March 29, 2026

Stop Pushing Listeners Away: The Biggest Podcasting Pet Peeves (and How to Fix Them)

Stop Pushing Listeners Away: The Biggest Podcasting Pet Peeves (and How to Fix Them)
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If listeners are quitting your podcast in the first five minutes, this episode is for you. In this annual ‘podcast pet peeves’ roundup, I asked my audience what makes them bail on a show— and they did not hold back.

Participants

You’ll hear from Kim Newlove (The Pharmacist’s Voice, Perrysburg Podcast), Steve Stewart (podcast editor extraordinaire), Todd ‘the Gator’ (Guardian Down Roundtable, Lessons in the Rear View), and York (Welcome to Earth Stories) as they unpack the habits that drive them nuts: from bad audio and buried leads to ad overload, lazy interview questions, sloppy terminology, and more.

You’ll walk away knowing exactly what turns listeners off - and how to fix it. I’ll also share my own take on ads, monetization, and why a little creativity can still set your show apart in 2026

The Most Popular Pet Peeves

  • Too many/poorly placed ads (especially mid-roll and early heavy ad blocks)
  • Not getting to the point / burying the lead / unclear episode direction
  • Lack of preparation (hosts winging it, talking in circles, not prepping guests)
  • Sloppy language and terminology (“podcast” vs “episode,” “podcasting” vs “podcasts,” RSS vs not)
  • Wasting listener time with meta-chatter, overlong intros, and “Tell me about yourself” questions

I do this question every year, and as you might imagine, this list doesn't change much. This year seems like advertisements were the top peeve.

Is Everyone Going to use the "YouTube Annoying Your Audience to Death" strategy, and use tools like Supercast and Patreon, and offer an ad-free version?

Mentioned In This Episode

School of Podcasting

Podpage - Podcast Websites

The Pharmacist's Voice

The Perrysburg Podcast

Steve Stewart

Podcast Editors Academy

Welcome to Earth Stories

Guardian Down Roundtable

Lessons in the Rear View

Ask the Podcast Coach

Podcasting Observations (Dave's Newsletter)

School of Podcasting Follow Page

Patreon

Supercast

OP3 Open Source Stats

Truefans.FM

Mentioned in this episode:

Get Some Feedback On Your Show

“Want honest, helpful feedback on your podcast? At the School of Podcasting, we host ‘Listening Parties’ where members share short clips and get constructive, encouraging critiques from fellow podcasters and myself. It’s a safe, supportive way to hear what’s working, fix what’s not, and make your show stronger fast.”

School of Podcasting

Question of the Month: The Future of Podcasting

Someone asked me, and I had to think about it. So now I'm asking you, How do you feel about the future of podcasting? Where do you think it's going? (etc,). Feel free to share your opinion and why. Don't forget to tell us about your show and where we can find it.

Question of the Month

Give Your Podcast A Home

When you look at our podcasting pieces, your media host is the engine. But your website is the home.It’s where your audience learns who you are, explores your episodes, and decides to subscribe.At Podpage, we build podcast websites that are fast, reliable, and designed to convert visitors into listeners. Every episode is automatically published, SEO-optimized, and structured for growth—so you can focus on creating, not managing your site.If your media host powers your podcast, Podpage gives it a place to live—and a place to grow.Start building your podcast’s home with Podpage by going to www.podpage.com/preview and start your 14 day free trial today.

Podpage

00:00 - Untitled

00:00 - What Makes People Stop Listening?

00:22 - Opening

03:11 - Kim Newlove

03:53 - Poor Audio Quality

04:03 - Volume Levels

04:17 - Get to the Point

04:42 - What is The Episode About ?

