Balancing Passion and Logic in Podcasting: Strategies for Success

0:00 Ask the podcast coach for April 27, 2024. There it is. It's that music. That means it's Saturday. It's time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Cullison from the average guy dot tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy? Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. I am marking myself safe from the great tornado breakouts in Omaha, Nebraska. Yesterday, we had, I don't know, 50 tornadoes or something like that touchdown.

0:42 Yeah. Yeah. All the all the activities west of me. We did have one land, in the airport nearby, which is not not too far from me and then one right across the river. So lots of notes from folks. Thank you for checking in on me. But, here in Bellevue, very, very safe and ready to do some ask the podcast coach. Excellent. Yeah. I saw that last night where there was something. For whatever reason, I still occasionally go to yahoo dotcom. Like, it's a, it's still there. And and, b, I was just surprised that I'm being told my audio level is too low. There we go. We'll boost that up, and will also boost me up over here. Thank you so much for that. Mister Ralph from ask ask ralphpodcast.com. And, but, yeah, I saw the, the tornadoes. And, of course, because it's mainstream media, they have, like, the world's worst picture of just destruction in this giant gob of No. That was bad. It was bad. Like, there's some spots. We saw some drone footage, and it's it's bad out west. I I I feel for those folks. So Omaha is a great community. They'll be well taken care of. We're all gonna be okay here. Another round coming today, so, hopefully, things will be fine. But well, you know what you know what helps when things are going crazy and and, you know, there's disasters all around? That's right. A steaming hot cup of Jaffa. Exactly. And, of course, that awesome coffee pour is brought to you by our 1 and our one friend. Yeah. We only have one friend. That's the way it works.

2:11 He's a really good friend and that is Mark from podcastbranding.co. One of the coolest things about Mark is, a, he's a podcaster. He's made easily over 200 artwork for people. And then if you go into websites, check out congressional dish.com. That's the one I know that Mark did, The Real Brian Show. So if you want a whole website, he's got that. If you want to just look good, it's super simple. Podcastbranding.co. And the beauty of it because Mark is a podcaster, he's gonna sit down with you and really make sure that your show, is matched to your artwork, and you don't have to do the whole explaining what a podcast is. And you're just not gonna get that kind of personalized attention from somebody on Fiverr or, you know, if you go to a graphic artist and they don't know what a podcast is they're gonna give you something that's, I don't know, a rectangle. They don't know that it's a square, and they don't know all the size measurements and the requirements. It's just gonna take all the headache out of it. Check him out. Podcastbranding.co.

3:24 Big thanks to our good friend, Dan Lefebvre, over there based on a true story, based on a true story podcast.com This week on his podcast, Troy, which was a great movie, by the way, if you the well, the ending was a little wonky. But the most of the movie that's Brad Pitt. Right? So you wanna make sure you've Okay. You you could check that out. And then this week in history, Chernobyl, which happened this week, 1986, I was getting ready to join the military. I would go to basic training, AIT, and I would land in Germany in December of 86. And, of course, some of those areas I'm not gonna say the radiation was high, but it was detectable. And Wow. There wasn't a lot of news. There wasn't a ton of news about it in those days. Anyways, check it out based on a true story podcast.com. Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. Yeah. You get a little nervous. That is based on a true story. Yeah. That is. But we listen. We had no idea. When we got there, nobody knew what was going on at Chernobyl. Like, remember, there was a gigantic, you know, iron curtain between Yeah. Yeah. Eastern Europe and Western Europe. And there's a different day. Cold war was in full effect, and there just wasn't a lot of news coming out of Ukraine in those days. And, you know, I remember even in 87 them saying them publishing maps of saying, well, the Soviets are saying it's not as bad as we think it is, but here's all the evidence Right. That says it's bad. And and so it was it was there's there you can go back and look and and see the

4:55 fields, but it kinda interesting. We found a wolf that's glowing in the dark. We don't think that's normal. Yeah. Dan says, yeah, detectable radiation is too high. It is. And it was. And there were there were I mean, it was a it was a disaster. I I not ironically and not even coincidentally, but the wildlife there I mean, if you wanna see how we would recover from an apocalypse, from a nuclear apocalypse, that's kind of a a good example. Fukushima will be in the same kind of in the same boat. Right? That when when the earthquake came and wiped out the nuclear reactor there, it not as bad. I think we thought it would be a barren wasteland for 1000 of years. Will humans wanna ever live there? Probably not Yeah. In in the near future. 20, 30000 years, probably. But, interesting story, nonetheless. And I I got to live through part of it. Wow. Fun. And I'm I don't know if, I'm assuming because there are a few yeah.

5:54 Not a lot of tourism going there right now. The interesting thing I think I'm guessing there are a bunch of movies about Chernobyl. I'm assuming he's Yeah. Talking about the one on Hulu. That was really, really good. It was like a 3 or 4 part sir series. It was really, really cool. So awesome. I have a a very strange question. I saw this today and was like, because Dave's always, you know, hey. Go start a podcast. And I was like, well, there is this one. He says he he just said I'm another noob. This is alright. So I had no intention of starting a podcast. However, I've been looking for relatable content in a niche and see no creators. That's kind of a good sign sometimes.

