My first reaction was well, that sucks. I was wrong.
I think this is an excellent business model for Mixergy. As a fan of Mixergy, I am happy that I have a weeks time to listen to the interviews before they go behind the subscription wall. Andrew, keep up the good work.
I think the model is sound as well but the prices are a bit expensive and its all-or-nothing. I'd love some sort of micropayment option per interview. At his cheapest option, $25/month, that's either $300/year for interviews, which is over double the price of my highest paid subscription to anything right now (the Economist).
They're arguably worth it, but I can see folks with tight budgets not willing to pay that much for any content.
Also with so many good startup eyeballs I am curious if the sponsorship angle was considered, specifically from service providers. There seem to be a ton of lawyers & other products that would kill for eyeballs and ears in Andrew's market.
I'm a big fan as well but I still find this a bit startling. But I do appreciate as well the fact that you can watch interviews free for the first week. That is plenty -- he could have cranked that down to one day and personally I'd still find my way over there to watch/listen.
Well I thought the transcripts were edited with community help. If that were true, and if I spent some time editing something I thought was going to be free and then the site owner took it behind a paywall I'd consider it a slimy move, but that's just me.
(So, I just archived all the available transcripts that I was interested in. Who knows when those go behind a paywall?)
Today must be April 1st. 25 dollars a month seems a wee bit overpriced. I wonder if YouTube could get away with charging that much for the millions of videos that they offer. In any case, at $25 per month, I would love to learn what percentage of free users convert to paying customers. With 1% being a typical conversion rate for Freemium, I'd be surprised if they even got one tenth of one percent to convert.
I definitely like the model, but I think $25/mo is too high, especially when compared to other sources of information. The $50 and $100 options made me chuckle a bit (sorry).
The Economist print edition comes at $15/mo. 30 days of New York Times, delivered in print is $29/mo. That's a lot more content than Mixergy. And you have similar similar sites like BigThink and the Stanford ECorner podcasts, which are free.
If you convince the Times to ditch the lifestyle coverage of things of importance to Upper East Side liberals and focus on interviewing Wufoo about conversion rates, I'll buy a subscription to them, too. Until you do that it strikes me like you're comparing a Ruby library and a chia pet.
I like the $1 per video idea. It sounds like an absolute steal. Another possible experiment is to have a monthly subscription fee for companies to have their name/logo show up on the pages of relevant videos. The minimum fee could be $5/month for companies (so barrier to entry is low), but precedence would be given to companies paying the most for particular pages.
...and Forrester research reports are $800 for a 500-word piece. You're comparing apples to oranges. Economist can charge that low because it has the mass market. If you only subscribed to niche journals, you'd be paying much higher. Andrew's is a niche.
This thread just confirms that HN are just wantrepreneurs. If you were a real entrepreneur, you would be running to pay for the education that Mixergy provides. This is an absolute bargain because learning from Mixergy will greatly enhance you chances at that dream exit. $25/month won't seem like much when you're the next Zuckerberg or Bezos or Gates. But it takes money to make money, and you're not going to become a great entrepreneur by avoiding resources like Mixergy.
I like mixergy and think that the interviews are great. But I still believe that this monetisation strategy is a strategic mistake. The reasons are these:
1. I've seen a few of these interviews being done online by others. This game is a winner take all game. The most popular such site is going to have everyone wanting to be interviewed there, and everyone will watch it because popular names are interviewed then. So it's important in this niche to become the dominant force and stay there, giving competitors no chance. Putting a paywall is going to lead to fewer incoming links and less traffic on old videos, slowing down growth, and giving others a chance to catch up
2. The payment model is unusual for video. People want to purchase a video and have it on their drives. They don't want to have to watch hundreds of videos in a single month.
3. The price is high. $25 for a month of access to video is a bit high, in my uninformed estimation
I think that a better strategy would be a focus on growth and improving the quality of the people, and focusing on breaking more into the mainstream. This particular move is going to slow down growth, and I think it may be difficult to get certain names on when they know that they are doing the interview for someone elses profit.
And my final argument is this: This model shuts down the possibilities of further experimentation. When the videos are closed, it's not possible to test other ways of monetising the traffic arriving at the videos.
I agree - the business model seems a bit forced. I think your first point will translate into quite a reduced maximum popularity. I would have tried the opposite approach and gave sites some easy way to embed clips of the interviews on their sites/blogs.
