In August of this year Wizzard Media, parent of long time podcast hosting company Libsyn, started looking for alternative revenue sources. They started purchasing and releasing iPhone applications such as Word Party, Dietician and Yo Mama which seemed very confusing to what I saw as their primary business… podcast hosting and distribution. But they surprised us again by releasing 15 new iPhone applications for specific podcasts on their network. I can only believe that they used the Yo Mama application to learn how to build and sell iPhone applications.
I had read the press release about the new podcast specific iPhone applications being released, but I did not rush out to see what the applications looked like or how they worked. But according to new information, the engagement of the show audiences has launched a few of the applications to the top 100 sales list for iPhone applications!
The Tii iPhone App (show profile), according to Libsyn, has been “available in the App store August 15th, has been purchased by 9% of the show’s monthly unique podcast audience in the first 11 days, rising to a high of number 19 in the top 100 list of all paid Productivity Apps.” That is actually really impressive considering there are over 65,000 iPhone applications with over 1.5 Billion downloads. So props to Wizzard Media for helping podcasters find another way to make money, and for building cool new features that people will actually use.