6:34 If you're like, oh, wait. Nobody's making the the podcast that I was looking for. So maybe I'll make one. He says, so now I'm feeling compelled to start a podcast. I'd like to do this in the simplest way while making something worth listening to. What tips or advice do you have someone for someone who is somewhat falling into this? I feel like I'm taking on something really big, but I want to enjoy it. And as I read this now the 3rd time, I'm not having the same reaction because he said, I'm feeling compelled to start a podcast. I somehow missed that, but my actual reaction to him was maybe you shouldn't start a podcast. And the reason for that is when I see people to me, there are and this is probably gonna be a future episode of The School of Podcasting because you've got the people that are a 100% passionate, and then you have the other people who are, like, a 100% logical. Like, is this the niche? How many total people would ever listen to this? Like, they're really getting into just the logic side of it. Is this a smart thing to do? And I think you need to be about 55% passion so that you have enough, like, I must do this, and 45% helps you then steer it in the right direction so that you're not just going, I don't care. Just give me that microphone there, and let's hit this. And whoever like, the passion part needs a little steering sometimes.

7:56 But as I read this, I I when I originally read it, I was, like, I don't think this guy should start a podcast because he didn't I didn't hear I didn't see the word compelled. I somehow skipped that or something because that is kinda one of the feelings you need that I must do this. What did you think, Jim, when you when I read that? Did it did it sound like he had enough to I mean, it's hard to tell, you know, from It is. Yeah. It is. And, you know, the first, 6 to 8 weeks are kinda the key on all this. Right? It's thinking, like, can we make it through? Because you you get in, and then you start doing the work. And we all know. Listen. Everybody's listening to this show probably as 1 or 2 podcasts, and they know the deal. And so it takes you know, you gotta kinda get beyond those first 8 weeks to say, like, oh, yeah. This is actually more work.

8:48 Because you think the fun part, you know, all the interaction with your audience and kinda that that dopamine hit that you get when you no. You know, when I hear the music to this show, little dopamine is released in my body. That's why we dance. Right? We dance out the dopamine. But you gotta get beyond that into, oh, I gotta show notes. I gotta, you know, I gotta do the editing. I gotta handle the trolls. I gotta get the naysayers. I gotta get past the 1st week when I get 10 downloads. And, you know, you're like so I I think in this in a case like this, if you're thinking about it, give it a try. Yeah. Like, just give it a try. I do the I think a lot of folks, maybe a lot of folks go this direction, do the audio first for sure. Because if you don't like doing the audio in the end, it's it's all that. Right? So get a bunch of those done. Don't worry about all the other stuff that podcasting brings to you. Just make sure you like this part of it, the recording part of it, and maybe some editing. Right? And then and then go from there. Yeah. Todd the Gator says, you gotta do it for the love of the topic. Yeah. That's definitely true. And he said, there are other things I'm compelled to do, like, I don't know, a job. And he said, are you one of those? But, yeah, I know one of the members of the school of podcasting is doing a show for dog groomers, and she's getting a little crispy on the outside. And that's where sometimes I think you have to identify what part of this do I not like doing, and then get rid of it if you can. So, like, I'll give you an example. I don't hate

10:19 doing it, but I currently do the editing for the future of podcasting. That's a show I do with me and Daniel. It's fairly easy to edit. There's not really much edits to it, but it's just one of those things we're going through and pulling it in and leveling. And it's just and it doesn't it's just one of those things where I was like, you know what? And, Daniel, what happens is I kept missing our publish date. Like, I would get it done by Monday and think, oh, I gotta do now is the show notes, and it'll be done. And then Wednesday would roll around, and I'd be like, oh, crap. I never did the show notes. And so we're gonna export that to, the one and only John Domingo in the chat room. He's gonna do the editing, and then I'll probably do the show notes when it comes in, But it's just gonna take this much off my plate. And that's all I need to make not that I hate that show also. It's, the biggest reason I do that show is I get to hang out with my buddy, Daniel. And, we get to talk we geek out on podcast. In fact, the, the next episode, the kind of, see, I told you, Jim. I I made my mic a little lower, so I'm not covering my face. Yeah. Your your hands are gonna hang up.

11:18 And I'm gonna bang the crap out of this. Yeah. Yes. You are. But to, to kinda change the subject a little bit is it's also interesting on that show because we we've talked a lot of times about having a co host and knowing your role. And on that show, I'm very happy being what I affectionately refer to as aunt Cheryl. Like, I am the voice of the person that doesn't get this stuff. And Daniel is way up here, and he's up to his neck in the technology and JSON files and activity pub. And so our last episode, we did one episode for people like Daniel that that are up to the neck and the tech. And I was like, yeah. But, like, I still didn't understand a single thing you guys said in that episode. So the one that's coming out Wednesday is me going, so it's kinda like this, because you know me. I love my analogies. I'm like, give me an analogy to wrap my head around this technology.

