Luckily for us at Freedom Podcasting, we have a podcast that we use like a lab monkey. It’s called the Love Affair Travel and since our CEO is the host of the show, he pretty much lets us do whatever we want to test out new podcasting platforms.
What is AudioMetric.io?
Essentially, they are a hosting company that pays you to host your podcast. They sell sponsor messages to people that will be automatically entered into the beginning of your show.
We like to run a frugal operation and hosting is a monthly cost that we’re always trying to get down for clients. Even if it is as low as $15 a month, it’s an expense that could be minimized. If you could turn that expense into a profit center, everyone wins… right?
Plan:
We will host the Love Affair Travel show starting now on AudioMetrics. We already have a good idea for the shows growth so we can test their honesty in reporting, the revenue potential and the quality of the fit for the advertisements they add to the show.
SWOT of AudioMetric.io
Strengths:
- Simplify the monetization of podcasts
- Simple uploading and media URL sourcing
Weaknesses:
- Inauthentic advertisements
- Poor hosting capacity
Opportunities:
- Cut down on hosting costs
- Easily monetize a show with a single entrance point
- Potential to outsource the whole monetizing side of a podcast
Threats:
- Loss of listeners due to inauthentic ads or poor hosting quality
- Lack of control over what is advertised
- Podcast platforms with existing ad deals don’t allow feeds that include AudioMetric.io media URLs
(Update on Error, it resolved it’s self quickly.)
Another one for Episode 9 with Erik Snare
(Update on Error: This was user error, we had a broken link so the transition process didn’t work. All fixed now.)
Afternoon update: The whole Love Affair Travel podcast is uploaded to their hosting servers and has already served 100 downloads today. Everything seems to be working well. Will publish a new show tomorrow so the surge in downloads will be a great test to see the robustness of their servers.
Here is a screen shot of the ads delivered:
So it’s great. We’re delivering ads. The problem is, I don’t know what that means. I listened through a podcast and I found that I couldn’t pinpoint an advertisement. I’m guessing that they aren’t distributing them at the moment. It seems like a StartUp company to me and I would guess that they are still working out the kinks. Of course, the fact that this month hasn’t accrued a cent in the account is clear indication that not much is happening…
There are no longer ads embedded into the podcasts. This could be that my show doesn’t have the download volume enough to warrant advertisers. I don’t really know.
Also, ID3 tagging is removed when hosting with Audiometric so your show will look unprofessionally tagged as they alter the file to serve ads.
I’ve reached out to the team to see how things are going, but right now I feel like they have either lost steam, or are working hard to find a solution.
The money is trivial, but my account was reset from the $3 to $1.24 so it seems that the numbers either didn’t reflect actual ad buy, or the results were simply too trivial to warrant distributions.
I did hear some life insurance ads on my show a few months back. The ads were added in at the beginning of the show. This means that they clearly had proof of concept at some point.
From the image to the right, you can see that their platform isn’t working as an ad distribution system for me right now.
I do not recommend using this service right now as a hosting solution for your podcast. This is still enjoyable to me because I am heavily in the business of podcasting and the testing is fun. But if you’re not on the cutting edge, go with someone else like SoundCloud or Libsyn.
Ian,
This article is great. I was contacted by audiometric.io about hosting our podcasts with them. I’m skeptical, it seems too good to be true. One of the items you list above as a weakness is “poor hosting capacity”. I’m not quite sure what you mean, but it’s something that sounds problematic. Could you elaborate on this?
Also, the statistics look really weak. Have they improved? Will they?
I have a call with Jason, hopefully tonight. The idea of free hosting sounds great, and I don’t need deep deep statistics. I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything that’s a huge downside.
Thanks!
Matt Quiett
Hey Matt,
Thank you for the kind words. We really do appreciate them. 🙂
“Poor hosting quality” was part of a SWOT analysis in which you project potential problems. I’ve found that the hosting with AudioMetric has been fine. I’m not noticing any delays in serving the shows so I think we’re all good in that regard.
They are improving slowly. A week or two ago they added stats. The dashboard is being updated on an almost monthly basis. I think there is room for the service to become really great, but they have a while to go.
At the time of writing this, I don’t recommend it. The stats are just new so I don’t have a good grip on what is going on with the Love Affair Travel Podcast. Also, I don’t really know what sort of advertisements are going up on the show.
Jason is great. They are based in Australia so I suggest being open to interesting timing. 😀
With appreciation,
Ian
Do you have an update now that it’s been a few months?
Hey Ben – They’ve been making strides. If you listen to Love Affair Travel podcast you can hear what it sounds like to have the automatically generated advertisements on there. I’ll keep updating the blog post as we go. Thank you for the comment.
Things are getting very quiet, and if you notice new podcasters can’t sign up any more. The advertisers that were there (fake?) are no longer there and they are not promoting their own service (so you are no longer getting income. I’ve sent some messages but have not heard back. Also, they updated their interface but gave no insights on how to use it. I’m getting worried.
Agreed Dave. The hosting still seems to work though it appears the advertisers are gone. Perhaps just for my show. I don’t know.
Their idea was working. I heard AudioMetric ads as well as Life Insurance Ads audibly inserted into the first 20 seconds of my Love Affair Travel podcast.
I’m not seeing any revenue.
I don’t recommend this as a way to publish a show, but I feel like it’s still worth it for me because I like being in the know to podcasting stuff.
Thank you for the comment by the way.