Podcasting Power Hour: Important Podcast Host Features, Podcast Marketing tips, Spinning off a new idea and more.

This content is repurposed from episodes of Podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power Hour is recorded live on Twitter Spaces. On this episode we dicsuss Important Podcast Host Features, Podcast Marketing tips, Spinning off a new idea and more.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
What's she gonna do? Brother?When Jeff Townsend Media runs wild on you.
Have you been searching for a podcast? Do you want to learn from
some great content creators? Well you'vecome to the right place, Indie Podcasting
with your host, Jeff Townsend,the Indie podcast Father. Alright, alright,

(00:29):
alright, this is Jeff Townsend.Thank you for checking out another episode
of Indie Podcaster. This podcast hasmade for podcasters and other content creators.
Certainly don't consider myself a guru,or either do any of my friends that
will be featured in these episodes.But what we do like to do is
talk content creation, pick each other'sbrains, and have a good time.
I'm proud to mention that this podcastis sponsored by Indie Dropping. Now let

(00:53):
me tell you something about Indie Dropping. This is an awesome network that my
friend Greg is created. What hedoes is drop episodes from independent content creator
into his established podcast audience on hisfeed, and he shares your episodes to
an audience that already exists. Yes, it's like free advertisement and promotion for
your podcast. He spent a lotof time, money, and effort building
it, and he already has anaudience that interested in the content and he

(01:15):
can certainly help you by sharing yourcontent is great promotion. Go to indie
drop in dot com slash creators andcheck it out. If you're a comedy,
true crime, paranormal, or variousother different kinds of podcasts, you
can benefit from this. So Ireally encourage you once again, good at
indie drop in dot com slash creatorsand see if you can get your stuff
featured on indie drop in. We'llgo back to the podcast here Indie Podcasters.

(01:38):
So what we've currently been doing issharing content from three different projects that
I'm involved in. The first isGood Morning Podcasters with my good friend Fuzz
Martin. We also do some contenton podcasting Sucks. And then in these
episodes you will also hear some contentfrom podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power Hour
is a live thing we do onTwitter spaces. We get a whole bunch
of great podcast minds together we talkpodcasting. So if you're a content creator

(02:01):
a podcaster, I think you'll takesomething away from every episode of the content
I'm going to share with you.With that being said, make sure you
check out Eddie drop in and makesure you enjoy this episode. I think
it's important that we all continue tolearn and grow every day, and that
will help us become even better contentcreators. That's certainly what I try to
do, learn something new every day. I'm excited to share this content with

(02:22):
you. I think it'll be alearning experience for you. Let's get to
this episode, and I hope youhave a great time listening to it.
Welcome to Podcasting Power Hour with yourhost Jeff Townsend aka the Indie podcast Father.

(02:44):
I'm your co host, Greg fromIndie drop in Network. Podcasting Power
Hour is recorded live every Monday atnine pm Eastern Time on Twitter spaces.
Every week, an experienced panel ofpodcasters and other experts will tackle your podcasting

(03:05):
questions. Special guests on the paneltoday Fuzz Martin cso at Epic Creative,
James Cridlin, editor at Podnews AerialNissenblatt, founder of Earbuds podcast collective and

(03:30):
community manager at squadcast FM. JenniferFurbo, founder and CEO of Javision Advertising,
Mark Binder, founder of Pad Tricks, Jack Resider, host of Darknet
Diaries. We will of course putlinks to all of our guests and any

(03:54):
relevant information in the show notes.All right, let's get this party started,
all right, we might as wellget started here. So we've been
doing this for I think this iswhat this is the third week, fuzz.
So every week's got a little bitbigger and better. As far as
the number of people are my right, fuzz, I think, yeah,

(04:15):
it's at least third and maybe fourth, probably third. So we've been getting
a lot of positive feedback and alot of content creators are just very thankful.
So I went ahead and invited somemore people to come to the space
and give us, give us morehelp and more advice for the podcast community.
I have Jack Resider. I invitedhim. He obviously has built his

(04:40):
podcast Darkness Diaries from the ground upand makes a living doing it now.
So Jack Man, I think,thank you for taking the time to give
out some advice. Yeah, I'mglad to be here. Yeah, and
you're right, it's gone from zeroto uh I think five hundred thousand downloads
pre episode now and yeah, this'smy full time job, so happy to
share any any wisdom I've learned overthe years. Appreciate it definitely. And

(05:01):
Jen is here. She has dealtwith some pretty big clients in the advertising
and marketing space, so Jen thanksfor join in space. Well, thank
you for the invite. I reallyappreciate it. And yes, I'm happy
to be here and to help outand give any tips and advices at marketing
advertising. I'm happy to be here. And of course the man, the

(05:25):
myth, the legend, mister JamesCrisling from pod News. He made it
here today. We had a wehad a we had a meeting set once
and he slept through it. Soit's a little bit later in your day
though, James, So thanks fortaking the time to John it is.
Yes, it's eleven o'clock in themorning tomorrow, so greetings from Australia.
It's the perfect time for you.You know, everybody else says it's it's

(05:47):
a little late. You know,people in the UK are upset about it,
but for James, it is theperfect time. Yeah, it's pretty
good being out. I've had mccoffee. Yeah, so everything's everything's good here.
So, like I said earlier,we're really just taking the time to
talk through some of the challenges thatyou guys have going on this week with
podcasting, orgeous podcasting in general.With that being said, we'll get into

(06:10):
it. Mark Binder, I knowthat you sent a request in and I've
missed it. Let me send youthe invite. So Mark ahead and introduce
yourself, because you just created apodcast hosted. Yeah, So my name's
Mark Binder created a pat Tricks that'sa podcast hosting platform focused around keeping the
podcast create or creative. Basically,the whole philosophy with what I'm trying to

(06:31):
build is your job as the podcasteris to create engaging content for either five
people or or as you know,Jack has done five hundred thousand people.
The technology is supposed to enable youto do that and not focus around infrastructure,
So creating features you know, toreach market parody, but also to

(06:55):
you know, surprising delight the podcasteras we move forward. Awesome. So
you have some questions that you wantto ask. These people are much more
experienced than me. I try tosurround myself with people that are better than
me. I think it's important tolearn something new every day. I think
we can all take that. Sowhat do you got? Mark? The
main thing is, as I'm startingto go into the surprise and delight phase

(07:19):
of features, I would really loveto hear what you know the big creators
and small creators alike what features they'reeither missing from their podcast hosts or wish
we're better. So basically, i'dlove to hear what your features, your

(07:41):
experience is, what platforms you like, which platforms you hate? Why?
So you specifically you have a podcasthosting provider, Is that what you're running?
Yes, So, just like everywebsite on the internet has a home
as an ip address, so doesevery audio file. That's where padricks fits
in. It's where your audio physicallylives online. Yeah, this is a
tricky place too. I mean whenyou when I see people ask me this

(08:03):
question sometimes and it's tricky to answerstraight away because you really need to nail
the basics first, right, Youhave to nail the is this available twenty
four hours? Like this podcast mustbe available twenty four hours a day all
around the world, and you know, as quick as to download as possible.
You can't have lags where you knowand be slow at downloading episodes when

(08:24):
people need it, and so youknow, that's that's number one, and
number two is having analytics and statisticsof what's what's going on, an easy
way to upload, an easy wayto put your image on there, put
the descriptions on there, like allthere's a whole bunch of mechanics that need
you know, a podcast host justneeds to provide to begin with. And

(08:46):
those are my favorite features, rightthose are the things that must happen in
that that must work before we evenget into the Oh that's a nice to
have. That's a really cool extrathing. You've really got to get that
baseline stuff solid at first. Yeah, all that is there, uploading of
the audio titles, descriptions, artwork, it's all there. The thing that

(09:09):
I've been working on the most recentlyis the feed importer. So you know,
it's really easy to start anew butit's really difficult to migrate a large
show over. So that that's kindof right before I hopped on this space,
that's that's what I was working on. That. All that is there.
As far as you know the basics, the feed importers is I believe

(09:31):
to be the last basic. Butas far as surprising and delighting, one
of the things that I've been thinkingabout is having the ability to look at
previous download history once you've been onPatricks for a while and recognizing the trends.
And I don't know exactly mechanically howI would go about doing. It's
just one of those ideas that youkind of play around with and see.

