What’s up podcaster! 🙂

Welcome to my site, where I talk about podcasting and share what’s working for me!

I hope you had a great 2015 and are working hard on your podcasting goals for the new year.

Before I share exactly what I did to get all of these podcast listens and views on this blog, I want to remind you that downloads and traffic are only numbers.

You must decide which metrics you actually care about. For some people that could be dollars in the bank. For others, it could be the number of emails from listeners, saying “You rock!”

That being said, let’s get down to business. Here are my Libsyn stats from the start of my podcast until the last day of 2015.

These downloads represent the number of times my podcast was listened to this year.

Now, I’ll share how many blog views this blog got this year. I also started it at the beginning of the year.

Aww yeah! Over 5k visitors for 2015! I’m proud of that :).

That means that over 5k people have benefited from this blog in some way and been helped on their podcasting journey.

If you really want to get the most out of my stats and resources, take a second to share your email address so that I can start sending you my newsletter with great resources and bits of wisdom.

So it’s great that I got these downloads and views, but how can you do the same?

How can you grow a blog from nothing into a website that has thousands of visitors?

How can you get your podcast to do thousands of downloads?

These are all great questions. I’d recommend getting started with the resources below.

1. Getting started with podcasting (great guides)

2. Making money from your podcast

3. Promoting your podcast (here’s how)

4. Common podcasting mistakes to avoid

5. Speaking and voice tips to engage your listeners

After you’ve checked out a few of these lessons, you’ll get a better idea of some of the techniques that I’ve learned this year.

All of these resources and tactics helped me grow my podcast to 20k+ listens for the year.

But, there are strategies that I didn’t share in the posts above. The first one that I’ll say is…

Leverage show mentions

What I mean by that is, if you mention someone during your show, send them an email and ask them to share the podcast episode!

If you have a guest on your show, specifically ask them to share the podcast when it comes out.

You can’t afford to be shy or just hope that they’ll see it and share it. You have to be direct.

Drive traffic to previous shows

Some of the podcast episodes that I did early in the year continue to get traffic. That’s because I still promote and mention them.

According to Derek Halpern, an online marketer and entrepreneur, you should “Create content 20% of the time. Spend the other 80% of the time promoting what you created.”

I agree with this statement, particularly for evergreen content or content that continues to hold its value over time.

It depends on the type of show that you have, but for me, if a I mention a particular topic I can say something along the lines of “and if you want to learn more about ___, check out episode ____.”

Good copywriting improved my download numbers

The title of your episodes matter! The way in which you describe an episode matters. How you tease an episode matters!

When I deliberately took time to write good episode titles and write out attractive descriptions that highlighted the benefits of listening to a particular episode, my download number improved.

Remember, we live in a world that is competing for everyone’s attention. Why should they listen to this episode? Why now? What value will it bring them?

This also holds true for the intro to a new episode, or when you mention another episode that the listener should check out. Always highlight what they’ll get out of the experience.

Rank well in a marketplace, but get people on your email list.

There are huge benefits to ranking well in a marketplace like iTunes, Amazon, Google, or YouTube.

In a marketplace, there are visitors out to consume content and creators who produce it. When you rank well, you’ll be easier to find and you’ll have more authority for standing out among so many creators.

At the same time, you can’t depend on your rankings in any marketplace that you don’t control. Yes, this includes social media marketplaces like Twitter and Facebook.

Therefore, the only reliable way to build a sustainable audience is to get them on your email list. This way, you can continue to have a relationship with your audience, even if your rankings fall or your site crashes.

Having an email list has let me notify interested audience members of new episodes and drive traffic to specific episodes. It’s a very powerful tool.

That being said, I do want to work more on providing attractive reasons to subscribe to this blog’s email list this year!

Consistency creates habit

Habit formation is the cornerstone of audience and customer development. Just think of McDonalds or Starbucks. People know what to expect, and are therefore much more likely to go to one of these locations then one they haven’t heard of before.

In addition, (this reference may not be true of you millennials), but people used to tune in at specific times for news shows or watch TV shows on specific days because, over time, they learned that that’s when they aired.

By putting out content consistently, you’ll begin to develop habits in your audience. They’ll know that if it’s a Monday, there’s bound to be a new show up, or that if it’s Sunday and they’re bored, you’ll have a new show up.

Try not to leave your content creation to chance. I did this when I first started blogging.

Instead, Create a schedule (ugh, I know it’s not fun). It’s effective if you want to be a serious creator or podcaster.

