Wired reports of the recent popularity of podcasts and how they are actually making money:
The podosphere may be virgin terrain for the online world, but already the race is on to figure out whether there’s any real money to be made through the new medium.
Consider the vast variety of approaches that have cropped up since Apple’s iTunes upgrade this summer started delivering thousands of new listeners to podcasters who once toiled in obscurity.
GrapeRadio podcaster Brian Clark is now gulping down about $1,000 a week from sponsors of his show for wine hobbyists. Grant Baciocco of the fiction serial The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd sells show-themed buttons and T-shirts and offers guest-voice roles for $50.
Josh of Josh in Japan is asking for PayPal donations from fans of his tales of expatriate life, though so far only $14 has rolled in. And Jimmy Diggs uses his Vegas-based Daily Noise as a traffic generator for his internet radio site, LVRocks.com, where sponsors pay for banner ads. (Editor’s note: LVRocks.com hosts the author’s podcast, Vegas S&M)
“There isn’t much information out there on how to do this,” said Tim Bourquin, producer of the sports-themed Endurance Radio podcast. “It’s a work in progress, how this all works.”
Endurance Radio was sponsored for a time by Gatorade and is now carrying ads from Fleet Feet Sports, a chain of running-shoe stores. Buoyed by their success, Bourquin and his brother Emile now offer tips on how to profit from podcasting on their weekly Podcast Brothers show, and their website provides a boilerplate contract for podcasters to use with advertisers. Bourquin is also organizing the Portable Media Expo in November in Ontario, California, to teach other podcasters how to “monetize” their shows.
One of the biggest challenges, says Bourquin, is that most potential sponsors don’t even know what a podcast is.
This really reminds me of the early days of the commercial internet and how I was making shitsloads of money (for a 16 year old) from my crappy little site by advertising. Looks like I’m gonna have to give this a try to. Read Sexy Jihad to be the first to know about my podcast 
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