(09:52):
But if you see a sudden spikein downloads for a particular show, surface
that in the UI for the forthe podcast of the podcast creator to look
at and see, Hey, whatwas it about this show that was different
from other ones? So I canstart creating similar content to this or something
dipped for some reason? What wasit about this show that didn't work?

(10:16):
Yeah, that's those are cool.I think a lot of people obsess over
analytics when they're podcasters, and youcan really do a lot there. You
know, you're given the basics,here's what episodes got downloaded at how many
times? In this sort of thing, but you could also pull in,
you know, comments that people haveleft on Apple podcasts. You can pull
in comments from some other podcast playershave comments as well. You can look

(10:39):
at statistically which episodes have performed,like you might want to look at what
some of the analytics are shown onYouTube, because YouTube really provides quite a
bit for creators, such as,when you publish an episode, is this
out performing the other ones at thesame time, you know, we're forty

(11:00):
eight hours into publishing an episode,how is that performing compared to others,
and yeah, you know stuff likeanalytics. I think analytics has a lot
of speace to grow. Still agreeon that's let's see what James thinks,
because James sees a lot of thesepodcast hosting platforms come and go throughout the
years. So James, what doyou think is what is absolutely critical?

(11:24):
I mean, I think we're ata stage now where just launching another podcast
platform is our podcast hosting company isI mean, it's fine, but there
are a lots of podcast hosting companiesout there, and so the real thing
that I would recommend you to markis to have a unique thing that your
podcast hosting platform does that nobody elsedoes. So copying everything else absolutely fine,

(11:50):
But what does it do that youcan't get from lips In, from
buzz Sprout, from Captivate, fromyou know, all of these other podcast
us hosting companies. And you know, I've been an advisor for Captivate until
they were purchased at the end oflast year by Global, So I'm a
little bit limited in the kind ofthing that I can say, But what

(12:13):
I would say is, you know, there's a there's a bunch of neat
analytics out there. There's a bunchof you know, of information out there.
But what is different about your podcasthosting platform that I can't get if
I go to lives in I can'tget if I go to you know,
to Blueberry or whatever it might be. And I think it's focusing on that

(12:37):
is you know, it would bereally helpful. Yeah, I love that
I can. I can answer thatquestion a little bit. But of course
that's you know something, I knowyou're asking that more. Think about this
as I'm building it. But onething I do want to say is that
I haven't seen this with too manyother hosts, and I could just be

(12:58):
messing it or don't advertising it orwhatever. But Patricks allows for show level
access control. So a lot ofwhat I've seen with like libs in and
Anchor and the like is you eitherhave access to the system and everything that's
inside of it, or you don't. With Patricks, you can have system

(13:22):
level access and then also separately fromthe system, have show level access.
So you may be an editor inthe entire system that's your default permission,
but you only have access rights tothe shows that you've explicitly been added to.
Yeah, so that's a feature whichis in Omnistudio. It's a feature
which is in Captivated. It's afeature which is in quite a look quite

(13:45):
a lot of people. But Iagree that that is a useful tool to
enable you to, you know,to appeal to the serious podcaster that might
be you know out there doing youknow, getting editors things involved in that
sort of thing. So I think, you know, certainly worthwhile having a
look at that. The other thing, I mean, I think there's a

(14:05):
real opportunity for supporting the new podcasttwo point zero tags, everything from in
enabling people to post transcripts to withinthe RSS feed, to doing value for
value you know, crypto stuff,to doing location based you know, information,

(14:28):
and really keeping on top of thepodcasting two point zero thing. There
are some podcasting two point zero podcasthosts out there, but not very many
who are supporting many of the newtags, and that might be you know,
the unique selling point that you haveis that you're supporting more of those
than other podcast hosting companies. Yeah, I've become aware of podcasts to point

(14:54):
out, and I definitely have sometags that are sad that I want to
start supporting. I think there's acouple I think that I either am supporting
in production where it's in staging rightnow, I agregate what they are off
the top of my head, butyeah, that's definitely something that is up

(15:15):
net to really start diving into.Yeah, so I would dive into that,
and I would also use there's athere's a bunch of open tools out
there around around for your analytics interms of user agent lists, in terms
of you know that that kind ofstuff to actually give really good analytics.

(15:39):
And I think if you I don'tknow what a typical podcast, what a
typical podcast it sees on your onyour platform, but if they're seeing more
than ten percent of their podcast downloadsbeing marked as from an unknown player,
then you've got a problem there.So, you know, working on working
on really good analytics in terms ofwhere things are getting played is something that

(16:03):
I don't see too many podcast hostsdoing it. So quite a lot of
it, this, I guess,is around not around new features, but
it's around differentiation. What what what? What what can Patricks do that other
you know, what are the tricksthat Patricks does? And yeah, you
know and you know that that otherthat other people aren't doing, because otherwise

(16:26):
you end up being just another podcasthost and that's not particularly helpful exactly.
No, I agree with that.I guess there's a lot more every every
time I have a conversation when somebodyI'm like, hey, I've got to
figure it out. That was justkidding. I think for me, it's
always the lot of the things thatI'm on Captivate. Obviously, they have
a lot of things and make ourlives easier as content creators, So that's

(16:49):
a big thing for me. Whatabout you, Fus, I'm also in
Captivate, and I would just saythat having I started hand coding and RSS
feedback in two thousand and five andto where we are today, I feel
like we're kind of in the Everynew feature is a little gift that we

(17:10):
get as podcasters, and I'm I'mhere for it. I'm enjoying watching Captivate
and some of the others introduce newfeatures and keeping up with that. And
Mark, I just think that,you know, just keep grinding and h
like we said earlier, and workon the basics and then find that that

(17:33):
one piece that's going to stick outfor you and hopefully that will be what
helps you pop. Thank you,guys. That's a lot of insight.
I greatly appreciate that. Hey,no problem at all. It looks like
we have the blue collar Enlightenment show. Spoke with you several times. You
have a question or challenges that you'refacing this week that you'd like to discuss
marketing, That's kind of my biggestissue is how trying to get more people

(18:00):
to come and stay on the show. So what are you what are you
currently doing? I do all overmy platforms, Facebook, Twitter, word
of mouth is a big one,talking to other people and having the other
people that I have on my showbecause it's interview based, promote their episodes

(18:21):
and the show in general. ButI'm trying to keep keep going and keep
the numbers going up and step downbefore I pass it off to I know
Jack and Jen came off of themute for a second, but so real
quick, what exactly you know?If you can quickly explain what your show
is about and who do you thinkit appeals to? Who are you trying
to reach out to with your show? So my show is about me called

(18:48):
guy, and I am searching outin the world of the people that are
doing interesting things and I want totalk to them, bring them on the
show asking because some people follow thosepeople and then they'll come to my show
and maybe you'll think that I'm interesting, or they can come to the show

(19:11):
my interviews about their journey, maybethey can relate. Maybe they're trying to
have a book come out, orstart a YouTube channel, or you know,
so on and so forth, thatkind of thing. Jack, you
want to start it off? Sure, yeah, I think I think some

(19:33):
stuff that's helped for me is tokind of inject yourself into these circles.
Right, So you are talking withcreators. It sounds like where the creator
communities online, where people creating things, how can you be more present in
those spaces and you know, offersome advice, give some you know,
good stories that you've that you've foundand shared and this kind of thing,

