August 25, 2025 • 48 mins
Independent podcasting is where the industry's creative energy truly thrives, bringing fresh ideas and unique voices to the forefront.
The discussion around this energy takes centre stage in our conversation with Frank Racioppi, founder of Ear Worthy – a publication dedicated to championing indie podcasts in an increasingly corporate landscape. Frank shares his fascinating journey from longtime podcast listener to passionate advocate, explaining why he made the deliberate choice to focus on independent creators rather than network shows.
'It's at the independent podcasting level that there's the greatest creative energy within the industry,' Frank explains, contrasting the formulaic approach of network podcasts with the genre-defying innovation of independent creators. He reveals how removing all paywalls from his content led to a 200% increase in readership – a decision that aligned perfectly with his mission to connect listeners with exceptional indie shows they might otherwise never discover.
Sam explains more about TrueFans' new promotional features designed specifically for independent creators. With a pay-per-action model, podcasters can purchase visibility on the home page header and in category carousels, and pay only for actual engagement – views, clicks, and plays. We also unveil plans for a creator-to-creator promotion system that will enable podcasters to host promotions on their own show pages, creating revenue opportunities while helping fellow indies gain visibility.
Here's some more of what you'll hear in this episode:
- Discoverability remains a significant challenge for independent podcasters, highlighting the importance of platforms dedicated to showcasing their work
- Engagement with audiences through listener support and monetization options can positively impact independent creators' sustainability in the podcasting landscape
- Networking with other independent creators can lead to innovative collaborations and new ideas that benefit everyone involved in the podcasting community
- How to start a promotion on TrueFans
- How TrueFans promotions reporting will work
- Sam and Claire's plan for a new carousel on the TrueFans home page
- Research shows that most podcast listeners only make room for three shows in their weekly routine, emphasizing the importance of consistent publishing
- Nearly half of listeners are unwilling to give podcasts a second chance after a disappointing first impression
- What puts Claire and Sam off shows
Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this episode offers valuable perspective on navigating the complex landscape of independent podcast creation, promotion, and monetization.
Find TrueFans here
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Recommendations: Creators Podroll
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Frank Racioppi (00:06):
A lot of times, it's at the independent
podcasting level that there'sthe greatest creative energy
within the industry.
Sam Sethi (00:15):
That will allow you to then be able to have a value
for the number of times your adis viewed, a value for the
number of times someone clicksthrough from that viewed ad or
promotion to your podcast pageand a value for the number of
times someone plays your actualpodcast, and then one that I'm
(00:37):
guilty of, which is friends ofthe show.
Friends of the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
We don't care.
Oh, I do.
Oh well, the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
We don't care, oh, I do.
Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I like being called a friend of the show on whatever
it's called Pod News Weekly.
I like that.
Claire Waite Brown (00:55):
Welcome to Creators from True Fans.
I'm independent podcaster,claire Waite-Brown.
Sam Sethi (01:01):
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
Claire Waite Brown (01:04):
Each episode , we'll chat with an independent
creator, whether a podcaster ormusician, about their creative
experiences.
Sam Sethi (01:12):
And we'll answer questions from independent
creators about the True Fansfeatures that can help them with
discovery, interactivity andmonetization.
Claire Waite Brown (01:21):
We'll get interactive and see what our
listeners have been saying inthe comments and super comments.
Sam Sethi (01:27):
And discuss what's happening in the wider world.
That could be a benefit toindependent creators.
Claire Waite Brown (01:33):
Hi Claire, Hi Sam, how are you?
Sam Sethi (01:35):
I'm great.
Yes, this time Claire isn'tchatting with an independent
podcaster this week, no, butinstead with a champion of
independent podcasts.
His name is Frank Raciopi.
Have I said that correctly?
Claire Waite Brown (01:49):
You have, I'm here with Frank Raciopi and
we're going to talk aboutEarworthy Frank.
What is Earworthy, please, andwhy did you start it?
Frank Racioppi (02:02):
Well, claire, first of all, thank you for
having me.
It's a real pleasure and anhonor to be on with you today.
And, secondly, so Earworthy isquite simply a podcast review
and industry trends publication.
That's for people who arepodcast listeners.
A lot of times it's for superfans, people that listen to more
(02:22):
than 20 podcasts.
But it's there because podcastdiscoverability is always such
an issue In every other mediaindustry movies and so forth.
You know what movies are outthere, like, for example,
superman is out there, f1 is outthere, lilo and Stitch is out
there.
Everyone knows that, at least inthe States, but does everybody
(02:46):
know that there's a greatpodcast out there called
Multispective?
Or one of my favorite ones onpodcasting is, coincidentally,
podcasting 2.0 in Practice.
Does everybody know that?
And unfortunately, the answerto that is no, they don't, and
so people are always searchingfor the best podcast to listen
to, and in my case, I felt likethere was a need for that and
(03:09):
I'm not the only one that doesit, there's a lot of people that
do it better than I can andthey're very good at it.
But I felt there was a need andfilled that need.
Claire Waite Brown (03:18):
Absolutely.
We are always talking aboutdiscoverability and the people
that I talk to on this show thatis definitely always an issue.
How do you choose or find orsource the podcasts that you
want to talk about?
Frank Racioppi (03:37):
A great question and, if you don't mind, let me
just give you a little historyon Earworthy.
So I've been a podcast listenerfor a long time for about 17
years so podcasts were only acouple of years old in 2008.
And in 2009, I decided to starta podcast website and reviewing
(03:59):
podcasts there weren't as manyas there are now, but there were
still a considerable number.
As many as there are now, butthere were still a considerable
number and back then, most ofthem were independent slash
hobby, slash basement podcasts,and so I started something that
I called Podcast Reports in 2009.
Kept it going for three years,but unfortunately at that point
(04:22):
there really wasn't the interestin podcasts or podcasting that
early on.
So I went away from that for afew years and then restarted it
back in 2017.
So in 2017, originally, what Idid is I reached out to a lot of
the podcast networks hooked upwith their marketing companies,
(04:43):
and they just fed me what wascoming out on Spotify, iheart,
siriusxm.
I did that for a few years andthen, as I did that, I started
to hear from independentpodcasters about hey, I have
this podcast that no one knowsabout.
I think it's wonderful, wouldyou listen to it.
So I started to incorporatemore independent podcasts into
(05:07):
the review structure, and just afew years ago I made a decision
that Earworthy was no longergoing to review network
supported podcasts.
So we don't do Spotify podcasts.
Occasionally we'll do somethingfrom iHeart or maybe Wondery,
if there's a reason to do it,where they're taking on a, like,
(05:29):
a social justice perspective orsomething on LGBTQ plus, we'll
do something on that.
But for the most part I getsomething from Wondery on a
weekly basis.
I respond back respectively,but I just don't use them.
So I'm really looking atpromoting independent podcasts,
and so it's not hard to findthem, and I do get a lot of
(05:51):
messages from people.
So that's really how I sourceall that.
And then, of course, I hearfrom people all the time about
other podcasts they've listenedto.
There's not a dearth of them.
Matter of fact, there's aplentitude of such good podcasts
out there.
It's not a dearth of them.
As a matter of fact, there's aplentitude of such good podcasts
out there.
It's not a question of what Ican write about, but do I have
the time to write about all ofthem?
(06:12):
There's the longer answer thanyou want it and I apologize for
that, but that's where we're at.
Claire Waite Brown (06:18):
No, not at all.
No, it was good to get thebackground.
Now we talk on creators andgenerally True Fans, about
monetizing fandoms.
So we're talking about, youknow, listener support and stuff
.
Now I know that Earworthy is onSubstack, which allows you to
do similar things, and it's onother places, I believe.
(06:38):
So do you find Substack orother places to be good places
to earn financial support forthis podcast, championing that
you're doing?
Frank Racioppi (06:48):
That's a good question, and I really do love
Substack.
I think it's the logical nextstep to what we talked about 15,
20 years ago blogging.
There's a lot of intellectualenergy resident in a lot of
different sub stacks.
It's user-friendly, it'sreader-friendly, so there's a
lot of good things to be saidabout the sub stack.
(07:10):
So it's been a positiveexperience.
It can be a great place to makemoney and monetize.
I think it all depends on yourtopic.
So what I've noticed in doingsome investigation is, if you
have a topic in which there'sinformation that needs to be
(07:32):
given out that's not readilyavailable, people will pay for
it.
And so, going back to mysituation and people who do the
same thing I do, there's not alot of reason for people to pay
for a podcast review, in thatyou can get them anywhere, and I
knew that going in.
So I wasn't going into Substacksaying, wow, I'm going to make
(07:54):
a lot of money from this.
That wasn't the idea.
The idea for me really is to dowhat I'm passionate about is to
bring great independentpodcasts to people who are
interested in them, and if Icould make some money in the
process, that's great.
They spend on it energy, theyput into it and also the other
(08:30):
parts of their entire businessthat Substack is only part of
Like.
For example, if I could giveyou an example and I think you
know him because he was onPodcasting 2.0, I believe Dave
Jackson, the School ofPodcasting guy right.
Yeah, he was on he's, he's, he'sgreat.
I love him.
He has a wonderful podcast asub stack, pardon me and he has
a great podcast too.
He has a couple of them, buthe's well known.
(08:52):
He's able to use all of thosedifferent avenues of
communication and he merges themtogether into this brand in
which people respond to.
So the Substack is only onepart of what he does and I think
for a lot of people that's whySubstack, I think, can be
(09:12):
profitable and I hate using theword brand, but I'm going to do
that because you have todistinguish yourself somehow.
So, for example, when you'reearworthy, there's 50 other
people already on Substack thatbasically do the same thing.
So how do you distinguishyourself?
You have to have some sort ofbranding in order to do that.
So to answer that question,Substack I think can be really
(09:35):
valuable for people.
It's a good avenue.
I'm on Medium, and Medium isgood too.
You have the option of having apaywall on Medium in which only
people on Medium can read, andthen you get paid for it, or you
can take away the paywall andthen you don't get any money.
I don't have the paywallbecause I had it in the
(09:56):
beginning and, I have to behonest, I found myself being so
hypocritical because I wouldcomplain about podcast networks
that would build these paywalls.
And then here I am doing thesame thing I'm criticizing them
for.
So I decided you know, I'm notgoing to do that anymore.
Anybody can read any of thearticles and all of the
publications online that I havefor E-Worthy.