People are used to paying for live video (PPV). People are used to paying to download content. They aren't used to paying for old content.
This seems to be like giving away your new hits for free and charging for the long tail - not sure that is ideal.
I agree that an opposite model would probably have worked out better -- charge for early access instead of archive access. Those who appreciate and anticipate new installments can pay to receive them sooner, [past] interviewees are perhaps less disturbed because the content will ultimately become free, and users searching the web for things like "Paul Graham interview" or similar would be able to find the content and get hooked, thereby creating new paying customers.
It'd really be interesting to hear Mixergy's thought process on this, though.
The example which most immediately pops to my head is for subscription businesses: watch the Wufoo interview. They drop three important bits of information in fifteen seconds: the most popular plan is the middle one, the highest grossing plan is the most expensive one, and Andrew adds that another business (CrazyEgg) similarly found that concentrating on the needs of the higher end of the market was much better ROI on time than concentrating on the $9 / mo customers.
People have burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars and learned less about pricing than was included in those 15 seconds.
Andrew draws out gems with sufficient regularity (signal to noise ratio: quite high) that I'm fairly confident I'll grab at least one idea and improve my business as a result of it.
On the subject of price points: I wonder what the above says about basing one's pricing decisions on the opinions of people who think $25 is a lot of money.
Ya, me too patrick. If you put even a fraction of the information into practice, you're bound to have some interesting experiment of which, many will likely pay big dividends. At least that is how I see it.
What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand)
Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I love to listen Paul Graham talk on stuff but none of the interviews are actually ground-breaking or great, it's just good time.
That's why I doubt if anyone would actually bother to subscribe.
Give it 3 months then I'm sure he'll change the model.
I was just going to post the same thing. If I was an interviewee, I'd be kind of pissed I'd given my time for free, just so someone else could throw it behind a paywall.
I am tempted to start contacting some of his old interviewees and ask them what they think about it. I'll ask them to contact him if they are pissed by the fact that they were tricked into giving their free time. Many of them precisely said in those interviews that they were only doing it to give back to the community.
Information should always be free to the community and Mixergy should concentrate on monetization with different ways rather than subscription model....
Warn Andrew ahead of time? You've got be joking. Why doesn't Andrew pay a fee to those he's interviewed already now, in this bait and switch interwebz journalism
Andrew has interviewed me twice for Mixergy. I don't begrudge him for making money off of his full-time job - I get promo for my projects through his platform.
If you were one of his interviewees, you'd understand that hard work must be rewarded. Business models change with time. Every successful entrepreneur (including his interviewees) knows that. I highly doubt they'll perceive this as bait & switch.
"And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I love to listen Paul Graham talk on stuff but none of the interviews are actually ground-breaking or great, it's just good time."
Calling the interviews chit-chat is nothing short of demeaning the effort of both Andrew and the interviewee. I would argue that the interviews are great and do teach us a lot. Often as part of the interview other parts such as history are covered, but that again adds to the whole experience.
Finally, the reason I believe this will not be a blockbuster, is because of two reasons.
1. On the net people rarely pay for content.
2. Scrappy entrepreneurs by my guess, are not the ones who would fall in the category of "paying people".
There is nothing wrong with chit-chat :) Actually I do love chit-chat.
I didn't mean bad, what I meant they are conversational interviews, they are not focused on teaching you something. The very nature of these interviews is the reason that I wouldn't pay money for them.
I'd pay for MIT Startup Bootcamp videos because they are solely focus on something which directly potentially almost instantly will effect my business (if the topic is relevant). In these interview I'm lucky if I can pick up 2-3 things by pure luck.
So again I don't mean bad, I think they are really nice, but it's like renting a video from a video store. Not great for business but great to watch and have a good time.
However if I'm going to pay I expect the get some more actionable outcome from it.
These interviews are pretty dense with information if you are ready to pay attention and take action. These are people who have "done it" and are teaching you what worked for them.
Yes, spoon feeding days are over. And yes, that is a good thing.
I don't agree that these interviews are just chit-chat and feel that I have learned a lot from these interviews. I have subscribed on these nice (free) interviews for 9 months now and listen to them many times a week. Paying the subscription fee is a great way to pay Andrew back for all the hard work he has put into these interviews.
It is probably fine if he is giving a portion to the people he interviewed. People go to mixergy to hear from them. It does also push people to check out interviews before they go behind the pay wall.