(19:56):
and that that gets people more interested, like, Hey, I want to
get in to this YouTube creation process. It looks like this guy's talking about
it a lot. I'm going tofollow him, right, And so you
got a new follower, whether it'son Twitter or whatever, And then they
look at your bio and they say, oh, this guy's got a podcast.
Right. So I think just beingpart of the creator community goes a
long way. But I like theway you framed it. At the beginning,

(20:17):
the question was how do I getlisteners to kind of stick around longer
and enjoy it? And I thinkyou have to be you have to find
what the value add that you wantyour listeners to take away from and then
just deliver that as much as possible. Right, So, if you want
them to be more educated or feellike this show is funny, right,
and they feel you know, funnier, like they get laughter out of it,

(20:40):
or they feel more inspired or whateverit is, you want to grab
that emotion, that feeling that youwant them to take away from it,
and just hunt for that in everysingle interview you do and every single episode.
And if it's not hitting in thoseepisodes, like oh, this one
just kind of fell flat, yougotta cut it, you gotta you gotta
say that one just did it fitin what I want this show to be,

(21:03):
And that's okay, it's all rightto cut some episodes out. And
if you can kind of be thattastemaker of pulling in the greatest conversations and
the real interesting stuff and delivering thatto the audience where they're like, this
is always I know, this isalways going to be something really interesting to
me, and it's going to giveme this kind of feeling. I'm going
to tune in every time. I'mthe kind of person that wants to wants

(21:25):
my listeners to catch up on everysingle episode and they're never behind on one
versus maybe somebody else who publishes fivetimes a week. They just want more
content out there, So you kindof have to figure out do I want
more content or do I want thecontent to just really be the best content?
And people take away from that.So I don't always have the right

(21:45):
school of thought for everyone, sosome people have different ways of doing it.
But these are some things that Ithink my help, Yeah, and
I understand that, you know,maybe a podcast or it's going to take
time, and I'll pushing them.Actually had my biggest interview yet, And
the more interviews I do, thebigger people that all have come on,
and the more interesting the conversations thatI'll have. Jeff, are you okay?

(22:11):
Was made promoting my twenty space.Yeah. Sure, So every Thursday
at seven thirty Central time, Ido a podcast base kind of like this,
but it's more laid back. Wedon't have a said it to him
or what we're talking about we justbullshit podcast. Excuse willing, Jen,
did you want to say, didyou have something to add to this?

(22:32):
I know you came off with youa few times. Yes, Actually,
I was just gonna ask him aboutwhat kind of efforts is he doing when
it comes to advertising his podcast,because when it comes to it, first
of all, you need to dotheir research to find exactly what kind of
people you're trying to attract. Onceyou know, once you know the type
of honors you're looking for, thenyou will have to see what kind of

(22:53):
value just like Jack was telling him, like what kind of value can you
add to that audience that is listeningto But at the same time, you
want to ask your audience like whatdo you think about this? And like
any kind of feedback that you canactually use in your own advantage and then
take it into a like an advertisingstrategy to attract more people just like them

(23:15):
and produce more content the same way. And I feel that's the best way
to actually do it, and notjust in one place, but in different
platforms if you can. I usuallydo not recommend to go everywhere, but
like to try to stick to providethe value that you're looking for in places
that you know you're going to findthat audience and maintain it in their focusing.
That one you say, people's feedback, How how do you do that?

(23:40):
Because you know at the end ofthe show, I do say,
hey, shop me message that whatyou think in the podcast? It needs
a lot to us but nothing sois just something I'm saying wrong? What
should you do to get to thatfeed Well? I do different things,
like for example, like I dohave a YouTube channel, but I'm more

(24:00):
focused on my Instagram account and everyFriday I go live like coffee with Jen
Right and people jumping in there.Sometimes they watch it after. But what
I like to do is like,for example, I do stories, and
I create like this, polls andkind of questions so people can get to
ask. And I ask in differentways even my own clients, like so
what do you like about this?Or when I get like any type of

(24:21):
commons, so what do you likethe most? Like what is something that
is attracting you? Is there somethingelse that you want to learn about it?
Or it? Should I be speakingabout another topic or something that is
more valuable to you. I askthose questions all the time. You might
not get an answer all the time, but it gets you closer to the
honest that is listening to because theyknow that you want to create that value.

(24:42):
I understand that. I get whatyou said. Do you have do
you have your own website or areyou just directing people to your actual podcast
episodes on one of the podcatchers Iam looking to I'm doing stuff in steps.
I don't have a process that convestedme up, so I'm working on

(25:02):
one thing at a time. Isso my website is the next thing.
Right now, I go direct yougo directly to my anchor side, and
from there you could go to whatever. Once you have your website up and
running, I recommend installing what's calledthe LinkedIn tag, which will allow you
to see the job titles, industries, and some of the different demographic information

(25:29):
of the visitors that are coming toyour website, and that will help you
back to what Jen was saying,find the right kind of audience. So
you're, you know, talking toblue collar workers to find you know,
perhaps what kind of industry those bluecollar workers are in and who's coming there,
and it all depends on if thepeople who go there actually have a

(25:51):
LinkedIn tag. So maybe you knowthat it depends on a bit on that,
but we do use that every dayfor the healthcare industry or for manufacturing
and things like that with our businessesthat we work with, and we're able
to see, you know, maybethis uh more on the respiratory therapist side,
or more on the you know,nurse practitioners or whatever that might be

(26:15):
that we're advertising too. So onceyou have an actual I always recommend having
your own page that you can controland look at the analytics for and those
kind of things that you don't getfrom anchor or from directing, you know,
right to Apple or to Spotify,and being able to measure that and

(26:37):
then see what's working, who it'sworking for, and then to advertise to
more people like that. You're ill. Do you have any advice on how
to get like, how to getfeedback from your listeners? What are some
creative things that you've done or heardof that he just said asking on his
podcast at the end it's not working. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I have many thoughts. Thank youfor asking, Yeah, it could.

(27:00):
How many listeners do you have isa big question, because if you
have two hundred listeners per episode,there's a good chance that sorry, I'm
in a loud room. There's agood chance that that's just not enough people
to be engaged to actually give youfeedback. So that could be something just
to think about, is you mightnot be getting feedback because your sample size

(27:22):
is not big enough. And yes, there are some audiences that have two
hundred people, and those two hundredpeople are all very engaged, but you
just never know when you're catching thosepeople. You know, you could be
they could be listening to your showwhen they're in the sixth hour of their
car ride and they just have nochance of responding to you right then and
there, and because of that,they're going to forget about it because they

(27:42):
also listened to five other podcasts.So that's just something to think about.
Maybe it'll make you feel a littleless like, oh, why is nobody
responding to me? Sometimes it's justbecause you are one of the approximately eight
podcasts that they're listening to per week, and they listen to you as part
of their routine, and you're sotrenched in their routine that they don't even
think of you as something you knowthat they need to do. Besides when

(28:04):
they're listening to you, But thenanother thing to do, just maybe try
this out, is when you areasking for ratings and reviews on your show,
give people something specific to respond to, so everybody says, hey,
before you go, leave us arating and review. It really helps us.
It doesn't really help you except forin social proof that's you know,

(28:27):
this was debunked a while ago fromApple that it moves you up in the
algorithm or anything like that. Somaybe just appealing to people where they are
and really telling the truth and saying, hey, it doesn't really help us
move up in the algorithm, butit really does help me understand what you
like about the show. And maybejust being honest with them will help and

(28:48):
say like, I really do needto hear from you because I don't know
why I'm making this show. Otherwise, you know, you can always try
that tactic and just be very veryfrank with them, and then just on
a lighter note, you could alsosay something like, we would love it
if you'd leave a rating and review. If you don't know what to say,
tell me what you had for dinnertoday or something better yet more related

(29:10):
to your show. I'm writing everyone of these things done just I have
I appreciate it. I am recordingit too, so you don't have to
write it down. You can listento it right after if you want to
go ahead, Jack, Just togive some context on what Ariel was saying.
With the sample size, I getabout one percent of my listeners to

