Making the Most of Your Podcast Back Catalog – PCI 470

Give Your Podcast Catalog New Life

Your podcast back catalog is one of the most powerful tools you already have — even if you don’t always think about it that way. Those older episodes aren’t outdated. New listeners are finding your show every day, and for them, everything in your archive is brand new.

Today’s Hosts: MacKenzie Bennett and Mike Dell

In this episode of Podcast Insider, we share practical ways podcasters can reuse, promote, and even monetize their existing episodes to grow their audience without burning out on constant new content creation.

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Why Your Podcast Back Catalog Matters

Once an episode is published, it doesn’t stop being useful. Evergreen topics, interviews, and educational episodes can continue attracting listeners months or even years later.

Your back catalog is more than an archive — it’s a searchable library of content that can:

• Bring in new listeners through SEO and podcast app discovery
• Keep listeners engaged longer by encouraging binge-listening
• Highlight your expertise and authority in your niche

If your show covers timeless topics instead of breaking news, your older episodes may still be just as valuable today.

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How to Bring Old Podcast Episodes Back Into the Spotlight

You don’t always need to create brand-new episodes to grow your show. Instead, try:

• Resharing older episodes when they become relevant again
• Updating show notes with fresh keywords, links, and summaries for better SEO
• Mentioning past episodes in new episodes (“If you liked this topic, check out episode…”)
• Creating playlists or collections of your best or most important episodes for new listeners

These small steps help listeners discover more of your content and stay subscribed longer.

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Refresh, Revisit, or Rerun — The Right Way

Mike shares important technical tips for rerunning episodes:

• Always resave or rename audio files before reposting
• Add a short new intro explaining why the episode is being shared again
• Retitle reruns clearly so podcast apps accept them properly

Instead of replaying an episode exactly as-is, consider recording a short update or revisiting the topic with new insights.

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Monetizing Your Podcast Back Catalog

Your archive can also become a source of revenue. In this episode, MacKenzie and Mike discuss ideas like:

• Turning transcripts into a book or digital guide
• Creating a premium feed with older episodes behind a paywall
• Promoting older episodes that already include ads or sponsorships

None of these are instant success strategies — but over time, they can reduce burnout, increase lifetime listener value, and create steady long-term growth.

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Use Your Data to Guide Future Episodes

Pay attention to which older episodes continue getting downloads. Those topics often reveal:

• What your audience cares about most
• Which formats work best

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell.
And I'm Mackenzie Bennett. Today, we're talking about
something a lot of podcasters forget they already
have, their back catalog.
Yeah. Everyone's focused on their next
episode or the next big ideas. And there's
a ton of value sitting right there in
your older episodes that can still help you
grow or even monetize. Yeah. So today, we're

(00:22):
gonna talk about why your back catalog matters,
how to bring those episodes
back into the spotlight,
and some easy ways
that you can get more life out of
your previous content. If you've ever felt the
pressure to constantly create something new, this one's
for you.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike

(00:42):
Dell, Dave Clements, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and
insider tips and tricks to help you start,
grow, and thrive through podcasting
with all the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting.
Welcome. Let's dive in.
The back catalog of a podcast can be

(01:02):
very powerful. Now it depends you know, if
you're doing a news show, a lot of
that back catalog is not really
relevant,
only because, you know, the the information is
no longer
viable. You know? If you're talking about something
that happened topically
or, you know, something happened
that really nobody needs to know about, that's

(01:23):
different. But if you're doing something that is
just general information,
interesting conversations,
all that stuff, your back catalog can still
get a lot of traffic.
Definitely.
Once it's been published, that doesn't mean it's
only useful for that week. I mean, Podcast
Insider, the way that we've been doing it
for the past year, so, like, they these
are evergreen topics.

(01:43):
This is stuff that people can
come back to or listen to
years after it's been published. I mean, obviously,
things change. But, overall, there's a lot of
episodes from, you know, a year or so
out that we could air now and would
still
be of interest to people. You know, and
we do that once in a while if
we don't feel like putting out an episode
that week.

