My love of all things Seth Godin is fairly well established on this blog – I’m a long-time blog reader, faithful podcast listener, Podcast Fellowship participant.
I found it very interesting that Seth unified all of his online workshops into The Akimbo Workshops somewhat recently. They’re available at akimbo.com – check them out!
However, about a year before that, Seth launched his podcast, also named Akimbo. Even though it was first, it didn’t launch at akimbo.com. Instead, it was at akimbo.link. Today, it’s at akimbo.me (although akimbo.link redirects to akimbo.me too).
I believe that someone else owned akimbo.com before all of this, and was trying to sell it for a (probably) large amount of money.
It’s interesting to me that the podcast wasn’t a big enough project to justify purchasing a (probably) expensive .com domain name, but the unified branding of Akimbo Workshops was. I speculate that this is for two main reasons: 1. The podcast was an experiment, and it was unclear how profitable and long-term it would be; and 2. domain names matter much less for podcasts than for websites.
Reason one makes sense – if it was an experiment that ended up being successful and continuing, there was no need for the investment of purchasing the .com at the beginning.
Reason two is more interesting – Podcasts aren’t discovered based on their domain name, typically. Instead, it’s based on their name, description and other metadata being in the major podcast directories (iTunes, etc). Seth can write a blog post and say ‘I have a new podcast named Akimbo’ and everyone who wants to listen will search for Akimbo in their podcast app. The domain name isn’t necessary for success; instead, being in the directory (with a strong description and meta data!) is what’s important.
This is opposite of traditional websites or blogs. With a website/blog/online presence, the domain name has historically mattered very much. If you had a strange TLD (domain ending), people wouldn’t find your website. Companies will fight strongly for ownership of the .com (Nissan is a cautionary tale here!).
It’s very interesting how little a domain name matters for a podcast.
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