Information about the owner of this cheap computer Website.

The definition of the term Computer.

Information concerning floppy disk drives and their functions.

Times have definitely changed in the last year in most parts of the country. I'm in Birmingham, Alabama and we are lucky to have 3 new automoblie maufacturing plants located in a triangle around our city.

But - if you are in an area that doesn't have commodities or heavy industry (two sectors that are doing well right now), what is your market like?

Chances are - you're in a "Buyer's Market".

What does that mean exactly? It means that there is more inventory than there are potential customers for that inventory. just like in the stock market - when almost everyone is selling and few are buying - the stock price will go down.

Many seller's think that because they paid a certain amount for a property, they can get at least that amount when they sell. Sadly, this leads to overpricing and a long, long wait until they sell much later at a lower price. My best advice is to find a real estate agent who will tell you the truth about market conditions and back it up with recent sales prices of similar home.

Last week, I was driving around Destin, Florida. Every third home was for sale. Auctions were common. Prices escalated in the area for 5 years and then they reached a top. What's happening now? The seller's are "holding out" for their price as more and more homes come on the market at significant discounts to what they are asking. The bottom line is that the sellers who put their homes on the market first are going to take a big hit.

As time goes on and the market is flooded with inventory, prices will go down and down and down. A smart seller would realize this and take the loss now before any further reduction in prices happened.

Is there anything you can do if you are trying to sell into a buyer's market?

Yes - make sure your home is:

#1) Priced very competitively with TODAYS prices (not what you paid 2 years ago)
#2) Make sure that your home looks like NEW (and I mean new - not just "touched up")
#3) make sure you get PLENTY of exposure.

The rpice, the condition, and the exposure are everything when it comes to selling into a down market. Good Luck!

by Mike Carraway Access1000.com, 7steps2freedom.com

The last thing you want to have happen when you have your home up for sale is for people to drive up and have a look, and then drive off...nver to return again. Why did they leave?

Your home could have been the wrong style or have the wrong exterior finish. But in all likelihood, it was curb appeal.

Curb appeal is one of those magic phrases used by real estate people that means a lot of things. It could be the home itself, or they could be referring to the landscaping. Curb appeal, in is simplest form means the overall balance and harmoney of everything the eye beholds while sitting at the curb and viewing the property. If it is eye appealing and alluring, they will want to come inside and have a look around.

The amount of curb appeal your home has will determine how much inside traffic you get to the home (outside traffic doesn't count). Inside traffic into the home is what it takes to sell it. So, curb appeal will ultimately effect how much your home sells for...or if it will sell at all.

So what makes up curb appeal and how do you get it?

The Structure

Your home must appear to be in top condition and well maintained. The paint must look fresh and unblemished. Gutters must be straight and in good repair. Doors should be square and fit in their frames perfectly. Anything that looks out of the ordinary needs to either be removed, repainted, or fixed.

The Yard

The lawn should be mowed and edged, and GREEN in the spring, summer and fall. Everything that blocks the view of the home needs to be trimmed or removed. This includes bushes, shrubs, trees, etc. If people cannot see the home, they will not want to come inside. All shrubs and bushes should be manicured and shaped. Flowers and bark or mulch needs to be new and replanted if necessary. Your job is to make the yard look picture perfect BEFORE you put it up for sale. Trim all low hanging branches that interfere with the street view of your home.

If you do not want to do all of the work, hire a landscaping contractor to come up with a plan. You will be more than rewarded for what you spend in the eventual sales price of your home.

Curb appeal increase the traffic to the inside of your home. And, if people don't come inside, they won't buy it. Your agent can get people to at least take a drive by your home. It's up to you to make them want to come inside.

New listings coming soon!

Broker
Access Realty, Inc.
1-800-840-0165

By Joe Klock, Sr.

Real estate analysts (and what American is not among them these days?) tend to survey the sea of sale signs in most areas and join the gloomy headline writers who conclude that there are not enough ready, willing and able buyers in the market place.

