February 3, 2025 • 14 mins
Are you a fellow podcaster? If so, I recommend you review your podcast data and stats for the past year. Your data can be used to help create benchmarks as well as to help you assess your podcasting progress.
In this episode, recorded on Sunday, January 19th, 2025, I reflect on my podcast's achievements over 2024. I discuss the importance of assessing your podcast's progress by analyzing both numeric and qualitative data. I highlight my goals and milestones, including regular publishing, expert positioning, and my experience with tools like Descript and Buzzsprout.
I share insights on the effectiveness of certain podcast strategies, listener statistics, and my editing process. Additionally, I touch on monetization options and incentivizing methods for podcasts.
00:00 Introduction and Yearly Reflection
01:04 Podcast Goals and Publishing Frequency
01:30 Expert Positioning and Episode Mix
02:01 Episode Performance and Listener Insights
06:16 Buzzsprout Features and Achievements
08:31 Editing Techniques and Tools
12:53 Monetization and Future Plans
14:13 Conclusion and Listener Engagement
**************************************
My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.
Visit mellermarketing.com
Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back.
As I'm recording this episodetoday is Sunday, january 19th
2025.
Starting to plan out my year,and I also started to look back
at what I did in 2024 andrealized I did an episode on my
podcast in the beginning ofJanuary of this year past year,
I should say where I reflectedupon my accomplishments with the
podcast, and I decided to doanother episode this year where,
(00:24):
in this episode, I'm going toreflect back on my podcast for
the entire calendar year of 2024.
Now, as is probably common witha few of you, your podcast is
an extension of your businessand I always recommend that you
look at your own data to assessyour progress over time.
Some of this will be numericdata and other will be anecdotal
(00:46):
data or qualitative data, butI'm a big believer that you
should be looking at yourresults over time because it
helps you first in establishingbenchmarks so you can measure
your own progress againstyourself, and you can measure
your success if you havespecific goals set up for
different initiatives of yourorganization.
Now, with regards to my podcast, my year two goals were to make
(01:09):
sure that I was publishingregularly, and I started at the
beginning of the year withhaving a goal of publishing once
a week, and then I realized Iwas already publishing twice a
week, so I continued to do twicea week up until probably about
early November I started toshift back to once a week.
Twice a week.
Up until probably about earlyNovember I started to shift back
to once a week.
I also wanted to make sure thatI was shifting my mix of
(01:32):
episodes, and I learned thistechnique from Adam Shibley, who
has a great podcast.
It's called Podcasting BusinessSchool, and he talks about the
two-third expert positioningtechnique, where two-thirds of
your podcast episode should beyou talking and sharing expert
advice to your listeners,whereas the other third can be a
variety of different things,maybe where you're interviewing
people or you're featuringothers or repurposing content,
(01:55):
etc.
But I really wanted to shiftmore towards that.
All right, so how did I do?
Well, in 2024, I had a total of88 episodes that were published
.
As I mentioned, I did have twicea week publishing from January
through November, and then Ishifted to weekly, and I think
there might have been one weekin there where I had a head cold
or something was going on withmy business, where I might have
(02:18):
skipped a week.
I had nobody complain aboutthat, by the way.
So that's a little side noteand key takeaway for you Don't
stress yourself out if you missa week of your podcast.
You can always jump back on,like I did.
And I did shift down, as Imentioned, from twice a week to
once a week.
Why did I do this and why thismight be a good idea for you as
well.
(02:38):
It's a lot of work publishingtwo episodes and I realized over
time it was starting to become.
It was feeling like a chore.
I wasn't enjoying it as much.
So I decided just to shift backto one episode a week.
I didn't really make a bigannouncement about it, I just
did the change and what I foundis that nobody complained.
Nobody reached out to me andsaid, hey, I used to get two
episodes from you and I'm onlygetting one now.
So that was an effective shiftand it really helped me from a
(03:02):
workload perspective shift.
And it really helped me from aworkload perspective.
What else?
Okay?
So in year one I had 36% of myepisodes were expert positioning
and 64% were not, so I haddefinitely an opportunity to
improve.
In year two I did a littlebetter.
I didn't quite get to the twothirds, but I did get to 51% of
(03:23):
expert positioning so a littleover half and 49% other.