However, I think this is a really bad business move, second only to using a fake name. It creates distrust and devalues the community aspect of the product.
A really bad business move is doing something that isn't sustainable. Given that giving his interviews away for free isn't sustainable, putting his content behind a paywall is probably an experiment to see if he can build a sustainable business.
Good point. The interviewees had an understanding that this content will be freely available and now that's changed. Then again, maybe he told them the content will be free but there is a possibility that one day it will not be free anymore. Either way, the better approach would have been to leave existing interviews freely available and start applying the pricing structure from the present onward.
On another note, I'm glad to see Andrew turning Mixergy into a real business that can be self-sustaining. As entrepreneurs, we should all be able to agree with that.
I hope this won't sound wrong, this is mixergy's about page:
...I used credit cards and ingenuity to create a $30+ mil / year (in sales) internet business...
Sorry but after creating a $30+ mil annual sale company trying to sell videos for 25$ to max. 1000 people in a lifetime is not a great step forward for an entrepreneur.
Maybe he has a grand master plan to make more 30+$ mils with mixergy ....
To extend on what you said. I think the price points are wrong. I'm not sure the interviews are strong enough to justify at minimum a $25/month recurring subscription. I would potentially pay a few dollars (prob not though). If nothing else I would rather pay as I go ($1 a video or something) as opposed to the subscription. What it comes down to is that a lot of these people are being interviewed elsewhere that can be consumed for free. Without offering something different I'm not sur ehte price point is justified...
I've tested many prices for my content products at iwillteachyoutoberich.com/scroogestrategy.com/earn1k.com.
Andrew, based on my experience and data from the content/marketing industry, I'd encourage you to charge more -- at a MINIMUM $47/month, probably $97/month or even $297/month.
If you want to chat about why I suggest this, and some of my internal metrics, please email me.
Sounds like a good interview brewing. I agree though I don't have the numbers to back up my position yet. Would love to hear the lessons learned from your experience.
The issue I see here though is that people will pay a lot of money if they think that they can get really high value out of your videos, such as you claiming to have a short cut to millions.
Andrews videos are useful but they aren't your short cut to millions, start ups are still going to be a lot of work and a big gamble no matter how much wisdom you have gained from people on the subject.
If that works, he'll make more profit at the expense of the community.
I'm sure there are plenty of upstarts who find these videos extremenly valuable, but aren't willing or able to pay hundreds of dollars. I don't think it's in Andrew's goals to do that.
When I found out about this I emailed Andrew. This is what i wrote:
I noticed recently that you've started charging for your older interviews. Good on you, I hope you do good business.
I have one idea you might want to consider: Sell short edited versions of the interviews. This is the opposite of what most online ebook and tutorial video sellers do. They show some short teasers for free, but ask you to pay for the "full program". In your case, the full program is the teaser - it's a treasure hunt to find the golden nuggets of business wisdom interspersed in 60 minutes of internet video chat. I bet you lose out on a lot of viewers simply because they don't have the time to sit through hour-long interviews. I think you could sell edited, 15-minute versions to those people. Cheapskates like me will continue to watch for free, but people with less time will pay for condensed honey drops of entrepreneurship gyaan. Actually, I might pay too as I get busier with my business.
Andrew replied saying he loves the idea and has has a vision along those lines; he just needs the time and resources for doing it. As he has stated in his own interviews before, he is trying to create an internet treasure which will have long lasting value. I'm sure he won't let us down.
The good thing is that the transcripts are still free. So I'll be reading more and hearing/watching less. Kinda like switching tv for a good novel, I'd think.
I just signed up simply to support his work even though I watch all the interviews in the first week anyway. For me, the content is worth more than $25/month. I would also like to see a forum as added value.
I'm not sure that this is the best possible model, but if it's not then Andrew will figure it out once he has some data.
As much as Jason Calacanis can be annoying, This Week in Startups is always a great show and he seems to have found a great monetization strategy for it - corporate sponsors of service providers to startup people.
I probably won't be paying for Mixergy on a monthly basis, but if he were to get a couple companies to sponsor the show for a couple hundred dollars an episode i would gladly sit through the intermittent plugs he would give throughout the broadcast.
