Podango has introduced a new beta service which delivers free, hosted services for the management of podcast stations by giving Station Directors, who own their Podango Stations as independent media prorperties, a complete platform to create and converse with subscribers.

Services provided by Podango available as a beta include:

• Castback - Provide a simple way for listenrs to record their comments about a podcasts and provide it as part of future podcasts.
• Podcast Surf - A separate page for each podcast that allows podcast listeners to browse and interact. The page containt a transcription of each podcast, relevant links and references for the important names, places, people, terms, sitse, and vendors mentioned in a podcast. It also contains instant access to the community forum, Castbacks, and ratings for each podcast.
• Transcriptions - Increase visitors from search engines by providing Station Directors with text transcriptions of podcasts.
• Marketing - Build audiences through several co-op marketing programs including search engine keyword buys, email programs, affiliate relationships, press releases, blog mentions, natural search engine optimization, sponsor and strategic partner links, and home page spotlighting.
• Search Engine Optimization - Podangos claims that their site structure and marketing are designed with on-page SEO in mind. Good for search engine spiders.
• Advertising - Tools to profile audiences, measure listenership, and promote ad spot opportunities to a growing set of advertisers.
• The Podango Dashboard - Key metrics on marketing, customer and revenue, which can be displayed in daily, weekly, monthly and annual views.
• Easy Payment System - Collect revenues, distributions of funds to partnering podcasters, receipts from sponsors, fees from the affiliate program or the payments for traffic generation activities.

If Podango in its release really delivers what they promise, this could easily be one of the most elegant podcast hosting service I have seen so far.

The service also promotes that podcast station owners could earn from anywhere between $25k to $250k. In anticipation to the grief over that quote, Podango explained in one of their blog entries.

Link: Podango.

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