Podcasting pioneer and author Michael W. Geoghegan has a great post today on his site that looks at making money with podcasts.

Geoghegan has written several books on podcasting, has been involved since the early days of podcasting, he helped Disney create their podcast and has run a podcasting network. And while many podcasters have been waiting for the podcast dollars to roll in, Geoghegan has been cutting deals with American Airlines and others.

He thinks it’s time for podcasters that want to make money with their podcasts to start treating their podcast as a business:

People often ask how we consistently sell out our inventory on GrapeRadio.

Easy, we have a kick-ass media kit, a proven track record, a book of business with many repeat advertisers and four entrepreneurs as owners Рfolks who aren’t scared to ask for the deal. While the amounts aren’t huge, $1,300 per weekly episode, we can command those prices because we have nailed our niche.

A comparative CPM deal would have to be close to net $100 to make sense. No ad network has ever offered us anything close to that. We have also built a great business in white label production, i.e. non-GrapeRadio branded content specific to individual wineries for their sites.

We decided from day one not to do wine reviews so as to avoid any editorial conflicts. Our figures are not awe inspiring but they buy nice equipment, pay for the trips to Napa and leave plenty leftover for shareholder distributions. Given that we all run other businesses full time, it has worked out quite nicely.

The whole article is a must-read, if you’re interested in commercial podcasting.