Hey Andrew, what about letting those videos be free, and selling DVDs per months, peoples can watch the content online for free (advertising support) in this way you keep growing and peoples willing to pay can order videos on a dvd, let's say each interview on a dvd cost 5 $. Next option, you can aggregate videos of each month as dvd and sell them for ~9,99 $ , and the next alternative will be to create an ebook from the transcripts of each month videos and sell it for a couple or dollars, you can organise this in topic (ebook transcript for freemium Business model, ebook for videos plattform entrepreneurs.....you can combine it as you want: we call in in mechanical eng variants)... That's my 2 cents. Some peoples may pay the 25 $ , but most of your users won't, if you want to go with the subscription , what about 1,99 $ /months * many users and steady grow?
The advertising model will not generate much revenue. As Rupert Murdoch is wont to say, the online publishing marketplace has an infinite supply of inventory, which drives down prices for display advertising.
The DVD idea might work for some small entrepreneurs who are not in the Internet startup space, but since most of the Interviews are focused on tech and the audience likely wants to see the videos online, there is a conflict there. Maybe Andrew should start expanding into other areas of entrepreneurship that appeal more to the non-Internet crowd?
One other note about transcripts: They are a pain to produce, as most of them have to be done manually. Prices are coming down thanks to online services and Mechanical Turk. But once voice-to-text tech improves to the degree where it's possible to instantly convert any podcast or video interview to text (and thence to e-book or whatever) that will really open the gates to e-book and custom publishing models, IMHO. It will also boost the output of journalists, who now have lots of overhead related to listening to audio post-interview and transcribing some of the results.
I don't necessarily think that this monetization strategy is the best idea but I'm not going to begrudge the guy for trying to make money from his business regardless of whether he already has a lot of money.
This is akin to asking why Sergey Brin charges for AdWords when he's already a billionaire or why the richest person in the world still makes money off of Windows. Your logic is moronic.
How can the bandwidth be high if it is being hosted on justin.tv? I would suggest an advertising model where there are short 20 second ads (maybe 5 per interview). Though I really like the interviews, 300 ponds a year 20 interviews is way too high (I watch about 2 a month).
same here. Was trying to watch http://mixergy.com/daniel-delaney-vendrtv/ which was posted on feb 18th (3 days old) but it is behind the pay wall. how come?
basically, any video i am trying to watch is behind a pay wall.
Almost all interviewers profit. So I don't see why an interviewee should be offended that Andrew is profiting.
Most interviewers profit by charging advertisers. The advertisers then become the customers and the viewers are just "users." By choosing to charge his listeners directly Andrew is making his viewers his customers.
A business naturally tries to please its customers. To the extent that advertisers' and viewers' tastes differ, we can expect Andrew's business to change for the better: it will be more pleasing to viewers.
We need Andrew to interview Andrew about this decision:)
Also, Andrew's lack of posting in this thread tells me that he is sitting back and watching the natural reaction rather than tainting it with his own participation.
The best response to this will be to not pay. Watch this week's video, and maybe save the stream. Take the responsibility for archiving into your own hands.
Hm, on second thought, I guess it probably is, except maybe if his TOS explicitly disallows it. It's basically the same as DVRing something. Still seems wrong.
That was my thinking. And it is fairly trivial to do, on most sites. There are already plenty of ways of grabbing a stream for later viewing. If I am doing that just for me, for my own use, I see no issue with it.
"If you have the time to do that 5 videos a week x 4 weeks instead of paying $25/month, you're valuing your time too cheaply."
If he is a half way decent programmer he could build a script in half an a hour to automate the whole thing. So the "valuing your time too cheaply" argument doesn't hold at all.
A lot of accolades in this thread. As for me and the rest of the silent majority, we poor ambitious upstarts will find a new home. I might consider it if I knew my contribution would lead to significantly greater production value, like airplane tickets for in-person interviews or investigative reporting.
Eulogy: Andrew was flirting with becoming a figure in start-up world... something which can't be bought. Managed to sell it.
Please. $25/month is two-hours of work for a cashier at McDonald's. If think the value of his work is below that, you probably don't have the right priorities to build a startup.
142 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] threadI think this is an excellent business model for Mixergy. As a fan of Mixergy, I am happy that I have a weeks time to listen to the interviews before they go behind the subscription wall. Andrew, keep up the good work.
They're arguably worth it, but I can see folks with tight budgets not willing to pay that much for any content.