05:17 - Ads in General

06:18 - Talking Over Each Other

07:08 - Longer Than They Need to Be

07:13 - Where's the Link

08:07 - Lack of Preperation

08:33 - YouTube Podcasts

09:32 - Serve Your Audience

11:01 - Steve Stewart

11:29 - Wrong Verbiage

15:02 - We are in the communication business

15:54 - Todd the Gator

16:31 - The Number of Ads and Placement

18:09 - Winging It

21:31 - York

21:36 - Bad Setup of Episode

22:29 - The Most Dreaded Question

23:34 - Check Out York

24:29 - Introducing a Guest

26:17 - Join the School of Podcasting

27:31 - Try Podpage

28:32 - Going Pro on a Shoestring Budget

29:31 - Dave Reflects on Ads

31:08 - Daveism

31:49 - Words Matter

32:49 - What to do with Chit Chat

33:34 - Fixing Bad Audio

34:37 - Fixing a lack of Prep

35:14 - Signed Books are Back

35:43 - Amazing Content Takes Work

37:14 - HLS Video Update

38:21 - TrueFans releases Pricing on Video

39:56 - Lack of Communication From Libsyn

40:15 - Number of Video Shows using HLS

41:15 - Buzzsprout Updates

42:19 - Updated Course on Media Hosts

42:53 - Podcast Stew is Coming

Dave Jackson

What makes someone quit a podcast in under five minutes and in many cases under 30 seconds?Well, in this episode, we're breaking down the biggest podcast pet peeves sent in by your fellow listeners so we can spot those habits that quietly push people away and fix them before they cost you, your audience. Hit it, ladies.

Todd the Gator

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson

Podcasting since 2005. I am your, 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 and grow your podcast. I want to say thanks to everybody who sent the congratulations and comments about the last episode.If you hadn't heard, the School of Podcasting has been acquired by PodPage, which is where I am the head of podcasting as well. And everybody went hooray. So thank you for that. This week we are doing a question of the month.If you're new to the show, I often use the last week of the, you know, the month to give you a chance to grab the microphone and then we all learn together. And yeah, if you send in stuff, you get free exposure.I know quite a few people that have said, oh yeah, I'm listening to that show from the guy that sent in the answer.And I'm always kind of slightly puzzled because many of the people that listen to this show are podcasters, so they have access to recording equipment and they could easily answer the question, send it in, because I always say be sure to mention your show a little bit about it and then tell me your website address so you get a backlink, which is good for SEO. And sometimes we get lots of answers and sometimes we don't, but just let you know, it's. There's no. What's the word here?If you send in an answer, it's getting on the show. So with that, this week we are talking about podcasting pet peeves.And this is a question I do yearly because, you know, podcasts change, et cetera, et cetera. And we're always looking to make sure that we're not doing those things that are driving our audience away.The easiest way to grow your audience is, is to not lose the audience you have. I'm actually working on an episode right now about that.So many times we get a core audience and they love your show, and in the effort to become giant, we mistakenly ignore our core audience. We go try to get a new audience and that fails. And so we failed to grow the audience and we alienated the ones that we had.So with that, we're going to turn this over to Kim Newlove from the Pharmacist Voice and the Perrysburg Podcast. Always love to see when Kim is sending a message because she put some thought into it. And here's what her pet peeves are.

Kim Newlove

Hey Dave, this is Kim Newlove. I host two shows.They are the Pharmacist's Voice Podcast, which you can find@thepharmacistsvoice.com we talk about pharmacy topics and careers and my second show is called the Perrysburg Podcast. You can find that@harrysburgpodcast.com that's a resource for the Perrysburg community.We talk about what's in Perrysburg and why people like to live here. It's a nice little town in northwest Ohio, population approximately 25,000. As for my pet peeves, I have 10 of them on my list.I'll try to get through them very quickly. I, for one, do not like to bury the lead, which is my third pet peeve. But first of all, let's get to number one. Poor audio quality. It's a classic.If I can't understand what the person's saying, I have to stop listening. Number two, inconsistent volume levels, especially when the host is louder than the guest because the host has a mic and the guest does not.I do not like to ride the volume knob. I'd rather ride a motorcycle. Number three Burying the lead. L E D E Lead Burying the lead.If there's a title for an episode or a thumbnail artwork, whatever for one topic, but then the host rambles without getting to the point right away. That's called burying the lead. I feel like I'm getting moody as I'm talking about all this, but anyways, burying the lead is number three.Number four, not clearly stating what the episode is about.Not only would I prefer to have an accurate description about what I'm going to hear in the show notes so I can kind of read what it's about before I press play. But also when I press play, I expect the host to get to the point quickly and tell me what I'm going to hear.It's, I think, called a listener promise.

