Podcasting is Selfish, In a Good Way

Maybe you’re one of the few Gandhi or Mother Teresa types who got into podcasting to help humankind and make this planet a better place to live. The truth is this does NOT describe the majority of us who drifted into podcasting (i.e capitalism) for purely selfish reasons. The good news is that there’s nothing wrong with that. The heart of entrepreneurialism beats with the rhythm of self-interest, otherwise every corporation would be modeled after Goodwill, a non-profit that has a chain of killer thrift shops, by the way.

So let’s just put it right out on the table now and decide not to be self-conscious about using podcasting to reach an end that benefits us personally. Do you want to:

1. Have your voice and opinions heard by hundreds, thousands, or millions?
2. Garner advertising and/or sponsorship support?
3. Sell products and/or services related to the topic of your podcast?
4. Meet people smarter than you and who you can learn from?

Don’t look now but all these motives are selfish, and once again, that’s OKAY! Seriously, it is. This is not to say that there is absolutely no altruistic motive felt by any podcaster out there. Of course there are. The independent spirit of podcasting is still alive and well. Many practitioners have learned to balance the pursuit of profit with the goal of providing a less corrupt, less boring, more creative alternative to commercial radio.

The idea we’re stressing here is that you don’t have to get behind the microphone every week and pretend like profit is the furthest thing from your mind. If you’re providing killer information that your listeners love and can’t wait to download every episode, don’t be afraid to drop an ad in here or sell a product there, though most podcasters don’t stretch the bounds of decency (a la commercial radio) and run three minutes of advertising for every 8-10 minutes of program time. In that way, podcasting has, thankfully, proven itself to be a different sort of beast.

So is selfishness a bad thing? Sometimes. Except when it’s good. We’ll leave you with this bit of wisdom to ponder from Speaking of Wealth founder Jason Hartman. Is Coke, Microsoft, Nike, or any of the thousands of other global name brands ashamed to charge you for their product/service? The answer to that is a big fat no.

‘Nuff said (Top image: Flickr | Muffett).

The Speaking of Wealth Team