(02:05):
You know, we'll throw a rerun in. But
be careful when you do reruns.
Hate to get technical and geeky, but if
you're gonna do a rerun,
reedit the file or at least resave it
under a different file name, the MP three
or the media file if you're doing video.
You know, and maybe record a little something
saying, hey. You know, this is a rerun,
but it's not relevant information. And then, you

(02:26):
know, just make it a little bit different.
Otherwise,
this is all technical, but Apple won't take
it if it has the same file name.
And Spotify won't take it if it's the
same post.
Be careful with that. You know, retitle it,
you know, rerun or something. That's another way
to bring them back. Another thing is is
go back yourself
and listen to an old episode that might

(02:49):
be relevant now. And instead of replaying that
episode,
revisit it. You know, if there's some sort
of an update to the subject you're talking
about or something more you wanna say about
it, You know, add that to it and
put that out as a new episode that
doesn't take nearly as much work as starting
from scratch.
Yeah. That's also good for updating your show

(03:11):
notes as well because that's gonna bring people
in if you are, you know, updating something
to be more relevant to SEO
or just something that people are searching nowadays.
That'll bring people to your episode as well
when they're searching for whatever topic it is.
It's a great way to say, hey. We
have episodes
about this
from two months ago.

(03:32):
If this
episode is something that you like, go check
out a couple more from that month or
something like that. It's definitely good. I think
a lot of people utilize this around the
holidays,
which I see nothing wrong with.
Even, like, in a new episode,
you know, I listen to a lot of
aviation podcasts, and they'll talk about, you know,

(03:53):
the the one that I listen to interviews
people. And they'll bring up something about that
person. And he said, and if you wanna
listen to it, go back to episode blah
blah blah. So you're mentioning the the old
episode and the new episode, and that can
drive traffic.
Yeah. Definitely.
You know, it just keeps everything sorta cohesive
and, running together.

(04:14):
You know, so many times
I do the same thing, you know. I
know I talked about this before, then I'll
go back and listen to that old episode
and decide whether I wanna do a new
episode about that,
rerun that one, or, you know, something of
that sort.
It's a wealth of information for you even
because, you know, well, you know, if you've
already covered that subject and you wanted to

(04:35):
cover it a little deeper or update or
whatever, it gives you a resource
to, utilize that back catalog.
One of the ways that you can do
this
is by building a playlist
of of these old episodes that you think,
deserve a little bit more love. I think
that's a really cool way to
utilize

(04:56):
your time as a podcaster saying, like, hey.
These are ones I'm really proud of and
think are really important for listeners to get
to because it's also really good for, like,
new listeners, new subscribers, followers, whatever you wanna
call them. And it just takes some pressure
off of you to put out, you know,
a new episode every once in a while.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, you know,
I mentioned in the intro there that, there's

(05:19):
ways to monetize your back catalog.
And, you know, some of them are are
easy, some of them not so easy, but,
you know, just ways that you could put
all that information to use.
One of them is
write a book. I know several people that
do this where they've got evergreen content.
And what they'll do is they'll get transcripts

(05:39):
of all their old episodes,
put them together, edit them into a sending
kind of a book form. And Right. That
seems kind of intimidating for a lot of
people, I think. Oh, yeah. Very much.
Very much. So, you know, I'm not saying
it's easy, but that's the way to do
it. It's,
you know, I I think of, Grammar Girl
as a good example.

(06:00):
She's written several books, and they're mostly based
on the topic she's covered in her podcast.
But she's actually a writer, so she probably
started from scratch on a lot of that.
But, you know, it was all motivated by
her back catalog.
And then I know another one that,
every year he puts out a pretty much

(06:20):
a book about compilation of everything he covered
that year.
That's pretty cool. Yeah. And, you know, and
then, you know, sell it for $5 on
Amazon or whatever and then get you a
little, money in your pocket. Plus, it's a
great archive for that information.
I mean, even if you don't share it
with people, it might just be fun to
have for yourself.
Sure. Sure. And, you know, and it's not

(06:41):
a word for word transcript thing. He goes
through and rewrites
the sections, but, you know, he starts with
the transcript. And, you know, now that transcripting
isn't that hard to do anymore,
at least a decent transcript, you've gotta edit.
You know? But that's a possibility. Another one
is,
and we have this on Blueberry, Blueberry premium.