Dave Jackson

All right, this is Future Dave. I'm jumping in here as I'm getting ready to post this for anyone who says, does anyone ever read show notes?Yeah, Kim does to help decide if she should listen to it or not. Back to Kim.

Kim Newlove

Number five is ads. Just ads in general. I think everybody's annoyed by ads.I don't like when I press play and There is an advertisement before I'm even welcomed to the show and told what the show is about and what I'm going to hear. Not fair. Not cool. I do not like when there's the welcome and then all of a sudden a bunch of ads.I listen to NPR up first and they welcome us to the show, tell us what we're going to hear, and then we have to sit through 90 seconds of AD. If my hands are in the dishwater and I cannot pull them out to fast forward it fast enough, I'm stuck listening to that.I don't want to hear about pillows and mattresses and other things. I do not like it also when ads interrupt an interview.So the host is asking a good question and then I have to listen to an advertisement before I can hear the response. Not cool. As a listener, ads are inconvenient. Number six, the host and guest talking over top of one another.You know, where their speech overlaps and it's really hard to tell who's talking or who you're supposed to listen to.As a podcaster, I've developed this skill where I can paste silence over the person who's not supposed to be talking and then just cut out the overlap and let it start where the other person is supposed to respond. It takes a little bit of skill, but there are some people that don't know to record two tracks when they're doing a remote podcast interview.When you're recording in person, I know how hard it can be because of mic bleed to completely eliminate that overlap. But just do the best you can because it's one of my pet peeves. I don't like listening to the host and the guest talking over top of each other.Number seven is shows that are longer than they need to be. Number eight on my list is missing items in show notes.I try really hard not to do this for either of my shows, but sometimes I will invest the time to listen to a podcast episode and a book will be mentioned and I want to check out that book. And I was busy driving or doing something and I was unable to write down the title of the book and the author.So I'm hoping that when I go to the show notes later, when I'm in a safe place to pull over and look at the show notes notes that that information will be there. But when that information is not there, I am disappointed. So one of my podcasting pet peeves is missing items in the show notes.

Dave Jackson

Look, I'm a pretty patient person, but if I go to find that Book link and it's not there. I will send you a sternly worded email. All right, back to Kim. Number nine.

Kim Newlove

Number nine is lack of preparation. I can tell that a podcast host is not prepared when they talk in circles.If you, as a podcaster, just think about what you're going to say before you say it, you can avoid talking in circles without getting the information up front. This kind of goes along with burying the lead. Talking in circles due to lack of preparation is one of my pet peeves.And number 10 is calling something a podcast when it does not have an RSS feed. I'm with Dave on this. If something doesn't have an RSS feed, it's not officially a podcast.I have lots of friends who have YouTube channels and they like to call their YouTube channel a podcast, and I will give them credit and call it a YouTube podcast, but secretly it's a pet peeve of mine. If it doesn't have an RSS feed, I really don't want to call it a podcast. Deep breath. That was a big list.The good news, if there is any, is that the audience will put up with our shortcomings if we bring good content and they like us, right? They come for the content, they stay for the host. It's a Dave Jackson ism. I'm bothered by all of those podcasting pet peeves.I think as podcasters, we're our own worst critics and we're very critical of other people. But just remember, we're here for the audience. We're here to come from a place of service.As I close out this contribution to the question of the month, I just want to pass along something that I like to say when I'm ending something, whether it's a prayer or I'm saying goodbye to somebody I really care about or I really like. And that is make good choices and do good things. Be patient and kind and remember where you came from.When it comes to podcasting, remember your why you're making content for your audience and you come from a place of service. Do the best you can and be that trusted voice your audience needs and wants to hear from.Dave, as I wrap this up, thank you very much for all the good things that you do and for being patient and kind with me. I know you're making this content so we can all learn from one another, and I appreciate that.Again, this is Kim Newlove from the Pharmacist's Voice podcast and the Perrysburg Podcast. Happy podcasting, everyone.

Dave Jackson

Links are in the show notes. Amazing. Amazing. And by that I mean, of course, Fire up the organ. Come on, preach, girl, preach. Okay. All right. So that's one clip. It was really good.I took notes.You know, it's hard to follow Kim Newlove, but there's only one person I know of that always brings as much value as Kim, and that is the one and only king of podcast editors, co founder of the Podcast Editors Academy, the one and only Steve Stewart. Hey, Dave.