Provide social proof around specific episodes

Remember, your goal isn’t to market the podcast as a whole. Your goal should be to market specific episodes.

It’s great to say that the podcast has been downloaded so many times or that you might have had such and such guests on. But why does this episode matter.

I found that a good way to provide social proof for my podcast is simply to communicate the credentials of the guest. Just because I know that this is a good guest doesn’t mean that other people do.

Your tone of voice and speaking style will also add social proof to episodes. If you don’t believe me, just think about how you’d speak differently if you had a major industry-related person on your podcast.

You’d be far more excited, which would make listeners more excited, and they’d realize that it’s super lucky you got this guest to come on and it’s going to be a great show.

The art of the ask: get iTunes reviews

I’ve read up on iTunes reviews. Some podcasters say that they play a big role in the algorithm. Others say that they don’t play that big of a role.

Personally, I think that the frequency and recency of iTunes reviews do play a role in the iTunes marketplace algorithm.

So, how do you get more reviews? Ask specific people. Email them. Email your guests. Ask your friends. Ask your audience in the most direct way possible.

I’ve been experimenting with reading out reviews that I’ve gotten as a way to remind people to leave one themselves, or to add social proof to the show for new listeners.

I also highlight the benefits of leaving a review, like you might get a shout out, I use it as feedback, and it will help out the show, which is free.

Just by asking people and reminding listeners, I’ve been able to get 30+ reviews. Not bad, but I could be definitely doing better on this front.

Okay let’s talk blogging – how do you get views?

Strangely enough, there is a lot of overlap between blogging and podcasting.

I’ll break it down for you. Here is the one thing you need to know…

You must either be entertaining or informative. You must either make people feel emotions (smile) or be useful to their life.

At some point, I’d love to do more entertainment related content on YouTube or other mediums, but at the start of my career I decided to focus on the informative side, since that’s my strong suit.

Simply by being helpful and sharing what I’m learning, I’ve been able to get almost 10k views on this blog in the first year.

This blog is by no means a central focus for me. It’s more of a side project/hobby and I want a record of what I’m learning while I’m progressing in the podcasting world.

Remember that the category of your blog, the competitiveness in the industry, the quality of your content, your writing skills, and how good you are at marketing will all impact your results with blogging.

You shouldn’t expect to get views right off the bat, unless you have a pre-existing email list, are willing to spend advertising dollars (not smart for a blog in my opinion, but good for a product), or are super aggressive on the promotion front.

As you continue to be useful over time and develop a reputation in your niche, you’ll begin to see more people trickling in, as long as you have good content.

Can you make money from blogging and podcasting?

Okay so I already linked to my podcasting monetization strategies above. With regards to this blog, I’m not really making any money, and I’m not really trying to at this point.

The ads on the website are enough to pay the server bills and I’ll link to some affiliate products that I use myself, like the Blue Yeti Microphone, which I’ve been using to podcast with all year, but it’s not a meaningful source of income at this point.

I’m also not really trying to push it too hard. In the future, I might release an informational product, like an ebook that goes more in-depth with some of the tactics I use, but I’m in no rush. I’m still learning and honing my podcasting skills.

That being said, remember that this is all relationship building. I’m not podcasting at all to make money. I’m doing it to build a more intimate relationship with my audience and improve the quality of their lives.

For anyone whose successfully worked hard at something for a long time, you’ll know that what keeps you going isn’t the money at all. It’s the feel of satisfaction that you’ve helped people in some way, made an impact, and pushed the world forward.

My new years resolutions for podcasting

For the new year, I’m going to continue to improve my podcasting and marketing skills. I want to get better at speaking, modulating my voice, adding emphasis, and being spontaneous when I’m talking with a guest.

I also mentioned in other blog articles that I’ve started to do some YouTube videos and Periscope live streaming videos to promote specific episodes. I’m going to continue with that, because I actually do love being on camera, though it is a little anxiety inducing!

Writing has always been a very comfortable way for me to express my thoughts and feelings. I want to make speaking second nature so that I can accurately paint a picture in people’s minds on the spot and cause them to feel emotions like joy, happiness, awe, or surprise.

What are your goals for the new year?

Let me know in a comment down below!

Woah! November was a big month!

What I love about these reports is that I can share insights and discoveries with you, as I become a better podcaster.

If you haven’t read my October report, go read it. 🙂

Okay, so November is the first month where I cracked the 3,000 download count.

I’ll share a screenshot of my Libsyn stats below.

I released 9 new episodes in November. which represent 65% of the podcast’s total downloads for the month.