(29:30):
do what I say. So ifI say, message me, tell me
what you think, Cleveland review bythis product, whatever, it's one percent
of my audience. Yeah, Ihave a repetition. What is gonna get
you there? Yeah? I meanI think when it comes to repetition,

(29:51):
So say so, Jack, thatone percent, you're going to have some
people tuning in, some people respondingto your call to action some weeks,
some people responding other times, andthen a good percentage is never going to
respond. Do you have any dateon that? I agree with you,
so whatever, And you're right becausethey're busy. I'm I'm listening to podcasts
when I'm running. I'm never gonnarespond on a run. I'm busy doing

(30:12):
something else. So yeah, Idon't know if yeah, they're you're right.
So I think the ones who dorespond, I think kind of reflect
a larger percentage as well. Soif you have one person that says,
hey, this was really helpful tome. It probably means that there were
ten other people who feel that sameway too, So I kind of feel
this as like, oh, I'myou're representing some of the other you know,

(30:33):
silent majority as well. Yeah,I can actually speak to that when
it comes to newsletters, so Irun a podcast recommendation newsletter called Earbuds Podcast
Collective, which you can get ifyou go to earbuds dot audio. We
are officially partnering with James at podNews, which you can get at podnews
dot net. And the way thenewsletter works is that we send out an

(30:55):
email every Sunday night that has fivepodcast episodes on a theme, and we
don't get them any clicks, whichis shocking to me because we have a
pretty big subscriber base and those peopleare very plugged into the podcast base.
We get a lot of people writingto us on social and saying they loved
our podcast recommendations or dming us orreplying to the email, but our click
rate is not huge. Our clickrate is in like the two percent range,

(31:18):
which is not which is okay industrywise, but I would like it
to be bigger. Whatever, allthe things for advertisers, whatever. But
what I found, and I tweetedthis recently, is that I don't know
about you, but when I amsubscribed to a bunch of different podcast newsletters,
I am not clicking on those newsletters. Even myself. I am viewing
what's being recommended and I'm thinking,oh, okay, that's being recommended.

(31:40):
Great, And then I go tothe next newsletter and I'm seeing that it's
being recommended there. And then sometimedown the line, maybe it's subconsciously,
I'm going and I'm putting the nameof that show into my podcast listening app
of choice, and then I'm goingto listen to it that way. So
people don't always take action right away. And so that's another thing to keep
in mind. James, there's plas. What are your thoughts, Yeah,

(32:04):
well, there we are. Imean, I mean, I think from
my from my point of view,to get people to to do anything,
you need to keep it really reallysimple, not add four hundred million different
things at the end of your podcast. If you really want something, then
ask and ask for it upfront.And you know that typically works rather rather

(32:28):
better than throwing in you know,give us five stars. That would be
really helpful. Please tell your friends, you know, please, you know,
give us feedback. Maybe you'll giveus a feedback on pod Chaser,
or maybe you're on the Apple podcasts, or you know, send us a
postcard, here's our address, andyou know all that kind of stuff.
That's not that's not going to bethe easiest thing to end up doing.

(32:49):
So if you want something from youraudience, ask them for one thing,
and make it really clear why you'reasking what you'd like to know? All
right? Is it? Is thatgood answer for your blue collar enlignment show,
Yes, sir, I will takeit any more of the time.
No, And I think you know, the longer you do it and you
get into it, then you startrealizing these kind of things. But yeah,

(33:14):
really keeping it simple is it's criticalbecause it just you don't want to
make it any harder. Give yourselfmore, give your listeners, excuse me,
more work for us. What doyou think? No? I agree,
I think that you want to makeit simple, and there's I mean,
really just again, find out whoyour audience is and provide the best

(33:35):
product to them and mark it tothe right people. And that's what you've
got to do. Anybody else hasa question don't hesitate to go ahead and
request the microphone will go on toon curve. Go ahead, Hi everyone.
So I actually am involved in thispodcast called Software Engineering Daily, so
I managed like the operations there.Before that, I've been a listener of

(33:58):
doc Knit Diaries and the Expreadman podcastand of also like Software Engineering Daily.
So I just want to like shareone of my experiences with the Lex Spreadman
podcast. I was one of thefirst listeners of those podcasts. So let's
created a Discord server which had likea hundred people in the beginning, and
it grew really from there. Andlike his episodes were like really technical,

(34:22):
deep learning and all kinds of stuff, but the audience of that podcast was
just not like the technical people.It was like people who were like played
great guitars or painters or artists,so people from all sports of life were
involved in that to grow that podcast. And I think like Lex had this
habit of you know, engaging withtheir audience, with his audience in such

(34:46):
a great way that he used toactually, you know, discuss research papers.
So he used to discuss the Turingpaper and kind of stuff with people
on the Discord voice chat. Solike that experience has been so and now
he's like millions of listeners, sohe probably does not even remember us.
But like I was one of thefirst listeners of that podcast. I had

(35:10):
a different question. So we arelike right now we have like thirty k
listeners per episode on Software Engineering Jerryand I am we are trying to create
new forms of podcasts, so likeweb three and all kinds of the different
domains that are coming right now,and I just want to understand, like

(35:31):
what's the best way to diversify fromhere without like starting from scratch all over
again. So diversify as in createnew podcasts or create go into new areas
in the current podcast create new podcasts. Well, I mean, you're a

(35:52):
creator. You've maken a podcast andit's probably not the last thing you create,
so you know you've got you kindof have to look at this as
a journey where each thing you createyou can try to take that audience to
the next thing you're working on.And you know, if you create another
podcast, you should self promote itin the Software Engineering Daily podcast, which

(36:14):
you already you know have a piecein. So yeah, I mean using
your current podcast to cross promote tothe other one is one of the best
marketing tricks I've ever seen, soI definitely use that. Okay, that's
quite thank you. I'm gonna jumpin there. For the Software Engineering Daily
podcast, I've listened to it forprobably two or three years, and I

(36:39):
was actually working with Jeff on itright as covid hit. I was doing
help doing the marketing and promotions forit. I would my biggest piece of
advice because of the polarizing nature ofWeb three is. I don't want to
say avoid it like the plague,because it could be the future. But

(37:02):
at the same time, the SoftwareEngineering Daily podcast is very much focused on
like established best practices. So ifI would lean into that cross promotion and
say, hey, if you're interestedin this, we have this other podcast
that we do and almost like asas a pre role and a post role,

(37:22):
I would put it in there.But I wouldn't like put it in
people's faces, because I think thatwould deter people away from Software Engineering Daily
because they're interested in today's best practicesand not necessarily tomorrow's best practices. If
that makes any sense. Yeah,totally thinker is the Is the Lex Friedmant

(37:45):
discord still around or did it getshut down. Ah, So I left
it because Lex was not active anymore. But I know a few people and
they say, like, there's notmuch activity in that discord now, so,
but when it started, it hada lot of activity. And he
used to like he used to likeread research papers like every Saturday sometimes even

(38:06):
he used to read like poetries andthat James or anybody else have anything to
add, I honestly do not.I don't want to act like I'm just
gonna throw shit on the one seatof the sticks. So anybody else feel
free if you have anything to add. All right, Yeah, we appreciate
you taking the time to come upand ask that. Podcasting Power Hour is
part of Indie drop in network.If you are a podcaster looking to grow

(38:30):
your listeners, check out indie dropin dot com. Indie drop in is
always free and we have opportunities rightnow for comedy, true crime, scary
and paranormal podcasts. Just go toindie drop in dot com to learn more.