Steve Stewart

Hey, sop family. It's Steve Stewart from stevestewart. Me, where I edit podcasts for personal finance content creators.I feel the need to preface my pet peeve with a little story first, that's unrelated, so that people will understand where I'm coming from. They'll realize that it's a pet peeve of mine. But I'm not yelling at anyone.Although sometimes I would love to just bring it up in a conversation when I hear this happen. When I started creating content, it was as a blogger.I was writing personal finance content on a blog, and I was hanging around with these people, and I eventually got into this community. I would hear people talk about, not just in the personal finance community, but all over the place. Who are bloggers. Say, I wrote three blogs.Well, a blog, if you think about a blog, I'm going to someone's blog. It's going to be a whole bunch of different articles. A bunch of different written articles, not one certain article.Technically, I have three active blogs. I've got the original blog money plan SOS where it was actually just the show notes for my episodes. I've got a blog at Stevestewart.Me, and I have a blog at podcasteditoracademy.com they're all a bunch of different articles. So if I were to come to you and say, hey, I just wrote three blogs. Okay, how many blog posts? And really, that's the thing.It's just quantifying it to say blog post. And that's where the pet peeve comes into podcasts. And podcasting. People say, oh, I just recorded three podcasts.Well, maybe if you were being interviewed on three different shows, you could say, I recorded three podcasts, but technically, that would still be inaccurate. And yes, I know I'm splitting hairs here, but if you were to record three podcasts, those are shows. Podcasts are shows.What we should, of course, be saying is episodes. And I think everybody understands episodes, and it makes sense. And we're saying individuals releases or content, going for individual releases.But unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. There's also a part two to this pet peeve. And it's also using the word podcast in an incorrect way.I've heard a lot of people use it this way, and even very, very experienced, knowledgeable people in the space who've been around even longer than me saying people are listening to podcasting. Technically, unless you're in the room listening to someone creating the show, you're not listening to someone in podcasting.You're listening to podcasts.And the reason why this is important to me is podcasting is the act of recording a show, the act of being a podcaster, the act of creating the content. You're the creator. Whereas a podcast is a medium that anybody can enjoy. Anybody.You do not have to be a podcaster or be in podcasting to enjoy podcasts. Anybody can listen to podcasts. They're not listening to podcasting, or I'll hear this.Towards the end of the calendar year, people say, get ready for the Podcasting hall of Fame. That is technically not accurate. Where it's not the podcasting hall of Fame, it's the Podcast hall of fame.We're recognizing people in the industry who may not be podcasters. They may not be actively working on creating the content. They're just supporting podcasters in some way.For many years after I retired Money Planet Sus, I was not a podcaster. I was not podcasting. I was supporting podcasters. So when someone say podcasting hall of fame, oh, I'm excluded because I'm not podcasting.I'm not a podcaster anymore.So my little pet peeve is to make sure that we're using the word properly, that a podcast can represent a body of work or a medium that anybody can enjoy, whereas podcasting is the act of creating that content. The thing that you and I, we all, anyone who's listening to this, that act of creating the content, enjoy.So podcasting is that verb, whereas podcast is more like a noun, a proper noun. It's the medium which anyone can enjoy. Hopefully I made some sense there. Hopefully I didn't ruffle anybody's feathers.This is Steve Stewart from stevestewart. Me. Thanks for having me, Steve.

Dave Jackson

I love it. For me, we work in the communication business, and that is built on words.And when people use words wrong, like important, there's a t in there that drives me crazy. That's not even a podcast pet peeve, but just the pet peeve. But language is fun, right? Words change meanings all the time.And everything we talk about today. Now this is going to be weird. We're going to peel back the curtain. Just a second. On this today's episode, I'm calling 1026.And to make a long story short, the easy way to describe this is I messed up the numbering for today. If you go to schoolofpodcasting.com 1026 you'll see the show notes and links to everyone's show. So next up is the one, the only, Todd the Gator.

Todd the Gator

Hey Dave, it's Todd the Gator here with the Guarding Down Roundtable and Lessons in the Rearview Podcast. To answer your question of the month, what are my pet peeves with podcasts?You know, to be honest, I think podcasting is the most personal media out there.You don't realize how engaging podcasting can be until you're watching those late night shows and get annoyed by the commercial breaks every eight minutes of conversation. It just breaks up any flow of the interview.