12:13 So we kinda did that. So it's it's interesting on that show because I am the guy that is representing the, you know, the average person that isn't a giant nerd, And then Daniel's job is to keep feeding me stuff until eventually I get it. So it's always kind of fun. When I saw somebody also had another question that, and we'll do this again just for fun. How do I if I'm doing a podcast with 4 people, like, how do I do that? And if they're all in the same room, if you're on a budget, PodTrak P4 from Zoom, that's under $200. If you have a budget, then throw in the RODEcaster DUO, which I don't know what that thing runs. I wanna say 500, maybe 400. It's not cheap, but it's got more bells and whistles and things like that. And, yeah, speaking of mister Jamango, he says, I record my Brand X podcast so I can eat lunch and day drink with this this cohost. There you go. Another reason because of my podcast. I get to day drink. That's a that's a fun reason. Tim said, I was on a team's call yesterday at work with the upper management person talking about something unrelated to podcasting, and I talked about our internal podcast and found out she listened to them. What do you know? People are actually listening to the podcast. What? What? Are you No. At work? No. It is funny because working now a little closer with Rob Walsh who deals with all these private podcasts for companies, and the stats are not great. I don't know exactly what they were, but if you have a 100 people, you're not gonna have a

13:46 100 people listening to your podcast. Not everybody wants to hear about the numbers and all that other fun stuff that, comes with the internal podcast. But Well, it's it is interesting. I mean, my podcast could at work could be an internal podcast in in that sense. And we talk about our own products and what we do. And and I was in a meeting the other day, and somebody was like, I just wish I knew more about what you were doing. And I was like, it's public. Yeah. Like, literally, at any point in time, not figuratively, literally, you can go out and watch or listen to any of it, and it's all right there. I mean, there's just just no secret. So but it it does take, I mean, it it does take a big commitment, I admit.

14:31 I mean, we produce 3 or 4 different kinds of podcasts at Gallup, and I don't get a chance to listen to every single second of every single one. I mean, it just takes the ones I make, of course, I'm at, so I know more about them than than the others. But it is it when you think, yeah, when you think internally, Dave, I think the numbers sometimes are similar to our the the number that we talk about about feedback. Like, if you're gonna get feedback from your audience and you ask for a survey, you're gonna get roughly 3 on the low end of 5% over participation rate on things like that on the back end. 3 to 5%. So 3 or 5 and a 100 are gonna respond to you. Though I don't know if those numbers change internally when you're doing it. Like, if you're gonna do this for an organization, I think sometimes we think we're writing these big emails or these big communication blasts internally, and we think, oh, our employees are gonna be so excited about them, and then nobody reads them. And you're like, oh, what do we do all this work for? So I think the I think the stats are are the same. And sometimes, I mean, this I'm under a little bit of, scrutiny. That's probably not the right word, but I've been podcasting for 9, 10 years at Gallup for the first. It kinda goes in cycles, but right now I'm in a review cycle. And everybody's like, I think you should do it this way, and I think you should do it that way. And it it's tough to be patient sometimes. You're like, well, that's not really the that's not really the way podcasts are done. But okay. Appreciate your feedback. You know? Yeah. Go ahead. I used to love back in the day before podcasts,

16:04 I was the editor of the student newsletter at my college, and so I just had, like, newsletter fever. Yet I was working in a restaurant, and so I said, hey. We should make a newsletter because everybody's bored on their break. We could give them something to read. And they're like, that's a great idea. And everybody's like, yeah, we can all do this. And yay. And the first one came out and was great because everybody chimed in and then not so much on the second and third, and then it became, oh, that thing that Dave does. It wasn't really internal things. Yeah. Well, the hard part, I think, is and this is with any feedback, whether it's internal or external. What do you do with it? You know? Yeah. Yeah. I I and I listen. I talk about this, but sometimes I am the I I don't respond to it. I need to get better at just saying, yep. I hear you and not say anything.

16:51 I hear you. I hear your feedback. I appreciate that. And because I'm I have a tendency to to want to say, I hear you, but and then I go off, you know, on a this is why what you're saying is wrong. That's that's not the right way to take feedback. I I need to learn better to shut my mouth, take the feedback, then go do what needs to be done. And sometimes, I know this is gonna sound weird, they're right. Yeah. The feedback is right. Wait. What? Oh, that's a tough pill to swallow. Yeah. But it is it is right. They're what they're saying is right, and and you need to that's why in the moment, it's just best not to say anything because you may just put your foot farther in your mouth. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Tim does 5 for his company that he works for. He says our but our internal stats are meh. Our external stats are decent. Unfortunately, promotion is inconsistent. Yeah. That's, that's kind of a tricky one because you do have to let people it's like that one person said to you and you're like, it's public. You know? But it's, Yeah. Secret. Here's a secret. It's public. Yeah. You know, you you can go listen to it or watch it anytime any anytime you want. It's available for you. You know? So you don't have to I know. But can you just tell me? Well, you could just go listen. I listen. As a podcaster, I have a lot more respect for someone who brings back examples from the podcast and says, hey, during this podcast at this time, you did this. I'd I'd really appreciate it if you didn't

18:22 or do more of that kind of thing. Then someone who sees a general concept and is and or it just hasn't even paid attention for the most part, then you're kinda like, I don't I you know, it's hard for me to take that kind of feedback knowing you haven't participated in it at all. I still should and I will, but it's it means less to me because the the person just hasn't engaged you know, it's like someone who's never driven a car trying to give you driving instructions. Right. Right? Well, that's And you're like That's that's one of the fun things is when somebody goes, you know what you need to do for the school of podcasting is you could should create a segment where where, like, people talk about the benefits of podcasting. And you're like, oh, kinda like a because of my podcast story, and they go, that would be amazing. And you go, yeah. I've been doing that for 4 years.