I made the move in the rightdirection and that's what I'm
focusing on here Now in 2024, Idid add in profile audits where
I featured people but it wasreally me doing the asking, me
giving the advice to otherpeople.
So it's really great expertpositioning and I did do a total
of 22 episodes of thoseLinkedIn profile mini audits
(03:46):
this year.
That represented 25% of mytotal podcast episodes.
Now, a few of those did convertinto clients and that really
wasn't a goal.
It was more or less just a goalto move towards expert
positioning.
So it was a nice little sidebenefit.
A few of them did convert toclients and a few of them I
featured my existing clientsstudents who are involved in my
(04:07):
Recipe Pro, for example, orother current clients that I
just felt like had a reallyinteresting background and could
be a great guest on my show.
So that was a part of that mix.
I also increased solointerviews, which were 23
episodes in 2024, or 26% of mytotal stats.
(04:27):
I can compare that to 2024.
So I have a year over yearcomparison data point that I can
look at and definitely this isexponential.
The more you have in terms ofpodcast episodes, the more
people can binge listen to yourepisodes and I think that really
does help with your totaldownloads over time.
(04:47):
If I look at my top fiveepisodes of all time, this was
kind of interesting.
Four were from 2023.
So again, it just shows thatpeople aren't just listening to
current episodes, but they'realso listening to a lot of those
past episodes.
And I'm really not doing anymarketing or merchandising of my
2023 episodes.
Every once in a while I'll dropa link there, but I'm really
focusing more on marketing mycurrent episodes.
(05:09):
So that to me, shows the powerof having a great podcast and
people scrolling through thatpodcast directory and looking
for some of your past episodes.
In my top five, I also had onewas from 2024.
As far as top apps, buzzsproutwas telling me that, as of today
, apple represents 54% of mylisteners, with 67% listening on
(05:33):
an iPhone no surprise there and79% from mobile.
The second highest category is10% of my listeners coming from
the Buzzsprout and Bed Player.
Not a surprise, because I'vestarted directing people to that
landing page where they canthen just listen to the episode
direct or choose their favoritedirectory.
The next category, followingthat, would be 8% on Spotify,
(05:57):
and I've not really put a lot oftime and emphasis into being on
Spotify, but it does show methat I'm getting a small portion
of my listeners coming fromthere.
At this point last year thenumbers were just a little bit
lower.
Apple represented 51% comparedto 54% and 79% were coming from
mobile.
That's the same year over year.
I also poked around a little bitinside of Buzzsprout and they
(06:19):
give an achievement sectioninside there and it's kind of
interesting because they giveyou milestones to work towards,
and they had two categories thatI'm looking at here podcast
downloads and episodes published.
In terms of podcast downloads,I've acquired 12 total
achievements and my latest wasthe 75,000 downloads achievement
(06:40):
and they tell me that, as oftoday, I'm 1,219 downloads away
from 10,000.
So stay tuned for details onthat.
Now, as I earn these badges, Ithink they send you an email and
I definitely see them insidethe platform.
What I recommend that you do isshare the badges in social
media posts that they provideyou, but I recommend that you
include the link to your show,whether it's your podcast page
(07:01):
or your main platform, if it'sApple or other, because we want
to, not just to celebrate thoseachievements, but we also want
to drive more listeners, andwhat I found is this technique
is really powerful.
If you're telling people, gosh,I've gotten to 7,500 downloads,
people are like, wow, that'simpressive.
Now they don't know that 7,500is not as impressive as 75,000.
There's not a lot of people outthere that have gotten to 7,500
(07:23):
.
So it's still an impressivenumber.
And if you provide them a placeto listen, that success creates
more success.
I think that's really important.
Now, I always include both thelink and I include the graphic,
and sometimes I makemodifications to the graphic
that Buzzsprout gives me.
I'll go inside Canva and I'lladd in some animation, like some
confetti in there, so it has alittle bit of movement to that
(07:45):
graphic.
So that's a technique you couldthink about doing as well.
In terms of episodes published,buzzsprout says that I've had
seven total achievements and thelatest was the 100th episode
achievement.
Now, as you go up, so theachievements become a little bit
harder to get, and they'resaying that I'm currently 103
(08:05):
episodes away from 250 totalepisodes.
