130 Podcast Answer Man – Leo Laporte Makes 1.5 Million From Podcasting

Podcast Answer Man Episode 130
Leo Laporte Makes 1.5 Million From Podcasting

In this episode, share my thoughts and reactions on a Mashable blog post that said, “Podcast pioneer Leo Laporte gave a talk at the Online News Association Conference in San Francisco recently, giving insights into the future of media coupled with anecdotes from his work in television and radio.

The keynote, entitled “Lunch with Leo”, runs 40 minutes, but it’s well worth the time if you’re involved in online media and broadcasting.

The most interesting tidbit: Laporte’s TWiT (This Week in Tech) network does $1.5 million in revenue per year, doubling yearly.

His costs, however, are more impressive: it only takes $350,000 per year to run the business with 7 employees.”

Here’s the video:

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Mike

Good show, Cliff, as always.

I think Leo is a smart businessman and a generally likable person. But I wouldn't call him a tech visionary as (I think) he so often tries to be. He's been wrong time and again when it comes to predicting what will or won't be successful (twitter is just one example). So I am not worried about his assertion that podcasting is dead. Live content may be good for him because it is a competitive advantage to what most of us are able to do. But as you said about people with DVRs, I'll take time-shifted content on MY schedule any day. For TWiT, I usually have to skip the first five minutes each episode while he banters with all of his guests before he gets to the stories.

I'm just thankful that the technology exists, and gets more affordable all the time, so that the average folks like us can produce and share our own content with people that are as passionate about tech (or whatever) as so many of us are.

Keep up the good work.
Mike

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Jonathan Nation

I have heard that same quotation about the costs of twit ... and heard Leo comment on it. I don't think it is a total of $350k, it's those 7 employees get paid a total of $350k, so an average of $50k per year. In addition to that there are more costs, like he pays the hosts, guests, etc ... then he purchases a bunch of equipment, marketing, accounting, and other business expenses.

It's a nice sound byte to claim that the costs are only $350k, but in a twit (or one of the twit shows) he basically said his costs are really higher then that.