Piad for podcasts - how?

[Melisen]

I am planning to sell audiobooks and wonder if RSS feeds could be a solution...

So I was thinking about making a weekly novel podcast, 5-10 hours directly to iTunes each sunday so you have something to listen to during your daily commute. it would be $5 per novel in a subscription model.

All I need to actually do something about it is to know if the tech is available.

The sign up would be done in my own webshop and it would not involve anyone else at all.

Can I make the server ask for a username/password through iTunes?

Can I give a special RSS stream url to each subscriber that each points to the same file? Can it be done automatically so when the specific subscriber has downloaded the novel, the link is removed (to make it impossible to have the same stream present in two iTunes)?

Any other ideas?

I have read about subscribecast (http://www.subscribecast.com/) but I would like to control it myself. Any software solutions out there that is able to do the same or some of the functions?

[WyethDigital]

I can't answer all of your questions, but I can tell you that iTunes does not list paid podcasts in their directory. They just don't.

Now, that doesn't mean that people can't use iTunes as a podcatcher for subscribing to your podcasts. If the podcast requires an authenticated subscription (as in the case of a paid podcast), iTunes will ask the user for the info you require (ie -- user name and password), and will remember it.

How you set your podcast up to do this is pretty much out of my league. The answer I see most regarding this question is that something like that us set up on the server side of your hosting service, and since each one is different, there are different ways to set it up. Best bet on finding out how to do it is research your hosts knowledge base or help files.

Good luck!

Eric

I am planning to sell audiobooks and wonder if RSS feeds could be a solution...

So I was thinking about making a weekly novel podcast, 5-10 hours directly to iTunes each sunday so you have something to listen to during your daily commute. it would be $5 per novel in a subscription model.

All I need to actually do something about it is to know if the tech is available.

The sign up would be done in my own webshop and it would not involve anyone else at all.

Can I make the server ask for a username/password through iTunes?

Can I give a special RSS stream url to each subscriber that each points to the same file? Can it be done automatically so when the specific subscriber has downloaded the novel, the link is removed (to make it impossible to have the same stream present in two iTunes)?

Any other ideas?

I have read about subscribecast (http://www.subscribecast.com/) but I would like to control it myself. Any software solutions out there that is able to do the same or some of the functions?