(10:17):
There's several, there's one onTumblr, Reddit, so forth.
They're all free.
They need to be, because youcan't write about the needed
destruction of paywalls if youhave one yourself.
That's just the way it is.
Claire Waite Brown (10:32):
That's hilarious.
You have to practice what youpreach.
Frank Racioppi (10:35):
Exactly.
Not that no one has ever calledme on it, but I just called
myself on it and said this isjust not right to be doing this.
And, to be honest, once I wentaway from the paywall, the
numbers of people I've gottennow that haven't made any money
on it, but I wasn't making a lotbefore, but the numbers of
actual readers are getting hasexploded.
(10:56):
It's went up about 200%.
So I'm getting to more peopleand to me, that's what's
important is, I want people toread about podcasts, find great
podcasts like yours, likeCreativity Found.
I want people to do that and ifI've done that, then I feel
like I've done what I set out todo here.
Claire Waite Brown (11:18):
Yeah, and that is of great value to us as
the podcasters, that the numberof people you're reaching is
growing, has grown in so much asother people are going to find
out about our show, so that ishugely, hugely valuable.
I want to talk about Podcasting2.0 features.
You've already mentionedPodcasting 2.0 in practice.
(11:40):
Thank you very much for that.
So what Podcasting 2.0 featuresare you aware of and do you see
the independent podcasts thatyou review?
Have you seen those shows usingsome of those 2.0 features?
Frank Racioppi (12:06):
in June, based on you reaching out to me and I
really thank you for doing thatand actually we're going to do
Creativity Found review in earlyAugust.
So, yeah, one of the thingsthat really attracted me, though
, in the beginning aboutpodcasting 2.0 in practice is
this Just like, as podcastinghas grown in popularity and has
attracted a lot more peopledoing podcast reviews and
(12:29):
recommendations, it has alsoattracted a lot of people who
either claim to be, or actuallyare, experts on how to create
your own podcast.
There's lots of great peopleout there.
Again, I mentioned Dave Jacksonhe's great.
Danny Brown with Be a BetterPodcaster.
One Minute Podcast Tips he'sfabulous.
(12:50):
There's a bunch of peoplePodcasting Tech with Matthew
Passy.
I could go through 20 of them.
What Podcasting 2.0 in practicehas that I think is highly
beneficial for either anaspirational podcaster or
independent podcaster who'salready starting to make
(13:11):
episodes is this it's coursework.
Coursework builds upon the lastpiece of work.
You need that knowledge thatgrows with every piece.
It's like building a house youstart in the beginning, you
listen, there's homework, whichmeans that people have skin in
(13:31):
the game, and then you go on,and the way you set it up was
logical in which you go throughthe coursework in a specific way
.
I thought one of my bestepisodes as far as me personally
, getting a lot out of it and Idid get a lot out of it was a
Danny Brown's one on funding andmonetization.
I thought he was great on that.
(13:52):
They all were great.
However, he's one of the best.
So I like that people can startwith the beginning of the
course, go to the end of thecourse and get a more
comprehensive view of how tostart a podcast.
Then, after you listen to all 31, I think it was 31 episodes
(14:14):
including homework, I don't know, I believe.
So I've been trying to thinkback to my review.
I think it's 31.
Someone will correct, someonewill send me a message that I
was wrong, which I am a lot.
But once you get all throughthat, then after that I think
you can go out and selectivelysay I want to know more about
(14:35):
one specific topic and findsomebody like Danny or Dave or
Joe Casabona and then go andlisten to what they have to say
and say that is real value,because now I have the
foundational knowledge that Igot from podcasting 2.0 in
practice and I will say that Ido talk to aspirational
(14:56):
podcasters on a pretty regularbasis.
So people know me and know whatI do and I'll get contacting
saying hey, I'm getting ready tostart my first episode, I'm
going to record it next week.
Would you listen and write areview?
And so what I've been saying iswell, have you gone through and
listened to the episodes ofPodcasting 2.0 in Practice?
(15:19):
If you haven't, go back and dothat because for people who
don't know who are listening tothis, they're not long.
They're like 15 minutes long orso, give or take.
There's a few that are longer.
The homework's about eight ornine minutes.
So even at 30 episodes or 31episodes, you're not talking
about a great deal of timeexpenditure, but you'll get a
(15:42):
lot out of it.
So I do recommend it, and I dosee that a few people now have
gotten back to me and said, yes,I've listened to it and now I
know not more and I am now goingto start my first episode, and
they scrapped the first episodethat they did.
So kudos to you for doing that.
Claire Waite Brown (16:03):
Well, thank you very much.
Frank Racioppi (16:06):
Can I add something about the creativity
found, if you don't mind, ofcourse, because one of the
things I see going on is youhave independent podcasters
going one way and a lot of timesit's at the independent
podcasting level that there'sthe greatest creative energy
within the industry.
So what I see from networksupported podcasts, some of them
(16:30):
absolutely fantastic I'm nottaking anything away from them
is that they've come up with aformula which isn't all that
creative, but I do have to saythey're generally always
successful.
Let's get a celebrity and thenwe'll create an interview
podcast and we'll market it.
As this person is controversial, unfiltered and opinionated,
(16:54):
we'll have good guests on forthem and then that's the show,
and those shows are.
There's a lot of them like thatand of course I'm not saying
that they're not good, it'ssimply that it's a formula and
then they replicate that overand over again without a lot of
creativity.
Now counterpoint that with someindependent podcasters who it's
(17:18):
because of the creative processthat they've created the
podcast.
The podcast is not because theywanted to start a podcast, it's
because they had such a greatidea.
The podcast was the logicaloutlet for those creative juices
.
And I could give you an exampleof one.
There's a podcast that's calledDead and Kind of Famous and
(17:41):
it's a podcast by two women.
They're both out in Californiaand in the LA area there's the
famous Hollywood Cemetery.
In the cemetery there's a lotof celebrities that we would all
know are buried.
Their podcast is called Deadand Kind of Famous because,
looking into the cemetery theyfind people that are not famous
(18:03):
but they're kind of famous.
There are people that you mightknow.
For example, they did somebodyright in the beginning who was
in the Frankenstein movie backfrom the 30s and then was in a
few of the movies after that andit's absolutely fabulous idea
and it's a great show and solove podcasts like that.
(18:24):
A lot of independent podcasters.
They don't just make a podcastthat is one genre.
So there's another podcastcalled Another F-ing Horror
Podcast.
It is a horror podcast, truecrime and comedy, so I don't
(18:45):
know where the Spotify or someof the podcast feeds would put
it.
However, it could go in allthree and most of the
network-supported podcasts thatcome out, which again are
wonderful in their own right,they're made to slot into a
specific genre.
What we need is to continuethat outlet for those creative
(19:10):
juices to be in podcasting.
You have a great idea.
Podcasting can be a way for youto release that creativity.
Claire Waite Brown (19:18):
I completely agree.
You may go to.
I have been to these kinds ofevents and people will say well,
what you need to do is knowyour audience Before you start
your podcast.
Know your audience and I'm likewell, I never did that, I did
what I wanted to do.
I had an idea and you're rightabout the flexibility of being
(19:40):
able to do that that anybody cancreate a show, get their RSS
feed.
Anybody in the world can findit.
That kind of thing absolutelyfascinates me.
One thing we do at True Fans andI've found some shows this way
is that when you sign up, if youchoose your categories you can
choose five categories.
They appear on your homepage.
(20:01):
Your categories you can choosefive categories.
They appear on your homepage.
But the way new shows appear ispurely by new episodes being
released, so you might getsomething from Sweden at the
front of that line one day.
I've discovered a couple ofcompletely new shows that I
never would have found on anyother app because they're coming
up that way through just thematter of shows are released
(20:24):
within that category, notalgorithmically being given to
you.
Just these are some shows.
So that's a discovery thingI've found.
Frank Racioppi (20:33):
Well, that's terrific and I applaud true fans
for doing that, because if yougo back and look at, for example
, the Apple ecosystem, whenyou're a new podcast, there's a
spot in Apple podcasting for newand noteworthy.
Once you're out of thatcategory, you're invisible again
.
You're back at the back of theline.
So yeah.
(20:54):
I think that could help.
Claire Waite Brown (20:55):
Yeah, thank you so much for our chat.
Frank, tell me and everybodylistening all the places that
they can find you and Earworthy.
Frank Racioppi (21:06):
Well, claire.
Thank you again.
I really was a pleasure to behere.
If you can find Earworthy foranybody's interest in podcast
reviews and specificallyindependent podcasts, you can
find it on Blogger, on Medium,on Substack, tumblr, reddit and
all of the social media outletsexcept for X.
(21:27):
We hope to have you on board,and anybody who has any feedback
on great independent podcaststhat they've heard, please let
me know.
I'm always in search of somegood ones and I recommend for
any independent podcasters thatare out there please check out
Podcasting 2.0 in practice.
(21:47):
It will definitely be worthyour time and you'll be a better
podcaster for it.
Claire Waite Brown (21:52):
Thank you so much.
I've been blushing for the lastgoodness knows how long with
all this praise.
Frank Racioppi (21:58):
Thank, you so much.
It's well-deserved, thank you,thank you.
Claire Waite Brown (22:02):
In the second part of that interview
with Frank, which you can hearlater, he tells me about how he
combines convening with naturewith listening to podcasts.
He reveals how his ownexperiences of making podcasts
have gone, and I talk about therevelation that came to me on
the sofa in my second year ofpodcasting.
Sam Sethi (22:23):
Can I just tell you the first part of that?
I thought Frank's walking nakedwhile listening to podcasts.
Right, that's what I thought hewas convening with nature naked
walking in the woods with FrankRassiopi.
He didn't mention what he hewore okay, and I'm not sure what
the revelation is, but we'llfind out.
Claire Waite Brown (22:44):
You need to listen to the revelation it's
not that exciting, but it isgood for independent podcasters
to hear good.
All right, if you'd like tochat with us about your
independent podcast or yourmusic, send a comment or super
comment in True Fans to anyCreators episode by clicking on
the speech bubble icon or on thecomments tab.
Sam Sethi (23:08):
Now we are going to be putting together a carousel
for the Earworthy Awards thatwill be live next week.
I'm sorry we haven't quite gotit there yet, claire, but it's
our plan that in the future wewill have a playlist available
for everybody.
