TalkShoe released a post on May 29, 2008 where they explained why they were stopping their ad revenue sharing with producers of shows in TalkShoe because they were paying more in royalties than what they where getting back in advertising revenues. Fair to say that a decision like this is very well understood by me but there is a “but” that deserves to be explained.

Among the complaints I heard from people hosting shows in TalkShoe, the most common was that TalkShoe backdated this decision to the beginning of May leaving shows that were produced already without the money they earned. In my opinion this was a bad decision but I also understand their rush on stopping the money to escape out the door keeping it where it is needed the most.

I read the comments that people left on those shows about this situation and most of the followers agree with the producers of these shows in leaving TalkShoe immediately. In the other hand, you could read how some people where actually mad at the producers of these shows for the lack of loyalty to TalkShoe in this transition period.

I slept through this information and came up with my point of view that some of you may not like, I’m with TalkShoe on this one. I want to make sure that everyone understand that the only business decision that TalkShoe did that I don’t like is to backdate their profit sharing cancellation to the beginning of the month, other than that, I’m with TalkShoe.

All businesses, especially in the new media arena go through changes in the first couple of years that may seem drastic to someone from the outside but totally necessary to the survival of the entity. TalkShoe did great in explaining their side of the story with details that would usually be kept to the board of directors.

I’m an accountant by trade and the decision TalkShoe made is one of the hardest that any leader can take on a company to safeguard it assets and values to their shareholders. I can only imagine the losses they must have had to take desperate measures and come up with a decision like this one.

I have a little message to all parties involved, to TalkShoe, tell your board of directors and finance personnel to make better use of their accounting data before making decision that affect the company adversely. To all podcast shows producers, remember that we are all new here and this space is always changing, plus what about your audience, you could continue the show until another viable solution was found, not just cutting it cold for monetary reasons.

A little message to all the people that follow shows that left TalkShoe, don’t take this personal, remember that the producers of these shows have no other option but to react aggressively to changes that affect their ability to continue paying for bandwidth and other miscellaneous cost that take producing shows like this one.

If you feel like adding to this conversation feel free to leave your post here, if you want a more organized place to discuss the subject, use my forums at lwees.com/forum. Also, remember that you can find me on every major social media outlet, follow me on Twitter, or Facebook, thanks for reading.

I’m not going into names because the main point that I want to bring is to how you value your time, effort, blog, etc. Let’s say that you are selling your business and let’s imagine that you are a business owner that for health reasons you have to sell your business. It is you and only you the one that can determine the value of your business and this is a very important part of business decision.

You need gather a basic amount of information to determine if you are really selling yourself short or not. First of, find out how your industry is dealing with similar issues, it will be harder to get some input from guys like Leo Laporte from Twit, but other smaller entities in this medium may be able to share some thoughts with you. Find out what your base of costumers is, how loyal they are to you and your brand.

This is why keeping good metrics for your site is very important, knowing your visitors and every other stat that you can get will be useful to make important decisions. I would recommend that you use an external service for your stats count, metrics tools from your own site are often not as credible as those from external sources. Find out how to use tools like Feedburner, Google Analytics, among others to keep your numbers straight.

What have you put into your business? In the business world the assets of a company accounts for what the business is worth, by taking into consideration what you have put into your business will help in part to know what to charge for advertising. At the time of selling a business, a good and accurate asset count fills out the gap of knowing what your hardware and brand are worth. Other than thinking on the possibility of selling your business, knowing what your equipment cost helps you setting up prices for your ads or services by calculating the cost of replacing your equipment over time.

The last piece of advice has to do with income, how much income you need to survive doing just what you’re doing. If you have a day job and blog as a hobby then this is not as important as it sounds, but if you are thinking of blogging as a career then you should be aware of every aspect of income needed to survive. Having multiple sources of income is very important also, as it helps you make up for lost income from over venues.

You should do a simple exercise, add all your bills in one single month, then add some overhead for emergencies and savings. Multiply the result by twelve (representing the twelve months in a year) and divide the result by 2,080. The figure you see is your hourly rate if you where to charge by the hour to any client, of course this is a minimum number, you should always aim to double the figure.

