As a fan of Planet Money, I was really pleased that they are getting on with their T-Shirt project even though its taken them 3 years to get to this stage. But.. what really struck me was the level of engagement they have with their community and how they were able to raise over half a million dollars on kickstarter.com for this project.
Considering that NPR’s This American Life has about 200,000 listeners, I assume Planet Money would have about 100,000. Of this 20% or 20,000 people paid $590,807 for the T-shirt. This is a contribution of about $30/subscriber. This is pretty staggering and demonstrates both the power of an engaged audience and of KickStarter, which is owned by Amazon.com
Unfortunately, I was a day late and could not order the T-Shirt.