So we'll have the first one,which will be a carousel on the
homepage called Awards, and itwill be the ear-worthy one, and
(23:29):
then in the future we'll updatethat for any future awards that
are appearing.
Claire Waite Brown (23:33):
Brilliant.
I'm looking forward to that.
Another good way for people todiscover new shows.
Sam Sethi (23:40):
We've been collecting questions that listeners have
sent us.
Claire, which question have youchosen to ask me this week?
Claire Waite Brown (23:47):
We're following on from something that
we mentioned in our lastCreators episode, and I've been
asked how can creators add theirpromotions to True Fans?
Sam Sethi (23:59):
One of the things we want to do is allow independent
podcast creators, not just thebig shows, to appear on our
homepage and, claire, you'vebeen doing a great job of adding
guests who we've had on thisshow so that they appear on the
Hero homepage or in a carousel.
But we came up with the idea,you and I of what if we could
(24:20):
allow you to buy space on thehero page or buy space on a
specific carousel.
So we started off with allowingpeople to buy space on the
headers, and then we said youcould buy space on your country
carousel.
And then we decided actually,wouldn't it be cool if you could
buy space on a carousel basedon your category?
So, claire, with one of yourpodcasts, it's got technology,
(24:44):
education and online courses andso you could buy space on those
three category carousels orjust one of them, or you could
buy it on another carousel thatyou're not even listed as as one
of your categories.
What do you think of that?
Claire Waite Brown (25:00):
I think it sounds absolutely fabulous.
I'm going to ask what anybody'sgoing to ask, and that is about
cost.
How does this work for mefinancially?
What's it going to cost me?
Sam Sethi (25:11):
So we're working on that.
So here's some of the numberswe're putting out.
We think that a seven-daypromotion putting a marketing
budget of, let say, 10,000 sats,which is £4.50.
We're not going thousands ofpounds that will allow you to
then be able to have a value forthe number of times your ad is
(25:31):
viewed, a value for the numberof times someone clicks through
from that viewed ad or promotionto your podcast page and a
value for the number of timessomeone plays your actual
podcast.
So, for example and again wehaven't finalized the number,
but it might be a hundred satsfor a view, might be 250 sats
for a click and 500 sats for aplay, and so what we would do
(25:56):
from your 10,000 sats is takethat money off from your budget
and if at the end of the sevendays you've got money left in
your wallet from that budget, wewill just give that back to you
.
If you're very successful andhalfway through your campaign
that 10,000 sats is all used up,we will then prompt you when
there's a thousand sats left.
Hey, claire, do you want to topup your budget, yes or no?
(26:19):
And if you say no, the minuteyour budget is finished, it will
be only three days into yourseven day promotion, we will
take your ad down or, conversely, you just put some more money
in.
It goes further until the sevendays are completed.
Claire Waite Brown (26:35):
Perfect.
I mean, it fits in witheverything that we do at True
Fans.
Pay for a view, for a download,makes absolute sense, rather
than just paying and hoping thatpeople see your ad.
Exactly, what about reportingWill I be able to see?
I mean, what will I be able tosee say at the end of my
campaign and say, luckily, allmy money's been used up?
(26:57):
How will I know where it went?
Sam Sethi (26:59):
In your creator's dashboard, once you've claimed
your podcast, you'll see a newtab called promotions and in
there you'll see any promotionyou've purchased.
So if it's a headline, a heroimage promotion, or it's a
carousel promotion, they'reslightly different.
You'll see two promotions andyou'll see the number of views
that you had, the number ofclicks you had and the number of
(27:20):
plays you had.
You'll even see who did that,and one of the things that we
also talk about, by the way, isa model which we will be
introducing in the future whereactually you, the listener, the
fan, gets a small micro paymentas well for your time and
attention, and that may helpwith converting people to play,
but we'll see.
Claire Waite Brown (27:40):
Yeah, okay, good, we will continue
experimenting.
I wanted to say something.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, sam.
You talk about SATs, but youcan set your budget as fiat
currency.
The SAT stuff is all working inthe background, isn't it so?
If.
I'm coming along and I want tosay, okay, I've got five pounds
(28:01):
for, or $5 or five euros for, acampaign.
I can still set it that way,can't I?
Sam Sethi (28:06):
Exactly so.
In your creator's dashboard,under settings, you will see
that there is a option to switchbetween viewing your currency
in sats or viewing it in yourfiat local currency.
So if you wanted to view it inpounds, dollars, euros, then we
will show everything in that.
So you just put five pounds inyour budget or 10 pounds in your
(28:28):
budget.
But if you prefer to use it inSAT, then, yeah, you can switch
and then we'll show everythingin SATs.
Claire Waite Brown (28:36):
Okay, brilliant.
I'll give some visuals of thatin the chapter art, no doubt.
Sam Sethi (28:40):
Thank you, Sam of some visuals of that in the
chapter art, no doubt.
Thank you, sam.
Thank you now.
Here's one other thing I wantedto ask you, claire.
So we've got an extension tothis idea of the promotion.
One of our ideas is that wewill basically allow the creator
to accept a promotion on theirpodcast page.
So at the moment, we, as truefans, are giving away our
(29:04):
homepage space to creators, butequally, why wouldn't a creator
like yourself on your ownpodcast allow ads to appear on
your podcast page?
So one idea we're playing withis the option for anybody who's
a creator let's say, look upyour podcast, claire then make a
(29:28):
request to you that says hey,claire, I want to be promoted on
your page.
There's a fixed fee for that,as we do with the budget.
You then choose to accept orreject that.
As the owner of that podcastpage, you say no, it doesn't fit
with my audience, I don't likethis podcast.
Oh no, that's a perfect swap.
You know it's complimentary.
It's maybe one of my friendsthat's already in the pod role
(29:48):
or whatever.
So you accept it and that willappear as the second episode
within your podcast page.
It's not added to your RSS feed, it's simply the latest episode
is episode one, then thepromoted podcast that you've
accepted and then last week'spodcast.
What do you think?
Claire Waite Brown (30:08):
Yeah, so we're talking about the show
screen, which is how I refer toit, on podcasting 2.0 in
practice.
So you might go to podcasting2.0 in practice, for example,
you'll see my show art, and thenyou go down and you see the
episode.
So you're go down and you seethe episode.
So you're saying this could bethe second episode.
Now, presumably it would look abit different and it would say
(30:30):
it was a promotion, completely.
It would say it was paid for.
Yes, yeah.
And let me just make sure I'vegot this right that other show
pays for that promotion.
Are they paying money to me orto True Fans?
Sam Sethi (30:47):
So they're paying money to the creator you,
because it's your page andyou're accepting the payment.
So you're accepting someoneadding content to your podcast
page, so you need to get paidand, yes, we'll take a small fee
, being very transparent, wehaven't decided, but it will be
somewhere in the region of fiveor 10%.
We're not going to go mental.
(31:07):
We're not Apple, we're notgoing 30%.
So it'll be 90 or 95%.
We'll go to the creator.
Claire Waite Brown (31:13):
Well, considering, the creator gets
the choice of whether to do itor not and whether to accept a
particular show or not.
The fact that it's going tolook obvious that it's a
promotion and not one of myepisodes, but, as you said, like
Podroll, something that Irecommend Personally, I would
not see a problem with that atall, and if people don't want to
(31:33):
do it, they don't have to, butif they do, they can be
promoting another show andearning a bit of money for
themselves, so seems prettywin-win to me.
I think it's all in the choice,so you can't really go wrong.
Yeah, interesting.
Sam Sethi (31:50):
That's in the plan.
If you want to try that, you'llbe able to buy creator space on
the homepage, and we do have awaitlist.
So what happens is if the fiveslots on the header are taken,
you get added to the wait listand the minute that one of those
promotions ends, your promotionwill get added and the same on
the carousels.
We have 10 slots on eachcarousel and if they get all
(32:12):
eaten up, then you go on a waitlist and then at the end of that
, when one drops off, you getadded onto it brilliant.
Claire Waite Brown (32:20):
So that's, the home page is up and running.
You can do those and we'llreport back when we get to this
other thing that we've justspoken about on a particular
podcast show screen coolhopefully in two weeks, when we
do this show again, it will belive well, you've said it now
yes, I have.
Sam Sethi (32:38):
Oh, my god help claire.
Should we have a look at what'sgoing on in the world?
Claire Waite Brown (32:44):
Absolutely.
What have you spotted?
What's caught your eye from anindependent podcaster's point of
view?
Sam Sethi (32:50):
Well, one of the things that I saw was a report
that podcast listeners arelistening longer, which I think
is great.
This was from Podcast Movement.
Weekly listeners now consume6.3 hours of podcasts a week on
average.
That's pretty high, actually.
I don't know who the sample is.
What was interesting, thoughone of the other things that
(33:11):
came out of a report was thatthe number of podcasts that
people have are three, so mostpodcast listeners only make room
for three titles in theirweekly routine.
So if the 6.3 was true and thereport saying that it was only
three titles, each one wouldhave to be over two hours long.
Yeah, it seems a bit odd.
(33:32):
How many podcasts do youregularly listen to on a weekly
basis, would you say?
Claire Waite Brown (33:36):
Okay, so I have a little collection.
I'm just going to actually havea look.
I know what they are five, five, five that are regularly in my
queue.
Sam Sethi (33:49):
Yeah, I've got about five, some podcasty, business
ones, a couple of politics ones.
Claire Waite Brown (33:55):
Yeah, about five I'm putting more in at the
moment, but then I'm listeningto shows in order to interview
them for this show for creators,yeah, which has been really
good, fun and interesting.
Sam Sethi (34:07):
So I've got quite a few shows in there that are
extras yeah, I think what ismost interesting from that to me
is that when we talk tocreators about having their
podcasts at the same time, everytime, and being consistent.
This is why Because if you'vegot three or five podcasts that
(34:30):
you regularly listen to and youthen go to listen to them at the
time that you do dog walk,drive to school, commute to work
in the gym, and that podcastyou want to listen to of your
five is not there, you canchoose to maybe find space for a
new podcast that you haven'tlistened to and suddenly that
becomes your new favorite andthat podcast that missed their
(34:53):
slot suddenly becomes off yourroster.
Claire Waite Brown (34:57):
Yeah.
Sam Sethi (34:58):
There may be 4 million podcasts, but don't
assume that people are going tocome back to your podcast if you
missed your time slot.