Dave Jackson

And we'll be back to Todd's comment, right? No, I'm just kidding.

Todd the Gator

However, there are a few things that have become some of my pet peeves when listening to podcasts. Some of you that hang out in the live chat of Ask the Podcast Coach every Saturday morning. Thank you for that.Dave, by the way, may have seen me rattling off comments about this very topic and that is the amount of ads and podcasts today. It has become so blatantly obvious that we are approaching those late night shows I mentioned earlier.Some interviews can be an art form with how delicately crafted each question flows until the next until you truly get an understanding of the guest. If you're going to place ads into your podcast, please either insert them as pre or post roll ads.That way you get the advertiser's message out there and your job's done. I as the listener can decide whether to skip through them, but if the ad is entertaining, I just may let it play.And don't get me started on the midroll ads placed mid sentence of a great interview. I create and publish a segment based show, but also a solo show.On the segmented show I will create small transitions from segment to segment, you know, to kind of break up the conversation a little bit, but strictly to provide information for the show or to highlight a past guest in like a radio style stinger. But it always relates back to the podcast. You know the show you clicked on.Podcasting created a whole viable option to the flood of commercialization of radio and it's why I don't tune into radio anymore. If your show has an impact on your listeners, why not create a crowdfunding option instead?You know, one Patreon member will offset an entire month of CPM from a commercial. Just saying. The other pet peeve of mine with podcasts is the quote winging it or quote we're going to have a real conversation type of podcasters.I have listened to some podcasters out there that love the chaos and somehow they can beautifully create a show on the fly. Hey, I applaud you. This is something that does not come easy to me.I have to create a plan of how a show is going to flow and I also share this with my other host and any guests before we go live every week. Dave, you've mentioned in the past shows that listeners want to know the destination before they get on the bus, right?So I am implicitly telling my listeners and viewers at the very beginning of the show where we are going today.I mean, I surely appreciate when podcasters do that as it it just doesn't waste my time when I decide to click on your interesting tit for your episode. There have been many times when guesting on other shows that have no show notes given to me and I'll ask what are we?What are we doing on this episode? Where are we going? And then you get that answer.The host just mentions oh, we're going to talk about such and such and then we're going to go from there.You know, that doesn't give me any warm and fuzzies inside and if anything please give me at least an outline of your episodes so I can prepare to present the best part of myself and contribute to your show. I probably have a few more day, but I'm going to stop there. I sound like a crotchety old man now.I go live every Thursday night at 9pm Eastern on my YouTube and Twitch channels covering topics that affect our gaming hobby as adults.The channels are Todd the Gator that's T O D D T H E G A T R the podcast is called Guarding Down Round Table where my coast and I We invite members of our gaming community to jump on the show and present a topic that they want to discuss to the table. We also go live in our now 8 year old discord community on the live stage and what we do is we stream to all three of these platforms simultaneously.If you would like to check out that community, the invite is Discord GG Guardian Down Roundtable I am starting a new solo podcast called Lessons in the Rear View.It's where I present topics, stories and lessons learned from living a life as a 31 year business owner, 32 year married person adult Gamer, father of a son, father of a daughter, and now the new role of grandfather. I share stories of any mishaps I've had in the past, but also my breakthroughs. It'll be coming soon.I do have the domain lessonsintherearview.com ready to go, and I'll be launching this very soon, as usual. Thank you, Dave, for all you do, sir, to get podcasters on track.So many valuable lessons I've learned along the way from years of listening to Ask the Podcast Coach and of course, the school of podcasting. Thank you, sir. Take care.

Dave Jackson

Thank you, Todd. Yeah, I'm noticing. Is it just me or do people not like ads, maybe? Could be. And I have a theory.I have a theory on this that I'll talk about a bit in a second. Because is it ads or is it bad ads? Hmm? We'll talk about this. But right now, ladies and gentlemen, you only need one word, and that word is York.

York

Hi, Dave. This is York from Welcome to Earth Stories.One of my pet peeves is when a podcaster tells the audience everything that they're doing or that they're about to do. What I call this is moving around the furniture. I mean, she just wastes a lot of time saying that, okay, we're going to do the lightning round.We were going to have a special feature, but that got bumped. Oh, yeah. What do you think, listeners? If I do this or that instead of this other thing, I mean, that's annoying.