Also with so many good startup eyeballs I am curious if the sponsorship angle was considered, specifically from service providers. There seem to be a ton of lawyers & other products that would kill for eyeballs and ears in Andrew's market.
I'm a big fan as well but I still find this a bit startling. But I do appreciate as well the fact that you can watch interviews free for the first week. That is plenty -- he could have cranked that down to one day and personally I'd still find my way over there to watch/listen.
I try. The formatting is hard to read, the transcriptions aren't always accurate (in a funny way).
(So, I just archived all the available transcripts that I was interested in. Who knows when those go behind a paywall?)
The Economist print edition comes at $15/mo. 30 days of New York Times, delivered in print is $29/mo. That's a lot more content than Mixergy. And you have similar similar sites like BigThink and the Stanford ECorner podcasts, which are free.
But I'd pay $5/mo, or better yet, $1 per video.
If you convince the Times to ditch the lifestyle coverage of things of importance to Upper East Side liberals and focus on interviewing Wufoo about conversion rates, I'll buy a subscription to them, too. Until you do that it strikes me like you're comparing a Ruby library and a chia pet.
1. I've seen a few of these interviews being done online by others. This game is a winner take all game. The most popular such site is going to have everyone wanting to be interviewed there, and everyone will watch it because popular names are interviewed then. So it's important in this niche to become the dominant force and stay there, giving competitors no chance. Putting a paywall is going to lead to fewer incoming links and less traffic on old videos, slowing down growth, and giving others a chance to catch up
2. The payment model is unusual for video. People want to purchase a video and have it on their drives. They don't want to have to watch hundreds of videos in a single month.
3. The price is high. $25 for a month of access to video is a bit high, in my uninformed estimation
I think that a better strategy would be a focus on growth and improving the quality of the people, and focusing on breaking more into the mainstream. This particular move is going to slow down growth, and I think it may be difficult to get certain names on when they know that they are doing the interview for someone elses profit.
And my final argument is this: This model shuts down the possibilities of further experimentation. When the videos are closed, it's not possible to test other ways of monetising the traffic arriving at the videos.
People are used to paying for live video (PPV). People are used to paying to download content. They aren't used to paying for old content.
This seems to be like giving away your new hits for free and charging for the long tail - not sure that is ideal.
It'd really be interesting to hear Mixergy's thought process on this, though.
People have burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars and learned less about pricing than was included in those 15 seconds.
Andrew draws out gems with sufficient regularity (signal to noise ratio: quite high) that I'm fairly confident I'll grab at least one idea and improve my business as a result of it.
On the subject of price points: I wonder what the above says about basing one's pricing decisions on the opinions of people who think $25 is a lot of money.
It's bleeding with killer actionable information.
I think the price is a bit high. He should of had a $10/month option and I would have signed up tonight.
Bummer, I did not even watch the full PG yet, an it was 11 days ago.
Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I love to listen Paul Graham talk on stuff but none of the interviews are actually ground-breaking or great, it's just good time.
That's why I doubt if anyone would actually bother to subscribe.
Give it 3 months then I'm sure he'll change the model.
Bullshit. Information is power.
Mixergy should concentrate on monetization with different ways rather than subscription model
Agreed.
Wrong.
The provider of that information should be able to charge what he wants. It's capitalism.
The HN lynch mob is pathetic.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with bait and switch - it's a common marketing tactic - but let's call a cat a cat.
Calling the interviews chit-chat is nothing short of demeaning the effort of both Andrew and the interviewee. I would argue that the interviews are great and do teach us a lot. Often as part of the interview other parts such as history are covered, but that again adds to the whole experience.
Finally, the reason I believe this will not be a blockbuster, is because of two reasons.
1. On the net people rarely pay for content. 2. Scrappy entrepreneurs by my guess, are not the ones who would fall in the category of "paying people".
I do hope that Andrew is successful though.
I didn't mean bad, what I meant they are conversational interviews, they are not focused on teaching you something. The very nature of these interviews is the reason that I wouldn't pay money for them.
I'd pay for MIT Startup Bootcamp videos because they are solely focus on something which directly potentially almost instantly will effect my business (if the topic is relevant). In these interview I'm lucky if I can pick up 2-3 things by pure luck.
So again I don't mean bad, I think they are really nice, but it's like renting a video from a video store. Not great for business but great to watch and have a good time.
However if I'm going to pay I expect the get some more actionable outcome from it.