Yeah, now some of the otherthings that are interesting.
No second chances, claire.
Almost half of listeners willnot give a podcast a second try
if the first impressiondisappoints them.
Have you experienced that?
(35:18):
Have you listened to a podcastand gone?
Nah, not going to listen tothat again.
Claire Waite Brown (35:22):
Yeah, I have Two reasons.
One I listened to just had somany adverts in it Loads of
adverts at the very beginning,so that annoyed me from the word
go.
You know I don't mind one ortwo promotions, but it was loads
of adverts Carried on listening.
Then there were a load moreadverts, bit more.
No, can't be doing with it.
And I like the idea of thecontent, but I can't be doing
(35:43):
with it.
But another one I don't know ifI'm really picky about this or
if everybody's like this, andI'm going to say sound quality,
but what I mean is speechquality.
So clicks and breaths and huffsand puffs and things that will
yeah, exactly those kinds ofthings will put me off, and I
(36:04):
know it does my son as well.
He gets so cross when he hearsthings like this.
So I completely understand thatI would be put off of a show.
I can be put off of a showquite quickly, which is a bit
sad, because in some cases youthink, well, maybe it's the
early days and really I shouldgo back five months later and
see if things have improved.
So it is a difficult.
Is it difficult, though?
(36:26):
Doesn't anybody hear goodquality and realise it's good
quality?
Sam Sethi (36:30):
Yeah, I think my biggest bugbear is when the
hosts start the show off.
So one of my favourite shows isPivot with Cara Swisher and
Scott Galloway, but I hate thestart of their show, so I always
skip it.
It's like oh Scott, how are you?
Have you been to Cannes thisweek?
Oh Cara, what were you doing?
I don't care, I actually don'tcare.
I just want to know what youropinion is on the news report
(36:54):
that's out this week, and sothat's one of my bugbears.
If I'm listening to a podcastand the hosts decide to give me
their weekly shopping list andthe roundup of their school day
and whatever else they think isimportant to them, which isn't
important to me, that turns meoff, and I often don't go back
and listen to them.
Claire Waite Brown (37:13):
I completely agree with that one.
Do they have chapters?
Sam Sethi (37:17):
No, they don't have chapters either.
Claire Waite Brown (37:19):
Because you could very easily skip past the
boring bit, in fact, my updatesfor Podcasting 2.0.
In practice, I do a little bitof repetition at the beginning
of each one, so I've used thechapters to say, in fact, I do
say something like if you'veheard this before, skip to the
next chapter.
Right, that would be an answerto that question, wouldn't?
Sam Sethi (37:38):
it Also a feature in TrueFans which we haven't talked
about properly.
Again, you might be learningsomething new, claire.
In the info button on thepodcast page you can actually go
and set the start time and theend time for each podcast
individually.
So you might say this is myfavorite podcast, but I know
(37:58):
they do an advert and then theydo some spiel for five minutes.
So start this podcast at sixminutes and it will
automatically skip all of thatfor you.
And equally, if you know theend of a podcast is something
you don't want to listen to, youcan say one minute from the end
, skip it.
And then it will go obviouslyin a playlist straight to the
(38:20):
next podcast.
Claire Waite Brown (38:21):
I didn't know that.
No, brilliant, we'll have to doa Fan Zone episode on that,
because you haven't told me thatone.
Sam Sethi (38:28):
No, yes, feature 1077 .
Claire Waite Brown (38:33):
Very good.
Sam Sethi (38:34):
Now Bill Wyman is a New York journalist.
He's written 23 reasons why hehates your podcast.
Now he basically said optionone is you have to envisage your
audience, yes, and set the tonefor them.
So don't talk about stuff thatisn't about your audience.
There was a couple in therethat I did like Number three
(38:56):
please don't tell us that youhave lots to get on with this
week.
Just don't Just get on with it.
It right.
And then one that I'm guilty of, which is friends of the show.
Friends of the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
We don't care oh, I do oh well, there you go so I
like being called a friend ofhis show on whatever it's called
pod news weekly.
Sam Sethi (39:19):
I like that well, yes , he simply says don't say
jocularly, friend of the pod,it's stupid, no one cares.
And then we have to listen toyou guys discuss how many times
this friend of the pod has beenon.
And anyway, I'm still going touse it.
But yes, he doesn't like that.
Yeah, it goes on.
If you want to read it, it's avery good 23 reasons why he
hates your podcast.
It's on Pod News Daily.
(39:46):
You can find it there.
It's very good as a read.
By the way, a couple of othermicro things I wanted to just
cover off.
One is the APAs from Audio UK,and that's really good for
independent podcasters.
You have until the 17th ofSeptember to enter and the
ceremony will take place onNovember the 27th at the BFI in
London Brilliant.
And the other one is the LondonPodcast Festival is coming back
(40:10):
in September.
It's the 10th year.
We'll be at King's Place nearKing's Cross.
If you're interested in seeingsome of your favourite shows
live, have a look at the list ofshows that are going to be
there, uh, and make your way wewon't be there though we won't
be there.
No, we know well we will be, butwe'll be in the audience.
But what we can do, one, we cando an unscripted.
(40:33):
How about we do one?
Just sat outside, see if anyonesits around and watches us.
What are you two muppets doing?
We're doing our show neverheard of you.
We're doing our show Neverheard of you.
Equally, though, at the event,they are doing something called
Podcast Makers.
It's over the weekend, it's the13th and 14th of September.
If you're interested inworkshops, practical insights,
(40:59):
what people are doing, this isdesigned for newcomers as well
as experienced podcast creators.
That's it for me.
I don't think we'll do any more.
I'm fed up.
Now I've had enough, yeah.
Claire's going to edit all thisout anyway, I don't know why I'm
doing it, and that's it forthis week.
Our audio is recorded onRiverside, edited by the
wonderful Claire, and we'rehosted by our friends Buzzsprout
.
Claire Waite Brown (41:19):
You can support this show by streaming
sats from your True Fans walletor leave us a super comment or,
better still, become a monthlysupporter of this show.
Sam Sethi (41:30):
If you'd like to advertise or sponsor this show,
then please email me, sam, attruefansfm, for further details.
Claire Waite Brown (41:36):
You can find out more about how to use the
features of the True Fansplatform although not all of
them, because Sam just told me anew one the features of the
True Fans platform, although notall of them, because Sam just
told me a new one, but a lot ofthe other ones you can find out
about by listening to our sisterpodcast Fan Zone and if you're
keen to learn more aboutPodcasting 2.0 in general, check
(42:02):
out my course-based podcastcalled Podcasting 2.0 in
Practice.
Thank you, don't forget.
You can keep listening to hearmore from this episode's
featured creator.
Talking about time, how do youfit it in?
You've got to listen to theshows before you can review them
.
You've got to do the reviews.
How does this fit in around therest of your life?
Frank Racioppi (42:20):
So here's my daily routine is I get up and
have some coffee, of course, tryto avoid reading the news, and
then I go out walking aboutseven in the morning and I walk
for about two hours that's aboutsix, six and a half miles and
then all I do is listen topodcasts, and then all I do is
(42:41):
listen to podcasts.
And so then, when I get backwhat I listen to, I jot down
some notes and then do some moreresearch and then that's how I
listen to all the podcasts thatwe write about, and that's where
I get the time to do that, andI have to say that it's actually
my favorite time of the day toget out there.
(43:01):
You know, first of all, beoutside is wonderful.
You commune with nature alittle bit and you get to listen
to great independent podcasts.
Really, life couldn't be better.
So it's great.
Not everything I listen to Iwill write about.
I mean, there's some timeswhere I'll listen to something,
and independent podcasters, asyou well know, are a wonderful
(43:25):
bunch.
They're very creative,enthusiastic, entrepreneurial.
Otherwise they wouldn't be asan independent podcast.
But there's, as you know fromPodcasting 2.0, in practice
there's a learning curve topodcasting and people are in
different points in theirpodcasting journey.
So sometimes I'll get a messagefrom someone listen to my
(43:46):
podcast and it's their first orsecond one and it's probably not
ready to be reviewed.
And then I'll get back to themand say there's a couple of
things you might want to look at.
And then I'll hear from them ayear later and their podcast is
transformed.
They've just gotten so muchbetter at it and now is the
perfect time to review theirpodcast.
(44:08):
So for me it's great.
It fits right into my scheduleand I do it every day.
It's a seven day thing to getout.
We were on vacation in NorthCarolina and I walked on to the
beach every day and that made iteven such a better experience
to be on the beach and listen topodcasts.
It's great.
Claire Waite Brown (44:29):
Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.
I listen when I'm walking andalso when I'm driving.
Have you ever been tempted?
Or perhaps you already have todo your own podcast?
Frank Racioppi (44:39):
Oh my gosh.
The answer to that is yes andyes.
So I have been involved in twopodcasts.
Neither one of them are active.
When I restarted Earworthy in2017, I decided that I would
start a podcast because I thinkthe best way to write about
anything is to actually do it.
(45:00):
Anything is to actually do it,and so it didn't seem fair for
me to write about people'spodcasts when I hadn't done it
myself.
And after this experience, I'mgoing to relate.
It's given me a lot morerespect for independent
podcasters or for any podcasters.
It's a lot more difficult thanpeople realize my background.
(45:21):
I worked for a Fortune 30company for years and my
background was in employeecommunications.
I was a speechwriter for thetop executives and I did a lot
of communications with frontlineemployees and so forth.
So I came up with a podcastcalled Make a Connection and it
(45:41):
was about how to be bettercommunicators within a
corporation or any organization.
It didn't have to be profitmaking, so it did things like
how to make sure that you giveemployees the right feedback and
things like that, and I had itfor about 30 episodes or so and,
to be quite honest, the reasonI got rid of it was that I just
(46:04):
was.
I wasn't very good at it, so Icouldn't attract a lot of guests
.
It wasn't a topic which Ididn't realize a lot of people
weren't interested in talkingabout, there weren't that many
experts on it and, to be honest,unlike you and a lot of other
people I review, I wasn't thatgood.
I wasn't happy with myperformance and so I stopped it
(46:27):
and let that sit for a while andso, for then, for a couple of
years, didn't do anything otherthan earworthy.
And then, like for a lot of us,covid came along and now I was
searching for something else todo.
To fill up that time, I have abrother.