19:10 Like, it's like, thank you for proving that you aren't listening to my show. So that's always fun. Dan says, I used to produce an internal video news letter for clients, then they found out a lot of people didn't wanna watch it outside of work. They wanted to leave work at work. Yeah. This was the one thing I made was meant to, like, hey. Because literally, our our break room was a desk at the bottom of the stairs. There there was no, like, room. It was this really tiny building that we lived in. It was a a car hop. So most of our, quote, restaurant was a parking lot, you know, for people to park on. And so you'd sit there for 15 minutes looking at the clock. And we're, like, well, because there were no this is weird to think, man. There were no cell phones yet. Like, you know what I mean? Not that you would play on.

19:56 Like, if you had a phone, it was a flip phone, but Yeah. You know, aside from You listened to the radio. Right? Yeah. That's what you did. You you you pushed the buttons on the dial so you could listen, you know, you could listen to the radio. I think, you know, we think about this idea of work. Right? Gallup splits. We have we have blenders and splitters. Right? We we categorize workers. Some take work and life and blend it all up together, and they would rather spread that across the day than not have a separate beginning and end to their work day. And then there's those who wanna begin at a certain time and end a certain time, leave work at work. They want that very separate, and both are okay. There's no one that's better than the other. Right? And I think when it comes to communication in the way we do it, and I think this applies to podcasters in a lot of ways, We think our podcast is the only part that for some where people listen. Why didn't you just listen to my podcast?

20:50 And I think, actually, if we create multimodes for them. In other words, so we get a podcast, and then we we we may we do good show notes with it. And we talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you gotta talk about it in groups, whether they're Discord groups or Facebook groups or whatever. But I think you have to be constantly talking about those messages. And I think when we think of internal corporate communication, think sometimes we think we send an email, and that's good enough. And it's really not because some people read emails. Some people listen to things. We gotta talk about them in meetings and some of those kinds of things. So don't forget with your podcast I mean, you can. You you only have so much time, so pick the most effective one or the most effective channels. But I think you have to have to remember, you have to constantly be talking about this in in multiple modes because not everybody's the same. Right? Yeah. Not everybody's the same. Well, I know a lot of my podcast that I listen to in my app, I'm like, keep the latest episode. And if it's a weekly show, that means I got 7 days to listen to that episode before. And, again, it's always there in the feed. But in terms of having it downloaded, ready to go, I've got 7 days to do that. And so Libsyn, for their show, the feed, they put it out, I think, on a Monday. I'm not sure exactly what day it is. But then on Wednesday, they'll send a newsletter that says, hey, here's what we talked about in the feed. And I'll be like, oh, yeah. I saw that. I need to go listen to that. And that's one even before I worked at Libsyn, I listened to the feed. And I always like it because both Rob and Elsie have a completely

22:21 different view in many cases. Like, there's some, it's like air tag or air something, but there's basically somebody's coming out with and it's funny because this is how Anchor started. An audio version of Twitter where it's asynchronous. So you basically post audio, and then other people can post audio. Right now, it's invite only, but they let Elsie know because she's the the head of our community over there and a lot of education stuff. And so they were taught so it's always interesting the the stuff you find out about that that you're like, didn't know that was a thing. And then you're it's also kind of fun going, oh, yeah. That's been tried before. And it it's it's not Clubhouse. It's not Twitter. It's audio Twitter, but it what happens is there's like, what's the business model? Like, how is that supposed to and it's kind of back to somebody who got some VC money in there. They just wanna play in the podcasting space. Yeah. Or they think differently. They think, like, hey. Here's another way. Although, sometimes, you know, again, we get into this we get into this trap of, like, there's just one way to do things, and that never really works out well. There's always there's always multiple different ways to get to to get the end result. And I think the the person I mean, there there might be a a main mode, and you might prioritize your time towards that. But if we're if we're really good with the other ways too of letting people because they everybody learns a little bit different. Yeah. Well, that's true. That's the whole, you know, the teacher in me. Some people like to read. Some people like to

23:53 watch. Then some people only really learn it when they do it. So Yeah. Well, I'd have to be super patient in a community as big as ours. I've gotta be super patient. People ask me employees ask me all the time, how do you put up with that? It's like the same questions over and over and over. I'm not talking about this show. I'm talking about the communities that because we we debut and I suffer the same. Like, there's only so many topics to talk about in podcasting. So you end up covering the same things just from different angles. But that's the job because you have new people coming in all the time. And so if you get frustrated with the new people, they'll just go away. You know? Listen. Those old people that you have in your groups or that have been around your podcast a while, they asked those questions too when they were brand new.

24:36 It's just you were excited to have them then, so you answered those questions. But now you're tired of answering those same questions. And you're like, could they not just no. They can't. They they they're gonna post, and they wanna know. And they, yeah, they could go to the FAQ, or they could they ask for support for a company on Facebook when they should just contact the company. Yeah. Right? But that's, I mean, that they're they're just they're they're reaching out. Right? And we just need to I think we need to be more patient than we are. We, being the royal, we need to be more patient. Did I use that? Right? We, being everybody Yeah. Needs to just be more patient with it. Yeah. You, you mentioned that. I saw this morning on Facebook somebody asking a very specific Libsyn question, and they're like, hey. Because Libsyn has discontinued our WordPress plugin.