(38:50):
Digital Dissection Mark. I know it'syou on there. I know you
have a great question. I'm sureyou always do. Hey, Jeff,
thanks thanks for inviting me. Iapologized I was a little late, but
the question I came in with actuallydoes kind of piggyback off of what was
just covered because we started doing amini series that that kind of accompanies what

(39:15):
we do on our main show.Because the main show that we do covers
you know, pop culture, andwe go through you know what, I
basically just whittle it down. Millennialsthat remember the eighties will typically be the
crowd we're going for. And whenwe launched this mini series, it was
not necessarily to break away from popculture, but to tap into some of

(39:36):
these other areas within podcasts that we'vealways kind of wanted to look at,
which was, you know, thingslike true crime, some of the more
mysterious aspects of pop culture. Stuffthat's kind of on the fringe of what
we would normally do. And theproblem that we've kind of run into now
is that we are seeing some ofthe folks that listen to our main show

(39:59):
tap into the any series, butwe're seeing the mini series be more successful.
And it's a really weird place tobe right now and just kind of
pull everyone that's here. I mean, where would you be at in terms
of you just follow the flow ofwhat people are kind of looking at and

(40:19):
maybe pull back on the other show. I mean, I'm kind of at
a crossroads and interested in everyone's thoughtson it. Success is always a difficult
thing to navigate, isn't it.Yeah, it's weird, James, Are
you still awake over there in Australia? Yeah, I'm still the way.
Yeah. I think success is reallydifficult because success for different people means different

(40:43):
things. And if you are wantingto become a millionaire, then that's very
different from if you are wanting tospread your own influence to other people,
or you're wanting to use your podcastsas an opportunity to travel the world or
whatever it might end up being.So really success is what you make of
it. And yeah, so it'sa difficult one to kind of, you

(41:08):
know, to kind of think aboutin that sort of side what I do
see, you know, in termsof you know, in terms of successful
shows, there's shows which have beenaround four years and years and years and
they're consistent and you know what theystand for. And you know, Jack's

(41:29):
podcast is a great example of that. It's a podcast which has been been
around for many years now. Everybodyunderstands what you're likely to get in terms
of a in terms of the nextepisode, and you know, and I
think from that from that point ofview, it's a great example. There
are plenty of shows which appear andthen they exist for twelve episodes and then

(41:51):
they disappear, which doesn't seem tome to be the world's greatest plan,
to be honest. So, yeah, so it's always always interesting saying that,
Yeah, I'm just trying to figureout what the problem is here.
So you've got you started a secondpodcast that's going really well, what's the
what's the issue that you need helptackling? So actually, James kind of

(42:15):
answered the question for me, atleast thinking about maybe not being so quick
to kind of run away from whatwe've been doing with our other show since
we won't we I mean, we'veonly been doing podcasting for a little bit
over a year now, So forme, it's not like we're thinking about
it being a job replacement by anymeans. For me, it was more

(42:37):
about maybe more of a knee jerkreaction. And to James point on this,
I think it is important for meto consider maybe looking at not one
doing better early on than the otherone, and maybe just seeing what this
looks like. I don't know,maybe month over month or the twice a

(43:00):
year check into it, or evenyear over year and maybe look more internally
than than anything. But but Iactually think he answered my question. That's
I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I mean what I've seen is like
when when a new show spins outof something, you see it hitting.

(43:20):
You know, sometimes on the podcastApple podcast charts ahead of its its parents
show. And the thing is isthat you've got this new influx of listeners.
You're taking your existing listeners and you'redumping them into this new show,
and they're like, yeah, Ialways like this show, I might as
well check out their new one.You know, I want more of whatever
they're making, So I'm jumping in. And so you see this new show

(43:42):
growing so much faster than your yourcurrent show. But it is sometimes just
at the beginning, because you're justintroducing a whole your whole audience. You're
kind of dumping them into that,and once you've kind of equalized them the
two, then you can then youcan start to see which one is actually
going to be the bigger one overtime. So yeah, I think at
the beginning you will see something likethat. All right, we'll go ahead

(44:06):
and move on Western sounds. Iknow that I've talked with you in pretty
good detail quite a bit. Youjust really get into it. You really
just started the podcast, so I'msure you have a great question to ask
us. Yes, so I'm lookingto upgrade my recording equipment. Right now,
I record off of kind of reallykind of crappy microphone and right into

(44:30):
my laptop. I record into Audacitythanks to you, Jeff. But I
am looking to upgrade, and I'mlooking to do it cost efficiently. So
I'm looking for some advice as tohow to best use my money. So

(44:52):
just to kind of explain here,he he started through Anchor. He's actually
been recording onto Anchor and he's andhe's enjoying it, but he's looking to
kind of upgrade to that next thing. As far as the equipment goes,
as far as the hosting platform andeverything, I know, for me,
the Samsung Queue to you would bereally, in my opinion, would be
a really good affordable option for amicrophone. I can send you details on

(45:16):
that, but I will you know. As far as being affordable and being
a dynamic mic. I kind ofuse that one on the go and I
think it does a great job.But I'll let somebody else chime in on
this. As far as editing goes, are you married to Audacity or are
you looking to want to update thatas well. I'm not married to it.

(45:38):
It's free and so that part's nice, but if there was something that
was better and worth the cost,then I would be way down to shop
around. I think that's a goodfirst step. You've been editing in Anchor,
so I mean, I think ifyou can go through the steps on
Audacity, that's that's pretty big incomparison to what you been doing. Yes,

(46:00):
yes, I agree, Audacity isgood. It's where I started.
I eventually made the switch over toAdobe Audition, and it's a little bit
more enterprising, but with their CClicensing, I think you can get it
just the just Audition relatively cheap.I don't have numbers in front of me

(46:22):
right now, but I would highlyrecommend Audition just because if it's plug in
architecture and like integration into things,it allows for you know, a lot
of land and expand type of editingyou can, like you can introduce different

(46:42):
types of audio processors into the editingexperience, so you don't have to do
it while you're recording. I wouldhighly recommend that, just because that's just
personal preference. Otter the audition.I am. I'm drinking the cool right
there, but I that's my recommendation. I would just ask, is there
something right now that you feel isfalling flat with your show? Because I
wouldn't just go spending money if youunless you know there's something that you feel

(47:07):
isn't working. And if there's likethat one specific thing that you need advice
on how to spend your money.There's a I don't know here right now
that can give you some advice Iwant to spend your money on. But
I would say, you know,don't spend it if you don't need to.
If if that's working for you,keep going that route until you hit

(47:30):
a hit a wall and needed adjust. I spend a lot of money on
podcast stuff, but only because Ithat's my hobby and that's where I spend
my extra spending money. But Iyou know, if you're doing it to
make money, I would say,keep it as lean as possible until you're

(47:52):
in the black. And other thanthat, I you know, we can
we can all hear spend your moneya thousand different ways for you and we'll
all have different opinions on that.Yeah, I'm I think my mic could
use an upgrade. I'm only reallydoing this with my spare money at the

(48:13):
time anyway, so it's more ofa hobby for me right now. If
I would start making money on it, then I would keep it a little
bit leaner, But right now I'mjust kind of doing it for fun and
want it to be better, ifthat makes sense. Do you have any
podcasts or friends who pod faded itand their MIC's just sitting in a drawer
somewhere that you could say, Hey, can I just borrow that to see

(48:34):
how it sounds? I don't rightnow. I might ask around, but
I've as of right now, Idon't. Jeff, what was that Mike
that you and I were talking aboutthe other day? Yeah, yeah,
no, I used to sharing meseven, but I mean we're talking about
I also use the Samsung Q toyou, it's like sixty dollars. I

(48:54):
think it's a dynamic MIC. It'sit's good that one's USB and XLR,
right, I hear him? Yeah, yes, just as a good transitional
mike. I mean that's if you'reif you're running USB now and not XLR
and you decide in the futured upgradeyour your recording device, then you can

(49:17):
go to an XLR if you're currentlyused in USB, and that's kind of
the next step up. Awesome,Thank you guys, I really appreciate it.
Anybody else have any other thoughts onthat before we move on to Chris.
I mean, the only other thingthat I would add is USB mics
aren't to the middle ground. Theycan be the microphone that you end up