Not so, gentle reader! The shortfall is among sellers, of which there are relatively few treading water in the aforementioned sea.
"Whoa, Nellie!" you might exclaim (ignoring the by-line clearly displayed above), "any fool, including the by-lined fool, can see that it's buyers that are now in short supply."
In so doing, you might cite the hordes of hungry house-hunters who roamed the house-hunting roadways during the many months of a recently-deceased feeding frenzy, fueled by mortgage lenders with deep pockets and all the fiscal restraint of sailors on leave.
It is a now a fact of real estate life in most areas that their numbers - and that financial fuel - have shrunk like last month's birthday balloons, and it's true that there are fewer prospective buyers rummaging through the current logjam of listings.
Enter the law (not the theory or fantasy) of supply and demand, which dictates that when the number of consumers is dwarfed by a surplus of products, either prices take a hit or activity takes a holiday.
That reality underpins my contention that, while there may be too many homes for sale, there are too few legitimate sellers offering them.
This position is backed up by more than a half-century of experience on and behind the firing line of real estate brokerage, during which I have seen and survived several cycles of inflation, deflation and stagflation, as well as so-called sellers' markets which morphed into buyers' markets and vice versa.
Through all that trauma, certain facts remained unchanged - facts that are being ignored by too many would-be sellers and, sadly, pseudo-professionals. They are as follows:
1. No home in history has ever sold for a penny more than the best offer obtainable from the best buyer available in the then-current market.
2. The only way to determine the true value of a home is to thoroughly and aggressively test the market and challenge the competition. That process need not be a lengthy one, since buyers and their agents do comparison shopping and readily react to an attractive offering.
3. Once that procedure has been pursued, properties remaining unsold for an extended period of time are, quite simply, overpriced. Forget about what similar houses sold for in the past (which is history), or what those would-be sellers might have invested in their homes (which is irrelevant), or what qualified appraisers say they are worth (which are only opinions). The critical test is exposing one's home to the greatest practical number of prospective buyers and active agents, and then analyzing the results.
4. A home that is appropriately priced and effectively marketed, preferably by competent professionals, will ALWAYS attract attention, generate activity and ALWAYS sell for what it's worth (refer to Fact #1 above).
The problem today is not that there are too few buyers. Demand is what it is and neither wishful thinking nor wistful memories will increase its size.
The more serious shortage is of genuine sellers; i.e., those who meet these specific criteria:
a) They are willing and able to accept the best price obtainable from the best buyer available in the current market, and
b) They have something to lose if they don't do so.
"Sellers" who do not fit that mold are not sellers at all and should be encouraged to take their properties off the market. (Realistically, they're not actually ON the market, anyway!)
The market is not always kind, but it is never wrong - and those who believe otherwise pay a heavy price for ignoring "The Facts Of Life For Home Sellers."
FOOTNOTE: For a further dose of this perhaps-unpleasant medicine, visit www.joeklock.com and click on that caption. You have nothing to lose - except, maybe, a pipe dream.
If that doesn't work for you, take two antacids or a short snort and DON'T call me in the morning!
Here's the bottom line - take it to the bank or to any nearby Wailing Wall: When proper pricing is combined with effective marketing, there is a buyer for everything and, given those conditions, any home can be sold in any market.
The ritual dances of negotiation may change with market fluctuations, but the drumbeat of reality does not!

Mike Carraway
Broker/Owner

WEICHERT, REALTORS - Access Realty
1100 East Park Drive, Suite 104
Birmingham, AL 35235
1-800-840-0165
WEICHERT, REALTORS - Access Realty
Valleydale Branch
4500 Valleydale Road, Suite 160
Birmingham, AL 35242
205-995-3939
24/hr Info: 800-634-0511
24/hr Fax: 800-634-0511
www.Access1000.com
www.Weichert.com
www.AlabamaWebPage.com
www.TakeOurTest.com
www.BirminghamRealEstateSchool.com

Given the IAB and PwC’s projection that ad revenue in podcasting will at last pass $1 billion in 2021 (up from $479 million in 2018), one would think this mediums decade-long slow (really slow) march towards some sort of critical mass has finally hit its stride. Let the gold rush begin, no?

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Podcasters continue to find growing interest from marketers, but their growth remains constrained by factors including a lack of independent audience benchmarks.

U.S. advertisers spent $479.1 million advertising on podcasts in 2018, up 53% from about $313.9 million a year earlier, according to a new report from the industry group Interactive Advertising Bureau and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC.

Podcast advertising is expected to rise to $678.7 million this year, the report said.

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Johanna Zorn is leaving the Third Coast Festival. The executive director and co-founder of the Chicago-based audio documentary conference will be departing in the fall, and the search for her replacement will kick off later this week. The move was announced Wednesday through a letter published on the Third Coast website.

