I've recently started doing a reading of Beowulf and posting it on Podcast Ping. I'm planning to release part 2 tomorrow and possibly part 3 on Friday depending upon how things go (and whether my cold clears up).

So far it's been a success, or at least as far as I can tell. I've seen more than a thousand downloads in less than a week, though not through the feed. I've been using another method as well as the regular podcast feed to distribute episodes. But I'm not quite ready to reveal that method yet.

Podcast Ping has been steadily growing since I adopted the new format in August. Many of the top podcasts have been ones that have been around for a while and it's hard getting an audience to a new podcast.

Mine isn't doing badly, but anyone who tries to get into podcasting could find themselves without an audience. Podcasts are becoming the new blogs, and as with blogs it's the ones who started early who have the most readers. Boing Boing, which has been going for years, supposedly has more than half a million subscribers, though many of those may be people who subscribed to the feed and never read it. (As I recall, it was featured as part of at least one Internet Explorer release.)

Currently, I'm putting out a Podcast Ping show on Sundays and Tuesdays, with at least one additional episode of Beowulf, usually on Thursdays. I'm thinking of keeping to that schedule, although if I only put out one episode of Beowulf a week it will take until August 2008 to finish so I will probably pick up the pace. I don't see myself doing more than three a week, and even that requires a fair amount of time to record and edit. 

If you are thinking of starting your own podcast, make sure there isn't someone already doing the same thing. You might be better joining with an existing podcast than trying to start your own. There are already too many podcasts that put out a few episodes and stop posting. I even occasionally throw something into my Writerpatrick's Blog podcast which I tried to use for The Would Be Writer to keep the feed active, though I still haven't decided how I'm going to use it.