And if you've been following mealong here, you know that I
said I was decreasing the numberof episodes that I do, so I'm
only had 52 episodes in 2025,unless I change my mind and
start doubling up.
So I'm not going to hit thatnext achievement until sometime
in 2026.
I'm okay with that.
I know why they put thesedifferent milestones in place
(08:26):
here, but something to look atand something to consider in
terms of your own achievements.
Now, from an editing perspective, some months in my business I
work with the VA, and othermonths it's just me.
In the business, I have aprocess in place that I loosely
follow.
When it's just me, I'm a littlebit more loose on it.
When I'm working with the VA,I'm a little bit more structured
on that process because I wantto make it easy for that person
(08:46):
to help me.
My goal is to prep the socialmedia assets at the time of
post-production and I'm tryingto keep that work to a minimum.
Now there's been some timeswhere I've just published the
episodes and I really haven'tdone a lot of event marketing
and I can see that in mydownloads I'm not getting as
many download episodes in thoseweeks.
I do rely heavily on Descriptand the more that I'm using
(09:07):
Descript, the more that I loveDescript, especially these
features Remove filler wordsreally good for removing those
ahs and ums in the editing.
I'm going to use this featurein this episode here today
Finding the highlights I findthat that's really helpful If
you're looking for soundbites.
It can find the highlightsquickly and then you can go back
into I go back into Buzzsproutand then I create the soundbite
(09:29):
downloads from there.
Draft show notes is reallyhelpful.
I find that that is even betterin Descript than it is in
Buzzsprout.
Isn't that crazy?
But I find that it's true.
And most recently I startedmoving these episodes into a
blog post in the form of aLinkedIn newsletter and I I've
been using that feature and Ireally like the summaries that
they're coming up with.
So I have to say, whoever'sworking over there at Descript
(09:52):
love the work you're doing andthe AI tool has been really
helpful for me and my business.
Now inside Buzzsprout, they dohave some additional features
create soundbite.
I like that feature where youcan create like a 30 second or
so.
You can expand it or you canshorten that, but a sound bite
where it has the show art in thebackground and you know some
quick sound bite of the showitself.
(10:13):
I like to use that on socialmedia, especially on Instagram
and sometimes on LinkedIn aswell.
Email link to the episode.
I've been using that more often, so just driving people to the
Buzz Sprout page to listen to it, as opposed to the landing page
where they pick their favoriteshow.
Okay, I've been using that alot the share link and that's
the one that drives people backto the landing page where they
can choose their podcast playerof choice to find your show, and
(10:37):
that's helpful.
I use that link in my monthlypodcast summary email.
I have that going out to about5000 people right now and I also
give my email list, by the way,the opportunity to opt out of
podcasts if they're not apodcast listener.
Now I do pay for the upgradedversion of Buzzsprout and I had
to take a look at what I'm doingright now with this, and this
is a good thing to do if you areself-employed.
Just look at how much you'respending for these subscriptions
(10:59):
every month and look and seeare you using all the features
of that?
Right now, I'm paying $47 amonth, which isn't a lot, but I
took a look at this and actuallydiscovered that I'm getting up
to six hours of uploads a monthNow if I'm doing only four
episodes a week, and thoseepisodes are 20 to 30 minutes.
If I'm doing a longer interviewit might be 40 minutes in total
(11:20):
.
I'm usually falling well underthe six hours per month.
That does give me the abilityto add in more episodes for
future months and I can getthose banked up and ready to go,
but I'm really falling belowthat six, so that's fine.
The other thing is MagicMastering.
I'm using that from Buzzsprout.
I do find that that helps withsound quality, of equalizing the
(11:41):
sound between myself and myguest if I have two of us on
there and just making surethat's a really good sound
quality.
So I think that's worth payingfor.
I did discover I'm paying rightnow $20 a month for their
co-host AI tool and I reallydon't care for their AI tool.
I'm sorry Buzzsprout ifanyone's listening, but there's
too many mentions of phraseslike treasure trove.
I never use that and I don'tfind that their summary tool
(12:05):
does a good job of reallysummarizing my language and the
content from within the show.
I was finding that I was editingover top of their summaries too
often and it was becoming achore for me to do so.