For advertising the rule changes a little, calculate the total amount of advertising you do then split the figure taking into consideration space and time. The longer a single add runs the more expensive will be, also the bigger the size is the more you should charge. Another way of charging for space is by specifying whether multiple advertisers will share the space or it will have its own dedicated spot on your site.

Never make important decisions like starting your own business without consulting someone, talk to your spouse, parents, friends, or an accountant before making big decision that can affect your finances. Ultimately, you are the owner of your time and if you think that exchanging a product for advertising is the way to go, then go ahead and do so. After all, you could claim and what you did was just part of a test related to the industry you are talking about in your blog or podcast.

I’m passionate about technology, I love to talk about tech without boundaries. However, my background is in accounting, feel free to ask as many questions you like about the subject. Leave your comments or questions on this post or send me a direct message using the form provided in the Drop-a-line tab of my website. Thanks for reading.

I consider myself a media enthusiast, wherever is a piece of news about tech, you can find me reading and learning. Passing the knowledge to other is just a way of paying it forward, whenever I can help anyone that makes me feel good, as if I’m doing my part. That is the sense of community all podcaster and blogger have, well most of us. I’m planning a podcast but starting is one of the hardest things about it. Look forward to it, it will be center on Tech, not only Mac news, but PC too, after all this is a Windows world.

LuMen Creative Group has change a lot during this first year, right now I’m very happy with my design. The site is easy to navigate; the home page will have my blog postings information some ads, and other important information. In the Studio [L] tab, you can find out about my passion, photography, and video, which I consider my hobbies. Consider Studio [L] tab like a gallery of my media knowledge. The Geek Spot tab includes everything that I know about computer and websites, the plugins I use on my WordPress site, etc. The Drop-a-line tab has a contact form, a short about me section, and social media contact information about me.

My website is design so that anyone can follow me without any issues, you can use my RSS feed to subscribe to my website. That is it for now but if you have any ideas or request about subscription schemes, let me know. My readers can actively become part of what I consider my community; on each post, you can leave your comments. If you need to contact me directly, use the drop-a-line tab. My homepage is ultimately the hangout space; below the latest post list, you can find a search space find all the information that I have available on my site.

This post came as an idea propose by ProBlogger, hopefully you find this article interesting and subscribe to my feed. Find great content here and at any of the websites mentioned on every single one of my post. Enjoy your technology and thanks for reading.

Talking about feed, I’ve also heard some people asking what is a feed. Here is a short, short explanation, a website feed or podcast feed is some code that allows you to subscribe to a show or blog or any other web source using a reader. And, a reader could be a web based or software based for your computer, and it allows you to manage your feeds subscriptions.

Back to podcasts, there are numerous sources of podcast directories that allow you to subscribe to podcast for free and even manage them from the same interface. The most popular one right now is iTunes; there is a whole section in iTunes with podcast that are updated fairly frequently. You can find talk shows know as podcast and also vidcast or mediacast, which is the same idea but video based. There is even screen cast, which is a talk show like podcast but with frames of photos or screenshots used often for tutorials or for artist to show their work.

But you should know that iTunes is just one of the podcatchers available, there is also Yahoo Podcast, Podcast Alley, and Podcast Ready just mention a few. It is important to not that while the word podcast can make you think about an iPod you DO NOT need an iPod to listen to podcasts. Many Podcasters make their podcast available on many different formats to make sure that everyone is covered, whether you have an iPod or not. For vidcast and screencast you will need a device ready for video files or just watch then over your computer.

There are many classifications or categories for podcast, like Arts, Business, Comedy, Health, Music, and my favorite Technology. Since I like so much my Mac, I searched and found over 10 podcast about Macintosh, also there are a lot of podcast about Windows, video making, photography, you name it. I have learned a lot from this podcast so you can consider them educational, there are motivational and marketing podcast that are great too.

Whatever your interest are you can find a podcast about it, there is even news channel and important people like senators and other that have their own show too. So that was it, hopefully that summarizes it what a podcast is, if I got anything wrong, missed anything, you want to add something feel free to do that in the comments or email me for corrections at lumencreativegroup (at) gmail.com. Thanks.