We came up, based on thecurrent political campaign in
(46:49):
2019 or so, with an idea calledfalse facts, and the idea was to
take historical facts andpresent political facts, look at
them as sort of a kind of likea fact check or a political fact
, and then do a podcast on that,and so we started that well,
false facts and we ran that fora while during COVID, but then,
(47:13):
once COVID was over, both of usneeded to go back to both of our
jobs.
There's an investment in goodequipment, especially when
you're doing a remote recording.
We weren't sure if we wanted todo that, so we said, well,
let's put that on hold.
And we did, and so now I'm notpodcasting currently, but I
would certainly like to.
Claire Waite Brown (47:36):
Yeah, that things getting back to normal
after COVID was what tookcreativity found from being a
weekly podcast to being afortnightly released podcast
because of getting back to work.
But what I loved about that wasthe and I remember sitting on
the sofa and having thisrevelation occur to me that it
(47:57):
was my show and I could do whatI wanted.
Oh duh, claire, you do what youwant.
So, yeah, completely understandthat.
A lot of times, it's at the independent
podcasting level that there'sthe greatest creative energy
within the industry.
Sam Sethi (00:15):
That will allow you to then be able to have a value
for the number of times your adis viewed, a value for the
number of times someone clicksthrough from that viewed ad or
promotion to your podcast pageand a value for the number of
times someone plays your actualpodcast, and then one that I'm
(00:37):
guilty of, which is friends ofthe show.
Friends of the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
We don't care.
Oh, I do.
Oh well, the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
We don't care, oh, I do.
Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I like being called a friend of the show on whatever
it's called Pod News Weekly.
I like that.
Claire Waite Brown (00:55):
Welcome to Creators from True Fans.
I'm independent podcaster,claire Waite-Brown.
Sam Sethi (01:01):
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
Claire Waite Brown (01:04):
Each episode , we'll chat with an independent
creator, whether a podcaster ormusician, about their creative
experiences.
Sam Sethi (01:12):
And we'll answer questions from independent
creators about the True Fansfeatures that can help them with
discovery, interactivity andmonetization.
Claire Waite Brown (01:21):
We'll get interactive and see what our
listeners have been saying inthe comments and super comments.
Sam Sethi (01:27):
And discuss what's happening in the wider world.
That could be a benefit toindependent creators.
Claire Waite Brown (01:33):
Hi Claire, Hi Sam, how are you?
Sam Sethi (01:35):
I'm great.
Yes, this time Claire isn'tchatting with an independent
podcaster this week, no, butinstead with a champion of
independent podcasts.
His name is Frank Raciopi.
Have I said that correctly?
Claire Waite Brown (01:49):
You have, I'm here with Frank Raciopi and
we're going to talk aboutEarworthy Frank.
What is Earworthy, please, andwhy did you start it?
Frank Racioppi (02:02):
Well, claire, first of all, thank you for
having me.
It's a real pleasure and anhonor to be on with you today.
And, secondly, so Earworthy isquite simply a podcast review
and industry trends publication.
That's for people who arepodcast listeners.
A lot of times it's for superfans, people that listen to more
(02:22):
than 20 podcasts.
But it's there because podcastdiscoverability is always such
an issue In every other mediaindustry movies and so forth.
You know what movies are outthere, like, for example,
superman is out there, f1 is outthere, lilo and Stitch is out
there.
Everyone knows that, at least inthe States, but does everybody
(02:46):
know that there's a greatpodcast out there called
Multispective?
Or one of my favorite ones onpodcasting is, coincidentally,
podcasting 2.0 in Practice.
Does everybody know that?
And unfortunately, the answerto that is no, they don't, and
so people are always searchingfor the best podcast to listen
to, and in my case, I felt likethere was a need for that and
(03:09):
I'm not the only one that doesit, there's a lot of people that
do it better than I can andthey're very good at it.
But I felt there was a need andfilled that need.
Claire Waite Brown (03:18):
Absolutely.
We are always talking aboutdiscoverability and the people
that I talk to on this show thatis definitely always an issue.
How do you choose or find orsource the podcasts that you
want to talk about?
Frank Racioppi (03:37):
A great question and, if you don't mind, let me
just give you a little historyon Earworthy.
So I've been a podcast listenerfor a long time for about 17
years so podcasts were only acouple of years old in 2008.
And in 2009, I decided to starta podcast website and reviewing
(03:59):
podcasts there weren't as manyas there are now, but there were
still a considerable number.
As many as there are now, butthere were still a considerable
number and back then, most ofthem were independent slash
hobby, slash basement podcasts,and so I started something that
I called Podcast Reports in 2009.
Kept it going for three years,but unfortunately at that point
(04:22):
there really wasn't the interestin podcasts or podcasting that
early on.
So I went away from that for afew years and then restarted it
back in 2017.
So in 2017, originally, what Idid is I reached out to a lot of
the podcast networks hooked upwith their marketing companies,
(04:43):
and they just fed me what wascoming out on Spotify, iheart,
siriusxm.
I did that for a few years andthen, as I did that, I started
to hear from independentpodcasters about hey, I have
this podcast that no one knowsabout.
I think it's wonderful, wouldyou listen to it.
So I started to incorporatemore independent podcasts into
(05:07):
the review structure, and just afew years ago I made a decision
that Earworthy was no longergoing to review network
supported podcasts.
So we don't do Spotify podcasts.
Occasionally we'll do somethingfrom iHeart or maybe Wondery,
if there's a reason to do it,where they're taking on a, like,
(05:29):
a social justice perspective orsomething on LGBTQ plus, we'll
do something on that.
But for the most part I getsomething from Wondery on a
weekly basis.
I respond back respectively,but I just don't use them.
So I'm really looking atpromoting independent podcasts,
and so it's not hard to findthem, and I do get a lot of
(05:51):
messages from people.
So that's really how I sourceall that.
And then, of course, I hearfrom people all the time about
other podcasts they've listenedto.
There's not a dearth of them.
Matter of fact, there's aplentitude of such good podcasts
out there.
It's not a dearth of them.
As a matter of fact, there's aplentitude of such good podcasts
out there.
It's not a question of what Ican write about, but do I have
the time to write about all ofthem?
(06:12):
There's the longer answer thanyou want it and I apologize for
that, but that's where we're at.
Claire Waite Brown (06:18):
No, not at all.
No, it was good to get thebackground.
Now we talk on creators andgenerally True Fans, about
monetizing fandoms.
So we're talking about, youknow, listener support and stuff
.
Now I know that Earworthy is onSubstack, which allows you to
do similar things, and it's onother places, I believe.
(06:38):
So do you find Substack orother places to be good places
to earn financial support forthis podcast, championing that
you're doing?
Frank Racioppi (06:48):
That's a good question, and I really do love
Substack.
I think it's the logical nextstep to what we talked about 15,
20 years ago blogging.
There's a lot of intellectualenergy resident in a lot of
different sub stacks.
It's user-friendly, it'sreader-friendly, so there's a
lot of good things to be saidabout the sub stack.
(07:10):
So it's been a positiveexperience.
It can be a great place to makemoney and monetize.
I think it all depends on yourtopic.
So what I've noticed in doingsome investigation is, if you
have a topic in which there'sinformation that needs to be
(07:32):
given out that's not readilyavailable, people will pay for
it.
And so, going back to mysituation and people who do the
same thing I do, there's not alot of reason for people to pay
for a podcast review, in thatyou can get them anywhere, and I
knew that going in.
So I wasn't going into Substacksaying, wow, I'm going to make
(07:54):
a lot of money from this.
That wasn't the idea.
The idea for me really is to dowhat I'm passionate about is to
bring great independentpodcasts to people who are
interested in them, and if Icould make some money in the
process, that's great.
They spend on it energy, theyput into it and also the other
(08:30):
parts of their entire businessthat Substack is only part of
Like.
For example, if I could giveyou an example and I think you
know him because he was onPodcasting 2.0, I believe Dave
Jackson, the School ofPodcasting guy right.
Yeah, he was on he's, he's, he'sgreat.
I love him.
He has a wonderful podcast asub stack, pardon me and he has
a great podcast too.
He has a couple of them, buthe's well known.
(08:52):
He's able to use all of thosedifferent avenues of
communication and he merges themtogether into this brand in
which people respond to.
So the Substack is only onepart of what he does and I think
for a lot of people that's whySubstack, I think, can be
(09:12):
profitable and I hate using theword brand, but I'm going to do
that because you have todistinguish yourself somehow.
So, for example, when you'reearworthy, there's 50 other
people already on Substack thatbasically do the same thing.
So how do you distinguishyourself?
You have to have some sort ofbranding in order to do that.
So to answer that question,Substack I think can be really
(09:35):
valuable for people.
It's a good avenue.
I'm on Medium, and Medium isgood too.
You have the option of having apaywall on Medium in which only
people on Medium can read, andthen you get paid for it, or you
can take away the paywall andthen you don't get any money.
I don't have the paywallbecause I had it in the
(09:56):
beginning and, I have to behonest, I found myself being so
hypocritical because I wouldcomplain about podcast networks
that would build these paywalls.
And then here I am doing thesame thing I'm criticizing them
for.
So I decided you know, I'm notgoing to do that anymore.
Anybody can read any of thearticles and all of the
publications online that I havefor E-Worthy.
(10:17):
There's several, there's one onTumblr, Reddit, so forth.
They're all free.
They need to be, because youcan't write about the needed
destruction of paywalls if youhave one yourself.
That's just the way it is.
Claire Waite Brown (10:32):
That's hilarious.
You have to practice what youpreach.
Frank Racioppi (10:35):
Exactly.
Not that no one has ever calledme on it, but I just called
myself on it and said this isjust not right to be doing this.
And, to be honest, once I wentaway from the paywall, the
numbers of people I've gottennow that haven't made any money
on it, but I wasn't making a lotbefore, but the numbers of
actual readers are getting hasexploded.
(10:56):
It's went up about 200%.
So I'm getting to more peopleand to me, that's what's
important is, I want people toread about podcasts, find great
podcasts like yours, likeCreativity Found.
I want people to do that and ifI've done that, then I feel
like I've done what I set out todo here.
Claire Waite Brown (11:18):
Yeah, and that is of great value to us as
the podcasters, that the numberof people you're reaching is
growing, has grown in so much asother people are going to find
out about our show, so that ishugely, hugely valuable.
