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- 400 Hundred Episodes In & Here’s What I’ve Learned
400 Hundred Episodes In & Here’s What I’ve Learned
Christy Pritchard
May 08, 2024
Table of Contents
Latest News: This Week marks Episode 400 of the Sound Off Podcast. I started the show back in June of 2016 creating one episode nearly every week. Here’s what I have learned so far…
I Can’t Do it Alone: Within the first 5 episodes, I knew I needed help. The shows did not sound the way I wanted. They sounded low in the car and they lacked professional mixing and mastering. So I hired an audio pro. (Hello Evan!!!) Today we have people that help with editing, (Thanks Aidan!) Reels, and this newsletter. (Thanks Christy!)
Soundcloud is horrible place to host a podcast: About 20 episodes in, Mark Ramsay told me about all the phony downloads and bots that skewed the download numbers. We got the hell out of there. Since then, Soundcloud never updated their Apple Podcast categories so if you are still there – RUN like Mexican water through a Canadian tourist.
Releasing Consistently is worth 20% of the Marks: I should have known this from my radio days when some of the most average of talent would succeed by simply showing up for work everyday. Once Aaron Mahnke (Lore) encouraged me to be considerate of the audience and release consistently, we saw our audience jump 25 percent over the course of a year. If you want to become part of someone’s media schedule – you need to be consistent.
Dynamic Audio Insertion allowed the podcast to make money: Around the time we were bailing on Soundcloud – we got our first sponsor, NLogic. They are still with us today. However, half our audience was American and NLogic is for Canadian media companies. Enter Art19 who have Dynamic audio insertion, and now midroll position 1 could become Megatrax in the USA, and NLogic in Canada – allowing us to be paid twice and get the most of our ad positions.
Podcast should not sound like radio: Jeff Schmidt has produced some of the most incredible podcasts. He said our episodes were over compressed, loud and noisy. Since that moment in Philadelphia, we have been creating a headphone experience for our listeners. We speak to the listener – not at the listeners.
Artwork Really Matters: We have had three different pieces of show artwork. The first one had a microphone in which was dumb because we were like every other dummy who had a microphone in their artwork. Have a look at the top shows – there are no microphones in the artwork. Steven Spielberg does not have a movie reel on Raiders of the Lost Ark promo posters. The only reason mics are in podcast artwork because the low end graphic designers on Fiverr who think that’s what podcast artwork needs to look like. We have been doing this since day 1, but we noticed that once Amazon, Spotify and later Apple supported episode artwork.
Do Video – if you can do video: It helps… but it’s not necessary. We are doing it because we are in the podcast business and need to speak to it. However, it is costly and your podcast’s success does not hinge on whether or not you do video.
Transcription is a necessary pain in the ass: I’ve had one request for a transcript in 400 episodes, but It helps with SEO and the technology is there – so we do it. We wasted $$ on two transcription companies that went broke.
There are lots of sponsorship opportunities outside of midrolls and prerolls: You can sponsor the transcription, the website, the promos, the YouTube page… it’s more than just midrolls and pre-rolls.
Make It Easy for Guests to appear on your show: We use Schedule Once to make it easy for people to get in touch with us. You can also use Calendly. It saves us time and cuts down on the back and forth time zone and scheduling nonsense.
It’s a long game – stat checking daily is for the crazies: I only pass judgement on episodes after 30 days and the podcast overall after 90 days. People have lives – they are living them. At best, your podcast is apart of their lives.
The best metric is your consumption: Downloads are nice but they are just that. Seeing how many people are getting through your show will tell you if your show is any good.
STOP DOING THIS!
Stop telling me that your show has 500,000 downloads.
Per episode, per week, per year, per quarter?
You mean you HAD 500,000 downloads.
500,000 downloads doesn’t tell anyone anything. 500k downloads might be bad if the show is a true crime podcast that has been publishing for 10 years. But if it’s a show about basket-weaving that has been active for 2 years – it’s a bona fide hit.
You could also be on Soundcloud and have more bots than people checking out your show.
Best Thing I Heard This Week…
After I tweeted this picture out:
Jordan Heath-Rawlings told me there was an episode of the Big Story that explains all this: Listen here!
(Pic is linked for full viewing pleasure)
But Wait, There’s more…Latest Show Info!
So this is episode 400. I'm never really sure if as podcasters we are supposed to celebrate these milestones publicly; I have never heard a listener tell anyone that "you need to listen to Episode 100 of" any podcast ever. But I have heard them say, "Did you check out the episode with [insert relevant person here]"?
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