25:28 And they we recommend now. It's like, this is what we tell like, oh, okay. We we're getting rid of this, but here's the replacement. And it's a, if you go to Google and type in RSS importer second line, second as in s e c o n d, like second line. It's the same company that makes second line themes, and they have this cool plugin. And then you can import your stuff into WordPress. So every time you publish on Libsyn, it'll go out and check and and pull that information over. But I was like, why are you asking about this in a Facebook group? You should ask Libsyn, hey, you discontinued your plug in. What's the deal? And we could go, oh, and there's a tutorial that I made that says here's how you install it. Here's how you do this.

26:08 Put your RSS feed in and you're done. So, yeah, don't ask. Not that not that all people on Facebook are in fact, they're not bad. Because people suggested some other plugins and it was just like, yeah, you might wanna if you have a question about Buzzsprout, go to Buzzsprout. If you have a question about Captivate, go to Captivate. It's kind of interesting that people go to Facebook. Because again, I see many times, like, a blatantly wrong answer. I'm like, no. Yeah. Yeah. But but it's our opportunity. In those cases, it's our opportunity to say and I I have to you know, I run big enough groups that the wrong answers appear. And I have to say, actually Yeah. The answer and they know they know I you know, I have I work for the company.

26:49 So, actually and so you have to be both patient with the person asking the question and the person who answered it wrong. Right. Because you don't wanna alienate them. They may have just been repeating the last thing that they heard. In in some situations, you know, remember when all of the that's what would be a good example. Maybe it was during the Blab days when all these on demand video things were coming out, and everybody was trying to figure it out. All these questions about things. There's an example going on right now where Facebook has killed the incoming videos for groups. Yep. Right? And there's been all kinds of questions out there about that in the Facebook groups of how do I do this, and how do I use RTMP, and I don't know how to do this. Right? And I think the the we have to be patient with all of those those people and and say and not say, and I see this all the time.

27:40 You know? Or just go can you just go back and read the you know, go back and search and go back. Yeah. I I no. They should. They should. Right? But they're they're in a they're in a jam right now, and they're they're trying to figure out how to get this done. As the yesterday, which is crazy. Yesterday, as these tornadoes were happening, there's parents who are posting on Facebook. The school's locked down. Right? They they were like, hey. It there's you know, tornadoes have been sighted in the area. We're locking we have your children. They're safe. We're we're keeping we have they're in the shelters and all the way. You know, we're built for that. Right? This isn't this isn't the first tornado we've had in Omaha, Nebraska. Right? So so but parents are going to Facebook and, like, asking questions. Like, why can't the schools release my kids? You know? And, you know, you you you want to say Yeah. It's not the appropriate place for that. But at that time, they're just panicked.

28:36 Yeah. Right? And and somebody we just we need to sometimes display a little bit of patience. Yeah. It's hard. It's super hard. It's harder than podcasting. That's what I'm gonna say. It's absolutely harder than podcasting. Yeah. Rich is saying, I was talking about that audio Twitter. Is that AirChat? I believe that is the name of it. I haven't I I just heard on the feed that it was invite only, and I was like, well, if I can get an invite, that'd be great. I'd love to play with it. I can go over and hopefully get there before the other 8,000,000 Dave Jacksons get there so I can get my name. But, you know, will I use it? I don't know. And then Randy says the only downside of using the second line importer or really any other importer is it uses the default WordPress player and that sucks. And that is true. It's very, very basic, but it's better than nothing. And I just, I'm not a 100% sure why they discontinued it. I just know the the fun part of WordPress is everybody's website is different.

29:34 Every like, I know it's WordPress, and I know there are standards for plugins, and they're all supposed to play nicey nice together, but they don't. And so we we just kept having a giant list of things that this is not compatible with. And then everybody started using, and that's just WordPress. Then you throw in Elementor and Divi and something WPBakery and all these, and then you go, oh, well, now you have to pull the embed code and put it in the HTML. And they're like, why doesn't it just work directly? I'm like, because that's not WordPress. Like, it's WordPress, but you've basically put a different operating system on top of WordPress. And so I just know it was always anytime you got a WordPress ticket, it was like, Ugh, WordPress ticket. Because have and and then people people would give me their login name and password to their website. I'm like, don't do that.

30:25 Like, a, we wouldn't log in because we don't wanna be remotely responsible if something goes wrong with your website, and we would immediately email back and go, thank you so much. Please delete that or change it because, like, we we don't want that. So Daniel says a nice thing about using the WordPress audio player is that it's really easy to find another plugin that automatically replaces the vanilla players. Yeah. I use, oh, Annie Mora. Simple Simple Press. Simple podcast press. Something. Yeah. We're terrible. Sorry, Hannah. Yeah. Hi, Annie. Sorry. The PHP version 8 seems to be the issue with the Libsyn plug in and the final blow. Plug in would force the site to crash.

