Subscriptions work? $1,800 in donations during live podcast | Hacker News Reader

Subscriptions work? $1,800 in donations during live podcast

twistlist.co

During This Week in Startups today we offered folks the ability to donate to the show... and boy did they! are monthly subscriptions to independent media the future?

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I'd like to see more content producers adopt this model. As a long time TWiST fan, I gladly donated.

I actually wrote a short blog post about this model and twistlist.co a few hours ago: http://ryanhoover.me/post/4768633874/please-take-my-money-mr... /unashamedplug

My friend used the "I'm doing this for a living, so pay me" model, which has worked out very well for him. He was a radio talk show broadcaster and after one more format change (after CBS sold off stations to Alpha Broadcasting) and decided to found a subscription version of his same show. Two to three hours of show every week day for $7/mo. He had 500 paying subscriptions in the first day and has been making enough to pay himself, his co-host, production costs, leasing an office and building a studio in it, an assistant/booker, and pay all of the royalties (BMI, ASCAP, etc).

I'm undecided which model is truly the best, however. Purely ad or donation based content will surely acquire a much larger audience, but is that worth anything other than ego-stroking, if you can make the same living off of a couple thousand people willing to pay you to do what you do? Of course, it's likely a different proposition to take someone and ask them to do what they do for a profession for free (or donations, etc) versus taking someone who is doing it as a hobby or a starter project and looking to build up from there.

Adam Curry and Dvorak do the "donate" thing with the caveat that "as long as you keep making it worth our while, we'll keep making content". Of course, something like one percent of their listeners actually contribute (but boy, they contribute a lot). I tend to adhere more to the idea that you only ned a small number of true fans to support you and you can just cater to them. If you get the same income either way, then it seems the only benefit of a massive audience that mostly doesn't pay is that you can hopefully springboard that into a paying gig somewhere on a big time site or in some form of traditional media.

Media is becoming more fragmented as the internet disrupts traditional TV broadcasting. We'll see more networks and independent shows similar to TWiST. Most of these people and shows will have relatively small audiences that don't yield enough eyeballs and ears for brands to care. Monetizing with standard, low-CPM will return pennies (a la low traffic blogs using Adsense). Donations from a core fan base might be the best approach for these small majority content producers.

Do you really feel that it is a superior idea to give it away for free and rely on donations, though? Both options are essentially the same thing, but one says that you're doing it for free and hoping someone will toss you a buck here or there while the other is establishing a value on your content and saying that if you want it, you can pay for it like you pay for anything else. It seems like one says "I do this for a living and I should get paid for what I do for a living" while the other seems more "this is a hobby, but it'd be nice if I could make a living out of it".

I know one is far more common than the other, today, but I also know that there is almost nobody actually making a really good living with the free model or even the advertising model (with a couple exceptions). I also know that I consume a lot of content and would consume almost none of it if I had to pay $5-$10/mo for it. But many may.

It almost seems ripe for the Netflix model to step in, where you pay a flat monthly fee for a whole catalog of content and then the creators get paid as a result. That that I'd actually want that sort of a giant singular wall between myself and accessible podcasts and video streams, mind you. But I'm surprised it hasn't been pushed, yet.

That's an interesting concept. What if there was a Netflix for independent content producers (bloggers, video shows, podcasts, etc.)? I could see this model work in the tech scene, where there are early adopters and tons of content.

I wonder how many of those people thought they were donating to Leo Laporte, due to the sleazy use of the "This Week In . . . " branding for a similar network doing similar content in a similar medium.

Probably none.

TWIST has enough of a fanbase without having to misrepresent who and what they are (it's not like Leo owns 'This Week in...')

As for 'sleazy', I think even Jason himself would admit that of all the things he's done, this is pretty low on the list of things that could be accused of sleaziness.

Fair enough. I concede that my statement was rather facetious. I assert that the naming of the same business model with the same type of content in the same market through the same distribution method is possibly brand deluding, definitely confusing in some cases, and possibly an intentional coat-tailing. However, it is unlikely that those persons who chose to open their wallets did so under the impression that they were contributing to another network since they would, by definition, not merely be casual fans.

1. This Week In Whatever is used all over the place both pre and post twit.tv foundation. I myself used to watch a show called this week in nascar (by all means feel free to stereotype me if its easier for you). I dont recall them crying like babies when "this week in tech" asked for donations "omg twit.tv is leveraging on TWIN sucess and our fans will be tricked by donating to a dif show".