For fun, I took a look at the episode download breakdown for one of the recent spikes, which confirms my suspicions about how my podcast operates.

This image represents the download breakdown for a single day.

50% of the downloads came from very recent episodes (though not all of the most recent, interestingly enough).

A recent “Ask Sal” podcast segment received about 1/3 the downloads as other episodes, even though it was one of the newest episodes at the time of making this chart, which could point to the topic of the question asked or the format of the segment.

I’m thinking that it’s the topic of the question asked, therefore, the “Ask Sal” episodes will get more downloads in the future and give me some indication of topics that are interesting to the audience.

The reason that I think that is that I’ve had monologue-style podcasts in the past that did well in terms of downloads, so it’s likely the topic of the “Ask Sal” episodes that will dictate their download numbers.

Let’s take a look at the chart for October, November, and then the growth between the two months. Here’s October.

This represents the trend line of downloads in October. Now, here’s November.

Now, let’s take a look at the growth between these two months.

As you can see, there is very little growth within a single month, but when viewed at a longer duration, lots of growth.

In fact, the total podcast downloads grew by 28%.

Here are the factors that I think are responsible for the growth:

• Frequency. Since doubling the frequency of my podcast, I’ve seen much more growth.
• Titling. I’m getting better at titling episodes in terms of what the listener will get out of listening to the particular podcast episode.
• Teasing. I’ve been doing youtube videos and periscopes to “tease” episodes and convince viewers to check out specific podcast episodes.

If you haven’t read my other podcast traffic reports, most of my downloads come from my own marketing and promotion, not from the iTunes marketplace.

I have no doubts that titling and teasing have a huge impact on podcast downloads. I think it’s very similar to the youtube marketplace. If you title a video well or have a great thumbnail, it prompts clicks. Same goes for blog posts and podcasts.

Although I have yet to experience a recurring stream of downloads for a particular episode, aside from my own marketing, I could see that happening in the future, depending on the search volume on iTunes for certain terms. I really wish they released that data.

Basically, the name of the game for my podcast (though your category or subject may differ), is lots of new useful content.

Even though listeners will look at old podcast episodes, most of the downloads are coming from new ones. But! That’s good for advertisers.

One question I’d like to answer in the future is when I’ll hit that plateau or get diminishing returns.

I think that I could deal with hitting that plateau by incorporating multiple episode styles within one podcast, like having some episodes be “ask sal,” some be interviews, and some be heavily edited story-based narratives or monologues on specific days.

Who knows!

Let me know a bit about your podcast in a comment down below!

If it’s your first time coming to my website, my name’s Sal and I’ve been podcasting for nearly a year at the time I’m writing this.

Originally, I was going to do my own podcast transcriptions, but (big surprise), it was very labor intensive and far more work than I could handle.

I transcribed one or two of my early podcast episodes, but after that I basically stopped offering a transcription for my podcast.

That is, until I started to grow my podcast and got a bunch of sponsors for the show. I’ve been getting more readers asking “Do you offer a transcript for the show,” and, unfortunately, I had to keep saying “no, not at this time.”

Finally, I decided to offer a transcription for popular podcast episodes at a very low price. It costs money, after all, to have your podcast transcribed.

I don’t know if this will be received well by my audience, but I do know that the transcription service I used was pretty good, which is what this review is about!

I found  on google, simply because they rank well for key terms.

I couldn’t really find any good reviews on them, aside from those on their website, which you can never really trust, so I just decided to try it out.

The Submission Process

Basically, you upload your mp3 from their website, provide your email, and after they receive it and look it over, they’ll send you a paypal invoice. After you pay it, they say they’ll deliver it in 24-48 hours. The one thing I liked about this was there was no going through the hassle of “creating an account” to use the service.

After I submitted the mp3 file, I got an email saying that they had received it and then a little bit after, they gave me a quote in terms of how much it would cost to do the transcription. I’ve shown those two below.

Note: This transcription service seems to be a subsidiary of Vanan Services.

It ended up costing $39.60 with a transaction fee of $1.98, or total of $41.58.

I approved the cost and then they sent me a paypal invoice for that amount, which I paid.

A day later, they sent me the transcript of the podcast, and it was pretty accurate, which impressed me. I was expecting (but hoping there weren’t) a lot of misspellings.

They asked for feedback, so I sent a message back saying that I wish there were spaces in between the paragraphs, even though it was double spaced. They wrote back pretty quickly with an updated document with spaces between the paragraphs!

