Because of My Podcast: I'm Getting
Married
Today Matthew Cox from Brunch with the
Brits explains how he went to a podcast event who eventually
became his wife.
Why I Turned Down My First Podcast
Sponsor
I had been contacted by a sponsor at
advertisecast.com. I decided to low ball my pricing ($10 an
episode) just to see if anyone would jump. An advertiser did. They
wanted 10 episodes of my Weekly Web Tools podcast. That would be
almost three months and the advertising would pay for my hosting
(minus the 20% that advertisecast take). I would take home $96. My
hosting will cost me $45 for three months. I might have some gas
money. Here are some of the bullet points:
To get started and receive a $50 signup
bonus
You’ll earn $1 for every new email lead and up
to $200 for every new member you refer from your
computer
Has already generated millions of dollars for
over 200,000 happy entrepreneurs
My audience is predominant male, and I know I
have some entrepreneurs in my audience. So far this sounds like a
great fit. Then I went to see what I was promoting.
It turns out the product was a video chat and
dating service. Hmmm, that doesn't really fit, but maybe I would do
this as an experiment. Then I dug a little deeper. You see this
wasn't some ordinary video chat/dating service. It was porn, oh I
wait I mean adult chat. Can we just call it what it is?
Porn.
Beside my religious beliefs there are lots of
non-religious reasons that porn is a cancer that most people feel
is "not a problem." Well I disagree. It's an opinion, and we're not
here to talk about that. Let's get back to podcasting.
I will not have a sponsor on my show that I
can't go to bed at night feeling I served my audience by sending
them toward a product I fully endorse. So I turned them down. I
also contacted advertisecasts.com and suggested they put in a way
for podcasters to save people time so I can say, "No porn,
cigarette, alcohol, etc)
Every podcasters starts with two things in
common. Zero listeners, and they have integrity. When you lose your
integrity, you may not ever get it back.
Don't Be Afraid To Start Your Podcast and Find
Your Voice
When I started college I thought I wanted to
"Fix stuff" so I went to an electronics school and got a degree in
electronic engineering. The other thing I got was a clear
understanding that I wasn't very good at fixing stuff. I fixed
copiers, but luckily got an opportunity (based on relationships I
had formed in the company) to go out and set up the equipment and
train the users. I was a customer service rep. Had I not gone to
college to be a technician, I never would've ended up in
training.
I later would go back to School to get a
Bachelor's Degree in Education. My dream job was to get back to
training people on Microsoft Products. I had the most fun doing
that in the past, and I was good at it. I could be funny and
educational. Because of my knowledge of computers I start to dabble
in building websites, and the Internet. That lead to me a guy who
had come back from a conference who told me about
podcasting.
I started podcasting, and got to know people in
the industry. Using my strongest skills of serving and teaching, I
created value. I developed relationships with all of the podcasting
companies. I remember one day about a year and a half ago when a
student asked me a question about combining two features in
Microsoft Excel. I explained I had never tried those two features
together, to which he pulled out his iPhone and asked Siri. Right
in front of my eyes, the phone solved my customers problem. I
thought, I'm going to be replaced by a phone. A year and a half
later what was once a staff of five trainers, what cut down to one
(and it wasn't me). However, because I had been playing with
computers, and playing with the Internet, that lead me to
podcasting. Those relationships I built over ten years lead me to
being employed by Libsyn.com (A podcast media company).
Now I would never have though my life would
turn out the way