So I stopped using it and Istarted using some of those same
tools inside Descript and Ireally find them helpful.
So just notice, I'm payingadditional $20 a month for this
(12:25):
as an add-on.
I'm not finding an easy wayfrom Buzzsprout to cancel that.
So I sent them an email and Ido see it's a $20 add-on on my
bill, but I can't find any placeto cancel.
Now, that's a marketingtechnique.
They're trying to create ahurdle because you might have
someone go.
I'll just keep paying for it.
Nope, not me.
I'm going to try to reach outto them and get that canceled.
So again, some really helpfulinsights there as it relates to
(12:48):
editing both from a descript andfrom a Buzzsprout perspective.
Now, while I was in Buzzsprout,I was also poking around and I
realized that there's a way thatyou can sign up to run
Buzzsprout ads.
I don't know if you knew that,but you can.
You can monetize your podcastif it sits on Buzzsprout, but
you have to have at least fiveepisodes, a thousand total
(13:08):
downloads in the past 30 days,and your episodes have to have
at least 23 minutes long interms of content.
Now, I meet all criteria exceptthe thousand downloads.
If you recall earlier I saidthe past 30 days.
I was think I was under like400 total downloads.
So certainly could be somethingto aspire to.
I'm not quite sure if I want tostart running ads or not, but
might be something to test out,see how much revenue is coming
(13:31):
in, and that could help tooffset some of the costs that
I'm paying for this podcast.
Right, and there's also asupport show link option that
you can add inside Buzzsproutwhere people can randomly show
their support by sending youmoney, and there's a couple
different ways that they can dothat.
I remember PayPal and there's abuy me a coffee and a couple
other things like that.
I'm not looking at setting thatup right now, but I might look
(13:52):
at setting that up for 2026.
We'll see.
And, by the way, I am anaffiliate for both Buzzsprout
and Descript.
If you use my links, you getdiscounts to sign up for each of
those services and I getincentivized for you in case, in
the future, you do sign up forthe paid services.
So use my links if you'd liketo try either.
I do have those inside of shownotes.
All right, my friend.
(14:13):
That is it.
I hope you enjoyed listening tomy podcast summary for 2024.
And I do hope that this episodeinspires you to look at your
stats if you're a podcaster likeme.
By the way, if you're onLinkedIn, send me a DM.
If you do have a podcast, andtell me the name of your show.
If I'm not already listening toit, I'd love to give it a
listen.
I'm always listening topodcasts when I walk my dog,
(14:36):
pepper, in the morning and I'dlove to put yours into my
rotation.
I hope you enjoyed the show andI look forward to seeing you on
LinkedIn.
Have a great day.
Welcome back.
As I'm recording this episodetoday is Sunday, january 19th
2025.
Starting to plan out my year,and I also started to look back
at what I did in 2024 andrealized I did an episode on my
podcast in the beginning ofJanuary of this year past year,
I should say where I reflectedupon my accomplishments with the
podcast, and I decided to doanother episode this year where,
(00:24):
in this episode, I'm going toreflect back on my podcast for
the entire calendar year of 2024.
Now, as is probably common witha few of you, your podcast is
an extension of your businessand I always recommend that you
look at your own data to assessyour progress over time.
Some of this will be numericdata and other will be anecdotal
(00:46):
data or qualitative data, butI'm a big believer that you
should be looking at yourresults over time because it
helps you first in establishingbenchmarks so you can measure
your own progress againstyourself, and you can measure
your success if you havespecific goals set up for
different initiatives of yourorganization.
Now, with regards to my podcast, my year two goals were to make
(01:09):
sure that I was publishingregularly, and I started at the
beginning of the year withhaving a goal of publishing once
a week, and then I realized Iwas already publishing twice a
week, so I continued to do twicea week up until probably about
early November I started toshift back to once a week.
Twice a week.
Up until probably about earlyNovember I started to shift back
to once a week.
I also wanted to make sure thatI was shifting my mix of
(01:32):
episodes, and I learned thistechnique from Adam Shibley, who
has a great podcast.
It's called Podcasting BusinessSchool, and he talks about the
two-third expert positioningtechnique, where two-thirds of
your podcast episode should beyou talking and sharing expert
advice to your listeners,whereas the other third can be a
variety of different things,maybe where you're interviewing
people or you're featuringothers or repurposing content,
(01:55):
etc.