Dave Jackson

I call that letting people know how the sausage is made. Except there's one problem. Nobody cares how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage.

York

Her show is really good, but just get to the point. That's what I'm pleading with her. Get to the point and just let us know exactly what we're going to hear.And also, when she does get into it, when she has a guest on the show, she asked the dreaded question that people loathe. And you know what this is? You know, you know what I'm gonna say? Tell me about yourself. I mean, didn't she do her homework? She's a smart girl.She could go on the person's website and Wikipedia and what have you and pull up all the information and just tell us the info, rather than saying, tell me about yourself.And that part of her show just takes a long time, especially if there is a lot of verbiage and you're just waiting and you're pleading for that part of her show to end before she gets into the meat of the topic. I guess I Slipped in two pet peeves. One is showing you the behind the scenes. It's different.If her show was to help you to podcast, just like your show where you talk about microphones, techniques and various things, but hers is not. If you want to listen to an audio show that hopefully doesn't do anything of that sort, then listen to my podcast, welcome to Earth Stories.It's an audio fiction sci fi show with voice talents from all around the world. This is sort of like a little bit of Twilight Zone and a little bit of Black Mirror all rolled in together.We're going on the ninth season later on this year. All the details is on our website at. Welcome to earthstories.com thanks, Dave.

Dave Jackson

Thank you, York. I'm back here with the mute button going, no, no, don't say it. I turned into Seinfeld. No, tell me a little bit about yourself. No, I can't take it.I never that to me just scream to go back to Kim's point. Why didn't you do your homework? And I'll have to find it.When I was doing the podcast Rodeo show, now known as podcast Hot Seat, soon to be Fix My Podcast. Yes, you can rebrand your show multiple times if you want to, but I remember I listened to one show and they read.And by that I mean they read it like this. Someone's LinkedIn bio and his dog name is Tippy and he lives in Poughkeepsie and He was ranked 132nd in his high school class.I mean, it just went into this insane detail. And the first question was not, tell me a little bit about yourself. It was, did I miss anything?And then I was just like, how could you miss anything? You just spent 45 minutes reading this guy's LinkedIn bio in a monotone. Oh, I gotta find that.It was a very unique way of, you know, introducing somebody because in theory, I cheat. If somebody has a really long list, then I will just say this someone is a big shot smarty pants.And you know that I know that, you know that you know that that means this person is a very well versed, lots of skills. And then I usually say why I'm excited. And that's an easy way to do a introduction.Why are you excited that you know, so and so is coming on your show? That should be your introduction and the last word should be, you know, so welcome to the show, York. Or whatever. You know, it's like, ah, so let's.Speaking of hopefully entertaining ad breaks, let's take one because this show is Brought to you by the school of podcasting. And just to prove it, here's an ad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's a fun one.It's a pet peeve about people who haven't even published an episode yet. I spent a lot of my time on Facebook, but I spent a lot of time in Freddit. Yes, good old Freddit.It's when you combine Facebook and Reddit in Reddit and this is just one of those things. Again, I always sound in my next episode, I'm going to sound even more. I am really studying YouTube and the stuff I find, I go, ooh, okay.But I see people that want to launch a podcast and they feel it has to be a three camera shoot. One where you get you and your guest, because of course it's an interview show.And then one on you and one on your guest and you want to switch them and you want to do it with great lighting and great sound and oh, by the way, we have no budget. That drives me bonkers. The theme that came up a bunch is advertising. And there are two reasons for this.Number one, if the ad doesn't fit the audience, like Kim said, like, how many pillows, how many sheets do we need? I used to love when the early days of advertising and you'd be playing stamps.com ads for people in Australia.Like, yeah, thanks, we don't really need your postage. So there's that. And then it's. It's too many ads. And I'm going to talk about that more here in a second because I have a theory.Not getting to the point. This is nothing new. Or, you know, bearing the lead when you don't let people know what the show is about.And sometimes I think people do this on purpose. They're like, well, we're just gonna slowly let them figure it out.No, because if I say, hey, today's show is about monetization and you have no