I’ve had a few months under my belt now as an audio podcast producer and my two shows, The Movie Film Show and The Independent Entrepreneur, are off to a modest start. Bootstrapping these shows with almost no budget is not easy and the struggle to grow my audience has been, at times, frustrating.

But I’ve learned a lot so far about what works, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to do. Most importantly, I’m realizing the need to create mobile-friendly versions of my shows.

I’ve set up my shows on a Wordpress Blog using Blubrry’s PowerPress plug-in, which is terrific. It’s saved me an enormous amount of development time and allowed me to focus on creating content. One of the services Blubrry provides is a measurement tool that shows how many downloads my shows have received, including what form people are downloading them.

I’ve produced twenty episodes of The Movie Film Show, and I finally have enough data to draw some conclusions. But first, the facts:

Few people listen on the Web. Only 7% listen through the Web site’s flash player tool. The rest are people downloading the shows through iTunes and on their mobile devices.  In fact, 53% of downloads come from applications like iTunes, and the remaining 40% are from mobile devices.

I was amazed at the number from mobile devices, especially considering I don’t currently have a mobile-friendly version of my shows.  It makes sense, though.  Audio podcasts are best listened to on the go, whether in the car or at the gym, and Smart Phones are a great way to grab such content while out and about.

I’ve concluded that enhancing the mobile experience is my top priority. Here are three action points I will begin to execute and want to share with my fellow audio-podcasters:

1. Create a mobile-friendly site. If the current version of your site is mobile friendly, that’s great. But if you have things like a Flash player and what not, they will not work on devices like the iPhone.
2. Create a ‘download MP3’ link for each show. Most mobile devices can download and play these files just fine. That means all listeners have to do is visit your URL and click on the latest show download link to listen. Get rid of any links or features that don’t work on a mobile device (like Flash players).
3. Make sure the file size of your MP3s doesn’t exceed mobile download limits. Some ISPs, like AT&T, limit downloads on mobile to devices to files sizes less than 20 megabytes each. Make sure your shows are under that limit. If they are longer, split them into multiple files on the mobile version of your site, if possible.

Related Article: Why I Prefer Audio Podcasts

Many are paranoid about privacy, such as how our activity is tracked online.  One of the biggest objections I see is that Web sites and advertising companies will use our personal information in order to display more relevant advertisements to us.

Why are we so scared about that?

Americans, I think, are rightly concerned about “big brother” watching what we do, and many equate corporations watching our behavior and tracking our interests as impeding on our privacy.  But there is a fundamental difference between the real “big brother,” i.e., government, impeding on our privacy and a company supposedly doing so.

When we interact with a company or another person, it is on a voluntary basis.  We chose to go to Whole Foods or Ralphs or visit Google or Facebook.  We do not have such a choice when it comes to the government.  Any corporation, no matter what the size, cannot force us to do anything.  It can’t force us to buy their products, use their services, or visit their Web sites.  Only the government can do this; it can, and does.  For starters, it forces us to pay taxes, get our car smogged, and buy health insurance.

Since government’s proper function is to protect individual rights, when it comes knocking on our door and asking for information that could only be used to violate our rights, clearly fears of “big brother” are justified.

How much money do you make?  What is your ethnicity?  What are your religious beliefs?  Such questions are none of the government’s business, yet when and if required by law, we have to provide such information to the government.  That is not the case with a company.

The purpose of a company is to make money.  It is to offer us value in exchange for money.  It is not to destroy value.  So when an advertising company wants to know our income, our age, our interests, our buying habits, etc., this information is used by the company to potentially provide us with better value in the future.  It uses this information for the purpose of better their product and marketing efforts to reach the right buyers, i.e., the people who want to buy their product the most.  Maybe it’s you.  Maybe it’s not.

The smarter advertising technology, the happier I am.  If I never see an ad for ESPN again in my life, that’s a good thing, because ESPN should know that the only game I like is Badminton.  Yet when Badminton is being played on the Olympics, perhaps NBC could send me an e-mail alert telling me where to go watch it and when.

