Fruitcast is a new service that is not only great for advertisers, but podcasters as well. The founder of Fruitcast, James Archer of Forty Media, saw a problem when it comes to making money with podcasting. You cannot simply connect Google AdSense to a podcast and make money from it, it just doesn’t happen. He came to realize that there just weren’t any services offering “advertising made simple” for podcasters, so he had set out to create his own. I had a talk with James about Fruitcast and how it works on both ends, the podcasters and the advertisers. Here is what I have gathered and you can also see what TechCrunch has mention.

Podcasters can signup to the service for free, add your podcast to the podcast directory, and then simply change your feed to point to your new Fruitcast RSS feed. Fruitcast will then stick a small 10 to 15 second long advertisement message that is simple and unobtrusive to the beginning or end of your podcast (possibly both). When your podcast gets listened to, you will then earn money from an advertiser that has been accepted to place an ad on your podcast. The amount that you will get is determined by the advertisers bidding on your podcast with a starting bid of $0.10 cents. So far, I have seen ranges from $0.10 cents to $0.25 cents per download, which is an excellent range considering that if you have nice amount of listeners, you can generate a steady cashflow. Fruitcast gives the following as an example, “$0.25 per episode × 500 listeners × 10 episodes per month × 12 months in a year = $15,000 annually.” That is an excellent amount and it is even better knowing that you earn it from your podcasts.

Advertisers: Podcasting is growing fast and is full of daily listeners. Imagine knowing that when someone plays a podcast, the first thing they are to hear is a 15 second message about your company. Not only knowing that it is on a podcast, but with Fruitcasts targeted advertising, you will know that your company is being heard by a podcast that relates to your company. You have the ability to actually find a podcast and bid for your ad placement on the price per download. The way it works, and from what I got from James, is that advertisers will be placed in an advertising queue for each podcast. When you create an advertisement, you will be asked for your maximum daily budget for that ad. When you make a bid on a podcast and you are the highest bidder, you will be the first advertisement to run until your maximum daily budget is reached. Once the budget is reached, the next advertiser (the lower bidder) will then get its turn for their ad to run, and so on.

When you signup as a podcaster, your podcast will get added to the Fruitcast podcast directory. You will see the podcast categories listed on the left and on the right you will see the most popular (most download) podcasts. You are able to choose what category your podcast gets placed in when you add your podcast and you will be listed using the title and description (about the size of a small paragraph) that you provided. When your name is clicked, it will then direct the user to your details page.

Your details page is where things start to get interesting. You will see basic information about the podcast and a url to the Podcasts RSS feed, provided by Fruitcast. You will also see a listing of the episodes that the podcaster has published along with information for the size, the date it was published, and how many downloads each episode has received. But even more interestingly is that if you are signed up to Fruitcast and you are an advertiser, it will tell you if you have an advertisement that is approved to play on the podcast. If your advertisements is approved to advertise on the podcast, then you will be able to place a bid on it in the amount of price per download. As mentioned earlier, there can be multiple bidders and the advertiser with the highest bid will get placed on the top of the advertisement queue.

Now that you have a basic understanding of Fruitcast works, signup and start podcasting or advertising! Fruitcast makes it extremely simple. When you login and go to the manage page, it will ask if you want to add a podcast or add an advertisement. Adding your podcast is as simple as filling in a form with the title, category, description, and your RSS feed to the podcast itself. Fruitcast will then use your RSS feed and turn it into its own and provide you with the new RSS feed that you use to earn money. If you have signed up to Fruitcast to advertise, you will fill out a form asking for your ad’s name, audio file, description, and the maximum daily budget. What else is great is that if you do not have an audio file for your podcast, you can contact Fruitcast and they will get you intouch with a voice over artist that will produce a professionally recorded advertisement. Once you submit, you just wait for your ad to get approved and your ready to get bidding.

Fruitcast looks great for both podcasters and advertisers. It makes it extremely easy for anyone to get started and even provides tips on how to start podcasting. It is about time that there is a good service that podcasters can go to for making some cash out of what they love to do.

If you were wondering, the beautiful design for Fruitcast was designed by Joseph Wain of Pen & Think. And don’t forget about they company behind Fruitcast, Forty Media, who has done an excellent job.

View Fruitcast: Making podcasting even sweeter.