How Mark Grew His Podcast 17% in Five Weeks

In episode 1053, I said, "Look, instead of trying

to hit a grand slam, let's just try to make a good connection.

Over the last couple weeks, we've been doing growth

masterminds at the School of Podcasting, strictly talking

about strategies for growth, and you're going to hear where Mark

has seen his numbers jump in less than five weeks, and so

that's great. And there were, I'm sure, many people that

listened to these webinars, but Mark actually did it, and that's

great. And I'm sure others have tried some things, and I totally

get this next mindset because I fall into this at times, and

that is, you think about watching the video that might do

the thing. And if you read the ebook, then maybe you might

possibly reread it one more time just to do. And we just keep

learning and learning, and then we we contemplate. Maybe we need

a different coach, or maybe the let's make sure this coach

agrees with what this coach said, so now you got too many

cooks in the kitchen, and in the end, you're not doing anything

but researching and researching and researching. There comes a

time when you have to see if it's going to work, and then

track what it does. And so we talked about this about a month

ago. So I'm bringing it back, and this time I've got receipts.

Hit it, ladies.

The SOP Singers: The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting Sense 2005. I am your award-winning

Hall of Fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so very,

very much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is

where we help you launch, grow, and monetize your podcast. The

website schoolofpodcasting.com. Use the coupon code Listener

when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly

subscription, and that show runs on Pod Page. So today, I'm going

to share some insights into growing your podcast. Now,

realize we're talking about measuring downloads, and I've

done episodes on how there are so many other ways to measure

the success of your podcast. But for whatever reason, we love to

look at the downloads. We love to to smell them, like smells

like downloads, and we love to eat them. We just love

downloads, and so I sat down and was like, "Well, here are some

things that we could do to grow your downloads, and realize

again that if I ask you what is your why, why are you bringing a

podcast into your life, and you tell me what the show is about,

that is not your why. That is what the show is about. You need

to know your why because if you don't get your why, you quit.

And so sometimes the reason people do this is because they

want to feel heard, and they see downloads as proof that they are

being heard. Which, for the most part, is true-at least that

somehow people have taken action to consume your content. But let

me just play you a clip from my buddy Mark from

PracticalPrepping Info, and this is a guy that did some of the

things we suggested, and that's kind of what we're going to talk

about today. Is are you doing what you can to increase your

reach? I talked about this a couple weeks ago, and I'm

bringing it back up again. And this time, I brought receipts.

Here's Mark.

You talked about figuring out where we were, and

at the beginning of this, and then figuring out where we were

at the end. Well, the 30-day downloads-that's up and down for

each episode. What I have found is that Buzzsprout sends me how

many downloads we've had each week, and through some of this

through this period of time, it's grown. I think I ran the

numbers, and it was like 17%

Nice. So

a lot of folks are a lot of folks are going back to

the back catalog.

So I will take a 17% increase in five weeks. That

was on week five of our growth kind of masterminds that we're

having. And for the record, Mark travels a lot, and I think he

was on his phone that week or something like that. Mark has

amazing sound. When you go over to practicalprepping.info, or if

you want to make your audio sound great, you can check them

out at p3mediagroup.net. Because now Mark has thrown his his hat

into the editor ring, which is one of those things you can do

after your podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So to grow your

reach, remember they have to. Find you first before they can

consume your content. So that means a good title. That means

decent show notes with lots of really helpful words that

hopefully came out of your mouth and not AI. AI can brush up your

words, but and I know it can sound like you, etc. etc. But

anyway, good Google loves good words. So, because they're

either going to find you from word of mouth because you made

amazing content, or you paid somebody to put your information

in front of their audience, or there's going to be organic

search. That's where you need the really good words, so they

have to find you first. So make sure your episode title is not

so much clickbaity, because you want your episode title to be a

promise of what's in your content, but it also needs to

inspire them to go. Wait, I want more of that information. So

they have to find you first. Then, once they get to your

website, you want them to click something. So don't make them

dig for episodes. And then finally, you want them to not

just click, but do whatever it is your why is. So if that means

tell a friend. If it means buy your product, if it means go

visit your sponsor, whatever it is. And so, I was explaining to

people that you can't manage what you don't track. And since

I knew some people weren't going to be crazy about the idea, I

found this free tool called Short.io, which lets you have

100 links for free, and it takes 42 seconds to add, you know, a

trackable link. And then I'll just go down here. You ready?