Yes, spoon feeding days are over. And yes, that is a good thing.
People pay for trusted, consistent online content that will help them achieve specific solutions. And Andrew's interviews are a prime example.
There are lots of people doing this. They just don't show up on many Web 2.0 sites.
However, I think this is a really bad business move, second only to using a fake name. It creates distrust and devalues the community aspect of the product.
On another note, I'm glad to see Andrew turning Mixergy into a real business that can be self-sustaining. As entrepreneurs, we should all be able to agree with that.
Maybe he has a grand master plan to make more 30+$ mils with mixergy ....
Andrew, based on my experience and data from the content/marketing industry, I'd encourage you to charge more -- at a MINIMUM $47/month, probably $97/month or even $297/month.
If you want to chat about why I suggest this, and some of my internal metrics, please email me.
Andrews videos are useful but they aren't your short cut to millions, start ups are still going to be a lot of work and a big gamble no matter how much wisdom you have gained from people on the subject.
I'm sure there are plenty of upstarts who find these videos extremenly valuable, but aren't willing or able to pay hundreds of dollars. I don't think it's in Andrew's goals to do that.
EDIT: simple->simply
But if he adds a forum - he can create a good membership site out of mixergy. And $25 per month for it is doable.
(I personally think its just an experiment to control high bandwidth costs...)
I noticed recently that you've started charging for your older interviews. Good on you, I hope you do good business.
I have one idea you might want to consider: Sell short edited versions of the interviews. This is the opposite of what most online ebook and tutorial video sellers do. They show some short teasers for free, but ask you to pay for the "full program". In your case, the full program is the teaser - it's a treasure hunt to find the golden nuggets of business wisdom interspersed in 60 minutes of internet video chat. I bet you lose out on a lot of viewers simply because they don't have the time to sit through hour-long interviews. I think you could sell edited, 15-minute versions to those people. Cheapskates like me will continue to watch for free, but people with less time will pay for condensed honey drops of entrepreneurship gyaan. Actually, I might pay too as I get busier with my business.
Andrew replied saying he loves the idea and has has a vision along those lines; he just needs the time and resources for doing it. As he has stated in his own interviews before, he is trying to create an internet treasure which will have long lasting value. I'm sure he won't let us down.
I'm not sure that this is the best possible model, but if it's not then Andrew will figure it out once he has some data.
I probably won't be paying for Mixergy on a monthly basis, but if he were to get a couple companies to sponsor the show for a couple hundred dollars an episode i would gladly sit through the intermittent plugs he would give throughout the broadcast.
The DVD idea might work for some small entrepreneurs who are not in the Internet startup space, but since most of the Interviews are focused on tech and the audience likely wants to see the videos online, there is a conflict there. Maybe Andrew should start expanding into other areas of entrepreneurship that appeal more to the non-Internet crowd?
One other note about transcripts: They are a pain to produce, as most of them have to be done manually. Prices are coming down thanks to online services and Mechanical Turk. But once voice-to-text tech improves to the degree where it's possible to instantly convert any podcast or video interview to text (and thence to e-book or whatever) that will really open the gates to e-book and custom publishing models, IMHO. It will also boost the output of journalists, who now have lots of overhead related to listening to audio post-interview and transcribing some of the results.
http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/04/08/the-andrew-warner-stor...
So he's charging because he can, not because he must.
Welcome to capitalism.
How can the bandwidth be high if it is being hosted on justin.tv? I would suggest an advertising model where there are short 20 second ads (maybe 5 per interview). Though I really like the interviews, 300 ponds a year 20 interviews is way too high (I watch about 2 a month).
Best of luck Andrew, I hope it goes well!
Most interviewers profit by charging advertisers. The advertisers then become the customers and the viewers are just "users." By choosing to charge his listeners directly Andrew is making his viewers his customers.
A business naturally tries to please its customers. To the extent that advertisers' and viewers' tastes differ, we can expect Andrew's business to change for the better: it will be more pleasing to viewers.
Also, Andrew's lack of posting in this thread tells me that he is sitting back and watching the natural reaction rather than tainting it with his own participation.
That's called copyright infringement.
If he is a half way decent programmer he could build a script in half an a hour to automate the whole thing. So the "valuing your time too cheaply" argument doesn't hold at all.
Eulogy: Andrew was flirting with becoming a figure in start-up world... something which can't be bought. Managed to sell it.