The Podcast Awards site is seeing 12,000 hits a hour with 5 days to go in the nomination process the traffic is off the chart clearly exceeding last years traffic. [www.podcastawards.com]

Got a message form GoDaddy support this morning, that said hey your busting your smtp send limit, and we wonder what is going on with your box. I called to explain to them that were sending out nomination verification e-mails, they then told me that we have been hitting there upper limit. Well they raised the limit to 15,000 per day and we will see if that is enough.
If it’s like last year I will have to call them later in the week. As expected a lot of people are trying to game the system as it was last year. Duplicate IP submissions are rampant from IP’s that we don’t expect to see duplicate entries, they can submit all day long, but in the end those duplicate nominations all go to the trash can. The new logging is easy to see the abuse, along with the cross check mechanisms we enabled is flagging the bogus entries.
People are also invalidating there nominations by putting the same show in every category.
Overall though I can say I am pretty impressed by the quality of most of the submissions.

As expected we are starting to see a major surge in traffic for the Podcast Awards site and as the long holiday weekend wraps up here I expect the traffic to test the servers. [www.podcastawards.com]

Good luck to all the thousands of podcast that will be nominated over the next 15 days. [www.podcastawards.com]

Here is what is coming to the world on Friday

This year I wanted to kick it up a notch and refine the categories on the Podcast Awards website. The final list is posted and you will notice that we have listed a “Best Podcast Directory” and a “Best Mobile Podcast” a large number of people are now listening to Podcast on their mobile phones and many of the Podcasters are creating short format shows for those audiences.
You will also see that we have worked very hard to make sure that there is no duplication in categories and that we covered as wide a base as possible without adding another 10 categories to the listing. We are pretty excited about this years event and even though Silver sponsors have been slow to come on we found this to be the case last year that a bunch of companies jumped on board.
We did a lot of advertising last year, and when we went back to some of the same sites they were asking ridiculous amounts of money for short advertising runs, these were podcasting sites and even though we explained this was a non money maker for us and that everything goes back to the podcaster most sites were not willing to cut us a break. Some where asking for banner ad CPM rates as high as $25.00 per 1000 impressions, I wanted independent verification of their impression numbers and most sites would not allow us to run our own tracking code on the site, so we have opted to not run ads on many podcasting sites. If they want their sites nominated they are going to have to promote the event on their own. [www.podcastawards.com]

I am looking for a really awesome promo for the 2006 People’s Choice Podcast Awards if you submit one and we choose it to the the official promo for the network I will give your podcast or your company free advertising on the PodcastAwards.com website for an entire year. Entries need to be received by the 26th of June

A month or so ago Tim Bourquin of TNC Media asked me if I would be willing to be on a panel during Podcast Expo. He asked me to be on the Panel titled “Monetize with Ads and Sponsorship: Use An Advertising Service or Sell Your Own?” being that I have sold my own, and actually run a advertising service for over 500 podcasters this was a good fit. The panel is made up of some other firms that represent podcasters and should be a lively discussion as all of our models are a little different.

In a very short time RawVoice will be rolling out it’s evolutionary new podcasting website called Blubrry! Upon launch the new Podcasting site will be in need of National Advertisers to roll out media campaigns with a very high number of world wide established podcasts.
If you are a media company, and have properties looking to get in the podcast advertising space we will ask that you negotiate your campaign today. The RawVoice team has spent 6 months of planning, and invested 100’s of thousands of dollars to deploy the new site, and when it is launched in late June it will be unlike no other.
Contact marketing@rawvoice.com for advertising spots on all of their properties.
Podcasters there is little time left to get signed up for the pre-launch orientation!

Today the team at Podcast Connect refreshed the Podcast Awards site in preparation for the 2006 People’s Choice Podcast Awards with nominations scheduled to kick off July 1st. With a revised category list that we feel we is well positioned to bring maximum exposure to all the 2006 nominees and ultimate winners. We will honor the winning podcasters at a ceremony to be held during the Podcast and Portable Media Expo on Sept 29th.
I am happy to announce that all of the Major Sponsorships are sold with Financial Content Podcasting Site, StreetIQ.com being our Platinum Sponsor for the second consecutive year.
Our four Gold Sponsors this year include Podango.com, and their soon to be released Podcast Stations, IPSWITCH the World’s leader in file transfer with WS_FTP, Mobilcast they make listening to Podcast easy on your mobile phone powered by Melodeo, and PodcastReady.com podcast directory and MyPodder, the podcast download client you can use on a memory stick.
We have plenty of opportunities for companies to provide prizes, with some remaining opportunities to become Silver level sponsors or even sponsor a trophy for a particular category. The Podcast Awards site saw record traffic during last years event, and over 6.5 million page views have accumulated since the sites launch. We look forward to Podcasters and their Listener participation. With over $4500.00 in prizes given away in 2005 we are well on our way to being able to give away more than $10,000 in prizes this year
Have your audiences prepared for the July 1 start of the 15 day nomination window. [www.podcastawards.com]
Todd Cochrane
Founder Podcast Connect Inc
www.podcastconnect.com