Episode 10 - Podcast Milestone

Today's episode is a short one, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate a podcast milestone and say thanks to all of my loyal listeners.  Most beginner podcasts stop long before episode 10, so thanks to you we celebrate.

Transcript

Episode 10 – Podcast Milestone

Hi folks and welcome back.  It’s great to have you here and I really appreciate you coming back to listen each week.   

This episode is on the shorter side, but today I want to celebrate a milestone for my podcast show… I know, I know, It’s a small one, but a milestone just the same.  This is Episode 10, and in the podcast world, a multitude of beginners quit and give up before they reach this point.  There’s a lot of literature and how to articles on starting a podcast and there’s differing information in a lot of that, but from what I’ve learned, most beginners stop after 3 – 4 episodes and the majority of beginners never make it to number 10. 

Podcast Page is a podcast website builder / podcast hosting platform and in their Podcast Statistics & Trends article, they state that there’s between 3.2 and 4.3 million podcasts published, and that number is growing each year.  The article cited two sources and one says 3.2 and the other 4.3 and there’s no clear explanation for that difference, but suffice it to say, there are millions of podcasts out there.  

That’s a ton of competition for listeners and there’s about 80 million people that say they listen to podcast on a weekly basis.  So you could be listening to any number of podcast shows.  Thanks to all of you out there listening to me. 

However, out of all those millions of podcasts out there and available, 44% of the podcasts had less than 3 episodes and only 720k have more than 10 episodes.  Of those 720k, only 156k are releasing weekly episodes.  I am now in that rarified air, how ‘bout that? 

There are quite a few reasons that podcasters quit or end up failing. 

Fist of all, it’s a lot of work.  You have to come up with the topic, try to put your thoughts into some logical context and then do the recording, editing and get it published.  If I weren’t retired, I wouldn’t have the time to put it all together each week.  But like I said, this is a hobby for me, I enjoy the learning, the research and I just like talking, so while it does take some time, I make it an enjoyable part of my week.

Poor audio quality is another reason, some podcasts, just don’t make it.  I didn’t spend  much money to get started, but I did have to get a good microphone, one that’s designed for podcasting and you could really break the bank buying equipment if you want, but for now, I’ve been told by listeners that the audio quality is near what they’ve heard on more popular podcast, so for now I’ll just keep using what I have.

Infrequent or sporadic releases will cause listeners to lose interest and forget about you if your content is not consistent and with regular releases.  I’ve been trying to do one per week and that’s been positively received by you the listeners.  I hope I can keep up the weekly releases, but as we move into summer and I’m traveling more, I might move that to b-weekly, I’ll just have to see how it goes, but hey this is a hobby I can pack up and take with me.  A microphone and my laptop and I’m good to go. 

One of the biggest reasons for Podcast failure is lack of marketing.  How will someone know that you’re out there if you don’t tell them about it.  I try to use all of the social media platforms to let listeners know when new episodes are available and I’ve paid nominal amounts for some targeted advertising, but real growth takes place by word of mouth and takes a long time.  Podcast longevity depends on its content and audience engagement. 

Depending on the subject matter, failure to stay up to date with industry trends, and and if your podcast is tied to current events, you’ll have to evolve and change things up as the need for new ideas come up.  The critical thing is to listen to your audience and adapt to what they want to hear and subjects that might be requested of you by them. 

I’ve had people ask me why in the heck do you do this, or what makes you want to go to all that effort each week? Don’t you think you’ll just be swallowed up and go unnoticed with all the podcasts available on Apple or Spotify.  Maybe, but I’m listed on Apple Podcast and Spotify just like the rest of them, so who knows when someone might stumble across the show and check it out. 

I certainly don’t do it for the money. There’s no money to be had until you grow a significant following and have 1000’s of downloads each month and I never expect to be as popular as someone like Joe Rogan or the Robertson’s from Duck Dynasty.   I just do it for the fun of it, another little hobby. 

It allows a space for my self-expression and these first 9 episodes surrounding retirement issues have been a way of me to get through some of the worry and concern I had about retirement.  It’s a way of talking through issues that have been on my mind and if these things concerned me, then there might be others out there that were thinking about the same issue and have concerns about these topics.  Hopefully, I can give a little information that might clear up some concern you’ve had and hopefully some of it will be entertaining.  Afterall, this is a subject that I’m quickly becoming an expert in … I’m living it day by day and you can’t get much better of an education than that. 

So today, I’m celebrating.  I made it to number 10 and hopefully there will be additional milestones to celebrate, with your help and feedback, I’ll keep talking and I might even say something that’s important… So keep coming back, and I’ll talk to you soon.