(07:02):
So what you could do if you wanted,
limit your
public feed to whatever number of episodes you
wanna give out for free for however long,
and then all the old ones republish in
a premium feed and then charge for that.
You know, for the longest time,
Libsyn was doing that as a feature where,
you know, you'd say, okay. The latest 20

(07:24):
episodes are available to everybody.
After that, you have to buy the archive.
And, you know, you could do the same
thing with now now Blueberry premium.
Now you'd have to republish those episodes, I
believe, but, I don't think it would be
all that hard to do. And you might
make a little money on that. Again, you
know, none of these are gonna make you
rich.

(07:45):
Right. And, you know, one of these things
are none of them are really a a
one
one shot that's gonna
change the game for you. But if you
do a little bit of this, a little
bit of that, I think it it tends
to add up over the year, you know,
so that there's there's less of that podcaster
burnout, I think.
Yeah. It's also good just to leave them

(08:06):
public and, you'll get some traffic to certain
episodes. Just all depends on your subject matter.
And, again, you know, let's say you did
an episode five years ago that's relevant to
something going on,
promote that episode. You don't don't republish it
or anything. Just promote it. It's available. Get
it out there. Yeah.

(08:26):
Especially if, you know, you have advertising
on that episode or something like that, like,
depending on how you're doing your sponsorships and
how that is all set up, just promote
the old episode. You don't have to republish
it or anything like that. There is generally
enough social media stuff going on that people
will, you know, pick it up. They'll that

(08:47):
old episode that you said give this a
shot and word-of-mouth, and and things will go
from there.
Right. You know, the longer you do it,
the more you got to choose from.
Also true.
You know, we've we're we're up to, what,
470
official episodes of this
That is program. And, you know, there's probably

(09:08):
more in the feed or in at least
on the website that we didn't count as
an official episode,
in the number. And so, you know, and
a lot of that is evergreen. You know,
some of the earlier shows were more topical.
Yeah. But, you know, they might be fun
to listen to what was going on ten
years ago in podcasting.
Yeah. I mean, one of the like, an
example of the way that we have republished

(09:30):
or just promoted an episode when we don't
necessarily have time to put out a new
one is,
like, if we featured a tool that we
have saying, you know, hey. We have Vidapod.
This can make your life a lot easier
if you're doing any type of, you know,
video and YouTube content as a podcaster.
And if we see that that is popular

(09:50):
right now or, you know, we have a
lot of people signing up for Vidapod,
maybe we just rerelease that episode.
It's not a bad thing to, to bring
back up. Yeah. There's a lot of creative
ways of, using your back catalog. It's not
just old content.
It's an opportunity
with a little intention. It can save you
time, grow your audience, maybe make you a

(10:12):
little bit of money, help new listeners,
you know, that may not have gone back
into your catalog,
learn more about your show and fall in
love with it. So if you take anything
away from this episode today, it's that your
back catalog isn't old content. It is an
opportunity.
Exactly. You know, you already done all the
hard work. Little small tweaks these past episodes

(10:34):
can keep working for you. You know, bringing
in new listeners, keeping people engaged longer.
Absolutely.
So we hope that you use your back
catalog to good use. If there's an older
episode that you're really proud of, definitely give
that episode another moment in the spotlight.
As always, if you need any help with
hosting, stats, growing your show, Blueberry team is

(10:56):
here for you. Thanks, everyone.
You can find all of our old episodes
for Podcast Insider on podcastinsider.com.
Yep. Keep scrolling and scrolling. See you next
week. Thanks for joining us. Come back next
week. And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
for more information,
to subscribe,

(11:16):
share, and read our show notes.
To check out our latest suite of services
and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage
your podcast, visit blueberry.com.
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