8 Tips for a Sustainable Podcast

So you've been thinking about starting a podcast and you might do that.

Okay.

But what really worries you is can you keep it going?

So today, how do you keep a podcast going?

We're also going to talk about a very unique microphone that shure just put out.

And I'm going to explain why sometimes I'm a little hard on Spotify because we got another reason.

Hit it, ladies.

The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005, I'm your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.

Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch, grow.

And if you want to monetize your podcast, my website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener.

That's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription.

And of course that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

And so I am loving some of the answers that I'm getting on a survey that I'm doing right now.

If you go to schoolofpodcasting.com survey25, survey25, then that will take you over.

And one of the comments I saw was they were worried about not just starting a podcast, but sustaining a podcast.

So I was like, ooh, that is a topic I've probably covered.

I mean, I've got 900 some episodes, but I don't remember talking about that one a lot.

And I did see where some people say, well, in some cases it's the same content.

And that's kind of always true because it's always going to come down to who is your audience and really knowing them.

Why are you doing that?

And you have to be honest with yourself.

And then what can you talk about to entertain the who while you move them towards your why?

And then how are you going to measure your success, though?

That will never ever change because if you miss one of those questions, you potentially may sabotage your podcast.

So one of the things I thought we could talk about is that first one, number one, if you don't know your why and you can't say it, it's not going to work.

And it has to be a passionate one.

I'll give you an example.

Last year I decided I was going to learn Spanish and so I bought a lifetime thing to babble.

Thought I'd learn Spanish and I would spend about five minutes a day doing little lessons.

I learned to say, I eat apples, Yokomo manzanas.

And that's about as far as I got after about two or three months.

And this sounds stupid.

So I realized this.

I was like, you know, I'm not really moving that far.

Said the guy who was spending a whopping five minutes a day on a lesson.

Wasn't really practicing it, wasn't really doing what they call the work right, wasn't putting in the time.

And my why.

Why was I learning Spanish was.

I don't know.

Might come in handy someday.

Whereas if I was moving to Texas, Spain, you know, Mexico, I would probably have a greater sense of urgency and passion to learn this, because I would need it.

And the people I see that really succeed at podcasting are people that need, I need to talk about this.

Not that you have to, but it comes in handy, because when things don't go exactly the way you want and you're like, hey, man, this is taking longer than I thought, and, you know, it's.

All I'm talking about is apples.

You know, you.

You might run out of gas, which is exactly what I did.

And I think after podfast, I might pick that back up, see if I can go in and just start from scratch.

But you need to know your why, and it has to be one that really resonates with you.

It's a.

It's a passion, it's a need.

It's.

It just makes you all tingly.

It makes you giddy, I tell you, giddy to talk about it for free.

So that's one thing when you think about, should I start a podcast?

What's your why?

And if you can't tell me your why, not that you shouldn't start a podcast, maybe now is not the time.

Jillian Michaels, the famous fitness trainer, had a great line.

She would say, if you can't explain the why, you'll never make it through the how.

This is a simple one to see if you're ready to start a podcast.

And that is simply.

Now, if you want to go old school, grab yourself a piece of paper and a pencil.

If you want to do this on your phone, whatever it is, but you're like, I want to do a podcast about blank.

Great.

Come up with at least 10.

You know, if you want to go 15, maybe 12.

You know, if you want to go super crazy, 52, but come up with at least 10 ideas for episodes.

Now, when I say this, I don't mean you have to, like, type it up or whatever.

Like, no, we could talk about A, B, we could talk about C, we could talk about D, whatever it is.

But see if you can Come up with at least 12, because that would be one a month.

You know, 52 would be one a week.

And that's a little hard to figure out.

But, you know, come up.

If you can't come up with at least 10, you're going to run out of ideas.

And now, here's another thought.

Nobody ever said every podcast must go on forever.

No, there's a few that are like, True Crime.

And they start off, they teach women how to kill their husbands without getting caught, and then it's over, and that's it.

And so, you know, it's whatever, nine episodes and they're done.

I think that's really the big draw.

Everybody's like, oh, he didn't take out the trash again.

I'm going to go listen to True Crime.

I've had enough.

But it's an.

If you go, well, I came up with three either.

It's.

I just watched a documentary on Jerry Springer, and I believe it was either two or three episodes.

Not everything has to go on forever.

And if you're like, I want to talk about blank.

And in three episodes, you've said all you need to say, well, maybe that's it.

But if you do want to kind of do an ongoing thing to really build that relationship with your audience, come up with a few titles, and if you're really struggling, then what you've done.