1639291584. What are these numbers? These are the amount of

times links that I pasted on social were clicked, and I

expected it to be 001120. I was not expecting a lot, and when I

posted on a regular basis, meaning like once a week or

maybe three times a week. I was getting around 40 clicks a week.

Now that's not a ton, but you know what I had before zero.

Yeah, so I tried something. I I got 40 clicks. Now clicks don't

mean downloads, but I got people to my website that had not maybe

been there before. And if I got 40 every week, that's 160 for

the month. And if I take 160 and multiply that by 12, that is

1920. Now, how long did it take me to post one link? And in my

case, it was Blue Sky Twitter, LinkedIn. What am I missing

here? Facebook, you know. And it took me less than five minutes

per link. It really wasn't that hard. And and that's just like I

said, like maybe once a week. So here again, it's not a tsunami,

but it didn't take me a lot of time, and it brought people to

my website. Now, have I had somebody go, Dave? I found your

show on social, and I love the. Haven't heard that yet, but

again, how many would I have received if I did nothing? And

that answer is, yeah, the same that I had before. And if what

you're doing now is not growing your audience, you should try

something. And that's really what I kept telling people. How

about you try it? And you hear things like, well, it's not

really a great fit. Try it anyway. You know we're all

waiting for the perfect opportunity that matches us

perfectly and is the exact right thing. And meanwhile, weeks go

by, another week goes by, and then another week goes by, and

you've done zero in the department of trying to get in

front of your target audience. So you've got to do something.

Mark did, and his numbers went up by 17% And so every week, I

am giving people strategies that I've seen work, and for some

reason, sometimes people don't put them into play. And I

thought, you know, we all struggle with even launching a

podcast because we're worried that it's going to fail, and

then it don't. On me, what I might be up against is not the

fear of failure because you launched. Now you might be

struggling with the fear of success. I've seen people do

this. They've gone from ah nobody will listen to me. I

don't know if I should do this, and then they start, and then

after a month or two or three, they're like, "Holy cow! People

are listening to me, and so they worry that if I actually get

popular, then people are going to criticize you. Well, like I

said last week, you know, if you're standing in a line at

Walmart, there are people behind you that are judging you,

whether you want them to or not. The old imposter syndrome. Well,

who am I to be listened to? Will somebody with enough life

experience to get people to listen to you? And you've done

hard things in the past. Or what if I get successful and

disappoint people? Guess what? Whether you want to or not, you

disappoint people on a regular basis. I do my best, but there

are times when I'm like, "Ooh, I would love to do that, but I

can't do that right now, and that's just that's life, right?

Or what if my growth turns my enjoyable hobby into a job?

Well, here's the thing: the last time I checked, it's your show.

You can do whatever you want, and the other one then is, of

course, well, what if I do every strategy and the show still

doesn't grow? That's a hard one because what's the one common

denominator there, and that's you. But you've already started

to grow the show. We just want to throw some gasoline on that,

you know. And then some people go, "Well, if I do grow, well,

then I have to monetize, and I have to do this, and I have to.

It's your show. If you don't want to have ads on your show,

don't have ads on your show. There's no rule that says,

"Well, yeah, but I've got you know according to what I see, I

I've got you know whatever 20,000 downloads. I could have

sponsors. Yeah, do you want sponsors? No, not really. Then

don't have sponsors. Sometimes we keep researching, but we

never act. I am. I have so many courses that I've not even like

got into, and sometimes that's just perfectionism. You want to

be perfect, so you keep doing more and more research, but you

never do anything. Sometimes, you know, you'll. I have people

that go, "Oh, that sounds great. Yep, I can do that. Sometimes

when I think about it, that might be me. Maybe I'm not

giving you clear enough steps, and whatever your goal is, it's

a little too vague, or a little too large, or inconvenient.

There's just something there that you're like, yep, gonna do

it, yep, gonna do it, and then you don't. Some people I've

worked with one client, and I want to give her money back

because I said, well, you could do A, and she said, yeah, I'm

not doing that. B, yeah, I'm not doing that. C, that sounds like

more work. Well, yeah, it is, but it'll work. I'm not doing

that, and so this sometimes, whatever the strategy is, it

might conflict with what you feel your identity is or your

values, which is good. You should have values. You should

have a moral of some sort, you know, they avoid promotion. I've

seen this where, again, I'm like, look, I did this. It

wasn't a 10,000 download switch, but it did grow my audience. And

some people, again, that imposter syndrome, or you're

just worried about being visible. It's weird. We all want

to be more visible, and then you go here, do this, stand in front

of this crowd, and they're like, "I get that, but realize that no

matter what your show is, you're in control of it. You're in

control of the promotion. You're in control of the content.