So, I was happy with my experience. I would . Hope they maintain this price, level of quality, and customer service as the podcasting industry continues to grow. Please share your experience with them as a comment.

Also! I ended up formatting the text that they delivered with iBooks Author, which I’ve found to be a great way to create a high quality looking PDF. I’ll attach a screenshot of the PDF that I made below.

Thoughts on including a transcript for your podcast

I do really enjoy podcasting, but I’m not an expert at podcasting by any means. I’m a regular guy figuring out this whole podcasting business.

Ideally, I’d love to offer these transcripts to my audience for free, but at the moment, I can’t justify the cost of transcription unless I charge a bit. I don’t know if I’ll continue doing that going forward, but for now that’s what I’m testing out.

Don’t forget to leave a comment telling me about your podcast!

In case you missed my report for September, here it is.

I hope that the info in this report and some of my insights will be helpful as you continue to grow your podcast!

Keep in mind that every niche is different and no two podcasts are alike. What might be good numbers for my industry might be horrible for yours.

You might remember that I took a break from podcasting a little while ago to see how it would affect my traffic stats. With this month, I conducted another experiment.

I doubled the frequency of my podcast episodes from once per week to twice per week. I also added a new sponsor (total of 3 – here are my tips for getting a sponsor).

Oh boy, that sure had a positive effect. Here are my monthly downloads over the course of September and October.

During October alone, I got 2,358 downloads, which represents a 74% increase from the previous month.

I think that part of this increase is due to the doubled frequency, but I’m also getting better at titling my episodes.

I can easily see how a show with a 5 day a week schedule could really rack up downloads, like the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast.

Podcasting vs Blogging

If you’ve been blogging for a little while, you’ll know that there are certain types of articles.

Some articles, like news posts, will see a bump in traffic and then rarely go anywhere. Evergreen content will usually see an initial boost, when you promote it, and then the traffic will stagnate. However, if it starts to rank well in google, then you’ll see traffic start picking up again.

In my experience so far, Podcasting is the latter form of content. You see an initial burst of downloads for new episodes, but then they trail off.

Some of my older podcast episodes continue to get 20-40 downloads per month, but that’s only because I continue to promote them and people discover them on my website, not through the iTunes store.

I have gotten several reports of listeners “binge listening” my content. I do that sometimes with other podcasts and I think that the degree to which listeners binge listen to your podcast could be a great metric for determining whether or not you have a show that’s going somewhere.

However, the vast majority of my listeners discover a single episode because I’ve promoted it or because they got a notification on the their phone that I had a new episode that has come out.

Evergreen Podcasts

Based on the stats that I’ve been recording and from looking at other podcasts in the iTunes store, I think that there is a market for evergreen content podcasts.

This means that you could rack up 10-50 interviews and then just let them sit and continue to rack up downloads as you rank better and better in the iTunes store.

What makes me say that? Well, for one, the Startup Podcast had stopped producing shows for a good chunk of time (3 months) and were still ranking well as a podcast for startups. They are also still in the top 50 in the iTunes business category.

Also, Seth Godin’s startup school podcast hasn’t produced a new episode since 2013 (two years!) and still ranks as one of the top startup podcasts.

Finally, in my own niche, one of the top ranking podcasts has only produced 11 episodes and hasn’t produced a new one in nearly 2 years. And they rank better than me!

Therefore, it would be an interesting experiment to get a library of 10-20 ridiculously useful, awesome, or entertaining podcast episodes in a variety of different niches and just see if you can get them eternally ranked in the iTunes store and profit from the downloads.

For this to work, you’d need a good call to action for each episode (would not recommend sponsors). If you were successful, you’d see a repetitive stream of traffic, similar to if you rank well in google.

However, if you don’t do this, then I think that you just need to keep cranking out new content to continue to make podcasting work as a customer relationship building tool.

Doing a Podcast Teaser on FB/YouTube

I also tested out doing a podcast teaser on FB and YouTube for one podcast episode. For that episode, I’d say that it brought about 5%-10% of the overall download traffic.

I actually enjoyed making the video, so I might do that again. When people see your face, it’s also another opportunity to connect with the listener.

My growth this past month

I’ll reiterate that I think the growth in downloads this past month as compared to September is purely due to the increased frequency of the show. As evidence, here’s the download chart for October only.

As you can see, the overall trend line is pretty steady. I’m expecting the same number of new downloads for new podcast episodes that come out in November.

I’m using the episode-by-episode download statistics to really see which titles and types of episodes my audience likes.

I’m also working on my voice.