I want to talk about Podcasting2.0 features.
You've already mentionedPodcasting 2.0 in practice.
(11:40):
Thank you very much for that.
So what Podcasting 2.0 featuresare you aware of and do you see
the independent podcasts thatyou review?
Have you seen those shows usingsome of those 2.0 features?
Frank Racioppi (12:06):
in June, based on you reaching out to me and I
really thank you for doing thatand actually we're going to do
Creativity Found review in earlyAugust.
So, yeah, one of the thingsthat really attracted me, though
, in the beginning aboutpodcasting 2.0 in practice is
this Just like, as podcastinghas grown in popularity and has
attracted a lot more peopledoing podcast reviews and
(12:29):
recommendations, it has alsoattracted a lot of people who
either claim to be, or actuallyare, experts on how to create
your own podcast.
There's lots of great peopleout there.
Again, I mentioned Dave Jacksonhe's great.
Danny Brown with Be a BetterPodcaster.
One Minute Podcast Tips he'sfabulous.
(12:50):
There's a bunch of peoplePodcasting Tech with Matthew
Passy.
I could go through 20 of them.
What Podcasting 2.0 in practicehas that I think is highly
beneficial for either anaspirational podcaster or
independent podcaster who'salready starting to make
(13:11):
episodes is this it's coursework.
Coursework builds upon the lastpiece of work.
You need that knowledge thatgrows with every piece.
It's like building a house youstart in the beginning, you
listen, there's homework, whichmeans that people have skin in
(13:31):
the game, and then you go on,and the way you set it up was
logical in which you go throughthe coursework in a specific way
.
I thought one of my bestepisodes as far as me personally
, getting a lot out of it and Idid get a lot out of it was a
Danny Brown's one on funding andmonetization.
I thought he was great on that.
(13:52):
They all were great.
However, he's one of the best.
So I like that people can startwith the beginning of the
course, go to the end of thecourse and get a more
comprehensive view of how tostart a podcast.
Then, after you listen to all 31, I think it was 31 episodes
(14:14):
including homework, I don't know, I believe.
So I've been trying to thinkback to my review.
I think it's 31.
Someone will correct, someonewill send me a message that I
was wrong, which I am a lot.
But once you get all throughthat, then after that I think
you can go out and selectivelysay I want to know more about
(14:35):
one specific topic and findsomebody like Danny or Dave or
Joe Casabona and then go andlisten to what they have to say
and say that is real value,because now I have the
foundational knowledge that Igot from podcasting 2.0 in
practice and I will say that Ido talk to aspirational
(14:56):
podcasters on a pretty regularbasis.
So people know me and know whatI do and I'll get contacting
saying hey, I'm getting ready tostart my first episode, I'm
going to record it next week.
Would you listen and write areview?
And so what I've been saying iswell, have you gone through and
listened to the episodes ofPodcasting 2.0 in Practice?
(15:19):
If you haven't, go back and dothat because for people who
don't know who are listening tothis, they're not long.
They're like 15 minutes long orso, give or take.
There's a few that are longer.
The homework's about eight ornine minutes.
So even at 30 episodes or 31episodes, you're not talking
about a great deal of timeexpenditure, but you'll get a
(15:42):
lot out of it.
So I do recommend it, and I dosee that a few people now have
gotten back to me and said, yes,I've listened to it and now I
know not more and I am now goingto start my first episode, and
they scrapped the first episodethat they did.
So kudos to you for doing that.
Claire Waite Brown (16:03):
Well, thank you very much.
Frank Racioppi (16:06):
Can I add something about the creativity
found, if you don't mind, ofcourse, because one of the
things I see going on is youhave independent podcasters
going one way and a lot of timesit's at the independent
podcasting level that there'sthe greatest creative energy
within the industry.
So what I see from networksupported podcasts, some of them
(16:30):
absolutely fantastic I'm nottaking anything away from them
is that they've come up with aformula which isn't all that
creative, but I do have to saythey're generally always
successful.
Let's get a celebrity and thenwe'll create an interview
podcast and we'll market it.
As this person is controversial, unfiltered and opinionated,
(16:54):
we'll have good guests on forthem and then that's the show,
and those shows are.
There's a lot of them like thatand of course I'm not saying
that they're not good, it'ssimply that it's a formula and
then they replicate that overand over again without a lot of
creativity.
Now counterpoint that with someindependent podcasters who it's
(17:18):
because of the creative processthat they've created the
podcast.
The podcast is not because theywanted to start a podcast, it's
because they had such a greatidea.
The podcast was the logicaloutlet for those creative juices
.
And I could give you an exampleof one.
There's a podcast that's calledDead and Kind of Famous and
(17:41):
it's a podcast by two women.
They're both out in Californiaand in the LA area there's the
famous Hollywood Cemetery.
In the cemetery there's a lotof celebrities that we would all
know are buried.
Their podcast is called Deadand Kind of Famous because,
looking into the cemetery theyfind people that are not famous
(18:03):
but they're kind of famous.
There are people that you mightknow.
For example, they did somebodyright in the beginning who was
in the Frankenstein movie backfrom the 30s and then was in a
few of the movies after that andit's absolutely fabulous idea
and it's a great show and solove podcasts like that.
(18:24):
A lot of independent podcasters.
They don't just make a podcastthat is one genre.
So there's another podcastcalled Another F-ing Horror
Podcast.
It is a horror podcast, truecrime and comedy, so I don't
(18:45):
know where the Spotify or someof the podcast feeds would put
it.
However, it could go in allthree and most of the
network-supported podcasts thatcome out, which again are
wonderful in their own right,they're made to slot into a
specific genre.
What we need is to continuethat outlet for those creative
(19:10):
juices to be in podcasting.
You have a great idea.
Podcasting can be a way for youto release that creativity.
Claire Waite Brown (19:18):
I completely agree.
You may go to.
I have been to these kinds ofevents and people will say well,
what you need to do is knowyour audience Before you start
your podcast.
Know your audience and I'm likewell, I never did that, I did
what I wanted to do.
I had an idea and you're rightabout the flexibility of being
(19:40):
able to do that that anybody cancreate a show, get their RSS
feed.
Anybody in the world can findit.
That kind of thing absolutelyfascinates me.
One thing we do at True Fans andI've found some shows this way
is that when you sign up, if youchoose your categories you can
choose five categories.
They appear on your homepage.
(20:01):
Your categories you can choosefive categories.
They appear on your homepage.
But the way new shows appear ispurely by new episodes being
released, so you might getsomething from Sweden at the
front of that line one day.
I've discovered a couple ofcompletely new shows that I
never would have found on anyother app because they're coming
up that way through just thematter of shows are released
(20:24):
within that category, notalgorithmically being given to
you.
Just these are some shows.
So that's a discovery thingI've found.
Frank Racioppi (20:33):
Well, that's terrific and I applaud true fans
for doing that, because if yougo back and look at, for example
, the Apple ecosystem, whenyou're a new podcast, there's a
spot in Apple podcasting for newand noteworthy.
Once you're out of thatcategory, you're invisible again
.
You're back at the back of theline.
So yeah.
(20:54):
I think that could help.
Claire Waite Brown (20:55):
Yeah, thank you so much for our chat.
Frank, tell me and everybodylistening all the places that
they can find you and Earworthy.
Frank Racioppi (21:06):
Well, claire.
Thank you again.
I really was a pleasure to behere.
If you can find Earworthy foranybody's interest in podcast
reviews and specificallyindependent podcasts, you can
find it on Blogger, on Medium,on Substack, tumblr, reddit and
all of the social media outletsexcept for X.
(21:27):
We hope to have you on board,and anybody who has any feedback
on great independent podcaststhat they've heard, please let
me know.
I'm always in search of somegood ones and I recommend for
any independent podcasters thatare out there please check out
Podcasting 2.0 in practice.
(21:47):
It will definitely be worthyour time and you'll be a better
podcaster for it.
Claire Waite Brown (21:52):
Thank you so much.
I've been blushing for the lastgoodness knows how long with
all this praise.
Frank Racioppi (21:58):
Thank, you so much.
It's well-deserved, thank you,thank you.
Claire Waite Brown (22:02):
In the second part of that interview
with Frank, which you can hearlater, he tells me about how he
combines convening with naturewith listening to podcasts.
He reveals how his ownexperiences of making podcasts
have gone, and I talk about therevelation that came to me on
the sofa in my second year ofpodcasting.
Sam Sethi (22:23):
Can I just tell you the first part of that?
I thought Frank's walking nakedwhile listening to podcasts.
Right, that's what I thought hewas convening with nature naked
walking in the woods with FrankRassiopi.
He didn't mention what he hewore okay, and I'm not sure what
the revelation is, but we'llfind out.
Claire Waite Brown (22:44):
You need to listen to the revelation it's
not that exciting, but it isgood for independent podcasters
to hear good.
All right, if you'd like tochat with us about your
independent podcast or yourmusic, send a comment or super
comment in True Fans to anyCreators episode by clicking on
the speech bubble icon or on thecomments tab.
Sam Sethi (23:08):
Now we are going to be putting together a carousel
for the Earworthy Awards thatwill be live next week.
I'm sorry we haven't quite gotit there yet, claire, but it's
our plan that in the future wewill have a playlist available
for everybody.
So we'll have the first one,which will be a carousel on the
homepage called Awards, and itwill be the ear-worthy one, and
(23:29):
then in the future we'll updatethat for any future awards that
are appearing.
Claire Waite Brown (23:33):
Brilliant.
I'm looking forward to that.
Another good way for people todiscover new shows.
Sam Sethi (23:40):
We've been collecting questions that listeners have
sent us.
Claire, which question have youchosen to ask me this week?
Claire Waite Brown (23:47):
We're following on from something that
we mentioned in our lastCreators episode, and I've been
asked how can creators add theirpromotions to True Fans?
Sam Sethi (23:59):
One of the things we want to do is allow independent
podcast creators, not just thebig shows, to appear on our
homepage and, claire, you'vebeen doing a great job of adding
guests who we've had on thisshow so that they appear on the
Hero homepage or in a carousel.
But we came up with the idea,you and I of what if we could
(24:20):
allow you to buy space on thehero page or buy space on a
specific carousel.
So we started off with allowingpeople to buy space on the
headers, and then we said youcould buy space on your country
carousel.
