Should I Use a Free Media Host?
Dave Jackson
Last Update hace 2 años
My quick reaction is no. Here is a list of free media hosts that have gone out of business.
- Podshow/Mevio 8/2005 – 4/2014 (116 months – 38.8 million dollars spent)
- Podango 9/2006 – 12/2008 (27 Months)
- wildvoice.com 7/2006 – 7/2009 (36 months)
- mypodcasts.com 2007 – 2011 (estimated 48 months)
- Audiometric.io 11/ 2012 – 8/2014 (21 months before being purchased by panoply and taken off the market)
- Opinion Podcasting 11/2015-10/2017 (23 months)
- Zcat 1/2016 – 1/2019 (36 months)
- Whooshkaa 6/2016-5/2021 (53 months - removed their free service)
- Red Circle.com 4/2019 -
- Anchor - Purchased by Spotify (who have also purchased media hosts that charge...)
The Reason Free Media Hosts Don't Work
The free business model works like this.
You get free media hosting, and the free host offers to help you make money by providing advertisers.
The hosting company will take portion of the ad sales to pay for the bandwidth and storage you have been using.
No Advertisers
Advertisers don't want to attach their brand to just any podcast, so there aren't any.
No Audience
As many new podcasters want to "test the waters" they have no significant audience yet. These means the host must combine small shows together to get enough downloads to attract sponsors. However, now there are more shows to vet to make sure they are "Brand Safe" and the amount of paperwork to get all of these smaller shows under contract, and get paid is enormous.
The Successful Shows Leave
If a show does get enough downloads for a sponsor (5000 per episode) instead of staying with the free media host, they leave (with their audience ) and work directly with the sponsor and keep all the money for themselves. So the money that was supposed to sustain the free media host leaves, and typically most of them go out of business or have to keep getting funding from a bank to stay in business.
and that's why I don't like free media hosting.