Heeeeere Comes the Podcast Re (Re) Launch!

First, let me say a resounding WHEW! On Friday, we opened the doors on the new podcast store, and brought CraftyPod 2.0 back into production. It was a staggering number of details to settle out, but I do believe we’re back in business again!

So, here’s how the whole thing will work going forward…

Free Shows and Sponsors

After this discussion we had, it was clear that there had to be some mechanism for making some of the new podcasts free. But I needed a way to cover their production costs. So I’ve decided to open a sponsor program for the podcast.

Any show that has a sponsor will be made available for free for its first 30 days, and it’ll have a sponsor message it. (You can hear a sample in the new show on The Art of Letter Writing, which was very kindly sponsored by the lovely folks at Swap-bot.)

If I can find two sponsors each month, then both of the month’s shows will have a freely-available period. If not, then I’ll try to make at least one show per month available as a sponsored free show. All the free shows will be available on iTunes as well as here on the blog, like in the olden days. :-)

Here’s what I’m hoping: that every business that sponsors a CraftyPod show you enjoy will then get a little love from you. After all, you got to enjoy the show because they paid for its production costs. This is an ecosystem! Sponsors, in this case, aren’t for ignoring – they’re for appreciating, visiting, and interacting with.

(At the end of the free 30 days, you can still buy a copy of each new show over at the podcast store.)

Subscribing to the Podcast

Now, if you want to become a subscriber, there are three new subscription packages to choose from: 3 months, 6 months, or one year. Subscribers get two ad-free shows delivered to them each month. The new podcast store will create you a personal Library page, where you can stream or download your shows, and get all the show notes in PDF form.

All these spiffy new options are made possible by K, who spent many hours programming all of this, and is quite seriously the best partner of all time. He is the Dude Who Saved CraftyPod 2.0.

What about the archives, then?

After we all had this other discussion, I decided to keep most of the old CraftyPod archive intact. (Thank you so much for your input there! Very helpful.)

I deleted just a handful of old shows, and it was only the ones about projects that don’t exist anymore.

The rest of the old archive, I divided into two groups. There’s a small group that I’ll leave available for free here on the blog and iTunes all the time. (Yup, every show I’ve done with my Mom is included in this group!)

The larger group (about 100 shows) will be accessible to CraftyPod subscribers. You’ll be able to stream or download those from your personal Library page on the spiffy new podcast store.

Many of you are past guests, and I hope you won’t be upset to find the show you were in in one of these groups or the other. Believe me, there was absolutely no way to go about this and make everyone 100% happy. I did my best to have a varied representation of the show in both groups. If you were in a past show that’s now available to subscribers, and you don’t have a copy of it downloaded, please email me and I’ll be glad to get one to you.

(All of the old podcast show notes and all your links are still here on the blog. Use the search box at the top of the page, or click the Podcast category in the sidebar.)

If you were an iAmplify subscriber…

Hopefully you received my email several weeks ago about shutting down your iAmplify subscription. If not, you can download this PDF, which has all the details.

I will not be doing business with iAmplify again, and all my content has been removed from that site. If you subcribed but didn’t get your shows downloaded in time, please email me and I’ll be glad to help.

Again, I am so sorry about any inconvenience this creates for you. If I could go back in time, I would never make the mistake of doing business with iAmplity.

OK… I think that’s all the news for now. There are a lot of moving parts to this, so if you have any questions or concerns at all, please feel free to comment away.

‘Tis so freaking good to be back, I’m dancing in my chair right now! I have a lot of great shows in development and I can’t wait to share them with you! Thank you so much for all your kindness during this transition.