And then we decided actually,wouldn't it be cool if you could
buy space on a carousel basedon your category?
So, claire, with one of yourpodcasts, it's got technology,
(24:44):
education and online courses andso you could buy space on those
three category carousels orjust one of them, or you could
buy it on another carousel thatyou're not even listed as as one
of your categories.
What do you think of that?
Claire Waite Brown (25:00):
I think it sounds absolutely fabulous.
I'm going to ask what anybody'sgoing to ask, and that is about
cost.
How does this work for mefinancially?
What's it going to cost me?
Sam Sethi (25:11):
So we're working on that.
So here's some of the numberswe're putting out.
We think that a seven-daypromotion putting a marketing
budget of, let say, 10,000 sats,which is £4.50.
We're not going thousands ofpounds that will allow you to
then be able to have a value forthe number of times your ad is
(25:31):
viewed, a value for the numberof times someone clicks through
from that viewed ad or promotionto your podcast page and a
value for the number of timessomeone plays your actual
podcast.
So, for example and again wehaven't finalized the number,
but it might be a hundred satsfor a view, might be 250 sats
for a click and 500 sats for aplay, and so what we would do
(25:56):
from your 10,000 sats is takethat money off from your budget
and if at the end of the sevendays you've got money left in
your wallet from that budget, wewill just give that back to you
.
If you're very successful andhalfway through your campaign
that 10,000 sats is all used up,we will then prompt you when
there's a thousand sats left.
Hey, claire, do you want to topup your budget, yes or no?
(26:19):
And if you say no, the minuteyour budget is finished, it will
be only three days into yourseven day promotion, we will
take your ad down or, conversely, you just put some more money
in.
It goes further until the sevendays are completed.
Claire Waite Brown (26:35):
Perfect.
I mean, it fits in witheverything that we do at True
Fans.
Pay for a view, for a download,makes absolute sense, rather
than just paying and hoping thatpeople see your ad.
Exactly, what about reportingWill I be able to see?
I mean, what will I be able tosee say at the end of my
campaign and say, luckily, allmy money's been used up?
(26:57):
How will I know where it went?
Sam Sethi (26:59):
In your creator's dashboard, once you've claimed
your podcast, you'll see a newtab called promotions and in
there you'll see any promotionyou've purchased.
So if it's a headline, a heroimage promotion, or it's a
carousel promotion, they'reslightly different.
You'll see two promotions andyou'll see the number of views
that you had, the number ofclicks you had and the number of
(27:20):
plays you had.
You'll even see who did that,and one of the things that we
also talk about, by the way, isa model which we will be
introducing in the future whereactually you, the listener, the
fan, gets a small micro paymentas well for your time and
attention, and that may helpwith converting people to play,
but we'll see.
Claire Waite Brown (27:40):
Yeah, okay, good, we will continue
experimenting.
I wanted to say something.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, sam.
You talk about SATs, but youcan set your budget as fiat
currency.
The SAT stuff is all working inthe background, isn't it so?
If.
I'm coming along and I want tosay, okay, I've got five pounds
(28:01):
for, or $5 or five euros for, acampaign.
I can still set it that way,can't I?
Sam Sethi (28:06):
Exactly so.
In your creator's dashboard,under settings, you will see
that there is a option to switchbetween viewing your currency
in sats or viewing it in yourfiat local currency.
So if you wanted to view it inpounds, dollars, euros, then we
will show everything in that.
So you just put five pounds inyour budget or 10 pounds in your
(28:28):
budget.
But if you prefer to use it inSAT, then, yeah, you can switch
and then we'll show everythingin SATs.
Claire Waite Brown (28:36):
Okay, brilliant.
I'll give some visuals of thatin the chapter art, no doubt.
Sam Sethi (28:40):
Thank you, Sam of some visuals of that in the
chapter art, no doubt.
Thank you, sam.
Thank you now.
Here's one other thing I wantedto ask you, claire.
So we've got an extension tothis idea of the promotion.
One of our ideas is that wewill basically allow the creator
to accept a promotion on theirpodcast page.
So at the moment, we, as truefans, are giving away our
(29:04):
homepage space to creators, butequally, why wouldn't a creator
like yourself on your ownpodcast allow ads to appear on
your podcast page?
So one idea we're playing withis the option for anybody who's
a creator let's say, look upyour podcast, claire then make a
(29:28):
request to you that says hey,claire, I want to be promoted on
your page.
There's a fixed fee for that,as we do with the budget.
You then choose to accept orreject that.
As the owner of that podcastpage, you say no, it doesn't fit
with my audience, I don't likethis podcast.
Oh no, that's a perfect swap.
You know it's complimentary.
It's maybe one of my friendsthat's already in the pod role
(29:48):
or whatever.
So you accept it and that willappear as the second episode
within your podcast page.
It's not added to your RSS feed, it's simply the latest episode
is episode one, then thepromoted podcast that you've
accepted and then last week'spodcast.
What do you think?
Claire Waite Brown (30:08):
Yeah, so we're talking about the show
screen, which is how I refer toit, on podcasting 2.0 in
practice.
So you might go to podcasting2.0 in practice, for example,
you'll see my show art, and thenyou go down and you see the
episode.
So you're go down and you seethe episode.
So you're saying this could bethe second episode.
Now, presumably it would look abit different and it would say
(30:30):
it was a promotion, completely.
It would say it was paid for.
Yes, yeah.
And let me just make sure I'vegot this right that other show
pays for that promotion.
Are they paying money to me orto True Fans?
Sam Sethi (30:47):
So they're paying money to the creator you,
because it's your page andyou're accepting the payment.
So you're accepting someoneadding content to your podcast
page, so you need to get paidand, yes, we'll take a small fee
, being very transparent, wehaven't decided, but it will be
somewhere in the region of fiveor 10%.
We're not going to go mental.
(31:07):
We're not Apple, we're notgoing 30%.
So it'll be 90 or 95%.
We'll go to the creator.
Claire Waite Brown (31:13):
Well, considering, the creator gets
the choice of whether to do itor not and whether to accept a
particular show or not.
The fact that it's going tolook obvious that it's a
promotion and not one of myepisodes, but, as you said, like
Podroll, something that Irecommend Personally, I would
not see a problem with that atall, and if people don't want to
(31:33):
do it, they don't have to, butif they do, they can be
promoting another show andearning a bit of money for
themselves, so seems prettywin-win to me.
I think it's all in the choice,so you can't really go wrong.
Yeah, interesting.
Sam Sethi (31:50):
That's in the plan.
If you want to try that, you'llbe able to buy creator space on
the homepage, and we do have awaitlist.
So what happens is if the fiveslots on the header are taken,
you get added to the wait listand the minute that one of those
promotions ends, your promotionwill get added and the same on
the carousels.
We have 10 slots on eachcarousel and if they get all
(32:12):
eaten up, then you go on a waitlist and then at the end of that
, when one drops off, you getadded onto it brilliant.
Claire Waite Brown (32:20):
So that's, the home page is up and running.
You can do those and we'llreport back when we get to this
other thing that we've justspoken about on a particular
podcast show screen coolhopefully in two weeks, when we
do this show again, it will belive well, you've said it now
yes, I have.
Sam Sethi (32:38):
Oh, my god help claire.
Should we have a look at what'sgoing on in the world?
Claire Waite Brown (32:44):
Absolutely.
What have you spotted?
What's caught your eye from anindependent podcaster's point of
view?
Sam Sethi (32:50):
Well, one of the things that I saw was a report
that podcast listeners arelistening longer, which I think
is great.
This was from Podcast Movement.
Weekly listeners now consume6.3 hours of podcasts a week on
average.
That's pretty high, actually.
I don't know who the sample is.
What was interesting, thoughone of the other things that
(33:11):
came out of a report was thatthe number of podcasts that
people have are three, so mostpodcast listeners only make room
for three titles in theirweekly routine.
So if the 6.3 was true and thereport saying that it was only
three titles, each one wouldhave to be over two hours long.
Yeah, it seems a bit odd.
(33:32):
How many podcasts do youregularly listen to on a weekly
basis, would you say?
Claire Waite Brown (33:36):
Okay, so I have a little collection.
I'm just going to actually havea look.
I know what they are five, five, five that are regularly in my
queue.
Sam Sethi (33:49):
Yeah, I've got about five, some podcasty, business
ones, a couple of politics ones.
Claire Waite Brown (33:55):
Yeah, about five I'm putting more in at the
moment, but then I'm listeningto shows in order to interview
them for this show for creators,yeah, which has been really
good, fun and interesting.
Sam Sethi (34:07):
So I've got quite a few shows in there that are
extras yeah, I think what ismost interesting from that to me
is that when we talk tocreators about having their
podcasts at the same time, everytime, and being consistent.
This is why Because if you'vegot three or five podcasts that
(34:30):
you regularly listen to and youthen go to listen to them at the
time that you do dog walk,drive to school, commute to work
in the gym, and that podcastyou want to listen to of your
five is not there, you canchoose to maybe find space for a
new podcast that you haven'tlistened to and suddenly that
becomes your new favorite andthat podcast that missed their
(34:53):
slot suddenly becomes off yourroster.
Claire Waite Brown (34:57):
Yeah.
Sam Sethi (34:58):
There may be 4 million podcasts, but don't
assume that people are going tocome back to your podcast if you
missed your time slot.
Yeah, now some of the otherthings that are interesting.
No second chances, claire.
Almost half of listeners willnot give a podcast a second try
if the first impressiondisappoints them.
Have you experienced that?
(35:18):
Have you listened to a podcastand gone?
Nah, not going to listen tothat again.
Claire Waite Brown (35:22):
Yeah, I have Two reasons.
One I listened to just had somany adverts in it Loads of
adverts at the very beginning,so that annoyed me from the word
go.
You know I don't mind one ortwo promotions, but it was loads
of adverts Carried on listening.
Then there were a load moreadverts, bit more.
No, can't be doing with it.
And I like the idea of thecontent, but I can't be doing
(35:43):
with it.
But another one I don't know ifI'm really picky about this or
if everybody's like this, andI'm going to say sound quality,
but what I mean is speechquality.
So clicks and breaths and huffsand puffs and things that will
yeah, exactly those kinds ofthings will put me off, and I
(36:04):
know it does my son as well.
He gets so cross when he hearsthings like this.
So I completely understand thatI would be put off of a show.