And I do this a lot, is I see something and go, ooh.

And I jump into it up to my neck, and then I go, oh, I didn't think, oh, okay, never mind.

So just brainstorm 12 episodes that you would do with your podcast.

Number three.

Number three for me, because I've been.

I hang out in a lot of forums and groups, and I see a lot of people trying to just put their toe in the water, and they're being really overwhelmed because.

And this always makes me sound like I'm not into this.

They're trying to add video at the very beginning, and they're already getting a little overwhelmed with just, do I do 4K or.

Because that means I need to get a different camera.

And then I do.

And I'm like, look, let's.

Again, if you want to do video and you have that passion and you have something that really needs to be seen.

Absolutely.

But I'm seeing more people going because they.

They can't even take their first step because when they add video to the mix, they get a little overwhelmed.

And I get that.

I mean, I have added so many different things and taken things away when I add Video.

And it does.

It adds a lot more time.

So number three would be start small and simple.

Because if you're thinking, I don't know if I could run a marathon.

I mean, I know how to run and I know how to start.

I'm just not sure I'm going to, you know, make it, whatever it is, 23.6 miles or something like that.

I don't know if I could do that.

You don't start off by going, all right, well, this Monday, I'm going to run 23 miles.

You would kill yourself and you're not going to make it.

So, you know, ramp up a little bit, and that way you're not spending thousands of dollars on a bunch of equipment that you don't need.

Start small, start simple.

I often say to people, I'm like, hey, did you.

Did you do your 12 episodes?

Let's use 12.

You have your ideas.

Great.

Okay, I want you now to just take your phone.

This is not meant for the public.

That takes the pressure off.

And just go to the voice recorder, whatever phone you have, and just, you know, if you want to write a little outline, whatever you want to do, but I want you to record your voice and just get used to it and realize that, you know, you're going to mess up.

There's this thing called editing, but you can actually record your voice and see how long that took.

Because we're just going to start small.

We're going to keep things simple.

Put your toe in the water and see what you think.

Number four.

All right, so you've done a couple practice ones.

You're ready to do an episode.

And if this is you and you're like, dave, I've been doing.

I've got 120 episodes under my belt, Great.

Do this anyway.

And I say this a lot.

Right now, I'm using Clockify.

It's a tool.

It's a free tool, and you can easily start it when you start doing something.

And when you're done, you press stop.

You could do the timer on your watch.

I like Clockify because it keeps tracks of totals, but record how long it takes to do that episode.

And then ask yourself, is there anyone else in my life that requires my attention?

This could be as simple as a dog or a cat or your children or your spouse.

Because you might go, hey, that took four hours to do that 20 minute podcast.

I got four hours every week.

I could do a weekly show.

And then you forget to consult your dog, your children, your spouses, your job, whatever it is, are There other people that depend on you?

Because yes, you have four hours a week.

Let's say you could do a podcast there, but is there anybody else that is counting on part of that four hours?

Because that again will lead to something you start and go, oh, man, I didn't realize that I had to pick the kids up from school.

I thought they could just walk home.

So what if it's 15 miles, right?

So you have to figure out the time wise.

That's one of the things that really, hands down, when people start a podcast, the thing they say the most is, wow, this took more time than I thought.

Number five.

And now that you recorded some content and this might not have all the fancy intro and outro, but you made some content.

Get someone who is not a family member to listen to that and say, I need some feedback on this.

Preferably this would be somebody who should be listening to this show not because they're related to you, but because you're doing a show about dog sledding and this person is into, you guessed it, dog sledding, this would be the person you would want their feedback from and ask them what they think about it.

What did you like?

What did you dislike?

Would you share this with a friend?

Because if you start this and it doesn't resonate with people and you, you know, look at your download stats and you go, ooh, that's a lot less than I expected.

And I always say, you know, 20 when you first start out, after a month, you know, depending on the topic, that might be where you're at.

And so if you are not great, right, you're.

And it's not that you're not great, it's you're talking about things that you think the audience would like to hear.

Turns out you were wrong, so you can turn that around.

So like today, why am I doing this episode on how to keep doing with a podcast, Even though some of this is a little bit of a repeat, that's all right.

It's a different angle.

And when you give people what they want, well, they'll listen.

When I look at the stats at Buzzsprout, if you go to buzzsprout.com stats, their median number.

Now, keep in mind, Buzzsprout has a free plan that you can use.

And not that free plan.

People aren't in it for the long haul, but there might be some people just kicking the tires on that.

But the median number, meaning 50% get more and 50% get less than this number.