Obviously, this is a major development for the beloved conference, which has become one of the most, if not the most important gatherings for radio and podcast producers since its founding almost two decades ago. Third Coast grew particularly quickly over the past few years — tracking the growth spurt in the audio world around it — the biggest expression of which was the decision to shift the festival towards an annualized schedule in 2016. (It was previously held every two years.)

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Podcasts created by big corporate brands to humanize themselves in the minds of everyday people — or branded podcasts, as they are known in the biz — are an increasingly common phenomenon these days. McDonalds launched one a while back to plug the return of its Szechuan sauce. Tinder has one, as do Microsoft and Nike and Slack. Hell, even Goldman Sachs has one, though how you’d humanize a giant octopuslike bank is anybody’s guess. So it should not come as a particular surprise that Netflix, the all-consuming video distribution platform and entertainment company that has laid waste to countless waking hours, has bought into the trend as well. But what may be a little surprising is the way in which the company has done so: As it turns out, Netflix’s various branded podcast adventures are far more peculiar, and in some ways, more interesting than one would otherwise assume.

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There are big opportunities for the music industry in podcasts, but one of the big barriers is licensing: the cost and complexity for podcasters of securing the rights to actually play music in their shows.

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Apple is on the prowl. Months after Spotify shelled out $500m on two podcasting start-ups, Apple executives are said to be contacting media companies in the hope of funding original content and brokering exclusive deals.

This new phase for Apples streaming service comes at a time when audiences for voice-based programming are growing rapidly. In the past five years, weekly listeners have doubled in the UK, as have monthly audiences in the US. It is not surprising that technology companies are focusing on podcasting and making the medium easier to access. Apple has introduced full-text podcast searches on its Podcast app and Google has made them appear in search results. Spotify launched a voice assistant.

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In recent months, the tech giant has reportedly reached out to media companies about such deals, per Bloomberg. We do not know what kind of companies Apple is engaging with (indie production studios or established networks), and we do not know what sort of shows they are targeting (hits like Serial or brand new projects), per Hot Pod.

Top Podcast Consumption Apps
Business Insider Intelligence
What this move is about: Apple likely views exclusive originals as a way to protect its dominance of podcast listening, which has slipped in recent years as rivals like Spotify bear down.

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Over the past few years, there have been a number of major developments within the advertising world, but one of the most fascinating is the tremendous growth of the podcast. Podcasting, by many measures, is clearly on the rise. As the fortunes of podcasts rise, so too do those of individual podcasters, who have legions of devoted fans looking forward to their next episodes. Podcasting has created a new type of influencer, one who has the ability to reach people wherever they are, whether it’s at home, in their car, or during their daily commute.

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Let me tell you: it was a journey. Learning how to podcast is easy on the one hand, but keeping it up requires grit. I struggled. I celebrated. I attracted clients. I considered quitting at times. I got fan mail. I stuck with it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It has now been over 17 months, and I've learned some things. If you are thinking of starting a podcast, here are a few mistakes I'd recommend avoiding:

1. Spending too much money
You do not need a bunch of fancy equipment to start a podcast. Trust me. I spent $65 on a used Yeti microphone and pop filter from some guy off Craigslist and started recording the next day.

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It seems like only yesterday that this water cooler cliche entered our lives. Twas a simpler time, when people would engage in long-winded conversations without feeling the need to freeze them in time and share them with the masses. But today, thanks to audio editing software and our social media culture, it seems everyone and their mom has taken to the format. Literally.

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Nielsen has launched Nielsen Podcast Listener Buying Power Service, an analytics tool providing insights matching podcast listeners by genre with their buying habits.

The tool is placed to help pair podcasts with advertisers by detailing the interests and expenses of audiences.

The product, from Nielsen Scarborough, launches with iHeartMedia, Cadence13, Stitcher, Westwood One and Cabana as clients.

Clients will be able to profile shows using program titles collected from subscribers. In order to connect specific types of listeners with particular advertisers and specific program-level insights - built from a sample of 30,000 respondents.

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One-third of Americans over 12 listen to podcasts. But just as the business gets booming, are there already too many podcasts?

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Last week, Bloomberg dropped a fascinating scoop that Apple, the long-time impartial steward of the podcast ecosystem, is apparently planning to finance original podcasts that would be exclusive to its platforms, and that it has met with media companies to discuss possible deals toward this end. According to the report, the talks were preliminary and Apple has yet to establish a clear strategy around exclusive audio content, but whatever the actual game plan turns out to be, the company appears ready to do things with podcasting and audio shows that it hasn’t done before.

