I was expecting a history of pornography.

Let me say that I think it's a great idea, and I don't mind paying at all for extra stuff. "Thor's Angels" is my all-time favorite HH episode so I'm excited that there's more.

As stated in the blog post, no it won't be available on iTunes.

This is perfect. If you have about an hour of parallel material to Thor's Angels, then do sell it. I think you might be surprised at the result.

Capital idea. Can't wait.

Verne much?

Rascal!

I'm sure you and others know more about this than I do, but I am aware that there are some podcasts available on iTunes that cost money. There must be a way to do this - not that it is any more convenient for me, but it will provide you more exposure to other listeners. I would think that the archived ($$) HH shows could be sold there as well. I realize I am far out of the loop on the options you explored for doing this already, so pardon me if you've been down this road.

Edit: I guess I was wrong about iTunes allowing podcasts to cost money. I can't find any now - I thought I had encountered that previously. Weird...

There are ways to do it on Amazon as well. You basically go to a third party distributor which specializes in that sort of thing. Produce your tracks, and then sell them on Amazon's MP3 marketplace.

Another thing I have wondered about is whether Dan should create a single html page for each episode which has a list of books he referenced, as well as other suggestions, linked to Amazon.

Dan

So it begins...

Anything that can help with the sustainability of the show is good news in my view.

Oh! I got the money in my grubby little hands waiting!

He should take a series--like Rome or an expanded Dark Ages--and put it on DVD with a nice cover and packaging. Make a Ken Burns style video, with just panning shots over public domain and/or inexpensively licensed photos. Don't need a talking head, except maybe if you want to intercut interviews with experts (NOT JESSE VENTURA lol). There are a lot of possible visuals to use.

You could make a deluxe version, priced in the hundred+ dollar range that includes the dvds and some source books, all nicely packaged together, with references on the DVD to pages in the source books. if there are public domain sources, those could be reproduced in their entirety on the DVD. The DVD alone, in nice packaging, could sell in the high double digits. Makes a good present for a history fan relative.

The Teaching Company has already fleshed out this business model. Thegreatcourses.com. They sell CDs of lectures for $50, usually 12 hours worth. That's like 3 episodes of HH these days! With services like createspace from Amazon, producing a physical product like a CD or DVD is simple. Dan's already done the hard work of building a recording studio, and, far more importantly, having the skill not to sound boring when recorded (and that's NOT easy to do).

Site Information for thegreatcourses.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 18,925 Traffic Rank in US: 5,892
Sites Linking In: 623

That's with a giant offline and online marketing and advertising program. They take out full page magazine ads.

Here's Dan, with no ad budget:

Site Information for dancarlin.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 157,691 raffic Rank in US: 33,063
Sites Linking In: 516


Look at the sites linking in metric--almost equal. The traffic difference can be bought...the "votes" from sites linking in cannot.