inkling, you have no desire ever to monetize. You can go, oh, this one's not for me and skip it. And I've given you your time back.And I know again, survey of one, if somebody said, hey, today we're talking about, I don't know, Brussels sprouts or something, I'm like, yeah, this one's not for me and I get my time back. I'm so thankful that you did that because you didn't waste my time. And this is going to be one of those Hatfield and McCoy things.The whole winging it, the whole tell me a little bit about yourself, that. That some people, that's their style.And I have my new bumper sticker is not every conversation needs to be a podcast just because you recorded it and maybe you want to do it. I did. I was looking at my last episode where I was talking about the history of relationships and how they've led to different things.And as I was assembling that, there was a part of me that goes, I think I'm doing this more from a history standpoint so that when I get old, I can go back to that episode and go, I remember that. But I did have some people say they thought that was really interesting. So who knows?But in some cases, we're just including things that nobody wants or needs, so that's always kind of fun.I love what Steve brought up because, again, we work with words and we want words to mean something, and we wanted to make it clear so that people understand. My biggest whole pet peeve about the YouTube thing is it messes up our reports when they go, oh, it'd be like saying, hey, you know what?The number one place to watch Game Boy games is on a Game Boy. There you go. That's a good example. Because where else are you going to watch a Game Boy? Can you take a Game Boy? I'm not a gamer.Can you take a Game Boy cartridge and put it into an Xbox? I don't think so.So when they say the number one place to consume, you know, a YouTube podcast, to use Kim's term, is on YouTube, you go, yeah, it's the only place you can get it. I'm again, I should never even sniff that topic. I can't help but expand. But we don't want to waste their time.And that doesn't mean you can't have chit chat. I believe you should put that later in the episode. I was listening to a show the other day. They had a nice title.I wanted to hear about what was in the title. And instead of getting to the point, they started talking about their favorite songs. And I was like, wait, what?Like, that's not even close to what the title is about. And they went on for a bit. Now that's a fine conversation to have. Just not in the front. Put that towards the back where your super fans are.So I can't really add to the list. You guys have the same pet peeves I do. Here are some solutions for bad audio quality. We really shouldn't have that anymore.There are so many tools like auphonic. I'll put a link to that out in the show notes again, Remember, today is 1026. So schoolofpodcasting.com 1026, there's that one.There is Waves, Voice Regen, there's Adobe, they have their enhanced product. There's so many ways to clean up bad audio. And bad audio to me is built by using the built in microphone from your laptop.And I know there are people go, oh, it's good enough for Zoom. Yeah, I agree. I 100% agree. However, this isn't Zoom. It's a recording meant to go out to the public as a podcast.And so I don't want you to sound like you're in a fishbowl in a bathroom frying bacon. So keep that in mind. There are solutions for this and the whole tell us a little bit about yourself.The solution for that is do the work, do your research. Listen to a couple episodes of that person. I talked about this a couple episodes ago where I was interviewing Jaina Marie from Big Lash Energy.Long story short, I forgot about it.And I had chatgpt spit out some questions and they weren't bad questions, but after I listened to her episode, I was like, oh, no, no, no, we're not using these questions because I didn't know what I didn't know. Do the work. If you're interviewing an author, read the book.And as someone who has a book available at profitfromyourpodcast.com hey, just another quick tangent here. The autograph books are now back in. I just got a new box.So if you want an autographed version, I will open that box, sign one to you, and mail it away. But if you have somebody on your show that wrote a book, read the book, and you're like, but that takes time. To which I go, and yes.Anything else you got there? Yeah, it takes time. Good content doesn't happen. I don't care how much AI you throw at. Doesn't happen without a little bit of work.And that work usually involves time. And if you don't have time, then hire a team to do the work. That's what all the Jimmies do on the late night TVs.They basically hire somebody to read the book and then explain, here's the highlights of the book, here's some potential questions. And then the good interviewers are really good at listening.So those are some things and some solutions you can do to, you know, not push your audience away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Todd the Gator

The school of podcasting.