But I really wanted to shiftmore towards that.
All right, so how did I do?
Well, in 2024, I had a total of88 episodes that were published
.
As I mentioned, I did have twicea week publishing from January
through November, and then Ishifted to weekly, and I think
there might have been one weekin there where I had a head cold
or something was going on withmy business, where I might have
(02:18):
skipped a week.
I had nobody complain aboutthat, by the way.
So that's a little side noteand key takeaway for you Don't
stress yourself out if you missa week of your podcast.
You can always jump back on,like I did.
And I did shift down, as Imentioned, from twice a week to
once a week.
Why did I do this and why thismight be a good idea for you as
well.
(02:38):
It's a lot of work publishingtwo episodes and I realized over
time it was starting to become.
It was feeling like a chore.
I wasn't enjoying it as much.
So I decided just to shift backto one episode a week.
I didn't really make a bigannouncement about it, I just
did the change and what I foundis that nobody complained.
Nobody reached out to me andsaid, hey, I used to get two
episodes from you and I'm onlygetting one now.
So that was an effective shiftand it really helped me from a
(03:02):
workload perspective shift.
And it really helped me from aworkload perspective.
What else?
Okay?
So in year one I had 36% of myepisodes were expert positioning
and 64% were not, so I haddefinitely an opportunity to
improve.
In year two I did a littlebetter.
I didn't quite get to the twothirds, but I did get to 51% of
(03:23):
expert positioning so a littleover half and 49% other.
I made the move in the rightdirection and that's what I'm
focusing on here Now in 2024, Idid add in profile audits where
I featured people but it wasreally me doing the asking, me
giving the advice to otherpeople.
So it's really great expertpositioning and I did do a total
of 22 episodes of thoseLinkedIn profile mini audits
(03:46):
this year.
That represented 25% of mytotal podcast episodes.
Now, a few of those did convertinto clients and that really
wasn't a goal.
It was more or less just a goalto move towards expert
positioning.
So it was a nice little sidebenefit.
A few of them did convert toclients and a few of them I
featured my existing clientsstudents who are involved in my
(04:07):
Recipe Pro, for example, orother current clients that I
just felt like had a reallyinteresting background and could
be a great guest on my show.
So that was a part of that mix.
I also increased solointerviews, which were 23
episodes in 2024, or 26% of mytotal stats.
(04:27):
I can compare that to 2024.
So I have a year over yearcomparison data point that I can
look at and definitely this isexponential.
The more you have in terms ofpodcast episodes, the more
people can binge listen to yourepisodes and I think that really
does help with your totaldownloads over time.
(04:47):
If I look at my top fiveepisodes of all time, this was
kind of interesting.
Four were from 2023.
So again, it just shows thatpeople aren't just listening to
current episodes, but they'realso listening to a lot of those
past episodes.
And I'm really not doing anymarketing or merchandising of my
2023 episodes.
Every once in a while I'll dropa link there, but I'm really
focusing more on marketing mycurrent episodes.
(05:09):
So that to me, shows the powerof having a great podcast and
people scrolling through thatpodcast directory and looking
for some of your past episodes.
In my top five, I also had onewas from 2024.
As far as top apps, buzzsproutwas telling me that, as of today
, apple represents 54% of mylisteners, with 67% listening on
(05:33):
an iPhone no surprise there and79% from mobile.
The second highest category is10% of my listeners coming from
the Buzzsprout and Bed Player.
Not a surprise, because I'vestarted directing people to that
landing page where they canthen just listen to the episode
direct or choose their favoritedirectory.
The next category, followingthat, would be 8% on Spotify,
(05:57):
and I've not really put a lot oftime and emphasis into being on
Spotify, but it does show methat I'm getting a small portion
of my listeners coming fromthere.
At this point last year thenumbers were just a little bit
lower.
Apple represented 51% comparedto 54% and 79% were coming from
mobile.
That's the same year over year.
I also poked around a little bitinside of Buzzsprout and they
(06:19):
give an achievement sectioninside there and it's kind of
interesting because they giveyou milestones to work towards,
and they had two categories thatI'm looking at here podcast
downloads and episodes published.