You're in control of the schedule, and if you want to

change any of that, you can because it's your show. But you

just have to keep in mind that you have to do something. You

you cannot just do a podcast and hope that somehow someone with a

giant spotlight is going to come along and point it at you. You

know the old "if you build it, they will come. And so all we

did for this, the the one I'm talking about now, where I had

you know a fair number of people, or at least let's go

this. I had more people going to my website than I did the month

before was simply putting a post on social, and the we thought

about our post. It wasn't episode 16 is out. We tried to

come up with something that made people want to click it, and I

was really surprised because I expected to get next to nothing

when it came. From social media. Now I did another strategy, and

I'm going to tell you about that right after this.

All

right, so this strategy is super easy. If you

listen to a show that is similar to yours, leave a voicemail for

it. That's what Neil did. I've told you about this story

before, so I'm going to run through this quickly. And Neil

always brought value. He always made me think or laugh. One of

the two when he left voicemail on the Pod News Weekly Review,

and so I reached out to Neil because one of the growth things

I said is, "Hey, let's go find somebody you share an audience

with, and you don't have to do anything. I just said go find

somebody that maybe you could cross promote with, and I went.

I thought about it a second, and here's it just proves that

podcasting works. I went over, found Neil's show, and started

cherry picking because he had really good episode titles.

There you go. There's a strategy. Good episode titles.

Listen to a bunch of them. I was like, wow, this guy is really

good. And so I mentioned it on the show. Now, what did that

result in? Us cross promoting? Well, kind of. I didn't ask for

this, but that after mentioning Neil on this show from

Podcasting Insights, I heard this on his episode.

Let me tell you a bit more about this host. The

host was Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting, a guy who

I have an immense amount of respect for. He's been

podcasting for 20 odd years,

and so we haven't figured out exactly what we're

going to do together. But we've already worked together because

he talked about me on his show, and I talked about his. And for

the record, Neil, that let's just stop the boomerang. This is

we're good. We'll figure out what to do here, but here's the

How long did it take me to do that? Less than five

minutes to reach out and go, "Hey, Neil, I love your show.

Why don't we do something together? And for those, so some

people did that, and other people, and I'm again. I'm not

quite sure why, because on paper it makes a ton of sense. So one

of the shows I miss a lot is called the Podcasters

Roundtable. It was myself, it was Ray Ortega, and it was

Daniel J. Lewis, and we did this on a weekly basis. And Daniel

and Ray had children and I did not, and they went off to be

phenomenal fathers and I did not. I started another 12

podcasts, probably something like that. But these were people

that were my and still are my competition. They're also some

of my favorite people on the planet, and every now and then

I'll be like, "Any chance the roundtable's coming back? I did

do the future of podcasting with Daniel J. Lewis, which is kind

of on hiatus because our our source material kind of dried up

a little bit. But back to Neil, this was less than five minutes

worth of work, and I got right in front of the audience that I

wanted to get in front of. And again, the thing to this is you

have to quit thinking about it, and you have to start doing it,

and then track it to see if it works. And it's where I kind of

want to look at you with a smile on my face, and go, "Are you

afraid of success? Like, why aren't you doing this? Well, I

wasn't really quite sure. Well, there's one way to find out.

Take that step, and see if it works. And if it doesn't work,

then you know not to do that again, and if it does work, then

you could find someone else and do it again, and see if it if

you repeatedly do it, if it repeatedly works, and if you

find something that repeatedly works, then keep doing it. I was

on a show this week. I was being interviewed. I'll let you know

when it comes out, and they said, "Dave, how do you feel

being in the podcaster Hall of Fame? How did you get into the

Hall of Fame? And it's something that I still it's humbling, and

I thought about it a second, and I said, "Well, and it's a joke,

but it's not a joke. I didn't quit. I didn't quit, and others

did. And you're not going to make a dent in anyone's life.

You're not going to connect with them if you quit in anyone's

life. You're not going to connect with them if you quit.

