I have been a podcaster on and off for a couple of years and I have found out that there is still a space for podcasting out there. Podcasts are for those who have the patience to download and listen to audio files lasting from fifteen minutes to even two hours.

And podcasts take on many forms:

1. Speech – At its most basic form a podcast could be a speech by the podcaster. A reading of his or her post. it could be a rant, an impassioned speech or a discourse and even story telling.

2. Radio/Magazine Show – A podcast can also be a radio show. A talk show, A magazine show with many features, interviews or even games. It could also be a time where music can be played – assuming of course it is podsafe music – free to be distributed to the public.

3. Radio Play - This is probably the most tedious of all podcasts but also when done correctly the most rewarding both for the podcasters and its listeners. Welcome to the Theatre of the Mind. A good template to follow for this type of podcast would be the radio plays from the Golden Age of Radio – Mercury Theatre’s War of the World is a fine example and even Vincent Price’s Three Skeleton Key Island.

And the beauty of it all is that all you need is a podcasting microphone, audacity , an open source software for recording and editing sounds – available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems, and time.

Podcasting is not dead.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Will we ever see a new PodPress plugin? If the current state of the forum is any indication, I wouldn’t hold my breath. If you are having any issues that can be fixed through the dozens of simple patches that people have come up with, that might be your only option unless Automattic puts out an interim release based on the fix that they’ve created. Though from what I’ve heard, they would only do such a thing if all other forms of communication broke down.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

After realizing that getting one thousand listeners per episode wasn’t easy for him, nor any podcaster, I immediately wondered how well podcast advertising scales. Surely it deals with the same sliding CPM rates that blogs and other forms of advertising get, and so the higher the traffic, the less money for every thousand listens he’ll get.

So estimating a maximum audience of ten thousand plays per episode, four episodes a month, and three sponsors per episode still paying $10 CPM, he would only be making $1200 per month for what, in my mind, would be an outrageously popular show.

Seems like there aren’t really any super easy ways to make money online and that it always comes back to creating a large enough audience that you can sell something, be it services, products, or advertisements, but the audience required to make a full time living off the web, is probably only achievable by two percent of those willing to chase it.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

There are currently many issues with PodPress’ WordPress 2.6 compatibility, and Dan Kuykendall aka Seek3r seems to be taking his time to work on what should be a major release in version 8.9, despite everyone wishing he would push an interim release to fix the current issues.

Over the last few weeks, people have come up with all sorts of ideas on how to make PodPress 8.8 work with WordPress 2.6 as well as making the experimental version of PodPress 8.9 work with WordPress 2.6.

Andrew Ozz was one of the first to get the PodPress 8.9 experimental release working for many people, with a fix that should fix PodPress for those using WordPress 2.6 and having issues due to the post revisions feature that WordPress now includes.

In the comments of the Andrew Ozz post, there is a person named Otto who has instructions on making it work with PodPress 8.8, but not really any confirmation on if it does, in fact, work or not.

There are also people disabling post revisions, which is a great feature, either through plugins or through manually editing core files.

Some people started a small donation drive in order to try to fund development time of the plugin, and not much money was raised, from what I can tell.

It looks like the WordPress community really wants this plugin to work, but aren’t willing to wait for the final release, nor pay for its development. As I have said before, I think the biggest issue is that this is a hobby project for Dan, rather than an Automattic sponsored project. Automattic should be actively participating in the development of important plugins such as PodPress.

Will we see a new release of PodPress in the next week? And if a WordPress 2.6 compatible version of PodPress becomes a month or more away from being released, will people wait, or try to transition to something else?

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Is this good enough?

PodPress is a huge plugin system that brings the ability to quickly and easily manage and embed audio and video to blog posts, providing millions of podcasters with a system to control their episodes and display them with a commonly understood look and feel. To me, this plugin has become a staple for podcasters, and should be treated as a premium plugin system where there are multiple developers, support from Automattic, and a working version ready within a week of a launch of a new major WordPress revision.

I couldn’t imagine how people who podcast every day have been feeling as two weeks will go by before they can either upgrade to WordPress 2.6, or if they already have, until they can easily embed their podcasts once again.

I might actually jump over to the Podcasting plugin, though I don’t really enjoy the interface as much as I enjoy the one that PodPress has, but it does support many of the features I am used to having. One thing I am really happy to see is that the display of the flash based player is exactly the same, meaning that people who listen to the podcast right on the post wouldn’t see any interface change.