2. Leo Laporte is a pro, has natural talent, and does his own thing surrounded by friends. He revolves his thing around his audience with which he has deep feedback (irc/forums/twitter/blog/general openness). There is a community there. TWIT.tv is a living and very active organism. He aims at a professional artisan feel. He knows where he's going (vihart, jeri ellsworth etc) and how knowledge needs to be presented. His network has SOUL. Its a real NET which WORKS. I'll skip commenting on ThisWeekIn.com because they have people getting paid for years to get right what i (or anyone that, hint, understands how products need audiences as much as audiences need products) could type in a few lines. I dont enjoy speeding up slow trainwrecks. They have a few human pearls in that train of mediocrity. Ever wished the best for something you know wont have it?

3. Leo Laporte is not a perfect human being (shocking, i know), and thus, everytime some random crosswind, specific temperature, prelunch hunger and skype-a-saurus radiation combine in rare yet periodic event, this causes spasms of accute calcanittis. This makes awesome human Leo become less awesome human Leo, ranting to his audience as if they were lemmings (dimishing your audience is a nice way to build an audience of dumb people). Fed from his frustration they spam for years anything remotely thisweekin.com related. Almost making it look as if both networks were in same championship (something only @Jason wants to believe). Counter productive.

with this being said, if you donated to @Jason TWIST show (which existed way before thisweekin.com foundation) thinking you were giving money to Leo Laporte, then "you" are a complete imbecile.

Do you really think that the average person browsing iTunes realizes that there is a difference between the TWIT brand and all of the "This Week In . . ." stuff? Largely, they don't. I've spoken with people that didn't realize they were unrelated. There's a reason for trademark law. So that someone can't come in and do the same thing you're doing in the same market with an identical branding and stir up confusion and dilute your own business brand. I suppose the audience at TWiT may generally be savvy enough to recognize there is no relation, but the network also caters to a very large audience of laymen who can no more discern the two This Week In tech-related networks than they can discern "The Internet" from "Internet Explorer".

I've dealt with this, personally, when someone produced the exact same service as I had been providing for many years. They changed two letters in the name and that was it. For years afterward, there was great confusion among the audience and I had to deal with people emailing me to complain about problems with the other group that I had nothing to do with, because they didn't realize they were different. They filed reports about me, thinking that I was the other place. They would use my service and get upset that "the site has changed", because they didn't realize that they had been visiting "the other" site this whole time.

The only reason I couldn't do anything about it is because I'm just one guy and I don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on lawyers and legal processes or, believe me, I would have.

You might also notice that "This Week In NASCAR" would, of course, be about NASCAR. There is almost no concern about brand confusion or dilution when one is about technology and the other is about racing. There is, however, potential for brand confusion when one is primarily about technology and tech culture and the other is about technology and tech culture. And when one is distributed over the internet and iTunes and the other is distributed over the internet and iTunes.

It is a naming attempt made deliberately for confusion. You can't argue that it isn't, because any reasonable person starting a project would look at the naming conventions of similar services and products and say "well, I don't want to be confused with this other one, so I want my name to be unique and very identifiable". It's skeezy, unprofessional, and the fact that the guy asked "do you mind if I name my show This Week In..." shows that he recognized it (notice he only ever said "the show" and not "an entire network").

Anyway, I'm not invested in TWIT whatsoever and normally could not care less, despite the characterization you attempt to apply. However, it certainly bears some relevance to the topic as it was posted.

I dont even think the average person DONATES for something they dont know what it is. As for the average person knowing what is what, i think the avg person doesnt even know what twitter is, much less twit.

1. 3 of Leo's shows were named This Week In when I bought the domain. 17 were named like MacBreak Weekly or other naming conventions. 2. I offered Leo the domain before I bought it--he told me he wanted me to buy it and he didn't want to waste the money. 3. I offered Leo to split the purchase of the domain--he declined. 4. Leo said go for it 5x on the air and in email. 5. I offered leo to use the domain as a directory of all the TWI named shows in the world. 6. Despite all that I still regret doing it because I lost the friendship with Leo. 7. I hope we can resolve the issue, but Leo has not been willing to discuss that.

Isn't a podcast, by definition, not live?

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