I've been following Cameron Reilly's progress with ThePodcastNetwork for a while now. Listening to his current woes, hoping things pick up soon for him. His request for ideas had me thinking and I've decided to pitch some of my ideas in. Feel free to steal them, I have much bigger ones in the works. Anyway here are my suggestions and thought I'd publish them for all to see and debate.

I'll start by outlining the podcast hosting (or video log for that matter) business model as I see it. Advertising. With more and more services like Amazon's S3 our likely future, I see the bottom eventually falling out of mere hosting unless you make the hardware or maintain it. Still you can cream a little off the top using it if you like, but for me the future is all advertising and subscriptions with hosting a side dish unless your a data centre.

Now Cameron more than anyone knows that advertising for his medium will most likely come through embedded sponsorship in podcasts as well as targeted on his site. Thus the more listeners and distribution, the better exposure for all involved. In my mind therefore building brand reputation while building distribution channels are the key to this medium. So, first we build on those. I use Cameron's business as my case study here. So here are my suggestions:

1. Build a better distribution model.

Make it easy for anyone to access and share your data.

The first and easiest thing Cameron could do is make each and every podcast easily sharable on anyone's site with a custom and branded flash player(with fallback) they can drop in, ala Youtube.

Optionally, a player, that on mouse hover or excerpt button click, displays either a text excerpt or transcript of the cast. (I've heard anecdotal evidence that transcripts next to casts improve listens by up to 225%.) Note: I'd do it with display:none javascript, not ajax to help the search engines find it. Let's hope RSS readers of the future support display:none or some other safe means of embedding metadata, aye. (Comments on alternative methods welcome)

So for easy copying and pasting I see the implemenation best done through and interface something like Live Clipboard's.

Thus we display Live Clipboard scissors on objects considered sharable. With our podcast example, on hovering those scissors would display your options for that content. In this case clicking Copy simply copies a piece of HTML to the users clipboard containing an object element marked up. ie. the podcast player <object> with podcast uri and description.

Note: This example doesn't utilise the 'Live' of Live Clipboard, but you get the idea. BTW, to anyone looking to implement Live Clipboard, please, on selecting a method of an object the user should be presented with something like a tooltip instructing them what has just happened! eg. "Success! HTML Object copied to your operating system clipboard. Now, go paste it somewhere!" or "Success! Live Clipboard XML Object copied to your operating system clipboard. Perhaps on hovering objects the type of content to be copied is displayed. eg. replace Copy (CTRL-C) in the figure above with Copy HTML Object (CTRL-C) or Copy Live Clipboard Object (CTRL-C)

Now, back to distributing our podcasts.

I'd also suggest branded widgets of feeds copied and pasted in similar fashion.

Taking this further an open API service for database access to casts and their metadata as well as data processing services. This however requires infrastructure and one central content management and hosting system. So build one(if and when you can afford to!). And Cameron, I know I'd have a 2web widget on my blog if you had one.

Next for distribution, another interesting path I see this model taking is with distributed metadata creation services. Check out what the blip.tv guys are working on with mirrorplay (not up yet) and read about video vertigo (user and password are in the popup authentication) and where metadata sharing for distributed media is headed.

There's an opportunity here for someone to build an open API that lets developers build podcasting software into their own, have those podcasts hosted on the API providers servers and allow collaboration with advertisers through it. Or just a service that streams the process of adding ads to the media and then to the clients servers. It's complicated to explain but if your interested, have a look at the eventful aka EVDB model. I think it's kinda similar but in their case used for events and I hear purchasing tickets.

And BTW, while your at it creating widgets, don't forget to add digg and delicious buttons to each! And comments… You could even include an area in the widget for displaying tags and tagging that very podcast using AJAX! No need then for mirrorplay? Maybe. Maybe not. Something worth considering is that not everyone lets you embed scripts… alternative: flash… *grumble*

Additionally you should write or purchase rights or licensing to podcast aggregating software for downloading content locally and consumuing it and feeding the playlist back to your database. Don't forget to brand it all.

Don't forget to bundle your service with other hardware. Mobile devices especially are the media players of the future.

2. Build a solid brand image.

Produce quality content under your logo stamp. Seek out existing podcasters(or vloggers, whatever floats your boat) with a proven track record and bring em aboard your stamp. Podtech did this with Scoble, Scoble did this with GETV…

Make podcasts about the people. Interviews, exclusives… I love those. Encourage that in your producers. Everyone loves to hear from experts in their field. Experts market themselves, experts therefore market you if you can get em.

3. Design and marketing.

Now I'm basing this off Camerons site and his homepage is a little bland. Get a good designer Cam, make it fun and build upon the brand in the design. In Camerons case, get rid of the whitespace at the top and make the TPN logo stand out. Add some mr.sheen polish to it and develop a 'look & feel' synonymous with TPN. Make play buttons using the logo to use there and in widgets? Something with personality…

Add a "featured show(s)" section with clips and play buttons. Add a short playable promo clip for all the shows and latest shows on there so people can get a feel for the hosts quickly. We're all time poor so please don't make me listen through ads or fancy long intros on those promo clips. Make the search feature and categories more visible. Make the site fun and idiot proof.

Maybe add sound effects on hovering items. Make promo's automatically play on hovering… Grab people's attention. Just never play music on page loading! That's a heinous usability crime! I curse you myspace.

Also add features that will entice people back. Let people tag and mark casts as favorites for later referral. Capture that attention data on what each user plays/tags/does on your site. Create a social network of tags and "who tags like me", "who likes listening to what I do" network ala last.fm. Create widgets of this data for the users. Use the data to recommend other items, including advertising. Create widgets for those.
Ultimately, you'll be reaching your users through distribution channels. Get that right. Make it so that people can easily find your content on your site to help it go viral. Add feeds and widgets on everything. Even categories, peoples listening lists, top downloaded… basic SEO.
4. Education

Drive traffic through education. Create a podcasting tutorial blog(and cast) to educate people. Let the TPN producer crew write it, everyone has a howto podcast story right? Call it the Digital Podcasting School ala Darren Rowse and his Digital Photography School.

5. Advertising

First, create some. Your own! Build a service that can attach advertising automatically to media. Create your own advertising first for podcasts in your network to test the system and attract advertisers that listen. Add an advertise with us option to your widgets. Failing those, hire someone to find you advertisers. Or something. Advertising hurts my brain.

6. Product Affiliates

Create a "cool audio tool" directory using amazon and other affiliates who'd like to advertise their wares to podcasters/users through you. This would fit well on the education blog and next to podcasts. Include hardware/software recommendations, reviews, etc. Track it all with stats.

7. Service Affiliates

"Advertisment FREE" podcasts for paying clients or subscribers.

8. Statistics

Watch them and learn.

9. Brainstorm

Put all the content producers on a mailing list if they're not already. Bounce ideas in it with them all. Create a community wiki to document all those ideas. They'll want to help, they're making a cut of the money for producing the content…

10. Get good developers to build it all

So you can sit back, feet in the air and let someone else stress out. I should also talk about networking, blah, blah, but I'm no good at that. Just do it. You'll figure it out with all that traffic and attention you'll be getting from people.

In conclusion:

• Build an API
• Build your own service on top of that API
• Open your API and service to the Public

The future is in API's and widgets(smart widgets and apps that talk back to your server with attention data).