Does that make sense to you? Make sense to me? Does that mean

I'm phenomenal? No, it means I didn't quit. But the bottom line

is, I also always strive to deliver value, to give you

something to try, to give you something to think about. Maybe

I make you laugh along the way, but there comes a time when

you've done enough research, and you have to try stuff. There was

a time when you didn't know how to button a shirt, and then you

practiced and you did it. You didn't know how to tie your

shoes, but you practiced and you did it. There was a time you

didn't know how to walk, and you practiced and you did it, but

all those things along the way, because we've all buttoned the

button, and you go, wait a minute, how come I got an extra

button and there's no hole over there? And then you look down,

you're like, oh. Then you have to unbutton and rebutton again.

You learn by doing things, and if you don't do them correctly,

you don't do it that way again, and that doesn't mean you're

stupid. It doesn't mean that you know we're happy when we put our

clothes on wrong, and you're like, "Wait, is this inside out?

That's always fun.

I've been there when you go to work and somebody goes, "Do you

know your shirt's inside out? You're like, "What? Oh, hold on,

I got to go to the bathroom. I bet you don't do that again, but

you do have to do something. I love the line from the great

sales trainer Zig Ziglar. He says, "You don't have to be

great to start, but you do have to start if you want to be

great. And like I'm, I'm here today because I listened to

Neil's episode. I've made my point. I'm going to stop now.

But you don't get better by not trying things. You fine tune

what you do right, and then let's find other ways to

increase your reach. And again, I've said this before. It boils

down to who is your audience. Go to where they are, make friends

with them, and then tell them about your show. That's podcast

growth one and one. And again, I said it at the beginning. It's

not all about the downloads. There are many other ways to

measure your success, but for today, we'll say it's downloads.

All

right. If you are using, it's an old advertising

company called Podcorn. They are going away, and this is a system

where you put what they call a prefix, and it basically so when

somebody clicks play, it goes over to Podcorn and they go,

"Yep, that's the that's the download, and then it sends it

over to your MP3 file where it then starts to play or whatever.

Well, that prefix is in front of every single one of your

episodes, and I just said they're going away. So if you do

not remove that prefix from whoever your media host is, when

they go away, every single one of your files will not work. So

do not put that off again. It's called Podcorn. And the other

thing I just want to say about this: when I worked at Libsyn, I

would see people that would have three, maybe even four prefixes,

each one representing a company, hoping that they would somehow

get some sales. You don't need four of these. In fact, I

wouldn't put any in because the more you put in place, the four

times more now chance that if one of those companies has a bad

day with their technology, all of your files stop working. So

find out what the minimum number of downloads you need to get

money from these companies, and when you get over that number,

then you add their prefix. But I saw so many people that were

getting, you know, 317 downloads, and they've got three

prefixes on with companies that need you to have 10,000

downloads. What's the point? You got the cart way in front of the

horse, so nothing against those companies. I'm just saying

you're putting extra technology that could fail because you know

it's technology. It's not always our friend, but the one I want

to make sure of: if you're using Podcorn, go into your media host

and get rid of that prefix. Otherwise, I'm not sure exactly

when they're shutting down. It's sometime I think in early

November, but you might as well get it out of your you know

workflow in your media host. Get it out of there before you

forget. And the next thing you know, you go into your stats and

you're like, wait. I had no downloads yesterday, and then

you look at your email and like, I have 10 emails saying I can't

download your show. Yeah, you forgot to pull out the prefix.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I am a huge fan of Rob Walsh now of Captivate,

and if you're ever at a podcast conference and you get to see

Rob, he's one of those guys. Tom Webster, Lou Mangello, James

Cridlin. Those are people that I always am really bummed if I

don't get to see. And Rob again brings the receipts, and he

makes it entertaining. It's hard to make stats fun, but Rob

always brings some great stats. So I wanted to share one because

you know, video is you know it's it's from the heavens. It's it

tastes like gold covered Cheerios. I don't know, right?

