A couple of weeks ago a good friend of mine asked me the question, "What's going on with podcasting?" My reply was something like, "How the hell do I know?" He was a bit surprised because he knows that I've been deep into the podcasting game since early in 2005. Truth be told I still keep an eye on things in the space but i'm not the oracle of podcasting information that I once was.

I decided that my friend's question was worth answering but didn't give myself any time frame for looking around and posting. I've got lots of other stuff going on including helping my wife out with our second child and my first semester of graduate school which has taken more of my leisure time than I expected it would. In any case I was doing some research and saw a tidbit today that really got my Irish (well Italian actually) up.

I cruised over to the Blogger and Podcaster Magazine website to see if they were still alive and I was greeted with the following banner image.

My first reaction was something akin to, "Oh jeez, what's this?" It's unfortunate that I become accustomed to dealing with snake oil salesmen when it comes to new media but sorry there are a lot of them out there. Here I see a graphic that in a couple of thousand pixels promises full-time income, health care and company stock. It looked fishy to me so I delved in further to see what the deal is.

Blogger & Podcaster have teamed up with three (or maybe two) other social media type websites to offer what I mentioned above plus promotion plus "discounts and freebies." I look at the companies involved and not one strikes me as very successful at what they are doing. Podcast Pickle has been around a long time as a directory and forum but has not seen any appreciable growth. Fuel My Blog pitches itself as a "spam free community exclusive to bloggers." I had never heard of it myself by their blog has 333 Feedburner readers so who am I to judge?

Then there's Social Rank. I hope you have better luck with their site link than I did because it went to an error page for me. I tried the Social Rank blog too. No luck there either since the blog has been deleted. That could be a problem since the Social Rank "search engine" is supposed to help serve up promotion "to millions each month." That's not the worst of it. Judging by the Google Trends numbers at left this band of merry bloggers and podcasters can't even draw tens of thousands of people each month to their sites. Perhaps they should ask Podcast Alley, which has more traffic than the other sites but is not part of the team.

The thing begins to smell more fishy that the old Fulton Fish Market at 4AM. I decided to Google the B&P Media Network's "BPMN's First Member - Self-Made Billionaire Bill Bartmann." According to Fortune Magazine Bill Bartmann was a billionaire on paper, which means he wasn't a billionaire. He's really a guy who's a good salesman that seems to excel at building paper assets and then losing them all.  Now he's a motivational speaker type looking to piece a career back together.

Evidently Bill is going to lead the new media revolution and help all of us little bloggers and podcasters rise up to earn a six-figure income, have health care and even a shot at being a billionaire ourselves. In fact BPMN's pitch for their venture promises to solve all of the problems for the little guys and gals in new media. They'll help you build an audience. They'll help you make money. They'll help you get health care. They'll get you equity. They'll get you access to mainstream media. The list of promises goes on and on.

I've said it to people in the podcasting and new media space many times before and I'll say it again. Stay the heck away from things like this. Joining "networks" does nothing for you. The multi-level-marketing hucksters are simply making another run at the new media space. They want you to go to work for them, bring them your audience and help their failing websites and publications to survive. They're not going to get you health care, they're not going to make you rich via stock in a company worth nothing. You can do those things for yourself. Whether or not you can do it with blogging and podcasting remains to be seen.

What these folks will do is distract you from building something by yourself and for yourself. I've seen all the promises before. Remember Quit Your Day Job from Podshow? Life and business does not work the way these people say it does. You work hard for yourself. You take the time to learn. You try to do better. It's hard. Nothing's guaranteed. These people trying to sell "success" as a secret system with a code just waiting to be cracked are full of it. And that's that.