The Seanachai

Growing up is hard. And I’m not sure it gets any easier the older you get. It just stays hard. For example, I have trouble delegating. When I get in my head to do something, by gum and Jupiter (and a bunch of other corny psuedo-swear words) I jump in and do it.

The problem is that I don’t have time to do everything. I have several friends who would gladly do some announcing for the Seanachai (bumpers, tags, promos, intros), but I just can’t seem to get around to scheduling them. It’s very hard for me. But it has to happen. If I’m ever going to get this ‘cast back on a weekly schedule, I need to delegate. The real absurdity of this is that I even have people to delegate to. So, I’m sitting down and making a plan. A schedule even. And I thought I would share my plan with you and see what you thought.

Patrick’s Five Point Plan that Will Allow the Seanachai to Take Over the World (pfppwalstow)

1. Weekly episodes.
2. Alternate short episodes (essays, stories, funny bits) with 30 minute pieces.
3. The 30 minute pieces will be serialized fiction. ( the first one I’m considering is Typhoon by Joseph Conrad. ) This gets me out of the content bind, and really let’s me study some great writers up close and personal.
4. When the 30 minute pieces are done, they are collected as high-quality audiobooks. Sold here, podiobooks, itunes, audible, wherever.
5. Actively encourage donations. Sell CDs of collected episodes. In short, generate some revenue.

Have I been looking at this all wrong?
As I dilligently scribble away with an eye on filthy moneys from a comic deal or a TV deal, I wonder if I haven’t been making a terrible error in judgement. Some maths for us. Let’s say I have 3,000 listeners. (It’s difficult to know for sure. One of my stat’s progams says I had 77k hits and 10897 unique visitors?) Now of those 3,000 listeners 1,000 of them are kind, decent, helpful, loyal, brave and financially solvent enough to donate $20/year to keep the Seanachai a going concern. (brace yourself for some multiplication) that’s $20,000 a year in revenue.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we have a production budget license music. Now we can spend some time on the sound design. Now I won’t fear starving to death if I really spend some time on an episode. And, with a little work, listenership will grow. It’s more like patronage than traditional publishing to be sure. But that’s okay. Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t have a revenue model. He had the de Medici. The cynical, but well-minded, are already saying to themselves, “Well, you can’t count on people to pay.” To which I say, “people”, “them’, “those guys” I’m not interested in. I’m interested in you. The one person reading this post. ‘Cause the thing they never tell you about ‘them’ is they don’t exist. Like “them’ vs. “us”. There’s just “us”.

And I don’t think I’m crazy. The best radio stations (in terms of content) already work on this model. It’s called public radio. But what do you think? Am I crazy? Wait, that’s not really important, am I mistaken?

technorati tags:Patrick E. McLean, Monetizing, Monetizing a podcast, TheSeanachai, The Seanachai Podcast, us vs. them