That’s a good thing for ESPN and for me: They won’t waste their time trying to reach me and I don’t’ have to sort through ESPN spam.  It’s also a good thing for NBC and me: They can target me specifically—someone who actually may be interested in their product—and I probably would have forgotten to even look for it in the first place, but once reminded gone and watched it.

Am I giving up my privacy?  In a small sense, yes, but there is no harm to me and, in fact, only value to be gained.  “Giving up” your privacy is not necessarily a bad thing.  You do it every time you introduce yourself to someone: “Hello, my name is Sean.”  Now you know my name.  You didn’t before.  This allows you to engage with me in some way—or even avoid me in the future if you don’t want to deal with me.

Of course, companies and other people can and do violate rights.  But this is the exception, not the norm.  And such violations should (and generally are) illegal and individuals should be protected against those who do violate their rights by force—which is the proper function of government.

So the next time you’re worried that Best Buy may be watching your behavior as you walk through their store, or a Facebook is tracking how you use their social network, or the supermarket asks you to sign up for a loyalty program, know that in all likelihood, they are doing so for the purpose of improving their product or to better reach or communicate with you about things you actually may want to buy in the future.

Often times we get “junk mail,” whether electronic or via snail mail, and we cry for privacy laws because they are a hassle to sort through and throw away.  But when we get or see content we actually want, we don’t think of it that way.  It just feels like our friends at Bed Bath & Beyond were kind enough to send us another twenty percent off coupon, and we don’t cry about our privacy.

When Apple announced its music social networking system, Ping, I was initially intrigued. So I gave it a try. Needless to say, I was not impressed. The promise of sharing music with friends was a failed one.

The idea of cataloguing and tracking my favorite artists sounded good. If I could “favorite” my favorite bands and get updates every time they released a new album or track, that might be reason enough to engage in the service. Getting a notification of a new Mark Knofpler album or new score from one of my favorite movie composers would have been helpful.

But from the start, Ping did not even list the most famous of artists to follow, and not even Steve Job’s much-loved Bob Dylan was listed. The reasons for this are unclear. Why wouldn’t Apple simply set up pages for all artists listed in the iTunes store automatically? I could only find a dozen or so artists, and I didn’t want to follow any of them.

Further, I wasn’t able to find my friends on Ping—linking my friends list with Facebook or Twitter followers would have been a good start—but instead I had to add them one by one, and most of the time they weren’t on the service yet. To date, I’ve followed only three or four people and, worse yet, gotten absolutely nothing out of it.

Having to access Ping through iTunes rather than the Web was also bizarre. In sum, the service had almost no content to engage with, with no artists I wanted to follow, few friends to find, and all with limited accessibility.

But I was willing to give Apple some time to develop their social network and see what happened over time. After all, Facebook and Twitter took some time to ramp up their systems to become as ubiquitous as they are today, and I could grant them some leeway. It wouldn’t cost me anything to do this, either, so no harm done.

No harm, that is, until Apple released version 10 of their iTunes software, which added a Ping sidebar to iTunes streaming a bunch of content I didn’t care about, and seemingly no way to turn it off. Now Ping was invading my screen, getting in the way of the already clunky iTunes software. I just want to find my music and play it, and here was Ping shouting at me, “Use me! Use me! Use me!” and yet, with nothing to use.

So I deleted my Ping account, and all the noise—including the sidebar—went away. I imagine others are doing the same.

Ping is a huge misfire for Apple, and to say their attempt to enter the social networking space is amateur is putting it nicely. Instead of building value, Apple is trying to muscle their users into using their system, and that will no doubt backfire, as it has with me. Without content, there is nothing to consume, and continually shoving an empty plate in front of people will only hunger them to satisfy their appetites elsewhere.

This marks an opportunity for Amazon’s MP3 store, Microsoft and others to capitalize on Apple’s misfire. I imagine integrating Amazon music purchases with Facebook is in the works. The ideas inspired by integrating a music store with social networking are intriguing and lucrative, and door remains wide open for someone to come in and execute such an innovation with success. But for now, at least for me, Ping is dead.