In terms of podcast downloads,I've acquired 12 total
achievements and my latest wasthe 75,000 downloads achievement
(06:40):
and they tell me that, as oftoday, I'm 1,219 downloads away
from 10,000.
So stay tuned for details onthat.
Now, as I earn these badges, Ithink they send you an email and
I definitely see them insidethe platform.
What I recommend that you do isshare the badges in social
media posts that they provideyou, but I recommend that you
include the link to your show,whether it's your podcast page
(07:01):
or your main platform, if it'sApple or other, because we want
to, not just to celebrate thoseachievements, but we also want
to drive more listeners, andwhat I found is this technique
is really powerful.
If you're telling people, gosh,I've gotten to 7,500 downloads,
people are like, wow, that'simpressive.
Now they don't know that 7,500is not as impressive as 75,000.
There's not a lot of people outthere that have gotten to 7,500
(07:23):
.
So it's still an impressivenumber.
And if you provide them a placeto listen, that success creates
more success.
I think that's really important.
Now, I always include both thelink and I include the graphic,
and sometimes I makemodifications to the graphic
that Buzzsprout gives me.
I'll go inside Canva and I'lladd in some animation, like some
confetti in there, so it has alittle bit of movement to that
(07:45):
graphic.
So that's a technique you couldthink about doing as well.
In terms of episodes published,buzzsprout says that I've had
seven total achievements and thelatest was the 100th episode
achievement.
Now, as you go up, so theachievements become a little bit
harder to get, and they'resaying that I'm currently 103
(08:05):
episodes away from 250 totalepisodes.
And if you've been following mealong here, you know that I
said I was decreasing the numberof episodes that I do, so I'm
only had 52 episodes in 2025,unless I change my mind and
start doubling up.
So I'm not going to hit thatnext achievement until sometime
in 2026.
I'm okay with that.
I know why they put thesedifferent milestones in place
(08:26):
here, but something to look atand something to consider in
terms of your own achievements.
Now, from an editing perspective, some months in my business I
work with the VA, and othermonths it's just me.
In the business, I have aprocess in place that I loosely
follow.
When it's just me, I'm a littlebit more loose on it.
When I'm working with the VA,I'm a little bit more structured
on that process because I wantto make it easy for that person
(08:46):
to help me.
My goal is to prep the socialmedia assets at the time of
post-production and I'm tryingto keep that work to a minimum.
Now there's been some timeswhere I've just published the
episodes and I really haven'tdone a lot of event marketing
and I can see that in mydownloads I'm not getting as
many download episodes in thoseweeks.
I do rely heavily on Descriptand the more that I'm using
(09:07):
Descript, the more that I loveDescript, especially these
features Remove filler wordsreally good for removing those
ahs and ums in the editing.
I'm going to use this featurein this episode here today
Finding the highlights I findthat that's really helpful If
you're looking for soundbites.
It can find the highlightsquickly and then you can go back
into I go back into Buzzsproutand then I create the soundbite
(09:29):
downloads from there.
Draft show notes is reallyhelpful.
I find that that is even betterin Descript than it is in
Buzzsprout.
Isn't that crazy?
But I find that it's true.
And most recently I startedmoving these episodes into a
blog post in the form of aLinkedIn newsletter and I I've
been using that feature and Ireally like the summaries that
they're coming up with.
So I have to say, whoever'sworking over there at Descript
(09:52):
love the work you're doing andthe AI tool has been really
helpful for me and my business.
Now inside Buzzsprout, they dohave some additional features
create soundbite.
I like that feature where youcan create like a 30 second or
so.
You can expand it or you canshorten that, but a sound bite
where it has the show art in thebackground and you know some
quick sound bite of the showitself.
(10:13):
I like to use that on socialmedia, especially on Instagram
and sometimes on LinkedIn aswell.
Email link to the episode.
I've been using that more often, so just driving people to the
Buzz Sprout page to listen to it, as opposed to the landing page
where they pick their favoriteshow.
Okay, I've been using that alot the share link and that's
the one that drives people backto the landing page where they
can choose their podcast playerof choice to find your show, and
(10:37):
that's helpful.
I use that link in my monthlypodcast summary email.
