That's not pr0n advice. It's a production requirement.

When you set out, pick a subject that you're passionate about. Something you can invest yourself -- not just your money -- in for a long time. You have to do something you believe in because you're going to be doing it for a long time without anybody caring about it but you. When you start out, you're going to be discouraged when your first episodes only get a few listeners -- maybe none. If you can stay at it, stay passionate, keep the faith that what you're doing does, in fact, have an audience, then you'll eventually reach them. It'll take work and time and you will need to SOUND like you believe in what you're doing.

More concrete advice:

1. Never refer to your audience as "both of you" -- no matter how small the audience is, even as a joke. It worked the first 100 times or so. It's an old gag now. Podcasts have no shelf life. Somebody might download and listen to it 5 years from now. Don't make them think that nobody else in the world cares. They'll stop.

2. Avoid temporal tags. Your cute topical banter about Tiger Woods will be old and stale by Christmas 2009. It'll sound banal and stupid by Christmas 2010. Keep the "no shelf life" idea in mind as you're producing it. If you are producing stuff that has a shelf life, consider restructuring your content.

3. I said this before, but "keep going." It may take you 6 months to break 100 listeners. It may take you a year. If you stop after 3 months because you're getting no feedback, then your listenership will be zero.

And that's why passion first. If you care about it, chances are good that somebody else will, too. And while you're busy being passionate about what you're producing, it won't matter that you're talking to yourself for the first six months. Each episode in the can becomes a time capsule of awesome for some future listener to find and marvel over.

Well put! My podcast on electric cars started as a way for me to learn more about EVs. We did a DAILY podcast for the first YEAR without a penny in revenue. Then, we got our first sponsor, then our second... without the passion for the podcast, I would have quit in frustration after month 1.

Great advice here. The 1 thing we agreed on when doing our podcast, was that we would have FUN doing it. Even if we get 2 years in and our listener numbers havent increased, we can still say that these were some of the best times we've had.

I agree, except that I think there is a place for podcasts with time-sensitive information. Some of my favorites are ones that do weekly tech news stories. Granted, that's a special type of podcast. If I miss a few weeks, there's a good chance I'll never go back and listen to the older ones I missed, because I usually want the latest news.

But I think this is a major genre that can build listenership fast. You just have to commit to a schedule that people can rely on.

I agree. There's definitely a place for the time sensitive issues.

People who commit to do them have to be passionate about them, tho. Otherwise, they podfade before they ever get an audience to sustain them.