Making Money from Content

Leo Laporte is a long time veteran of radio and TV broadcasting, and now owner of the TWiT (This Week in Tech) network which offers a cornucopia of online tech programs. I worked with Leo at TechTV (formerly known as ZDTV), the ill-fated 24-hour cable news network devoted to technology and the Internet that lasted only six years. I was the editorial supervisor on both of his tech help shows, “Call for Help” and “Screensavers” at TechTV. Leo was a great guy to work with and what we all knew back then was that  Leo was one of a kind. He was the only person who had massive tech knowledge, and years of broadcasting experience, plus was great on camera. While there are plenty of people on camera today that talk tech, there is no one that equals Leo’s breadth of relationships, knowledge, and experience.

I just finished 15 interviews for a series I produced called “Making Money from Podcasting.” A summary article is available on the Mashable site “9 Successful Techniques for Making Money from Podcasting.” One of the repeated comments in the article was “What about Leo Laporte?” And they’re right, I should have interviewed him, but there was a reason I didn’t. Given Leo’s experience, to some level he’s simply not repeatable. Yes, one can build the model that he’s built with TWiT and enjoy some success, but you still wouldn’t have the background connections and experience he has. I remember when Leo started TWiT, my comment was, “If Leo can’t figure out how to make money from podcasting, nobody will.”

Luckily Leo did figure out how to make money from podcasting. A lot of it. In fact, $1.5 million according to him during his speech at the Online News Association Conference in San Francisco on Friday, as reported by Pete Cashmore of Mashable. He produces TWiT with a staff of seven and a yearly budget of $350,000. Watch his presentation where he talks about the plans to launch CNET and what it would cost to launch a 24 hour cable network about technology. Leo did some research and at the time he came back to say it would cost $50 million a year and you would lose money for the first five years. He also pointed that CNN didn’t make any money until ten years. So using that logic, you’d spend somewhere between $250 to $500 million dollars before you’d see any profit. At the tome, CNET chose against it. Quite a risk back then. And it’s a risk that doesn’t exist today.

Watch this video (about 40 minutes) where Leo goes through his whole history of “The Site,” ZDTV, and now TWiT. Specifically, he talks about how you can make money finding niche audiences that are passionate. It’s rather fascinating.