I have that going out to about5000 people right now and I also
give my email list, by the way,the opportunity to opt out of
podcasts if they're not apodcast listener.
Now I do pay for the upgradedversion of Buzzsprout and I had
to take a look at what I'm doingright now with this, and this
is a good thing to do if you areself-employed.
Just look at how much you'respending for these subscriptions
(10:59):
every month and look and seeare you using all the features
of that?
Right now, I'm paying $47 amonth, which isn't a lot, but I
took a look at this and actuallydiscovered that I'm getting up
to six hours of uploads a monthNow if I'm doing only four
episodes a week, and thoseepisodes are 20 to 30 minutes.
If I'm doing a longer interviewit might be 40 minutes in total
(11:20):
.
I'm usually falling well underthe six hours per month.
That does give me the abilityto add in more episodes for
future months and I can getthose banked up and ready to go,
but I'm really falling belowthat six, so that's fine.
The other thing is MagicMastering.
I'm using that from Buzzsprout.
I do find that that helps withsound quality, of equalizing the
(11:41):
sound between myself and myguest if I have two of us on
there and just making surethat's a really good sound
quality.
So I think that's worth payingfor.
I did discover I'm paying rightnow $20 a month for their
co-host AI tool and I reallydon't care for their AI tool.
I'm sorry Buzzsprout ifanyone's listening, but there's
too many mentions of phraseslike treasure trove.
I never use that and I don'tfind that their summary tool
(12:05):
does a good job of reallysummarizing my language and the
content from within the show.
I was finding that I was editingover top of their summaries too
often and it was becoming achore for me to do so.
So I stopped using it and Istarted using some of those same
tools inside Descript and Ireally find them helpful.
So just notice, I'm payingadditional $20 a month for this
(12:25):
as an add-on.
I'm not finding an easy wayfrom Buzzsprout to cancel that.
So I sent them an email and Ido see it's a $20 add-on on my
bill, but I can't find any placeto cancel.
Now, that's a marketingtechnique.
They're trying to create ahurdle because you might have
someone go.
I'll just keep paying for it.
Nope, not me.
I'm going to try to reach outto them and get that canceled.
So again, some really helpfulinsights there as it relates to
(12:48):
editing both from a descript andfrom a Buzzsprout perspective.
Now, while I was in Buzzsprout,I was also poking around and I
realized that there's a way thatyou can sign up to run
Buzzsprout ads.
I don't know if you knew that,but you can.
You can monetize your podcastif it sits on Buzzsprout, but
you have to have at least fiveepisodes, a thousand total
(13:08):
downloads in the past 30 days,and your episodes have to have
at least 23 minutes long interms of content.
Now, I meet all criteria exceptthe thousand downloads.
If you recall earlier I saidthe past 30 days.
I was think I was under like400 total downloads.
So certainly could be somethingto aspire to.
I'm not quite sure if I want tostart running ads or not, but
might be something to test out,see how much revenue is coming
(13:31):
in, and that could help tooffset some of the costs that
I'm paying for this podcast.
Right, and there's also asupport show link option that
you can add inside Buzzsproutwhere people can randomly show
their support by sending youmoney, and there's a couple
different ways that they can dothat.
I remember PayPal and there's abuy me a coffee and a couple
other things like that.
I'm not looking at setting thatup right now, but I might look
(13:52):
at setting that up for 2026.
We'll see.
And, by the way, I am anaffiliate for both Buzzsprout
and Descript.
If you use my links, you getdiscounts to sign up for each of
those services and I getincentivized for you in case, in
the future, you do sign up forthe paid services.
So use my links if you'd liketo try either.
I do have those inside of shownotes.
All right, my friend.
(14:13):
That is it.
I hope you enjoyed listening tomy podcast summary for 2024.
And I do hope that this episodeinspires you to look at your
stats if you're a podcaster likeme.
By the way, if you're onLinkedIn, send me a DM.
If you do have a podcast, andtell me the name of your show.
If I'm not already listening toit, I'd love to give it a
listen.
I'm always listening topodcasts when I walk my dog,
(14:36):
pepper, in the morning and I'dlove to put yours into my
rotation.
I hope you enjoyed the show andI look forward to seeing you on
LinkedIn.
Have a great day.
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