The number is you want to guess.

28.

Yeah.

So 50% of podcasters on Buzzsprout get less than 28 downloads per episode.

50% get more.

Now, Libsyn, which is the oldest media host, their median is around 128.

Their average is, I believe, 1132.

But remember that the media host has nothing to do with how popular your show is.

And so as I look at these, I go, well, a Buzzsprout has a free plan that you can kick the tires on.

Libsyn does not.

Libsyn's been around longer, so they might have podcasters on there that just have a larger audience because they've been doing it longer.

But you have to realize when you first start out, you may have much lower numbers that you expected.

And can your ego handle that?

Because that sometimes when the ego gets a blow to the face.

Mike Tyson had that famous quote, the boxer.

He said, everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face.

Well, everybody has a plan until you see the stats for the first time.

In some cases.

If your ego can't handle that, number six, focus on the parts you love.

I know that sounds kind of duh, but if you love the interacting with people when you do interviews, if you love soundscaping or whatever, make sure you enjoy the process.

Because there are times when you're like, you know what, Dave?

You're right.

I can't do all this stuff.

It just kind of takes all the fun out of it.

Well, then either a, outsource that to somebody because you've got the budget to do that, or, you know, maybe not do whatever that is that you don't like doing.

If that's something that you can get rid of.

I hate doing artwork for every episode.

Well, then don't it.

Does it somewhat, kind of.

Maybe.

Could be, maybe help.

It makes you stand out a little.

But if it's something that you're like, oh, I just hate it, well, don't do it.

It's your show.

I did that episode with Doc G from the book the Purpose Code, and he hates social media, so you know what?

He doesn't do it.

And it makes his podcast much more enjoyable.

Now, is it blasphemy to do a podcast without social media?

You can do it.

You know, I always say social media is a trickle, so if you don't mind losing a trickle.

And then there are people like Gary aren't from everything everywhere.

Daily gets a million downloads a month, and same thing.

I don't have time for social media.

So he quit.

And according to Gary, it didn't affect his downloads at all.

Number seven.

Keep in mind that if you're worried about, can I make the commitment?

Well, have you ever had a car payment?

All right, well.

And then eventually you didn't.

I've done that.

When you start a new job, you're like, I hope this is a good fit.

And if it is, you stayed.

And if it isn't, you either hated your life or quit.

I mentioned, you know, house payment.

There's any kind of loan.

When you take that on, you're like, can I do this for the next amount of time?

And again, this is where you might just go, I'm going to do this for a year.

Or maybe I'm going to do this for six months.

Take the weight of I got to do this forever off.

Maybe I'm going to do this for 10 episodes.

I remember a guy, speaking of running marathons, There was a guy that would basically run a marathon every day.

And he said the way he did it was just running to the next telephone pole.

He would just see it on the horizon.

I'm going to run there.

When he got there, he found the next one and just kept going to the next one and the next one and the next one.

But any kind of career that you've done, any kind of, you know, instrument that you ever played, if you play, think about the kid that is playing peewee football, right?

He's doing it because he loves the game.

He saw it on tv.

It's like, man, I want to do that.

So anything that requires you to be good requires commitment.

And that's where the old imposter syndrome comes in, telling you, nobody will listen to you.

Well, don't listen to that person.

You know, ignore that voice in your head, because we all think that and just try it.

When I was inducted into the hall of Fame, I was thinking about this because next week I get to induct George Robb and I get to induct Tom Webster into the Podcaster hall of Fame.

And I was thinking about what makes these people great.

And, you know, I'm working on my speech, and I remember when I had to do a speech because I was being inducted, and I said, so many people think about, well, who would listen to me?

And I just said, but what if they do?

You're so convinced that they're not, but what if they did?

How cool would that be?

And there's only one way to find out.

And so the last one that always requires commitment are children.

That's kind of a lifelong commitment.

I know you know, at 18, in theory, they're an adult, but you don't go, sorry, you're on your own.

See ya.

I'm moving to another country.

Right.

That's the ultimate commitment.

And I don't know if I've never had kids.

I have great nieces and nieces, but I've never thought about.

I tried really hard to have a kid, and at the time, I wasn't thinking, am I up for the commitment of having a kid?

No.

Because the passion of wanting a kid just pushed that fear aside.

And so I say this a lot.

When the passion for serving your audience is greater than the fear of, can I do this?

Will people listen?

Am I going to be any good?

When that just gets pushed aside by your passion, you will press record.

And that's really the first part.

Not sure if you can stay committed to the podcast.

Well, have you ever tried to lose weight?

