Profitable Podcasting

Who would've guessed a teenager would be able to get sponsorship for her podcast?

Fifteen-year old Martina Butler did just that with her podcast, Emo Girl Talk.

It appears that 552 "listeners" have subscribed to her podcast feed. That means more than 500 people have their systems set-up to automatically download Martina's mp3 file to their mp3 players. Whether they actually listen to it or not is an entirely different matter.

Then again, there are listeners who chose to get the podcast via streaming audio rather that via a feed subscription. It's difficult to determine how many those are.

I tried listening to her latest podcast and did not hear her mention her sponsor within the first few minutes of the show. I was expecting something like: "This podcast is brought to you by Nature Cure (acne medicine)"

She does talk about her sponsor and their products 5 minutes into the show.

Looks like companies are reaching out to their markets in media other than television or radio. With sponsored podcasts, could videoblogs be far behind?

I wonder if a Pinoy podcaster will ever get sponsored. Perhaps if the topic were less on technology but more on something teens are hugely interested in. We'll see.

The only Pinoy teen podcaster I've listened to is Jeric Peña.

Right now I'm listening to Emo Girl Talk and I'm hearing choppy emo music (yes, that's what you get for connecting to the net via a dial-up account), so I'm patiently waiting to hear the podcaster's personality.

Perhaps we'll figure out what makes certain people aurally popular. Then again, it's possible advertisers are just experimenting...

(Found out about this via Heather Green's Teen Podcaster Gets Sponsorship)

[ First posted on 11/21/2005 by Manuel Viloria ]