Dec
31
2009
Posted by Fab
Hello once again. I trust everyone has had a nice Christmas? I thought I’d provide a quick update to wrap up the year on this blog as well…
I just released the last episode for the year on Tuesday — we had a lot of fun with this one, recording special sound effects and all. I even drove over a road bump very fast in my Twingo to make it authentic! So that wraps up the podcast itself for 2009, but a few other things have developed that I wanted to talk about on here as well. First off, you might have noticed the Sixgun Productions bumper at the beginning of the show and in the file tags. The site itself explains what we have in mind with this pretty well, so I’ll leave it at that, suffice it to say that we are looking to put Linux Outlaws on a much more solid foundation for the future. Do not despair, we aren’t looking to sell out or have suddenly developed delusions of grandeur like some other podcasters, we are simply trying to make sure that the production of the show can be sustainable for us in the long run so that we can deliver many, many more episodes to you. In the same vein, you will notice the adverts on the main page. This is an experiment to see if we can generate a revenue stream for the show. Both Dan and myself will most likely undergo some changes in our lives in 2010 and this will hopefully help to keep us afloat. I’ve personally never had ads on any of my sites and I’m curious to see how this shapes up. As always, we welcome any comments and feedback in general on this via the usual channels. We have also talked about supporting the show via ads in the content itself a few times, but so far nothing has transpired. No matter what happens, we have quite firmly agreed on never having more than one ad on the show itself. I have seen first hand what more than that will do to a show like TWiT and I don’t want to go down that path. Again, if you have any comments on all of this, please leave them here on the blog or send us an email.
Anyway, the Linux Outlaws wish you all the best for 2010 and the new decade! Here’s to many, many more shows in the new year. I am going to leave you with our Libsyn download stats for the year (as of this morning) and as you can see, the show is really going places. We hope to improve on that even more in the new year!
Libsyn Download Stats for 2009
1 comment | tags: advertising, feedback, financial, libsyn, podcasting, production, sixgun, stats, twingo | posted in Financials, Podcast, Website
Nov
8
2007
Posted by Fab
As I have hinted at before, Dan and I have decided that we will move the actual podcast files away from this server. Since we started the show, our bandwith usage has been steadily growing, including a quite dramatic jump around the time we released episode 7. To give you a feel for the numbers, here’s the raw bandwith we pushed since I set up the site:
- August (starting on the 25th): 17.2 MB
- September: 4.27 GB
- October: 65.63 GB
- November (at the time of writing): 21.28 GB
While we can comfortably support the current bandwith on this server, it isn’t hard to forsee that we will outgrow it quite quickly at this pace. I have therefore set up an account with Libsyn to host the media files for the podcast, starting with the next episode which I am in the process of editing right now. We are currently on the “Podcast Standard” plan, which will give us 250 MB of hosting per month with unlimited bandwith for $10 a month. This change will not affect the way you get the show at all. The show notes will still be here on the site along with a Flash player to stream the show directly. The address for the RSS feed will also not change. This stuff happens purely behind the scenes and shouldn’t concern you, the listeners, at all.
Since Dan is already donating time and his hosting space to produce this show and I am paying for Libsyn and also off-site backup for the production files, I will set up a PayPal account especially for Linux Outlaws and put a donation button on the site. I do not expect anyone to donate, but if you do enjoy the show and have one or two bucks to spare, Dan and I would appreciate it very much. I am being purposefully open with our expenses here and I do guarantee that the money we receive from donations will only be spend on the Libsyn fees and further down the road maybe on some hardware that is immediately used to produce the show (like a USB harddisk to back up the audio files in addition to the off-site solution). I hope you will agree that this is a fair arrangement since I really don’t want to put any advertising on the site or the show itself if I don’t absolutely have to.
I am really happy that the number of listeners seem to grow steadily and I think that this step is a very good sign. Outgrowing our cradle like this proves that there is definitely a lot of interest in this kind of show and as long as that holds true, Dan and I are more than happy to continue doing what we do. Please tell your friends and co-workers about the podcast (now that we have the Libsyn setup it’s gotta pay off, after all) and keep writing us encouraging feedback like we are getting on an almost daily basis now.
Comments Off | tags: bandwith, donations, financial, libsyn, stats | posted in Podcast