That's another one.

That's kind of hard.

Number eight.

Oops.

Thought I was done.

Guess I'm not.

And you've heard me say this before.

If you get any feedback at the beginning, write it down and find a way to store that.

Whether that's Apple Notes, Google Doc, Evernote, whatever you're doing, notejoy.

Find a way to take those positive pieces of feedback and put them someplace, because there are gonna be days when you need those.

So when we talk about continuing with a podcast, you need to have those items that put gas in your tank and save them, because there are going to be some days when your tank is a little dry.

In just a second, I'm going to talk about a new microphone I just found out about.

And if you're a person that doesn't want to deal with a lot of knobs, this might be the one for you.

Especially if you're interviewing people in the same place where you are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wanted to tell you about a new microphone that came out.

Now, before we all go running over there, keep in mind that getting a new microphone is not going to grow your audience unless your audio is really, really bad.

And the reason I bring this up, it's a very, in my opinion, niche microphone.

I want to thank Chris stone over@castahead.net and the Dealcaster show for tuning me onto this.

Chris is a member of the school of podcasting, and it is again, another member of the Shure MV family.

They've got the MV7.

They got the MV7.

Plus they got.

Now they have the MV7i.

And what is so different about this microphone.

And you're either gonna hear this and go, yeah.

Or you're gonna go, oh, wait a minute, how?

What?

So here's the thing.

On the back of this microphone, it has its USB out.

So it will plug directly into your computer and you're good to go.

If you want it to plug directly into your phone, it can do that, but you got to get a special cable.

But here's what else is going on on the back of this computer, back of this computer, back of this microphone is it has a microphone in.

So you got USB out, microphone in.

And that jack will take a typical XLR microphone, the one, the little three pins.

Or if you're a musician, you can actually plug like a guitar like a quarter inch into the back of this microphone.

And then you basically plug it into your laptop or your phone and you use some SHURE software and it has some built in effects, like you can stop pops, you know, the whole like when you blow too much wind into a microphone with P's and B's.

Yeah, it has a tool to help reduce those.

But the one that I was like, ooh, is it can remove some background noise.

So if you're hearing the air conditioner or the furnace or it's just a little too echoey in your room, you can remove that.

And that is something that, that is pretty impressive.

And what makes it different is you have like the SHURE move mic are their lavs.

Their lavs are literally the size of my pinky finger.

They're really small.

They're also a little expensive, but they have these same features that you can kind of tailor in the sound via their LAV alert.

But some people are like, yeah, I want to use, for lack of a better phrase, real microphones.

And this allows you, if you think about, if you want to go mobile, you could get some mic stands, like some desktop stands, have these microphones and have it go either right into your laptop or right into your phone with that special cable.

And there's no mixer.

The mixer is in the software and you can have, you know, a combined track of you and your guest or a track of just you and a track of just them so you can edit it later.

And so when I saw this, I was like, okay, this is not something I'm going to tell everybody to go get.

But if you're the person that's like, look, I'm going to go out and about, right?

I'm recording on site, you know, whatever place that you go.

And I want to go above and beyond the typical lavalier setup, I want to use, you know, again, real mics.

You.

You got this going.

Two mics, two stands in your phone or your laptop, and that's it.

No interface.

Everything is there to go.

Or you're the person that's recording with somebody you always know in your spare bedroom.

But for whatever reason, it's a little noisy.

Got a little reverb built in the room, and you've tried some things, this might be a way to take care of that.

Now, it's not the cheapest microphone.

It's $349.

And what's really weird is I record this.

It's available at B and H.

It's available at Sweetwater, which is my favorite place to buy things from, because a, they tack on another year of warranty, it's free shipping.

It's all the same stuff you get from Amazon, but they also give you candy.

So between the candy and the extra warranty that they tack on, and they offer tech support, which is even better.

So I love that.

And.

But it's not right now.

At least if you're like, I'll just go to Amazon and get it.

I'm like, nah, no, no, you're not.

And if you're wondering, well, Dave, what microphone do you use?

Right now, I'm using the Rode Podmic.

I like it a lot.

I like the way my voice sounds on it.

I've got a Shure SM7B sitting behind me.

That's a $400 mic.

I just like my voice on this particular mic.

And a lot of times, that's how you choose a microphone, the one that you like.

And as long as your audio isn't harsh and it's ripping off people's heads or it's so bassy that it's rattling people's teeth, I think you're good to go.

But I just saw it and I was like, ooh, that's.

They're thinking outside the box over there.

It's sure a little bit.