Dave Jackson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna save this for next week. I'm gonna throw it in here the there's a way that you can hack your iPhone right now to update early.And the new version has this whole HLS video thing, which I have in my brain concluded that this is a feature not wanted by the audience. But then again, we didn't want an ipod either back in the day. And then we loved them. And I think it's really more of an advertising thing.And they are reporting that right now there are about 48. John Spurlock put this out, who's a total nerd geek guy that's into stats. He does OP3 stats.And then if you're wondering, because remember this number one, you. You almost have to create. Well, you don't have to create. And that's the whole thing. This is the epitome of it depends if you turn your podcast.And when I say podcast here, I mean podcast, not a YouTube podcast. This is a real RSS one. And the crazy scientist that is Sam Sethi at TrueFans FM is the first person to put a price on it. And he has.Now, he's a totally different business model. You pay for what you. I would say download, but he's counting streams.And he is saying on his website at TrueFans FM, 30 bucks a month to stream one terabyte, which is an estimated 50,000 plays if you want to do video.And of course, because it's Sam, all the podcasting 2.0 stuff and all the alternate enclosure and all that without really digging into it, anytime there's a new feature, Sam tends to implement it into both now his hosting and True Fans the app. So that is starting to roll out.It's not something I'm going to be jumping into because remember, the 30 bucks a month does not include the amount of money that Apple is going to charge you when you dynamically insert an ad into your video. It's also kind of a bummer now that if you are doing a video podcast, you will have to upload it to Spotify and then you have to use.This is the weird one about this whole thing.You'll have to use one of their approved media hosts and two of the hosts that have been doing video the longest, Libsyn and Blueberry, have yet to be added to the list of approved hosts. So that could be another hurdle if you're on one of those platforms. I also think in the terms of like, wow, that's weird.Libsyn updated their interface and put out zero, as in nada, zip. They put out nothing about the fact that they updated their interface to look A lot like their interface from 2008 with a much cleaner look.So that's coming. And John Spurlock, who is the guy behind OP3 stats. So if you want more stats, because, you know, why not? You can sign up for OP3 stats.Links will be in the show notes. And he did a quick look and I trust him because he's way off the charts in terms of geek and nerd dom.And I think he said there were somewhere around 40 shows, maybe close to 50 shows that are actually video podcasts ready to go.So it's going to be interesting to see when this actually rolls out to everybody, where you don't have to, you know, do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around to get your iPhone to update to this new version when that comes out, if anybody jumps on it. Because this might have been like, hey, here's a feature. And everybody went, yay, hls video. And then nobody used it.I'm dying to see what's going to happen with this. It could be a big thing that maybe I'm just missing it because it's an extra expense. We'll see. So that's the latest news.Also, I should say that buzzsprout, since we're talking hosting. Buzzsprout just announced they rolled out voicemail. And I'll just put my pod page hat on. Their voicemail is a minute.Pod Pages voicemail is 2 minutes. They rolled out free transcripts now. And if you want to, if you're somebody, you have to be on one of their new plans.So they did raise their prices again. Again. Remember, AI stands for always increase. So when you add AI to something, your bill's gonna go up.There's no way around that one unless you want the company to just go out of business. But your transcripts are free and you can actually go into your old episodes and click a button and it will import your old.You know, it'll make a new transcript for that.And then the other new thing that they just announced is they're the only company I know that has a button that you can click and send the host of the show a text message. And they've now updated that to where the host can text you back, which is kind of cool. I'm getting ready to roll out a course or update.The course is what I should say on podcast media hosting companies. And it's really interesting trying to figure out the unique things of each one because they all do a lot of the same stuff.They do tend to in some cases. I remember There was one host that said, you're copyright protected. We help you with that. And I'm like, yeah, they all do that.And when we syndicate your show to Apple and Spotify, yeah, they. They all do that. Which kind of leads me to next week's episode.And I have been doing a lot of research on different things, and this is what I kind of call one of those podcast stew episodes where it's about podcasting. But in fact, I just heard another clip, and I'm like, that's going into Stew.And so, in regards to next week, what if the reason your podcast hasn't exploded is also the reason it could last?I mean, what if being a thousand people's favorite show is actually a better business, a better brand, and a better creative life than being known by 20,000 casual listeners? You can go out to schoolofpodcasting.com follow and follow the show, and never miss an episode. I'm Dave Jackson.I've been helping podcasters for over 20 years. I can't wait to see what we're going to do together. And until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend right now. Yeah.