To your model, I’d suggest one additional option: For the full text RSS feed, the user might have the option to either pay $1, or get the full text RSS feed for free with ads in the feed. Users who don’t want to pay and don’t want ads would be relegated to using the partial text RSS feed.

John
Co-Founder
PimpMyNews.com

iTunes. There are thousands of podcasts. All free. If iTunes would start offering the ability to offer not only free podcasts, but also, for pay podcasts, just like their music, then I think it might work, but until iTunes does this, the #1 podcast directory in the planet, no one is going to really be able to charge for their shows.

Believe me, I want to do that. I have 3 pretty popular podcast (check out http://www.TheDigitalMediaDude.com), on iTunes Top 100, and I put out a feeler about people paying and not one bite.

Sponsorships are a different thing. Companies are willing to sponsor my podcast because my audience is their key demographics. But charging the customer directly, no one (for now at least) wants to pay because everything is free in iTunes.

I think, for now, the best way to monetize your podcast is through sponsorships. But that’s hard too. You have to do a lot (and daily) of business development to get them and you have to show stats to them.

I think the future of podcasting is the same as radio / tv. Free model, with lots of advertising / sponsorships. Unless, we come up with a “cable tv” or satellite tv like model where a companies start carrying a bunch of channels and charge a monthly fee for packages (kind of like your article states…but more enhanced) and then people sign up for these packages, but then, there goes the entire point of having everyone podcast, now only the “few lucky ones” that get picked up by a network or company get to be heard. And be careful if you are wishing for that, because your podcast may be the one not picked up.

It’s not as easy as one may think. I’m sure it will be worked out, but while you have iTunes, YouTube and the gazillion of websites that offer free podcasts / videos, very few people will pay for now.

Cheers!
- Marcelo
The Digital Media Dude
http://www.TheDigitalMediaDude.com/

I have been saying for a while now that while it is easy to call for free music, accepting free music as the norm would set a dangerous precedent for all digital content. The mere fact that content can be easily copied and shared does not make it right to do so. The people who create this content deserve to be compensated for their efforts. This is true for bloggers, artists, authors and all other creative types.

Whether you can get away with charging the user is another story- doubt if I would pay for a feed to a text blog unless it had timely competitive info and I could then, for instance, consider it a business expense; I think someone could make a killing here if they made deals with truly high value added content creators, and of course physically collected, controlled, and distributed the feeds.

Audio and video (entertainment) feeds are a whole different story though- I already subscribe to a few (yearly fee) for the convenience factor (pods) and so I don’t have to listen to/watch commercials.

With all that said, though, if I could find a way to monetize my feeds (audio and video) though, I’d interested- if for no other reason than to cover costs (cause I just like creating the audio/video anyhow).

However, not all feeds are worth 50 cents. Some are just worth 10 cents.

The posts from the ‘hubs’ you mentioned get repeated in social aggregators, other blogs and everywhere else you can imagine. Would that be forbidden in your monetization idea? Would blog content be strictly copyrighted?

I would just stop reading these blogs. Not only I find it immoral to find a marketing plan for everything, but I also find many (and constantly increasing) not-so-popular blogs really interesting – so I would just stay with them.

You would say that these Problogs are setting the course of the social web and if I wouldn’t subscribe, I would probably stay out of the current news (I would get them a week later, or something like that).
Well if the social web would take such a course, then I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.

Sorry for the extensive comment, but I believe some things should stay free (with or without ads).

I could see another incentive being exklusive feed content or maybe even “published in feed before published online” content etc.

I made a personal change to my RSS habits recently. I now click through to the articles that interest me – never reading in my actual feed reader (I switch between NetNewsWire and Newslife on my mac). This is mainly a moral decision, so I can see ads on the blog just in case one appeals.

My main worry about quality blogs are them disappearing because of lacking of finance, not that I might have to shell out a measly $1 to read it’s RSS.

Another problem with the idea is the RSS technology does not support athentication – is just a url i can access from anywhere in the web. There is no subscriber ids, address, verification, etc. This makes it even harder to bring your idea to reality – unless you impose your users to use spefic RSS readers that do have support for authentication.

It’s an interesting concept, and I’ve long wondered about better monetization of feeds (we offer a full rss feed) since a lot of people never ever click through.

At last100 we run some ads in our feed, but alas, advertisers don’t treat feeds the same as page views, so the revenue they generate hardly registers.

Your point about the different reasons / models of blogging is important. Not all bloggers (in fact very few) are trying to make a living through their writing. If you are — and try to blog full time or employ a team of writers — these issues matter. If not, they don’t.

- Steve, editor and co-founder last100.com