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Meanwhile, the biggest advantage management holds up for growing podcasts is improved engagement on the platform. But since Spotify doesn't disclose average time spent per user on its platform, investors may be left guessing how the company is doing. So, what is the best indication of whether or not the podcast investments are paying off?

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iHeartMedia has been the radio industry leader when it comes to podcasting. From purchasing How Stuff Works, to The Ron Burgundy Podcast with Will Ferrell, to slapping a full day of podcasts on its radio stations, iHeart has not been afraid to take risks with this fairly new medium. So what does Bob Pittman think about it all?

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Podcasts are now produced by commercial broadcasters, individuals and companies with no connection to broadcasting. In fact anyone with something to say, and a few pounds to spend on the equipment to say it, can get involved.

The digital audio files are cheap to produce and, thanks to the internet, easy to distribute.

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If you want to test in a channel where early adopters are being rewarded with both attractive CAC and scale, here’s what you need to know:

~ Podcast advertising is used very successfully as a direct-response channel with CAC on par with other consideration-stage activities. It is not just for awareness.
~ Podcast reach is very good, reaching 51% of US audiences aged 12+ monthly.
~ Ads read by hosts outperform canned programmatic ads.
~ Tracking is harder than most digital channels and the cost to test the channel is higher than most digital channels.

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It is well-known that podcasting is huge these days. But you might not realize how many educational podcasts are out there.

By educational, we mean shows that focus on some super-focused topic, like a specific period of history or an academic discipline. For instance, there are at least 15 or 20 active podcasts about linguistics, and there are several podcasts out there about conversational Latin (and we were pretty sure that was a dead language that was no longer spoken).

A Podcast for Every Discipline? The Rise of Educational Audio

The audio technology company Voxnest owns the podcasting platform Spreaker. The Italy-based StreetLib is a digital book distributor. Last week, they teamed up for a symbiotic relationship that will let StreetLib’s book publishers create podcasts and Spreaker’s podcasters create and distribute digital books or audiobooks.

The Publishing And Podcasting Industries Are Getting Even Cozier

Fifteen years after Apple first offered 3,000+ free podcasts on iTunes, the medium has become mainstream.

Basic Facts: According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, there are now 62 million Americans listening to podcasts each week, up from 19 million in 2013. One reason for the growth is the number of choices podcast listeners have today. There are now over 800,000 active podcasts with over 54 million podcast episodes currently available worldwide. Because of a low cost of entry, in the first ten months of 2019, a record 192,000 new podcasts have been launched.

Podcasting Is Going Mainstream

Last Friday, a group of podcast publishers and related operatives announced the formation of something called the Podcast Academy, which they described as a nonprofit organization dedicated to “elevating awareness and excitement for podcasts as a major media category and advancing knowledge and relationships in and around the business.”

Its various activities will involve things like holding educational webinars, organizing networking events, and publishing white papers. But its flagship endeavor seems to be an awards program to be called the Golden Mics — or, as people are already calling it, the Oscars of podcasting.

Podcasting Is Getting Its Own Oscars. Will It Work?

The soundproof Staples Connect Podcast Studios, developed in partnership with iHeartRadio, will include professional equipment -- a RODECaster Pro control board, RODE microphones and SHURE headphones -- and space for up to four people.

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Podcasts are growing; we are all going to make millions, get on it, quick! This seems to be the general consensus at the minute.

Now, I can understand the excitement, I’m excited too. A passionate, engaged audience, an intimate environment, niche targeting opportunities; it’s hard not to be interested. So, it’s absolutely no surprise that 75% of brands expect to spend big in the podcast realm this year.

How you do it is the important thing. Fundamentally, you have two options - either to advertise in the space or make your own branded podcast.

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Podcasting has enormous potential for publishers, given the mobile portability of the format and the possibility of converting text content into a spoken-word format listeners can consume while doing other activities. The IAB estimated the podcasting advertising market in the United States may exceed $1 billion by next year, a tenfold increase since 2015.

That estimate is encouraging, but podcasting needs to catch up to the needs of sponsors to become more viable amid a crowded media marketplace.

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We have seen how the radio industry has steadily increased its digital revenue, crossing the $1 billion mark in 2019, according to the RAB. As radio stations look to generate new business, to battle digital monsters Facebook and Google who are coming for their local ad dollars, could podcasting be radio’s next revenue star?

