One of the most used monetization techniques for podcasters is the “Freemium” method where you give away tips/content for free and entice people to sign up for a service (or product) that's not free. I use this model on the School of Podcasting. I deliver podcasting tips, and hope people sign up for my membership site.
One of the most versatile tools for creating a “premium” version of your podcast is http://www.premiumcast where you can create a podcast that people have to pay for, and if they stop paying you can go in and “turn off” their RSS feed. You can also use it to sell digital products, physical products, generate coupons, and many other features. I use premiumcast to deliver my “students only” (private) podcast.
I was approached by a company that is geared towards community, and education. It's prfessor.com and it has a unique twist that I have not seen in other tools (and could be used for someone who is looking to deliver content via a website instead of RSS feed). You can set up unlimited courses (nothing new). However, you can solicit instructors and pay each instructor a percentage of each class that a student registers for. When you teach a class you take 100% of the commission. When someone else teaches a class you pay them 80% and you keep 20 (or whatever percentage you determine).
When I think of the communities that podcasting helps build, I can see experts coming together to build a website to teach others with everyone getting a piece of the pie. Each class can have (or have not ) a time limit (i.e. it's live for 3 months and then expires – you set how long). You set the price, you can add a quick logo and your branding is taken care of, you can easily pay commissions to your “teaching staff.” While Moodle may be an open source package for this type of application, it doesn't have any way to pay instructors (that I know of), and it doesn't have the built in SEO tools (you can add Google analytics in about 3 seconds), that this tool has.
From the video I watched at their website, you can have a functional website in about 20 minutes. It's uber easy. I have not used this personally (only watched the video), but I have a meeting with them next week to get my hands dirty and see the back end.
The price is only $49 a month. So if you have a few courses for $10, you can easily make that up.
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