Yesterday I did a quick interview for a magazine. One of the major themes of article will be the ROI of podcasts, with an emphasis on business podcasting. The overwhelming majority of podcasts I listen to are not done by businesses. They're done by individuals that are very passionate about their topic.

But once again the question is what's the ROI? I understand that there has to be some benefit to spending your time and perhaps money doing something but it isn't always measured in dollars. Shel Holtz talked about blogging ROI earlier this month:

As cheap as they are to set up and maintain, there’s really no need to measure the ROI of blogs. After all, is it necessary to measure the ROI of your pants?....It’s even easy to extend the “pants” argument to higher costs, as Toby Ward does when discussing intranet ROI. Intranets, obviously, cost more than blogs, but Toby has asked if companies demand ROI justification for their telephone networks? Not even the bean counters insist on a tally of the ROI for phones because everyone knows the consequences of removing them.

I usually ask somebody if they go to church, if they do what's the ROI? As Shel goes on to point out, too often ROI is thought of in terms of dollars and not opportunity/risk:

But I would make the argument that the kind of ROI assurance executives want is not the kind of ROI accountants measure; we’re getting too hung up on definitions. The ROI in question here is more commonly referred to as a cost (or risk) benefit analysis. While ROI generally refers to the amount of money earned after all expenses are tallied, the risk-benefit analysis weighs the consequences of an action or expense against the benefits it will achieve. Because so many executives fear the consequences and don’t understand or recognize the benefits, I still think this kind of measurement is important.