31:06 Yeah. That's always a problem. And so yeah. I'm not sure. Again, I just woke up the one day, and they're like, hey. We're not supporting this anymore. And I'm like, oh, yay. I was actually ecstatic. I was like, no more WordPress issues. So that was, but yeah. Here's a fun question. This and we'll do that. And and it's kind of a simple question, but I was like, Alright. Is advertising on other podcasts effective? He goes, I was thinking about purchasing a mid roll ad space on another podcast. The, the audience would align with the interest of my show, and they have almost 5 50,000 downloads a month. First of all, well, we'll get to that. Monthly stats are crap. The host has agreed to give my show an introduction and run my prerecorded clip. The question I have, has anyone done this, and do they find they got a lot more foot traffic? Tell me the trade off. So first things first, monthly stats are crap. And by that, what I mean is so let's I'll give you an example. The School of Podcasting, 60% of the downloads in April 2024 are from things not released in April 2024 because I have 927 episodes that people are downloading. So when you see monthly stats, that is the number 4 of your episodes. Going back to the when you started, if somebody like, my first one was back in, April of 2005.

32:32 If somebody downloads that episode, it counts in April 2024 stats. So monthly stats are crap because you're like, holy cow. They've got 10,000 downloads a month. They only do a weekly show. That's 2,500 downloads an episode. No. No. It's not. So you you need to know how many downloads they get per episode after 30 days. And then realize that no matter what they tell you, they're lying. Like, 99.9 percent of the time, they're going to lie. And we run into this with what was the the artist formerly known as advertise cast, where people would say, oh, yeah. We get 10,000 downloads a month or whatever. And then they come over from SoundCloud, and you're like, no. Sorry, but no. So but to get to the the question here about is it is it effective? Well, first things first.

33:23 Why are you doing this? And so if the answer is I wanna have fun. I just wanna talk about bass fishing. Okay. Well, are you making any money with your podcast? Well, no. That's why we're doing this. We're trying to grow the audience. Okay. Great. Do you have a budget for this that if you spend $500 on this, that you're not gonna go, oh, wait. Where's the money for the house payment? Like, that's not what you wanna do in that situation. But for me, it's it's the most effective because if I wanna go fishing, right, I could grab my pole and I could stand out in the street. But there aren't many fish in the street. Have you ever noticed that, Jim? There aren't that many fish. There are not. If there were, they smell.

34:07 Yeah. And so you wanna go where the water is, because typically, that's where fish are. And so, yeah, there are things like you could send out postcards, and you could do a billboard. And you could do, you know, you could advertise in the paper, all sorts of different ways you could promote. You could even advertise on TV. The question is, are those people that drove by the billboard that saw it in the newspaper, the do they listen to podcasts? And the answer is, we don't know. However, if you can somehow advertise on or promo swap or something like that with another podcast, you know a 100% of those people listen to podcast. So if you want to catch a fish, go where the water is. And if you want to advertise your podcast, the number one way is by getting your show in front of other people that listen to podcast. Now Ralph's in the chat room. Ralph advertised. He does a a show. It's kind of it's finance, but it's both personal finance and, you know, tips for your business. But he's also what makes Ralph different is he's doing that from a Christian kind of point of view. And so he advertised in overcast in the religion section because, in theory, that's where his audience should be. And he got very, meh, kinda results.

35:29 So it it kinda depends, as always, with advertising. But to me, that seems like, you know, if I'm try if I don't wanna have to teach people how to listen to my show, I would want to advertise in some sort of app or do a promo swap. Does that make sense, Jim? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think is the best what is the we we listen. We talk about this all the time. But best bang for your buck, what do you think that is in your opinion? A promo swap with another host. So if I say right now, if you're worried about AI, you gotta go over to Daniel j Lewis and check out the Audacity of the podcast. He gives you 11 reasons to things to think about on AI. And I'm like so if I say that, I'm like, I listened to that episode. Man, it was really good. Made me think about things I hadn't really thought about. If I did, that's almost like it is. It's a personal endorsement. So if you can get another host who honestly likes your show that says, oh, I just listened to that. It's really good. You should check it out. We've never really formally did this, but in the early days of the podcasters round table was me, Daniel, and Ray Ortega. And we're friends, and we all listen to each other's shows. And so, like, for example, that's another I'm gonna combine some topics here. Daniel talking about AI is something I was gonna talk about in either an episode or 2 from now. And when I first heard it, I was like, ah, crap. Daniel beat me to the punch to talk about AI. But

36:59 that also assumes that everybody that listens to me listens to Daniel, and that's not always the case. Then I'm gonna probably have a different spin than Daniel. So that's that's part of it. But we all listen to each other's shows and occasionally so like when I what if I do that episode, somewhere in there, I'm gonna go, oh, if you wanna do a deep dive, and and another example of that is I was on the In and Around podcasting show with Mark Asquith and and Danny from Captivate, and we talked about the whole the, total number of of episodes people usually get before they quit is 7. Like a lot of people quit at number 7. Well, a report came out that said that's now down to 5. And I was gonna talk about that. And then I got invited to be on their show to talk about that. Well, we hit some of those topics, but not all the ones I wanted to. And so Ray, Daniel, and I would constantly do what I'm gonna do when I do that episode.