And I wanted to make sure you were aware.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

People always ask me why I'm so hard on Spotify as a media host.

I do love them as a music service, but I found this guy on Facebook.

He goes by the name Sink Money, and his company is all about helping musicians get their music into, you know, licensing deals with Netflix and all.

You know, basically get your.

Your music in commercials and movies.

And you're like, dave, what does this have to do with podcasting?

It doesn't.

I Just as much as I always like to go, this is why I believe what I believe.

So I'm going to play you this clip where he talks about something that Spotify is up to and why I generally don't trust them, and why I want to keep RSS open for everyone.

And I don't really.

I would not recommend putting your content or I wouldn't recommend hosting your content behind their walled garden.

If you want to syndicate there, that's fine, but using them as the source of your podcast, I know they're free, but not my favorite.

And here's why.

Listen to the shenanigans.

Did you know Spotify has a confidential program that steals millions of dollars away from real artists every single year?

It's called the PFC or Perfect Fit Content Program.

And they just got exposed.

There was a guy who listened to jazz playlists on Spotify all day long, day in, day out.

But he started to realize that there were these songs that had more plays than the Grammy Award winning jazz musicians that he's used to, like John Baptiste and Miles Davis.

He was hearing the same track over and over again.

And so he decided, hey, every time I hear this track, I going to go make a playlist and add the song to the playlist.

But here's where it gets weird.

Turns out that Spotify was listing the same song with over 40 different random titles.

Spotify told their employees to seed all these fake tracks in playlists of genres where people, quote, wouldn't know the difference, AKA passive consumption.

So Spotify said, hey, instead of us paying all this money to go license these famous jazz musicians and classical musicians, let's just make fake artists ourselves and keep all that money.

And the craziest part about this is that all these fake artists have been traced back to Sweden, which is where Spotify was founded.

Chances are this is a big part of why Spotify is having record breaking revenue numbers.

Because instead of having to pay out artists for how many streams they get, they basically just found a loophole to pay themselves.

And just to add one more thing on this, when Spotify added audiobooks to their service, now because they are bundling audiobooks with music, they can once again pay the musicians, pay the artists, pay the people who are actually, you know, creating the content that they are selling.

Yeah.

They said, oh, now that it's a bundle, we can pay you even less.

So in case you ever wondered, Dave, why are you always so down and negative on Spotify as a hosting company now, you know, let me count the ways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And with that, I'm going to remind you that if you're thinking of starting your podcast and you go, you know what, I could do that after Dave told me all that stuff.

Go out to schoolofpodcasting.com, click on the join now button, use the coupon code listener and you've got 30 days again.

If you're worried, 30 days to figure out if this is for you.

If not, let me know.

I will refund your money.

And at this point, I am getting ready for podfast.

I'm super excited about this and I have to say this again because I hear it not a lot, but it always confuses me.

I will be at Booth 32 at the PodPage booth where I'm the head of podcasting and I hear people say, oh, well, I saw you in the elevator or I saw you and I was somewhat intimidated to come up and say hi, please.

I am the least intimidating person on the planet.

I hope so, at least, and I would love to meet you.

That's actually one of the reasons why I go to these things, is, yes, I will be promoting PodPage because we paid to do that.

But when I'm at a party or something afterwards, I am there to listen.

I'll be looking for guests for my show probably and, you know, just never hesitate to come up and say hi.

I always love meeting people.

So with that, I am off to finish.

I'm inducting two people into the hall of Fame.

That's going to be fun.

And I have to go back and re time my presentation because I am one of those guys that I do not.

I do not want to be that guy that doesn't get off the stage and forces you.

And it just like, you know, when they give you 20 minutes, make it.

In fact, with me, I'm going to make mine about 17 because I will call an audible because that's the way I'm wired.

And so I will end at 20 minutes.

I hate people that go over and over and over and, you know, you finally get to switch out with 30 seconds left.

That's always fun.

Be professional.

Take advantage of the opportunities you get because when you start a podcast, you will have opportunities.

So be sure to practice, be ready to go, be professional.

And that's how you get asked back.

So thanks so much for listening.

Until we meet again, I'll be probably talking about PodFest the next time we get together.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

And until next week, take care.

God bless class is dismissed.

If you like what you hear, then come tell somebody if you like what you hear, then you're too.

But if you're the person that's like a.

I want to go above and beyond recording locally, so I've got.

Let's.

I messed that up.

I got a subscription to a service that I don't remember.

Starts with a.

Babel.

That was it.

It's only seven seconds late.

Dave.

28.

28% or not 28.

Crap.