Radio has certainly gotten into the podcast content game, with big companies launching their own networks, some creating original content and most stations converting on-air shows to on-demand podcasts. Revenue has been somewhat elusive so far.

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Spotifys continued investment in podcasts appears to be paying off, after the company reported that podcast listening has increased by 200 percent year-on-year in its fourth quarter earnings today. The company says it now has over 700,000 podcasts on its platform, and that over 16 percent of its users now listen to podcasts. Spotify says the amount of users paying for its premium tier increased to 124 million.

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A tool called Headliner is solving the discoverability issue in podcasting in a couple different ways, for both consumers and creators.

On the creation side, Headliner allows podcasters to upload snippets of their podcasts, which Headliner transforms into videos, complete with automatic captions and spiffy images or clips of your choice. The resulting files, called audiograms, can be uploaded to the social media site of your choice (unlike audio files, which no major social network allows to be uploaded).

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Advantage: Convenience

With podcasting, you do not have to worry that your audience is busy offline when you make your sales pitch. A listener can download the file and replay it at whatever time is convenient for him, even while jogging or driving to work. If someone chooses to subscribe to your podcast feed, he can get any podcasts of interest downloaded automatically. If you want all your employees to hear what you have to say, podcasting is often easier than trying to get everyone together for one meeting.

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Seventy-five percent of Americans aged 12 and older (about 212 million people) are now familiar with podcasting, up from 70 percent in 2019. Fifty-five percent (155 million) listen to podcasts in general while 37 percent (104 million people) listen to podcasts monthly, up from 32 percent (90 million) in 2019.

It is more important than ever that brands create content easily retrievable through voice as consumption of both podcasts and voice-operated assistants rise. Over six in ten Americans use some form of voice assistant technology and nearly one-third of smart speaker owners have three or more devices in their homes.

Other noteworthy survey findings include smartphone ownership growing to 240 million, smart speaker awareness growing to about 220 million and smart speaker ownership growing to 76 million. The mean number of smart speakers per household grew from 1.7 in 2018 to 2.2 in 2020. As smart speaker ownership increased, radio ownership decreased, as the mean number of radios per household went from three in 2008 to 1.5 in 2020.

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FEDERATED MEDIA has launched a podcast division, including a podcast network as well as production and marketing services, with 46 podcasts at launch, including original shows, branded podcasts, and repurposed radio content.

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As the global COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, it appears more people are turning to podcasts for news and scientific information as much as a distraction.

Acast, one of the world's largest podcast hosting and analytics companies, said new listening figures for March 21-22 saw a 7% increase in listens globally, equivalent to more than 750,000 podcast plays.

Although some categories experienced declines, podcasts in the education, entertainment, science, medicine and health genres were all up more than 10%.

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Can listeners find you? Or is your name and frequency too difficult to find on a voice-controlled device or in a device-controlled system in the car?

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If the music industry is worried about podcasts eating into music’s share of the American audio diet, new survey data suggests that such worries are unfounded: Podcasts’ share increased at the expense of music a couple of years ago but has held steady ever since. Instead, the rising number of podcast listeners are coming from AM/FM radio. That’s what the numbers in new research from Edison Research, Triton Digital and National Public Radio show.

The Infinite Dial from Edison Research and Triton Digital is an annual survey that has been published for over 20 years. It originally covered listenership to digital radio such as Pandora and Sirius XM, but it has expanded to include other types of streaming music services, social media, podcasting and most recently esports; it has also tracked trends in consumer ownership of devices such as smartphones and smart speakers. The Infinite Dial is highly respected because of its methodological rigor and its year-to-year consistency over a long period of time. The 2020 edition of the Infinite Dial was released last week.

New Sony venture. Sony Music Entertainment announced another podcasting venture today, this time in the shape of a partnership with U.K. audio company Somethin Else. This continues a recent run of Sony investments in audio — previous examples include Jonathan Hirschs Neon Hum Media, Adam Davidson and Laura Mayers Three Uncanny Four and Renay Richardsons Broccoli Content.

Fifteen years after Apple first offered 3,000+ free podcasts on iTunes, the medium has become mainstream.

Basic Facts: According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, there are now 62 million Americans listening to podcasts each week, up from 19 million in 2013. One reason for the growth is the number of choices podcast listeners have today. There are now over 800,000 active podcasts with over 54 million podcast episodes currently available worldwide. Because of a low cost of entry, in the first ten months of 2019, a record 192,000 new podcasts have been launched.