And the important part for people like me that jumped on WordPress 2.6 is that the plugin works with the latest version of WordPress and has since before WordPress 2.6 was released.

If you have been having issues with PodPress and WordPress 2.6, checking out the Podcasting plugin from cavemonkey50 might be a great alternative for you to get your functionality back up and running.

I am not entirely sure if you can transition easily from PodPress to Podcasting, but it is definitely something that I might look into next week if PodPress doesn’t soon get a new release.

One great thing about the WordPress community is how their almost always end up being two plugins that do the same things, so that if one does die off, the community has an alternative to flock to.

I hope that PodPress development moves smoother in the future, and I hope Automattic will take some of the flack for not helping support certain premium level plugins.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

There is no report yet on when PodPress will work with WordPress 2.6, but I have found PodPress to be on the cutting edge when it comes to WordPress compatibility, so hopefully they won’t let me and many others down.

PodPress is one of the few plugins that I am realizing are worth their weight in gold, and as such, are worth paying for, so if you have used PodPress and enjoyed it, please make sure to donate to the project as it will keep them happy, and more likely to continue its development.

Am I within my right to get annoyed when key plugins aren’t at the front of the development curve? Should I be mad at Automattic and the WordPress contributors for making changes that negatively effect key plugins or is all of this just part of open source software?

I guess it doesn’t really matter, I just want PodPress to work…

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

The sessions I went to didn’t teach me anything new, and the whole conference seemed centered around the emotional side of podcasting rather than the business or technical side of podcasting. I think an equal mix of these three important facets should have been included.

I also felt like the conference was really geared towards a group of people that all know each other with newcomers feeling like outsiders.

Try as I did to get noticed, and use my connections with the few people I knew to meet more people, I felt getting inside the circle was a fight, rather than being a welcome addition.

The biggest issue is that the conference doesn’t pull in the outside world. Most of the sessions that did try to teach something seemed to be geared towards people just starting out, and there weren’t many people that fit that description. It was a weird event to be certain.

I do have to give a shout out to Tim Coyne and Dave Brodbeck for their sessions. While I didn’t learn anything new about podcasting from either of them, I think that they would be great at inspiring people to get into podcasting. After listening to them, and feeling their passion for the medium and its diversity, I wanted to record a podcast, right then!

I think that the Friday afternoon would be better spent with a Podcasters 101 style line-up which could hopefully bring in a larger group of people and get them interested in podcasting, or for those that are interested, help them understand how it all comes together. These conferences should be about expanding the community and teaching, not giving an update about what we did in the last year so we can get our pats on the back.

I was very sad to see that there were no sessions that covered tricks and tips to editing a good podcast from a technical side. What software should I be using? Should I put audio between topics to break things up or not? What is a good mic, and does anyone have tricks to make it sound even better? Where should I be hosting my podcast files? What’s the best way to make show notes? Where is Digg just for podcasters? There were so many very important things that weren’t brought up, and maybe because those in attendance already knew it all, but not covering the how’s and why’s made me not want to attend again next year.

I was also annoyed at how monetization was seen as a negative thing with the mention of it bringing on a massive wave of sighs and groans from the audience.

If it wasn’t for proper monetization, I wouldn’t have had the great jobs I have been able to have over the last three years. I really didn’t understand their apprehension, and I think they are all doing themselves a great disservice by not finding a way to build a business around their passion.

It was really great to see Bill Deys, John Wiseman, Chris Brogan, and Jeff Parks because otherwise the conference would have been a waste for me. Get it together Podcasters Across Borders as being an echo chamber is no way to build a community. What I experienced was a Podcasting Club, not a Podcasting Conference.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

The main difference is the conversational tone as podcasting with someone else gives you a chance to bounce thoughts and ideas off each other, creating new and better thoughts and ideas. When I podcast alone, if I forget to say something amazing, I have no one to blame but myself, and more often than not, I do forget to say things or see things from a different point of view.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy having someone else on the podcast, and as I have asked before, I would love to continue to have guest spots on a variety of different podcasts.

It has been too long since Chris Garrett and I have recorded an episode of the FourFourNiner, and far too long since I have been on WordPress Weekly or the WordPress Podcast, and I would love to record episodes of each.

I am also open to having people on this podcast to talk about themselves, their work, and their thoughts, as well as question me about my own work, thoughts and life. Podcasts with more than one person are just more lively and more interesting, wouldn’t you agree?

This doesn’t mean I will stop recording episodes of the Xfep Podcast, as I do enjoy sharing my opinions through the easy to use audio format.