And I'm not anti video, but I was kind of like, let's wait and

see what happens here. And so Rob went and got some data, and

he said what he did was he went look for shows that opted into

the Apple Video program in May, and he said when I looked at

their numbers in August for Apple Podcast, how they compared

to the average in February, March, and April. So the three

months before they opted in, you know, prior to that, and then he

looked at their August numbers. All right, so did their numbers

go up? Did they go down? What's the deal? And he said 15% of the

shows had gone up in Apple Podcast total number of

downloads. 32 were in the flat range, so they didn't go up or

down, and this is plus or minus 15% And he said, and then 53% of

people that joined Apple Podcast Video went down. And he said, so

basically 85% chance that your show was going to be flat or go

down after introducing video, and he said he talked to a few

different people afterwards because they came up to him and

basically they said they thought what happened is people saw that

they were on video in Apple, and they went, oh, cool! And so they

then went to. If I say video, you say what? YouTube. And so

they went and consumed the video on YouTube. So where they used

to listen to them on audio, they saw it was video, and they went.

Oh, I don't do video here, and they went to YouTube. So if

you've been thinking about it, and he made a really great

point. It's the point we all said when this started. If you

want to do video, then do video, and if you want to start

someplace, start on YouTube because that's where most people

consume their video, and if you like that, and if it doesn't add

too much to the stress and workflow of doing a podcast,

then keep doing it and maybe add it to Apple. But we have heard

of people that added video and went, "Oh, it's too much! And

then instead of getting rid of the video, they got rid of the

podcast, and that makes me sad. I'll have a link to Rob's

presentation. In fact, all of the presentations from Podcast

Movement are on their YouTube channel, and I'll have a link to

the channel as well as Rob's talk in the show notes, we've

been doing the podcasting in six weeks free course, and if you're

looking to start a podcast in 2027, this would be a good time

to do it. We're going to kind of weave and bob our way around the

holidays, but it's going to be starting in a couple weeks, and

I'll put a link to that in the show notes, or you can just go

to podcastinginsixweeks.com if you want to start your podcast

or grow your podcast. We heard how Mark was growing his show

along with other members of the School of Podcasting. It's super

simple. Go over to School of Podcasting, click on the join

button, use the coupon code Listener when you sign up for

either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription, and if

you're worried about that, just realize you've got a 30-day

money-back guarantee. And if for some reason you're not happy

with the courses, you're not happy with the community, you're

not happy with the one-on-one coaching, then you can say,

"Look, I'd like a refund, and we will refund your money. So

there's really no worry about is this right for me.

If it's not, well, then let us know, and we'll let you go, and

you can go on to other bigger and better things in your life.

Again, the website schoolofpodcasting.com. Use the

coupon code listener. I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's

what I do, and I can't wait to see what we're going to do

together. But until next week, try treating people the way you

wish they would treat you. I hear it works really well, and

it makes you feel good about yourself. All right, take care.

God bless. Class is dismissed. And so, because I wanted to find

something free, he said, hitting his microphone, to a show that

you share an audience with, and I went over and listened. And

here's the number one. Ah, crap. So I'm at Wendy's. It's this

fast food place in America, and I go in, and I love Wendy's, but

they got to make my food right. And I said, I want a hamburger,

and all I want is ketchup, mustard, pickle, and lettuce,

and she put it on there, and I saw where she took off

something, and this, and then she said, "So, mustard, pickle,

onion, and I went, "Nope, ketchup, mustard, pickle,

lettuce, and she said, "Okay, and I said, "And no cheese, and

she goes, "Oh, okay, so ketchup, lettuce, and I went ketchup,

mustard, pickle, lettuce, and I can see on the screen she still

got it wrong, and I go and no cheese, and she's like, okay,

sorry. So it's it's pickle, mustard, ketchup, and I'm like,

and and lettuce, let it's ketchup, mustard, pickle, and

let it. And I'm starting to slowly lose it because I'm

hungry. I'm hangry, and I want you know my burger. And so

finally, she repeats it back, and she gets it right. I go

over, I eat my burger. It was right. It was delicious for

Wendy's. And on my way out the door, I stopped by and I said,

"Hey, you could probably tell I was losing it. I said, "That has

nothing to do with you. I said, "I've had a long day, and I

said, "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. And she goes, "Well,

that's not really needed, but I appreciate it. And I felt better

because it was the right thing to do. She, you know, for

whatever reason, we don't know what her day was. Maybe she was

having a bad day, and some poor guy is screaming about, "I don't

want onion on my hamburger, and it's not a a hamburger does not

have cheese on it. A hamburger with cheese is a cheeseburger. I

asked for a hamburger with ketchup, mustard, pickle, and

lettuce, and it's good to say I'm sorry. Try it. I bet the

person on the other side will go. Thank you.

Yeah.