(49:39):
using depending on what your show is. You know is about the MV seven
is a perfectly capable microphone without everplugging in an XLR thing into it.
And I also think just worth wellbearing in mind that there are audio editors

(49:59):
for music, of which Adobe Auditionis most certainly one of those, or
Reaper or any of these other veryoverspecified audio editors. There's a really good
audio editor which is specifically for speech, therefore specifically for podcasting. It's called
Hindenburg. It will costume nine US dollars a month, and it's specifically

(50:21):
built for putting together shows quickly easilyfor speech. You'll even upload it to
your podcast host for you, andis a much much better choice than going
for a hugely complicated piece of equipmentlike Adobe Audition or any of these these

(50:43):
other services, in my humble opinion, and so you know, just worthwhile
knowing that there are other other toolsout there that make it easy, simple
and quick for you to edit,which, frankly, much of the reason
why people pod fade is that theyjust get tired of editing, you know,

(51:06):
they get tired of the drudgery aroundtheir creativity. And I'm a big
fan of getting rid of all ofthat and to focus on keeping time for
being creative rather than you know,fiddling around with you know, excelent microphones
and complicated audio editors when you canjust do a great job with something which

(51:27):
is made for the job. Yeah, I like Hindenberg as well as an
audio editor. And the reason whyI don't want to use Audacity is because
there's this there's this thing called whatis it called self destructive non destructive editing.
So when you cut off the endof a clip on Audacity, you

(51:49):
can't get that back unless you reimportthat idea. And to me, that
was just really anxiety and do singbecause I'm like, do I really want
to remove this forever? Forever?For ever, and you know, it's
like, oh no, I actuallywhen I wish I kept that one extra
second on there. This is reallydriving me nuts exactly. So with the
Hindenburg you can cut it off butthen regrow it if you want, make

(52:12):
it bigger again. And pretty muchanything other than Audacity does this, so
it's not just Hindenburg. But Iagree with James that Hindenberg kind of boils
it down to just this is thestuff you need for speech. We don't
have all these really fancy plugins andextra things that you don't really need unless
you're making music or something else,and so it does kind of simplify it
and it gives you everything you need. So Hindenberg is a really cool thing.

(52:34):
You can try it for free forlike ninety days. And the other
thing just to bear in mind isthat Audacity is owned by a company in
Russia and is sending back information aboutyou. Not very much information, but
it is sending some information back aboutyou to the Russian owner of that of
that company. If you're cool withthat, then that's fine, but it's

(52:57):
just worth while you being aware ofthat. Important to note that. James,
Okay, well I'll go ahead andmove on to Chris. Chris has
a podcast. He's grew growing prettyquickly and doing a great job. Chris,
I'm sure you have something awesome today. Ask thanks for joining us.
Man, Hey, Jeff, thanksfor inviting me up here to ask a
question I have. Since there's somany great minds in here, I'm going

(53:22):
to ask one question and two partsthat wait, it's still one question number
one. We're we are exactly ninetydays old today. So we dropped our
first episode exactly ninety days ago andsince then, all I've worked on We've
never done this before or anything,so I had to learn with YouTube how

(53:45):
to like edit and everything. Sowe've just worked on audio for the last
ninety days. How important and it'sbeen in Audacity and I did not know
that about Russia, and that's whatI've used because that's what was the most
accessible on YouTube at the time.I could just there are so many videos.
But how important is it going tobe for us to start to edit

(54:09):
video and put out video versus justaudio? Like, is this something I
need to transition to a new software? Just get used to it because everybody's
going to video. That's my That'sthe first part of the question. And
my second part is when it comesto monetization, we're building a little podcast

(54:30):
network right now. We just putour second podcast out. Is downloads or
time? What is more important formonetization the downloads or do we just need
to put time in first learning?Thank you? So the first question about
video, I think I think themost popular podcasts out there, like if

(54:57):
you look at the top two hundredon Apple podcasts, majority of them don't
have videos. So you can goyour whole podcasting career without worrying about video.
And that's the reason why I podcastis so I don't have to think
about props and makeup and backgrounds andall this kind of stuff. I could
just focus on audio only. ButI think I saw something in pod News
recently which said that the podcasters whodo create videos, such as Lex Friedman,

(55:21):
Joe Rogan, these kind of showswith some others Huberman Lab this kind
of stuff, they're getting more listenerson the video version versus the audio,
which is really some striking numbers tome and James, please correct me if
you saw something differently than that.But I think video is completely optional.
But if you want to have yourface on their YouTube, is actual doing

(55:45):
some some pushes to get more podcastsgoing. I can imagine in the next
few months we're going to see awhole podcasting section on YouTube to kind of
give podcasters some sunlight there. Soit's kind of excited to get a show
on YouTube, even with minimal visuals. Just maybe an looping animation or something

(56:07):
could could help ride that wave whateverYouTube's plan on doing. I think it's
also important to ask yourself where doyou want to engage with your listeners?
Do you want to manage multiple incomingchannels if you are getting responses from your

(56:27):
listeners, do you want to replyto emails or apply to like pot inboxes?
If you add YouTube in the videoformat, one of the key things
that YouTube looks at is, youknow, comments and comment engagement. So
if you're going to be encouraging video, naturally there's going to be the YouTube

(56:49):
comments, which of course you canturn off you want to, but I
wouldn't recommend that. But do youhave the time to reply to the comments
to foster that engagement? It's allabout the time and where do you want
to take this? And I thinkbefore you even get there, do you
have time to make videos? Anddo you have time to make videos well,

(57:13):
because shitty content is not going tohave a place anywhere in the future.
There's just too many other shows tochoose from. Your show has to
be amazing, both audio and video. And so I mean I've seen people
think, oh, I need toget on YouTube because everybody says I need
to get on YouTube. That's definitelynot a reason to get on YouTube,

(57:36):
especially if you don't have the equipment. If your video quality is shaky or
it looks like there's a film overthe camera. It's got to be a
nice camera, unfortunately, and thatcould be expensive, and that can be
really time consuming and then expensive topay people to make it not time consuming
for you. So a lot ofthings to consider, And I think the

(57:57):
number one thing here is you don'tneed to get into YouTube now just because
people are saying to get into YouTube. And if you get into YouTube in
three years and you make a greatproduct, then no one's gonna be like,
oh, they didn't get in threeyears ago. Therefore I won't listen
to their ship or watch their ship. People are going to watch it if
it's great. Yeah, well saidthere was a second question there as well,

(58:20):
which is a monetization and I justwant to kind of step back from
that question and an underline what Ithink. There are the three biggest challenges
that podcasters face today, and thefirst one is making great content, and
that might take six months to ayear to figure out what that is.
What's the stuff that's just really youknow, landing with listeners and making it

(58:40):
so that if you were to shutthe show down, they'd be so upset
with you, Like something great?Is making something great something worth listening to
because people turn off good shows tolisten to great shows, so you really
want to try to make a greatshow. That's kind of the first big
challenge to get over. The secondbig challenge is building an audience, which
is like, Okay, now we'vegot something great, let's market it,

(59:00):
let's build it, let's grow it, let's you know, advertise for it,
whatever the case is. And thattakes a long time as well.
Shows don't grow successfully overnight. Theytake a long time. It's a long
cycle. And then the third bigchallenge is that monetization, which is what
you're asking about, figuring out whoor is the sponsor, trying to find
them, how do I put adsin there? And if it's not monetization,

(59:23):
it's just keeping going because sometimes werun out of steam or it's not
given us back what we thought wethis podcast thing was going to give us.
So it's just kind of not givenup. So what's going to keep
you there to keep going so youdon't have to give up? And so
yeah, I mean that brings usto the question, which is what a
sponsor is looking for, and it'snumber of downloads per episode is kind of

(59:45):
the industry standard. People charge somewherearound twenty to thirty dollars per one thousand
downloads, So I wouldn't really starteven looking at this until maybe you hit
five thousand downloads per episode, andthen you can maybe play around with affiliate
ads or something like that just tokind of tickle it and see how it
feels. But once you get inlike the twenty thousand downloads per episode range,