I can be put off of a showquite quickly, which is a bit
sad, because in some cases youthink, well, maybe it's the
early days and really I shouldgo back five months later and
see if things have improved.
So it is a difficult.
Is it difficult, though?
(36:26):
Doesn't anybody hear goodquality and realise it's good
quality?
Sam Sethi (36:30):
Yeah, I think my biggest bugbear is when the
hosts start the show off.
So one of my favourite shows isPivot with Cara Swisher and
Scott Galloway, but I hate thestart of their show, so I always
skip it.
It's like oh Scott, how are you?
Have you been to Cannes thisweek?
Oh Cara, what were you doing?
I don't care, I actually don'tcare.
I just want to know what youropinion is on the news report
(36:54):
that's out this week, and sothat's one of my bugbears.
If I'm listening to a podcastand the hosts decide to give me
their weekly shopping list andthe roundup of their school day
and whatever else they think isimportant to them, which isn't
important to me, that turns meoff, and I often don't go back
and listen to them.
Claire Waite Brown (37:13):
I completely agree with that one.
Do they have chapters?
Sam Sethi (37:17):
No, they don't have chapters either.
Claire Waite Brown (37:19):
Because you could very easily skip past the
boring bit, in fact, my updatesfor Podcasting 2.0.
In practice, I do a little bitof repetition at the beginning
of each one, so I've used thechapters to say, in fact, I do
say something like if you'veheard this before, skip to the
next chapter.
Right, that would be an answerto that question, wouldn't?
Sam Sethi (37:38):
it Also a feature in TrueFans which we haven't talked
about properly.
Again, you might be learningsomething new, claire.
In the info button on thepodcast page you can actually go
and set the start time and theend time for each podcast
individually.
So you might say this is myfavorite podcast, but I know
(37:58):
they do an advert and then theydo some spiel for five minutes.
So start this podcast at sixminutes and it will
automatically skip all of thatfor you.
And equally, if you know theend of a podcast is something
you don't want to listen to, youcan say one minute from the end
, skip it.
And then it will go obviouslyin a playlist straight to the
(38:20):
next podcast.
Claire Waite Brown (38:21):
I didn't know that.
No, brilliant, we'll have to doa Fan Zone episode on that,
because you haven't told me thatone.
Sam Sethi (38:28):
No, yes, feature 1077 .
Claire Waite Brown (38:33):
Very good.
Sam Sethi (38:34):
Now Bill Wyman is a New York journalist.
He's written 23 reasons why hehates your podcast.
Now he basically said optionone is you have to envisage your
audience, yes, and set the tonefor them.
So don't talk about stuff thatisn't about your audience.
There was a couple in therethat I did like Number three
(38:56):
please don't tell us that youhave lots to get on with this
week.
Just don't Just get on with it.
It right.
And then one that I'm guilty of, which is friends of the show.
Friends of the show are on theshow.
Yeah, don't tell me they'refriends of the show.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
We don't care oh, I do oh well, there you go so I
like being called a friend ofhis show on whatever it's called
pod news weekly.
Sam Sethi (39:19):
I like that well, yes , he simply says don't say
jocularly, friend of the pod,it's stupid, no one cares.
And then we have to listen toyou guys discuss how many times
this friend of the pod has beenon.
And anyway, I'm still going touse it.
But yes, he doesn't like that.
Yeah, it goes on.
If you want to read it, it's avery good 23 reasons why he
hates your podcast.
It's on Pod News Daily.
(39:46):
You can find it there.
It's very good as a read.
By the way, a couple of othermicro things I wanted to just
cover off.
One is the APAs from Audio UK,and that's really good for
independent podcasters.
You have until the 17th ofSeptember to enter and the
ceremony will take place onNovember the 27th at the BFI in
London Brilliant.
And the other one is the LondonPodcast Festival is coming back
(40:10):
in September.
It's the 10th year.
We'll be at King's Place nearKing's Cross.
If you're interested in seeingsome of your favourite shows
live, have a look at the list ofshows that are going to be
there, uh, and make your way wewon't be there though we won't
be there.
No, we know well we will be, butwe'll be in the audience.
But what we can do, one, we cando an unscripted.
(40:33):
How about we do one?
Just sat outside, see if anyonesits around and watches us.
What are you two muppets doing?
We're doing our show neverheard of you.
We're doing our show Neverheard of you.
Equally, though, at the event,they are doing something called
Podcast Makers.
It's over the weekend, it's the13th and 14th of September.
If you're interested inworkshops, practical insights,
(40:59):
what people are doing, this isdesigned for newcomers as well
as experienced podcast creators.
That's it for me.
I don't think we'll do any more.
I'm fed up.
Now I've had enough, yeah.
Claire's going to edit all thisout anyway, I don't know why I'm
doing it, and that's it forthis week.
Our audio is recorded onRiverside, edited by the
wonderful Claire, and we'rehosted by our friends Buzzsprout
.
Claire Waite Brown (41:19):
You can support this show by streaming
sats from your True Fans walletor leave us a super comment or,
better still, become a monthlysupporter of this show.
Sam Sethi (41:30):
If you'd like to advertise or sponsor this show,
then please email me, sam, attruefansfm, for further details.
Claire Waite Brown (41:36):
You can find out more about how to use the
features of the True Fansplatform although not all of
them, because Sam just told me anew one the features of the
True Fans platform, although notall of them, because Sam just
told me a new one, but a lot ofthe other ones you can find out
about by listening to our sisterpodcast Fan Zone and if you're
keen to learn more aboutPodcasting 2.0 in general, check
(42:02):
out my course-based podcastcalled Podcasting 2.0 in
Practice.
Thank you, don't forget.
You can keep listening to hearmore from this episode's
featured creator.
Talking about time, how do youfit it in?
You've got to listen to theshows before you can review them
.
You've got to do the reviews.
How does this fit in around therest of your life?
Frank Racioppi (42:20):
So here's my daily routine is I get up and
have some coffee, of course, tryto avoid reading the news, and
then I go out walking aboutseven in the morning and I walk
for about two hours that's aboutsix, six and a half miles and
then all I do is listen topodcasts, and then all I do is
(42:41):
listen to podcasts.
And so then, when I get backwhat I listen to, I jot down
some notes and then do some moreresearch and then that's how I
listen to all the podcasts thatwe write about, and that's where
I get the time to do that, andI have to say that it's actually
my favorite time of the day toget out there.
(43:01):
You know, first of all, beoutside is wonderful.
You commune with nature alittle bit and you get to listen
to great independent podcasts.
Really, life couldn't be better.
So it's great.
Not everything I listen to Iwill write about.
I mean, there's some timeswhere I'll listen to something,
and independent podcasters, asyou well know, are a wonderful
(43:25):
bunch.
They're very creative,enthusiastic, entrepreneurial.
Otherwise they wouldn't be asan independent podcast.
But there's, as you know fromPodcasting 2.0, in practice
there's a learning curve topodcasting and people are in
different points in theirpodcasting journey.
So sometimes I'll get a messagefrom someone listen to my
(43:46):
podcast and it's their first orsecond one and it's probably not
ready to be reviewed.
And then I'll get back to themand say there's a couple of
things you might want to look at.
And then I'll hear from them ayear later and their podcast is
transformed.
They've just gotten so muchbetter at it and now is the
perfect time to review theirpodcast.
(44:08):
So for me it's great.
It fits right into my scheduleand I do it every day.
It's a seven day thing to getout.
We were on vacation in NorthCarolina and I walked on to the
beach every day and that made iteven such a better experience
to be on the beach and listen topodcasts.
It's great.
Claire Waite Brown (44:29):
Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.
I listen when I'm walking andalso when I'm driving.
Have you ever been tempted?
Or perhaps you already have todo your own podcast?
Frank Racioppi (44:39):
Oh my gosh.
The answer to that is yes andyes.
So I have been involved in twopodcasts.
Neither one of them are active.
When I restarted Earworthy in2017, I decided that I would
start a podcast because I thinkthe best way to write about
anything is to actually do it.
(45:00):
Anything is to actually do it,and so it didn't seem fair for
me to write about people'spodcasts when I hadn't done it
myself.
And after this experience, I'mgoing to relate.
It's given me a lot morerespect for independent
podcasters or for any podcasters.
It's a lot more difficult thanpeople realize my background.
(45:21):
I worked for a Fortune 30company for years and my
background was in employeecommunications.
I was a speechwriter for thetop executives and I did a lot
of communications with frontlineemployees and so forth.
So I came up with a podcastcalled Make a Connection and it
(45:41):
was about how to be bettercommunicators within a
corporation or any organization.
It didn't have to be profitmaking, so it did things like
how to make sure that you giveemployees the right feedback and
things like that, and I had itfor about 30 episodes or so and,
to be quite honest, the reasonI got rid of it was that I just
(46:04):
was.
I wasn't very good at it, so Icouldn't attract a lot of guests
.
It wasn't a topic which Ididn't realize a lot of people
weren't interested in talkingabout, there weren't that many
experts on it and, to be honest,unlike you and a lot of other
people I review, I wasn't thatgood.
I wasn't happy with myperformance and so I stopped it
(46:27):
and let that sit for a while andso, for then, for a couple of
years, didn't do anything otherthan earworthy.
And then, like for a lot of us,covid came along and now I was
searching for something else todo.
To fill up that time, I have abrother.
We came up, based on thecurrent political campaign in
(46:49):
2019 or so, with an idea calledfalse facts, and the idea was to
take historical facts andpresent political facts, look at
them as sort of a kind of likea fact check or a political fact
, and then do a podcast on that,and so we started that well,
false facts and we ran that fora while during COVID, but then,
(47:13):
once COVID was over, both of usneeded to go back to both of our
jobs.
There's an investment in goodequipment, especially when
you're doing a remote recording.
We weren't sure if we wanted todo that, so we said, well,
let's put that on hold.
And we did, and so now I'm notpodcasting currently, but I
would certainly like to.
Claire Waite Brown (47:36):
Yeah, that things getting back to normal
after COVID was what tookcreativity found from being a
weekly podcast to being afortnightly released podcast
because of getting back to work.
But what I loved about that wasthe and I remember sitting on
the sofa and having thisrevelation occur to me that it
(47:57):
was my show and I could do whatI wanted.
Oh duh, claire, you do what youwant.
So, yeah, completely understandthat.
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