Foursquare made popular the concept of the “check in,” where individuals “check in” to locations as they travel about town, earning points and badges while they do it.  It is both social networking and social gaming, and it’s fun.

On this front, I’ve recently become addicted to Barcode Hero for the iPhone, a new app from Kima Labs and founded by a couple of friends of mine, Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford.  These are smart guys and the first version of their app is all the proof you’ll need to see they are seasoned pros.

Barcode Hero brings a new innovation to the “check in” world, applying it—not to places—but to things.  You can scan anything that has a standard barcode with your iPhone camera, whether it be things you own in your home to items at the store, and share it with your friends.  From Best Buy to the supermarket, Barcode Hero will likely have it in their database, and you earn points for scanning items, marking them as “owned” or writing reviews or comments on the items you’ve scanned and share them with your friends.

If you have the most points in a given category, you will be deemed the “King” or “Queen” of that category.  Since I started using the app very early on, I quickly became the “King” of sheet music, DVDs, books, Objectivism (from scanning all my Ayn Rand related literature), among many others.  I’ve been dethroned in several of these categories since, a good sign the app is rapidly acquiring new users.

In addition to this, you can follow your friends like on any social network, and see what they’re scanning and buying.  It’s also much more useful than Foursquare, as when you scan something you can instantly see where you can purchase the product online from a variety of major online vendors.

It does require an iPhone, though a Droid version is planned, according to their Web site, as well as a Facebook account to log in (hopefully they will allow non-Facebook users to use the app in the future as well).  Also lacking is a fully integrated Web presence, but I’m sure this is on the way.  The few bugs I found at launch have been quickly remedied, and it feels like a solid and mature app.

Unlike many other social media apps, this one has a clear practical application: scan a bar code and instantly connect you to online vendors for the best deal.  That means it has a solid business model out of the gate, a very promising sign for this new startup.

I wish Blake, Jason and all those involved with Kima Labs much success and am happy to see such a solid concept so well executed in the growing social media space.  It’s a winner.

Failure is a buzz word in today’s fast and frenzied Internet startup world.  Many are focusing on it, saying not to be intimidated by it.  While the intention is good, the growing focus on failure is a false hope that cannot bring success by itself.

True, the fear of failure can be paralyzing.  Perfectionists often don’t get anything done because they cannot accept even the possibility of failure, leaving them paralyzed at the starting line and left in the dust by the rest of the world who embraces their mistakes, learns from them, and moves toward the finish line as a result.

During my short stint as a stand-up comic, I wrote a joke on perfectionism:  “I have the best joke on perfectionism that you’ve ever heard,” I would say, “but it isn’t ready to tell yet.”

In this light, yes, you should not be afraid to fail and be willing to “embrace” it if you do.  But one does not achieve success by failing.  Failure is, well, just that.

Failing may give you the opportunity to learn, yes, and it may uncover important information that allows you to move forward—often information that you would have never learned if you hadn’t tried in the first place.

That doesn’t mean you should seek it out.  When Michael Jordan takes a jump shot, he is not aiming to miss.  If he does miss, while it may be an opportunity to learn, it did not score him any points.

But isn’t the opportunity to learn from failure the point?  Yes, in a way, but it also misses the wider principle.  Failure itself is just one way to learn and grow.  Consider that success gives you that very same opportunity and for the very same reason.

Just like failure, with success you must always perform a postmortem on your actions, your project, your business, whatever, and discover the reasons behind your results.  They are both learning opportunities and success’ sweet smell isn’t as potent unless you know the cause behind it.

This is important to remember at the start of any project, task or business proposition.  Focusing on failure is a sure way to get sidetracked and land yourself in a rut, leaving you wondering when the heck all that success is going to come.  If failure is your focus, it never will.

Instead, set your sights on the target—settling for nothing less than full understanding of your results—and shoot to win.