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March 22 Indiepublic is for sale and what I don't like about it.I got an e-mail from Indiepublic and the owner is looking to sell the domain. I have no interest in buying it and I don't see why anyone would want to. There are a few problems with the scenario.
1) They are asking for $18,500 for the site. That doesn't sound like much but their income claims only $1,200/month with $45/month in expenses. This means that it would take a buyer 16 months to make back what they spent on the site. Someone starting a new website from scratch would have the potential to make money immediately provided they could land the revenue sources. But even just $50/month would be a better situation.
2) There is no guarantee that what they made in the past would be made by the new owner. Thus any claims of revenues are valueless. A new owner could just as easily find themselves making much less, in which case they would be better with their own site. While in the past the site may have made about $1,200/month, it could be on a diminishing basis. Next year the revenues may only be $1,000 per month or less. And that works out to only $300/week--not very much for what probably would be a full-time job.
3) The new owner will be required to honor past contracts, particularly advertising contracts. I don't know exactly how the payments work, but it could mean that if someone paid for six months of ads last month, the new owner would miss out on five months of ad revenue but still be required to run the ads. That's also part of the supposed $1,200/month that they would not recieve.
4) Indiepublic is part of Ning. Someone could very easily set up a similar site doing exactly the same thing on Ning or another like site. In some cases, they could even set one up for free. This may be why the owner wants to get out. It's not hard for someone to set up their own website or a make-your-own-social-network site. And any real business should have it's own website. Indiepublic is fine for the home crafter who just wants some website for free and doesn't understand the technology, but with the tools available now even a hobbiest who knows nothing about Web design can put a page together. And given it's part of Ning, they may not even have the freedom to sell.
If I was interested in buying, I would wish to see the books first before making any offers. There would also have to be the guarantee that the previous owner didn't develop a competitive site. It does have the advantage of being a moderately well known name, but considering it would likely take a new owner two years to see an income, it could be overpriced. And when you consider that Ning is the real owner, it's Ning that one would really want to invest in. In fact it would be a lot smarter to set up a similar site on Ning since it would be much cheaper and returns would come much sooner.
March 14 Over 100,000 Podcast Downloads!I have now collectively passed over 100,000 downloads of my podcasted/torrentcasted shows! That's primarily for the Podcast Ping, Beowulf (which I've been presenting on the Podcast Ping feed) and the Blue Hot Gossip shows. About 97,000 are for Mininova downloads which should surpass 100,000 sometime next week. I can't say for certain, but I estimate somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 people hoave downloaded at least one episode. (It could be higher.) The average downloads per episode is about 1,000 but many episodes surpass that.
I've still four episodes of Beowulf to post and two of Podcast Ping (one tomorrow). Then, after a long poem, I'll get onto my podcasted audio book, THE UNSTOPPABLE RIDE. Based upon the reaction to Beowulf I expect it to do well. I've found the interest in Bewulf higher than that of the music and poetry episodes which suggests I would do well with an audiobook.
THE UNSTOPPABLE RIDE is a humerous mystery set in an off-season near-future amusement park. I've about six chapters done and will write the rest of the story as I progress with the audio book presentation.
Now that I've passed 100,000 I'll probably not make mention of it again until I'm around 150,000 or so. I'm hoping for about 10,000 listeners for the audio book; it will make it easier to sell to a publisher when I'm finished.
March 06 Torrentcasts - The Yang of PodcastsThere's a new trend coming, starting with modifications to many torrent client programs, and it's called Torrentcasting. It's still too new to even be listed on Wikipedia. But it could make just as big an impact. Torrentcasts are virtually the same as podcasts but instead of distributing indivial files via downloads, they distribute torrents which are used to download the file. They still use RSS like podcasts, but the software supporting them has still a ways to develop. However, once they get going, they could have quite an impact. The primary advantage for a podcaster to use a torrentcast is that is saves bandwidth, so if the number of downloads is a factor in fees it can save them money. It's primary disadvantage is that the torrent is only good as long as there's at least one feed available. Xtorrent for Mac and muTorrent for Windows are programs that currently support torrentcasts. muTorrent still uses a fairly primitive system and has a way to go before matching that of the simplicity of iTunes or Juice. But torrent software has been around longer and many are already using it. Because of this, it can be easier for someone to use a torrentcast than a podcast. My torrentcast is http://www.mininova.org/rss.xml?user=PodcastPing. This link needs to be cut and pasted into a torrent program. muTorrent handles it under "Options" "RSS downloader". The link is entered under "Feeds" and accessed under "Releases". To download a specific torrent file, the link needs to be clicked to open. In the future this should become automated. |
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