37:50 I'm like, hey. If you wanna do a deep dive into this whole people only making it to episode 5, I was on the In and Around podcasting. So I'm going to naturally mention those shows. And so we just did that all the time. Not because we're like, hey, this week, we're gonna talk about Daniel. Hey, this week, we're gonna talk about Ray. It was just something we naturally did. And so I think that's the number one way because I've gotten we eventually, like the Transformers, got together. And for a few years, we did the podcasters roundtable. It's still not officially dead. It's just on a really long hiatus. But, you know, but I would get people that would say, I heard you on the roundtable, and they were from Daniel's audience or from Ray's audience. And they're like, I thought I would come over to give you a try. Wow. You're pretty funny. I like your show.

38:38 So any kind of, I think, host endorsed or a horse a horse? Yeah. Or a horse, pig, whatever you can get to endorse your show, you know, you know, mister Ed, Wilbur. I love Jim Collison. On the average guy got TV. And you know what? Nobody knows who mister Ed is. I barely know who mister Ed is. That's pretty good. Yeah. That's pretty good, though. So and it's odd that I can remember that the guy in mister Ed was Wilbur, but ask me what my ZIP code is, and I might have to think about it. But, yeah, I think that's probably the number one way because you're you're embracing no. That's not the right word. But you're you're tapping in to the influence of the host. And so when they if they can honestly say, and this is another thing that's coming into this, you're now seeing how Dave comes up with an episode. I saw on Jeff's show, Jeff See. He did, he interviewed this woman about SEO and Google. And Google has come out and said, this is what we're looking for. And it's e e a t or e a e I e I o something. I forget what it is. And I was like, oh, I'm definitely going to have to talk about that because as much as we all go YouTube, it's the number 2 search engine. I'm like, yeah, we we might wanna pay attention to what the number 1 search engine is is doing. And so that, along with, why are people only making it to 5 episodes along with AI are going to eventually end up in a school of podcasting episodes. So that's

40:09 all coming up. Yes. Here we go. A horse is a horse. Of course. Of course. Yes. Very fun. Todd the Gator said Podcasters Roundtable is one of my favorite shows. I hope Ray is well, but I miss you guys on that one. Yeah. Ray's father passed away is what kind of put a damper on that. And he, it was not a it was, you know, old people deteriorate on their own time frame. So he had to kinda take care of pops for a while. And then the other thing that happened is while his father was unfortunately passing away, his kid got old. And so now he's doing softball games, and he's doing that whole dad thing. And it's, like, it's not it's not dad. It's always one of those things like, hey. Someday, man, we're getting the band back together. But, you know, in the meantime He's just waiting on Ray. Is it Ray's decision to come back on that one? I think so. I mean, Daniel and I were like, well, screw it. We'll start our own podcast. And we started the future of podcasting. So and Jeff says, my downloads went up when Dave mentioned my show last week and and played a segment.

41:08 Coincidence? I think not. I've this sounds very humble. Welcome to Humblebrag Theatre. But I've heard people say and Kim Kradgy, who used to be in the chat room a lot, would call it the Dave Jackson effect. That if I would mention somebody's show well, I always put links in the show notes and things like that. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do. You do. Some oh, you know what we need to do? Because I am you have to remind me, because I know we're on a different time frame to you're only around for the 1st hour. A little bit early. So we want to take a quick second to say thank you to our awesome supporters, and you can be 1. It's so simple. All you have to do is go to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome and become an awesome supporter. It's deeply appreciated. And some other things we always like to thank is, hey, the School of Podcasting, you know, that thing that I run. Well, if you wanna plan, launch, grow, if you wanna monetize your show, you can just come over to school of podcasting.com where you get courses, coaching, and community. And speaking of that, we'll throw this up from Ralph. He says, hey. Join the School of Podcasting.

42:10 I'll let Dave review what you're doing and make your podcast better. He gives great feedback and has made a huge difference for me. Just hit 8,000 YouTube subscribers. So be like Ralph and join the school of podcasting. Use the coupon code coach. Ask the podcast coach runs on PodPage, You can check it out using my affiliate link, trypodpage.com. And if you wanna learn it, just go to learnpodpage.com. That's free, by the way. That is it. Absolutely a 100% free course, and I'm not gonna spam you with a bunch of stuff. Also, if you're like, you know that, I always think this is the Jim Collison slide, and it's not because I slid this one in about ECAM, which is what we're doing to stream this live right now. If you wanna check out ECAM, it's ask the podcast coach.com/ecamm. And ECAM is e c a m m because is it good.

42:58 And now we're talking Jim Collison. Hey. If you want more Jim Collison, there he is. It's super simple. You just go over there to the average guy dot tv, and he's got home gadget geeks and talking about robot lawn mowers. And there's a lot of grilling probably coming up with the summer. And, it's time I hope so. It's time to go over and pick our awesome supporter of the week. And I always laugh when I do this because Ecamm puts, like, 8,000,000 little windows that are in my way when I do this. But could it be Ask Ralph? Could it be Shane Wiley? Or also, we've got Craig over at Live Well and Flourish. And I swear I'm gonna wait till the radio wrestling guy comes by. And I'm just gonna click it again here and see if we it's been 3 weeks in a row. I think the, the wrestling guys are paying somebody. I don't know. But indie drop in. This is Greg over at indidropin.com. If you do a comedy show, if you do kind of a scary show, he's got an audience that loves that stuff and will be happy to put your show into his rotation.

