Last Call at the Marketing Martini Bar

Well, it's official... The Marketing Martini bar is closed for good, which means I won't be recording any more new episodes of my podcast. (You can always check out the archive of earlier episodes, however, as well as pay a visit to my Internet marketing blog, Sweetmantra.)

When I launched my Marketing Martini podcast in January 2007, I had a number of goals.

First and foremost, I wanted to better understand the medium of podcasting, and the only way I could do that was to get my hands dirty and produce my own podcast. I certainly ended up learning more than I ever wanted to know about the technical nitty gritty of producing a podcast, and this knowledge proved very helpful to me when I was working at 'The Big Ad Agency'. In fact, I was able to directly apply that knowledge during the production of the podcast the agency produced for General Motors of Canada, "Aesthetic Intent". I was, and still am, very proud of how that turned out.

Second, I wanted to experiment with communicating my knowledge of Internet Marketing through a new medium, which is somewhat ironic since I started my career working in radio over 25 years ago. I discovered that I enjoyed using the spoken word (again) and had fun exploring some of the potential of the medium.

There were also a few other more private goals I had in mind when I launched the Marketing Martini podcast. I should add, however, than none of these goals had anything to do with generating revenue from my podcast; that was never one of my goals.

So why am I hanging up my podcaster's mike?

Quite simply, I achieved the goals I had set out for myself, even my private ones.

Once I realized this, I took a hard look at the time I was spending to produce my podcast. It soon became apparent that (for me, at least) this was a pretty time-consuming endeavor (compared to, for instance, blogging), and was - quite frankly - getting in the way of me pursuing other things.

I didn't want to find myself resenting doing my podcast because it was stopping me from launching other projects, so that's why I decided to stop podcasting.

I'd like to thank my listeners - who, interestingly, hail from all around the world - for their loyalty, support and encouragement. Nothing gave me more pleasure than hearing from a listener in a far off place.

Thanks to Mitch Joel and Michael Seaton for inspiring me to begin podcasting in the first place. Keep on podcasting, guys!

And very special thanks to podcasting expert Leesa Barnes who provided some invaluable advice and support during the initial setup of my podcast. I truly couldn't have launched Marketing Martini without her input.

Thank you everyone!

"And now it's time to settle the tab..."