Podcast Advertising: Another reason for the growth in podcasting is the potential income a popular podcast can earn from selling advertising. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PriceWaterhouse, ad revenue is expected to reach $679 million this year, increasing to $863 million in 2020 and over $1 billion by 2021. Popular podcasts can charge advertisers between $10 to $50 for every 1,000 listeners, approximately two or three times the ad rate for broadcast radio.

Podcast measurement company Podtrac has recorded mostly negative week-over-week download and unique audience growth since social distancing measures began. The declines were most severe in mid-March when major cities began shelter-in-place requirements and nonessential American workers began working from home. As of the week of April 27, however, weekly download and audience growth are slowly ticking back up.

But it is not all bad news: Podtrac found that for the shows it measures, year-to-date growth overall is still positive with major download growth in categories like news, comedy and business.

Put simply, a podcast is a web series in an audio format. It can be downloaded by the listener or it can be streamed. The joy of the podcast is that you can listen to them wherever you are. Whether you’re in the car, in the house, on the train, or doing the ironing.

Many people find podcast series that they love and will avidly listen to every episode. Some podcasts have such great followings that they spawn live tours, books, and other merchandise.

Although podcasts have seen a meteoric rise in popularity in recent years, the root of podcasts actually goes all the way back to the 1980s when they were called audio blogs.

But it wasn’t high-speed broadband and the invention of Apple iPods and smartphones came along that the world was ready for the podcast. The rise in internet speeds that made downloading or streaming podcasts possible timed itself well with the perfect devices to listen to them on.

After Spotifys recent string of podcasting deals, it is kind of weird to see a podcast acquisition where Spotify is not involved. E.W. Scripps has been shopping around its Stitcher podcast platform for a couple of weeks, and it looks like it found a buyer in SiriusXM.

Sirius will pay around $300 million for the unit. That is a hefty return for Scripps. It originally bought Stitcher in 2016 for $4.5 million, combining it with its $50 million Midroll Media acquisition from the year before.

Still, $300 million is a good deal for the premium podcast platform, a specialized podcast advertising network doing sales for over 300 podcasts, and the owner of two podcast content networks, Earwolf and Stitcher Podcasts.

That compares to Spotifys acquisition of The Ringer earlier this year, for which it reportedly paid between $141 million to $196 million.

Podcasting is a relatively small market, closing in on a $1 billion run rate. But the category is on fire right now. The New York Times scooped up Serial Productions for a reported $50 million this week in a creative and strategic alliance with sister company This American Life. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and depend on performance goals. The Times bought podcast studio Audm for $8 million in March and is hiring prominent journalists to host new programs. With Serial, the Times owns the 14th largest podcast production company with roughly 4 million listeners and the iconic Serial franchise that was the first breakout hit. Union Square Ventures also announced on Thursday that it is investing in the podcast studio and ad network Headgum.

Here are seven ways you can avoid common virtual sales meeting technology mistakes

1. Prepare meeting attendees in advance with clear instructions
2. Run a tech check
3. Increase your internet speed and bandwidth
4. Choose a reliable meeting platform
5. Invest in quality audio and video
6. Master your platform
7. Have a backup plan

I think this comes down to treating your marketing campaign mix holistically. A lot of digitally native brands tend to think about each channel independently and think about, you know, how do I get my Facebook campaign working, or how do I get my Google AdWords campaign working. But on Google and to some extent on Facebook, our activity is really driven around intent. People effectively putting their hands up, saying, I am looking for a sofa! through some kind of signal we can pick up on.

Podcasts are completely separate. There is no demand signal. So it is about finding that target audience that you are after and really introducing and sort of familiarizing that audience with the brand. That requires a holistic, full-funnel approach to your entire marketing mix, understanding that people we introduce to our furniture via podcast will be converted down the line via some other channel. That is key to building out a proper marketing mix, instead of just running some Facebook ads and hoping they do all the lifting.

Building out a physical space associated with a podcast business used to be a really good idea. For one thing, it offers an alternative revenue stream — through studio rentals and in-person events, among other things — that could check against the growing but volatile advertising revenue pool. It is also a really good fit for any podcast operation built on a sense of community. Having a physical space for listeners to routinely gather can really strengthen that relationship between publisher and fan, expanding the notion of how that community can be served.