There are certain things that I can’t control, like the market I’m in or what I’m podcasting about, but I can make it more of an enjoyable experience for the listener.

I’ve been working on improving the strength and confidence of my voice. I’ve been doing this by “warming up” for a good 15 minutes before any podcast interview. This way, I get myself in a talkative mood and also don’t stumble or experience any switching costs as I go from one activity to another.

For me, my biggest things to work on are my enunciation, enthusiasm, and remembering to be myself, not some abstract interview “personality”.

What are your biggest challenges? Let me know in a comment below :).

Want to join me in my journey as a podcaster? Awesome!

I’m going to be 100% transparent and show you how my show grows over time.

Why? Because when I first started my podcast, this is the info that I wanted out there! I couldn’t find many blogs that were sharing it though…

As you’ll know from my last post, I took a break from podcasting for a bit to see how it affected my traffic.

My downloads definitely went down a bit, but not as much as I thought. However, it certainly slowed the momentum of my show.

Well, now I’m back and am podcasting regularly!

Here’s the first statistic that I want to share. My monthly downloads for September (1,358).

Now check out where my listeners are coming from!

I expected most of my listens to come from the USA, as that is where most of my website traffic comes from. My podcast is also in english, so it makes sense that the listens would come from english speaking countries.

What surprised me is that a disproportionate number of my podcast downloads are coming from California and the upper east coast.

Is this because people in Cali and the east coast are more tech savvy users, podcast lovers, or just innovative (my audience has many entrepreneurs)? I’m not sure.

Next, let’s look at the technology that people are using to access my podcast.

Apple Core Media refers to people listening to the podcast from their smartphone, the podcast app, or iTunes. I’ll include a more detailed breakdown below.

I’d say it’s about 50/50 in terms of the number of people listening from my website vs. their mobile device.

Here are some listening apps I discovered just from pouring over this data:

• PodCruncher
• Podcast Addict
• Overcast
• Pocket Casts
• AntennaPod
• Stitcher

Average downloads per episodes in September: 200

Number of sponsors: 1

New updates

There are a few new updates going into the next month! For one, I’ve increased the frequency of the episodes to twice a week (oh boy – twice the work).

I’ve also added two more sponsors, along with my core sponsor. I think they are all great resources for the audience. Don’t forget to check out my guide on how to get a sponsor for your podcast.

I purchased a pop filter for my Blue Yetti microphone.

I’m thinking of building a soundproof box that will minimize background noise.

Finally, I’ve been doing periscopes to promote the podcast.

Tools I’m using

• Hosting provider: Libsyn
• New show intro: Fiverr
• Guest recordings: Skype + Ecamm Call Recorder 
• Microphone: Blue Yetti.
• Website blog hosting: Bluehost + wordpress.
• Social media scheduling: Buffer
• Email newsletter: Mailchimp
• Audio editing: Garageband + Audacity

Hope this report has been helpful! What are you podcasting about? Let me know in a comment below.

I love conducting experiments. If you think about it, all of marketing is experimentation and trial and error.

For the month of July, I decided that I wasn’t going to post a single podcast on my show and see what happened.

Podcast downloads for my show only declined by 235! What does this tell me?

1. Most of the listens are coming from my blog and people that discover my podcasts through social media.

That’s because I’m not ranking well in the iTunes marketplace for my key terms or in any broader category.

2. Listeners are still checking out the early podcast episodes that I released.

The very first podcast episode that I published continues to receive listens (55 in July).

That doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you really stop to think and imagine 55 people in a room listening to your voice, it actually is a good number of prospects and would be a good turnout for a webinar or any event.

This got me thinking. Most podcasts out there aren’t going to be major successes in terms of monthly downloads.

But, I’m coming to realize that you don’t need a high number of new episode downloads in order to take advantage of this new platform.

Podcasting for business isn’t about the number of new episode downloads that you can rack up. It’s about how many relevant relationships that you can develop at scale.

55 individual listeners might not be a lot for a new podcast episode, but the idea of 1,355 people listening to my voice and hearing my message over the course of a month is mind boggling!

In order to really leverage this medium when you have a small audience, your podcast must have a very focused and consistent message or call to action in each episode.

That way, when listeners discover your past episodes, the relationship building continues and they are reminded of certain products, services, or where they can learn more about your podcast’s topic.

Now, if you’re wondering how I actually was able to set up a podcast that has, for the most part, sustained the monthly downloads after not posting for an entire month, then check out my podcast marketing plan here. Hope it’s helpful!

I invite you to share your podcast below so I can check it out!