(01:00:07):
things actually like ad deals start tomake more sense and sponsors make more
sense. Thank that was a bighelp, Thank you guys. I'll just
add one more thing to that,which is that podcorn is a great resource
if you want to try out sponsorshipsor try out your luck in pitching for

(01:00:29):
sponsorships. That's podco r N dotFM. It's a marketplace where advertisers can
say I want to advertise to thesetypes of people, and you can say
I have these types of people,and then you can apply. You can
do a vocal a vocal ad,you know, you can record a voice
clip, or you can write yourpitch, and of course there are best

(01:00:50):
practices for both of those things,and there's many reasons why you would be
accepted or not by these advertisers.So that's a fun way to play around
with a potential ad goal. Butthen another thing to think about is do
you have Are you getting enough engagementfrom your listeners, whether that's on social,
whether that's ratings and reviews. Areyou hearing from your listeners enough to

(01:01:14):
know that they are going to takeaction when you tell them to buy a
product because or else you are notgoing to be a great ad partner for
an advertiser or a brand, andyou want to prove your worth so that
they come back around again. Soif right now is not the time,
spend your time building up your qualityof your content, your engagement, your

(01:01:35):
listenership and all that before you goafter asking for somebody to pay to be
in your show, fuzz Jen James, anything to add to this, I
don't particularly know, as I saideverything that I was going to no.
I think Chris also just knowing alittle bit more because they engage with him
daily. He's definitely at that pointnow where he as far as the number

(01:01:58):
of listeners he's in the engagement itgets, He's ready, but it's about
taking that next step for Chris.Chris, thanks for asking a question,
man. I appreciate you inviting me. Jeff, you a problem to you,
like I know you have a questionto ask. Hey, guys,
thank Jeff. Thanks for bringing meup. So I've been I'm going through

(01:02:21):
a lot of things with a podcastingindustry, kind of doing a lot more
research. And one thing that I'vegot to myself into is I help a
lot of podcasters outside the United States, and I've bring more people into podcasts
and from Africa, from the Caribbeans, and now we're going into Latin America.
And the only problem that most ofthem a beam that they keep asking

(01:02:45):
me is how do they get tocross promote with counterparts in the United States
to be able to get that UnitedStates audience Because they want to be able
to get that United States at dollarsand it's been one hecover journey trying to
do it a few clos in tryingto see if we can do that.
But then there's sometimes a language barriers, sometimes the accent barriers or the story

(01:03:07):
barriers there where the series might notyou know, how do how do we
figure out the way to solve forthis to bring more of a very very
diverse community that can cross promotes easilyacross some continents if possible, because they
are already in the same general someonewho's talking about relationships in Africa to be

(01:03:30):
able to give that advice to someonein Europe, right, But how do
we what are are their platforms thathave been created for this or is there
something that I'm missing and having tohelp these people kind of cross promote into
Europe or into United States and thatAnd that's what I really have in trying

(01:03:52):
to solve this past two weeks thatsince the last time we spoke, Jeff,
that's it. Well, I've donequite a few cross promotions, so
I can share some experiences here.The things that I want to do when
I'm cross promoting with some other showis to find a show in my in

(01:04:13):
my category, my genre, likeyou said, talks about the same things
I talk about, and to finda show that's got similar size to me.
And to do that, I lookat my category, whatever that is
in Apple Podcasts or whatever, andI try to get a good understanding of
what are some of the shows thatare going on there, and not just
my primary category, but maybe mysecondary or third choice category. Right,

(01:04:38):
so you know I'm technology primary,but i'm true crime as well. So
I can look in these two differentcategories to try to figure out what's going
on who else is there? Andthen I want to try to figure out
similar size, and to do thatI go to castbox dot fm. This
is a podcast app that actually showshow many subs scribers every podcast has.

(01:05:00):
So I can look at how manysubscribers does my show have on there?
And that's just cast Box subscribers,and so that gives me a kind of
an idea of how big I amon the app. And then I started
to look at these other shows thatI've already identified to say, what are
some that are in my range?And that gives me an idea of this
is about the same size show asmine, and we're both probably trying to

(01:05:24):
grow and so then I'll reach out. Maybe I'll get five, five or
ten shows, And it's probably betterto find shows that don't have a network
and they're kind of independent because kindof network shows have this own, their
own little club that they're in.So you find an independent show, you
reach out to ten of them andmaybe three say yeah, I would like
to do a cross promotion. Sothe way I pitch it is saying,

(01:05:45):
Hey, I'd like to put asixty second ad for your show in my
show, and I'm wondering if youwould like to do the same, put
a sixty second ad for my showand your show, and you know,
here's here's the stuff I want youto say to promote my I show or
whatever and see if they say yes. And like I said, when I
reached out to ten, three saidyes. So it sometimes is a number

(01:06:06):
game. You sometimes have to reachout to quite a bit before you get
him. But those shows could reallymake an impact with your downloads. And
that's kind of my experience. Doyou do this for international podcasts? Are
like just the ones locally that you'veyou've done this with? Well, I

(01:06:27):
found, you know, English speakingones. I guess you know, if
your shows are English speaking, thenthey can be, you know, in
the English speaking crowd, but ifthey are in that language whatever language you
speak locally, then you might wantto seek those ones out specifically. And
I think you brought up a goodpoint about the language barrier and accent barrier,

(01:06:49):
and I think one way you canovercome that is not necessarily doing cross
promos straight away, but appearing ona few shows as a guest so that
they actually hear your voice, hearthe host's voice, and then later maybe
down the line, after they've heardyour voice they're acclimated to it, then
you can pepper the shows that you'repotentially interested in collaborating with with cross promos,

(01:07:15):
but you kind of introduce them alittle bit with something that helps them
understand the tone of your voice.And all of that got okay, thank
you. I also just want toadd that it is possible to do cross
promos with shows that are smaller thanyou. You just have to think about,
or bigger than you. You justhave to think about either a dynamically

(01:07:40):
inserted piece of content or ad orwhat other things do you have to leverage
or do they have to leverage.So if you have five hundred downloads per
episode, and you're interested in swappingwith a show that has five thousand downloads
per episode. In theory, youcould run an ad for them X number
of times to make up for theirone ad, or you could run it
once but then also post about themon social post about them in your newsletter,

(01:08:02):
and come up, come up,come up with an agreed upon number
of social swaps and other types ofswaps that makes sense, so that so
that it's fair or at least closeto fair. That was That was a
very good idea. That's what I'lltry. That that works. Thanks a
real thanks Yah, no problem atall, anybody else or anything to add

(01:08:26):
of that. James, fuzz,Jene, George, George, do you
have a question? Though you werea speaker then you had dropped off before
we end this, George, doyou have anything you want to ask?
All right, Well, hey,we've passed the hour mark here and I
really appreciate everybody joining. It's beenanother fun week of this and thanks to
James and Jen and Ariel that haveall Jack that all joined this week,

(01:08:48):
and hopefully whenever you guys have freetime in the future, we can do
this and do whatever we can tohelp the community fuzzy any more. Closing
thoughts, No, don't. Ijust want to say Jeff Thing for putting
this together. These are always helpful, and thanks all the guests that joined
today and all the listeners who listenedin or ask questions. It's this is

(01:09:10):
great. This is something I lookforward to on Monday nights, so thanks,
or Tuesday mid days if you're James, Tuesday midday and if anybody would
like to know what the headline isfor tomorrow. Megaphone, the massive,
great big podcast hosting company that Spotifyowns, has been down for the last
two hours. Yikes, So thereyou go. It's all going on at

(01:09:34):
Spotify, isn't it. I'm justgonna say Patricks right now is up so
and so and so is my ownCobbles Together podcast hosts as well. Always
good you have any other closing thoughts, James, We appreciate you taking the
time to do this. Hopefully wecan join forces again in the future.

