reviews and we will then do a podcast with him reviewing our review!
todo-227: There were two podcasts with
art ludwig that were never made free. It was an experiment. I think we need to include those with todo-221.
todo-228: The patreon thing is looking like it will turn into the powerhouse driving all this. I am going to explore the space of releasing stuff early to the patreon folks. It seems a lot of patreon peeps offer extra goodies to their patreon supporters .... maybe I
should start setting up some goodies over there.
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