Today we talk about how adding a podcast to your blog can help you gain a larger audience. We talk with Kate Erickson of Kate's Take Pocast and the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast

Ken Blanchard produces the Black Man with a Gun podcast among other podcasts that you can find at Blanchard Media. Recently he announced that he was having technical issues with his equipment, and that production of new episodes might come to a temporary halt. Instead of letting this happen, an audience member sent him a new Mac Book. I've said before that you can build a relationship with your audience, and that influence can be leveraged in many ways.

MagicJack Plus + Free 6 Months Subscription to Magic Jack Service $37 (a year of service is $35)

Google Voice - It's Free. The Sound is OK. Just realize if Google ever decides to charge or cancel this service you will have a back catalog of shows with this number. (deliver mp3 file)

Kall8 - This is the service I have used since 2005. An 800 number is $5 a month and approximately 7 cents a minute. My apologies to my friends across the pond. There isn't much international information on their site. I've never had a bill more than $10. The bad news is the sound quality of these calls is not great.

Kall8 captures at 8 bit, while Google Voice and Magic Jack capture at 16 bit (which is why Kall8 sounds so much worse).

With Google Voice being free, they seem like the obvious choice. I'm not sure I'm willing to trust Google with a voice mail that I give out for episode upon episode and then yank the tool away from me.

Magic Jack for me will be the recommended (more affordable) option. The ONE downside is people have to wait 5 seconds to go to voicemail (which is a bit long).

Another tool (that's not phone based) to get audio on yoru website is via Speakpipe.

In a recent article in Podertainment magazine (a really great issue) Rob Walch VP of Podcasters relations a Libsyn.com  states in an article titled "A Rope in the Garage" that about 8% of all the episodes released that reach the 5,000 download threshold." What's so special about 5,000 downloads? This is the minimum number that many advertisers need to look at your show. Even if you reach that number you're still not talking about quitting your day job. Rob states, "Realistically less than 5% of podcasters even make enough from their podcast to even cover their costs. An less than 1% can call podcasting their main career or in the case above - an alternative better than the rope in the garage. "

I bring this up today because we have Kate Erickson of Entrepreneur on Fire on the show. John Lee Dumas has created an empire. An empire I stand and applaud. John has proven (over and over) that you CAN make money using your podcast. Notice I didn't say from your podcast (although John does that as well). Most of John's money comes from additional products he sell. Most podcasters who make money podcating (myself included) use the free podcast to promote other non-free services.

Paul Colligan in his recent episode states Podcast Monetization breaks down to: Market + Message + Money + Media = The Only Formula For Podcast Monetization

Kate Erickson is one of the guiding forces of the wildly successful Entrepreneur on Fire podcast. This has launched other spin of shows like Quotes on Fire, Webinar on Fire, and today we talk to Kate about why she launched Kate's Take along with "the Fire Path" which are the first 17 episodes of her show and are assembled into an ebook (no email required) at www.eofire.com/tfpbook

You will hear how Kate has boosted her confidence by doing more and more episodes. She started by re-recording her first shows (so remember you don't HAVE to publish the episodes you record).

She has put great content intermixed with stories and her audience is loving it.

She has a discipline to to focus on certain tasks that help propel her podcast and website further toward her goals. 

Kate states that they don't make subscribing to their podcast a primary call to action. She advises the call to action be go to the website where they can then subscribe to your podcast and/or your email list. 

Kate has taken her blog posts and turned them into a audioblog/podcast. So if you are a blogger you will hear how she is getting more feedback and reaching a large audience as a podcast. Another thing to consider is if you are a blogger that for every one podcast there are roughly 1950 blogs so having a podcast makes it easier to be found. (source Rob Walch)

With the success of shows like Radio Lab, Startup, and Serial, more people are discovering podcasts. These stories pull us in, and keep us captivated. Well the people behind startup have launched another new show call Reply All. I was stoked as (so far) every "Story" podcast was a giant home run in my book. Reply All has left me in a "meh" state of mind. With this in mind, you still need to prove value to your audience. If your information is not how to, it needs to entertain them, or make them think. 

I jokingly made a podcast called "Dinner" where for 5:48 you hear me try to decide what I want for dinner, and then go to Target to buy it. 

The fun part is this 5:48 clip took an HOUR to produce (finding music, sound effects, etc, editing the audio). It sounds great when you have a great story (and you should start there), but it takes a lot of time to add that icing on top of the cake.