by a show of hands....

[vader]

Ok heres the deal, i'm looking into starting a podcast managing and hosting business. besides having great hosting plans, ($10 month starters for 1000 mb of storage and 60 gb transfer monthly, easily beating libsyn.com's $10 plan), we would offer with every package feed managing, blog installs/managing and updating to new versions, entering into the major directories etc. by a show of hands, whos interested? if not, why please? thanks

[camilian]

Will there be a plan with more than 60 gb transfer monthly? I would be interested if you had a bigger transfer, and allowed me to build my own blog with php and mysql.

[vader]

yes, we'll have bigger transfer plans, how much do you think you'll need? we will also have php support and unlimited mysql databases. email me at vader@restartpodcast.com if your interested.

[Patrick]

How does that beat libsyn, exactly? I'll be over my 60GB limit before the 10th of the month.

[vader]

not in transfer quite yet, (though were working on it), but in storage we offer 1000 mb at our $10 plan, versus 250 mb at libsyn's $10 plan. i think this service is going to be aimed at begining podcaster's who don't want to do the tech behind the podcast, but which we love to do. out of interest how much bandwidth do you use, so we can try to make our plan try to fit podcaster's needs?

[jeffoest]

Just an FYI- we have recently entered an environment (impact iTunes 4.9 specifically) where it's going to be hard for us podcasters to predict bandwidth needs. Not only is there some talk about Apples' caching of some files but all of us have experienced pretty dramatic transfer over the last week. To make things even more complex and dynamic: some of these transfers are 'double' counts and not all iTunes subscribers have downloaded the latest version yet.

Until things settle a bit (say a month or so) my personal belief is that it's going to be VERY hard for an individual podcaster to assess their needs with much accuracy.

My gut says a package of 100Gig transfer minimum offering.

One more thing - in the podcast world, Transfer is king. Disk space is not nearly as much of a selling point as it is elsewhere on the web.

[vader]

ok thanks alot, this helps. i'll have to look into it, but honestly i'm not sure my servers have the bandwidth cability for many podcasts to have unlimited bandwidth without further investment in infrastructure.

[Will-Casel]

One more thing - in the podcast world, Transfer is king. Disk space is not nearly as much of a selling point as it is elsewhere on the web.

I totally agree, Jeff.
That is the biggest selling point with Libsyn. You don't have to worry about watching your bandwidth. Storage space is secondary.

Will

[obtuseangle]

First off, as a preface point, I'm very much a tech moron.

And a regular moron, for that matter.

Which is why I chose Libsyn in the first place, so I don't have to dick around with a lot of code. Code makes my brain hurt.

So, yeah, sounds great, but how would the transition process work in terms of old shows? Would you have to repubiish them with the new RSS feed or what? And wouldn't that gunk up the directory sites?

Finally, if anyone is kind enough to explain this, please imagine you're talking to a retarded fisherman who's been out to sea for a while.

Thanks!

Steve
The Obtuse Angle

[vader]

well i don't think i'm gonna do this, bandwidth is too expensive without enough people doing it. but if someone was doing it, their would be a few ways to manage the transistion. it depends on how your rss feed is generated, if you manage it yourself and reupload once its edited, then you could just change the file address in the rss feed, (this means you would have to keep the rss feed at the same place) or you could copy the edited feed to the new server, and edit the directories. (usually by emailing them, in the cases of podcastalley and itunes) i ahven't used blogger for podcasting, but i assume you could just edit your posts to the new file locations.

[obtuseangle]

Already that's too complicated for me, so I guess I'm locked into Libsyn for the forseeable future. Good thing I'm happy with the service overall.

Well, sorry to hear that you've abandoned your idea already. Always more fish in the sea ...

Steve
The Obtuse Angle

[vader]

well as the service was aimed towards the tech phobic, we would have managed the transition for you. oh well, on to the next money making scheme ;)