In a talk at South By Southwest, being held March 9-18 in Austin, Texas, filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks) said that podcasting saved his career.

“I had no idea, but that would become the fucking center of everything I’m doing now,” said Smith. “The ultimate freedom that allowed me to walk away from the ‘heroin’ [money] of the movie business – what gave me the strength to walk away – was podcasting.”

In 2007, Smith launched SModcast, a weekly podcast, with friend Scott Mosier, and he’s been doing it ever since.

Smith also noted several ways he’s made money from his podcast:

• “People would tweet left and right: ‘You put out so many free podcasts; how can I pay it back?’ ” said Smith. “I was like, ‘Go buy a T-shirt’ and they were like, ‘Cool.’ “
• Paid advertising – The first sponsor was adult product Fleshlight.
• A paid version of the podcast which contains bonus features, but no ads.
• Taking the podcast on the road, selling tickets and merchandise.
• Creating a podcast network of affiliated shows.

“In terms of filmmakers, it was me and Peter Jackson on the Web,” said Smith. Then, one day, he said ‘I’m going to get offline and go make classics’ and I was like, ‘I’ll stay here.’ ”

via cnn