(01:09:58):
Yeah, indeed, I'd love tooin the future country next week because I'm
in Toronto in Canada rather weirdly,but yes, no, this is this
has been fun, so it's alwaysIt's always good to hear these and yeah,
it's been it's been good fun tobe part of this, so hopefully
I will be again. Check Man, appreciate you taking the time. I

(01:10:19):
know you're a busy guy. Youhave any closing thoughts, Oh, it's
just fine catching up with some ofmy friends on here. So good seeing
you, Ariel and James and Jeff. Nice nice chatting with everyone. Hey,
thanks for your input. You're alwaysvaluable resource and you have a lot
of information out there also that's helpfulon the web, So thank you Jack.

(01:10:40):
Good for an aeriel. You haveclosing thoughts, Yeah, I do.
Just because somebody says something doesn't meanit's the truth. When it comes
to podcasting or podcast marketing, beskeptical of people who call themselves gurus.
Be skeptical of me, Be skepticalof everybody up on stage. Do multiple
rounds of research before you make decisions, because anybody can say anything, and

(01:11:04):
because there are no real rules,anybody can make anything up. So just
you know, do what's right foryou in your podcast. Ask questions,
but trust multiple sources. You're thebest. You probably get told that a
lot too, but maybe not enough. Appreciate you, Jen closing thoughts.
Thank you for joining. This isyour first time joining and kind of getting

(01:11:27):
to know some of the people onthe podcast in space, so appreciate you
taking the time to do this.I'm really happy to be here and like
you said, it's my first timedoing this one, and I was happy
to listen to everyone and everyone's thoughtand especially by just Arial just said,
everyone can say whatever and anywhere,doesn't mean that they're actually telling the truth.

(01:11:47):
But just get out there, guys. Just keep doing what you need
to do, and just enjoy itwhile you're doing it. And thank you
for having me. George. Nowyou jump up here. What's going on?
Sorry, guys, I just Iwas taking care of something that I
had to jump off and then Ihad to jump back on again. But

(01:12:08):
I had just a quick question regardingregarding the some some really cool news that
I got recently. I just gotrecently got was named as like a number
number one spot and over on overon on good Pods, and I know

(01:12:30):
that, you know, like Iknow that that it's you know, it's
a new platform and everything, andit's something that not one to take fully
seriously and everything, but you know, like it's a number one spot and
it's something that I feel like woulddefinitely benefit if I were to use that
to gain some momentum regarding sponsorships.Do you think that that would be would

(01:12:50):
be a good good way to gowith that? It depends how how much
the potential sponsor knows about the podcastspace. If they know something about the
podcast space, they'll know that beingthe number one on good Pods doesn't necessarily
mean that you have tons and tonsof listeners. If they don't, then
it sounds pretty good. However,it's good for social proof to say that

(01:13:15):
you're number one on something, Soyeah, it's out that. Something that
people do all the time. You'llsee is they'll go to listen notes.
They'll look up their show on listennotes and see that it's in the top
five percent or top ten percent ofall podcasts in the world. And truthfully,
that doesn't mean much. It meansthat you have like five hundred maybe
seven hundred downloads per episode. Andalso you don't necessarily know how accurate these

(01:13:38):
things are, so that's just somethingto be aware of. Us. We
don't know exactly how much goes intowhat makes you the number one podcast on
good Pods, Like sometimes it's numberone rated, which means that three people
rated you that week, which isnot that much, you know, So
it's just something to for you toknow and for some people possibly to be
impressed by, but other people lesser. I know that sounds like harsh.

(01:14:02):
It goes it goes back to whatyou just said about questioning everything too.
I think you know to be ifyou're if you're number one on good Pods,
but you're you know, number fifteenthousand, eight hundred and seventy three
on Apple podcasts, what's the uh, you know, where's the discrepancy?
Who's listening? Exactly to your pointof what goes on? Beasts? The

(01:14:23):
Apple podcasts chart has nothing to dowith downloads anyway, so you know there
is that sort of side of itas well. I am number three on
Good Pods and have been number threeon Good Pods for probably the last six
months. Same and I can tellyou as of Sundays downloads which I'm looking
at here, I got one thousand, seven hundred downloads of the pod news

(01:14:46):
podcast on Sunday, not one,not one was from good pods. I'm
sure I could find some good podsif I searched hard, If I searched
hard enough, but they're not abig, a big podcast app. But
great, as Ariel says, forsocial proof, great for showing advertisers,

(01:15:10):
look, we're number one in thisin this app. That's absolutely fine.
You're probably not going to see anawful lot of additional downloads from it,
but I know that it's a youknow, it's an exciting group of folks
who all believe very very strongly inthat particular app. But you know,
all of these charts, there's there'sonly one chart which has a scintilla of

(01:15:33):
truth to it, and that's Edison'sPodcast Metrics. And Edison's Podcast Metrics are
you know, they only show youthe top one hundred podcasts. It's only
for the US, and it's anawful lot of work to get even those.
So unfortunately the other charts aren't particularlyhelpful, but you know, they're

(01:15:55):
good social proof and good for goodfor bragging about an incredible place to you
know, interact with your audience.So what I've been doing on my podcast
is every week, if people listenon good pods and leave me a rating
or a review or even just likeit shows that they've listened, I shout

(01:16:15):
them out. So that's a funthing to do. Hey, Ariel,
we're like to talk to people withthe followers on good Pods. I wish
I could get all those followers.And that's saying something, you know,
like, look, I'm popular inthe podcast space for podcast marketing stuff,
but I'm not popular in the restof the world. And I'm next to
a lista Milano, so that's interesting. We'll just say that. Oh man,

(01:16:39):
I was trying to build us uphere. Here you go tearing us
down. I'm just telling the truth. That's hilarious. By the way,
I did. I did get adownload on Friday from it, so there
you go. That was me.Thank you. Who was that jerk behind
that big good Pods movement? Danghim? Anyway, No, seriously appreciate

(01:17:00):
everybody taking the time to do this. We'll be doing now. We love
good Pods. Let me just sayI love Good Pods. Like James said,
they care a lot about the podcastspace, and I'm a big fan
of them because they're a big fanof podcasting. Just again, like Fuzz
said, like I said, questioneverything, Yeah, good to throw that
in there. Yeah, we andmost of us have a pretty good relationship

(01:17:20):
with the people of Good pods.They are awesome, So no, but
again, thanks for everybody for joining. We'll be doing this every week,
and I think we have a groupof people here that really do care about
giving back to the podcasting continent creatorcommunity. So I appreciate everybody who's been
helping answer questions, and then everybodythat's joining and asking questions. So hopefully

(01:17:41):
we will see you all next weekand have a good evening. Thank you
for listening to the Podcasting Power Hour. Everyone is free to participate on Twitter
spaces every Monday at nine pm Easterntime. To join, just follow Jeff
at podcast underscore Father or Greg atIndie Dropping. If you found this podcast

(01:18:02):
helpful, go into your podcast appand write a quick review. Other podcasters
will see it and know this showis worth listening to. Also, I'll
put a few links in the shownotes for ways you can support the show.
I think by now you know welove our coffee. Have a great
week. Thank you for checking outthis episode of Indie Podcaster. I really

(01:18:24):
do appreciate it. If you're interestedand learning more about this podcast, you
can go to podcast father dot com. If you're interested in all the different
kind of work that I'm doing youcan go to Jefftownsend dot Media contact form
On there various other different podcasts andprojects that I'm involved in that I think
you will enjoy. But again,thank you for supporting me, and make
sure you support Indie Drop In Networklike we covered at the beginning, get

(01:18:45):
your podcast featured on there. UntilI see you next time, take care
of yourself and keep being you andkeep being great. Jeff Townsend Media,

(01:19:06):
seize you good night. And thequestion is do I stay here? Will
you be back? Are you gonnacome back? Will you be back?
Are you coming back