44:06 And so he gets content. You get a bigger audience. It's all there at indidropin.com. Greg, thanks for being an awesome supporter. And if you, yourself, again, are finding value from this show, well, then, hey, maybe if you think about it, like, you know, Dave and Jim, they they save me time, or maybe we saved you money by not buying something that was bright and shiny or maybe we saved you a headache or we keep you educated, then maybe you should think about it. You don't have to do $20 a month or other plans, but, just go to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome, and thank you to all of our awesome supporters. So What's going on live? Like, all of a sudden, we've got 42 folks on YouTube watching us. Like, that's I mean, typically, we're in the thirties, the mid thirties. There's some kind of effect this morning. If you've I saw a few of you early in the show say, hey. I I could join you live today, and I couldn't normally. Anyways, for those new folks that are joining us, welcome. Appreciate being here. I know. It's always fun because I'll I kinda I'm out of the the loop because I'm, you know, busy doing a show. And like I see here where Daniel it's the it's the meaning of the Dan's. Dan Lefebvre and, Daniel are talking about something where he said it makes downloads per time relevant only for DAI, and all of you have insertion points in all of your episodes. They're talking about, dynamic content insertion. And I so there's a whole other show going in the chat room right now. And so,

45:39 you know, also here, daily sports history says, I think having the host suggest it rather than a trailer is more effective. Yep. Me too. Because their audience is more likely to listen to them than you. But, yeah, always fun to do. Alright. Let me find another quick question here. Here's one, and it's about the YouTubes. And he says, I started a podcast a couple months ago. Thanks so much. But since I already have a YouTube channel, I've just been using it for the podcast also. So figure why make a new channel is what he's talking about here if I already have one. I'm not sure if this was a good move in the sense of reaching the right audience. My YouTube is and was not intended for podcast, and I don't wanna confuse either the crowd I I do have and new subscribers.

46:24 So I kind of run it. I ran into this. It's not really a problem because my YouTube channel is about podcasting, and most of those videos are, I don't know, 5 minutes if that. And then I started putting I when I made Ask the Podcast Coach, I used my channel that had this instead of making Ask the Podcast Coach its own. And so when everybody likes, subscribe, and ring the bell, and thank you to all of you who are have been liking it in this episode. I appreciate that. It's now you'll have, here's Dave's 5 minute episode or 5 minute 5 yeah. 5 minute episodes. And then here's one that's 90 minutes. And if I were to go back again, I probably would have made Ask the Podcast Coach either its own channel. Right now, it's a playlist on my channel. But because they're the same thing, it's not like, here's Dave talking about podcasting, and here's Dave teaching you how to shred. So on the guitar. So I think if it's the same topics, I think it's okay to mix them up if they're the same length. I don't know. What do you think, Jim? I know you play a lot more in YouTube. I do. I do a lot on YouTube. I I would, I would've I I'd agree with you. I think you never know. Like, when we started this, we're goofing around. But we probably it maybe the 6 month mark, probably should have just created an Ask the Podcast Coach channel that was tied to your profile, to your Google profile, and just made it made it work that way. I think that would have been better. Then all the content is super

47:55 similar. People would have known where to go. You could probably even get the vanity URL of ask the podcast coach, you know, youtube.com/ask them. So we probably should have. We you you don't know. You still could, but do after what how many of these things have we done? What number are we on here? 5 something? Or we're over 100. Because I remember when 500 rolled by, I was like, oh, if I wanna get off this roller coaster no. It's not a roller coaster. If I wanna get off this train oh, actually, we haven't made it to 500 yet. This is episode 480. So the question is it's 400 when Yeah. You were thinking of. Yeah. We wanna quit in 20 weeks? Is that what you're saying? Nah. I it's it's one of those things where, again, be it's one of those things where there you're gonna have ups and downs. Right? There are times when especially now when summer's coming, this is the problem. Summer is coming, and I'm gonna think back to those days when I would wake up about 7, grab the bike, throw it on the back of the car, and I would go out and ride 50 miles on a Saturday morning and come back. And consequently, all the weight that I gained in the winter would then fall off.

49:00 And I can't do that now because by the time I get done here I actually still do occasionally. I just ride in the evening now because me and the sun don't get along. And so when I would ride in the morning, the sun wasn't, really at its hottest. And I found a place now that's pretty much almost always forest. So I don't have to worry about getting burned to a crisp from the sun because that's that's what I do. My middle name is actually people think it's Andrew. It's not. It's Burnin Peele. Dave Burnin Peele Jackson. That's my it's just the way it works. So but no. So and and I it's one of those things that's like a treadmill. There are times that I'm like, tomorrow's Ask the Podcast Coach. I wish I was out riding my bike. But come 12 o'clock and the show's over, and we hit stop on this, and Jim and I are doing the the post show wrap up. I'm like, oh, that was fun. That was great. Yeah. You know? So it's you know, I think you always have ups and downs when you're like, some days you wanna do the podcast, and some days you're like, you know. And then you just gotta plan accordingly. Tomorrow is my great nephew's birthday. Actually, today is his birthday. We're going to, you guessed it, Luigi's Pizza tomorrow. Well, Sunday is my record day, so I'm just planning ahead, And I'm gonna record a bunch of stuff today so I can do the birthday party tomorrow. So you just got to plan ahead and around it. And what was the original question? I've totally lost my train of thought. I think you're just thinking about all the things, you know, that The YouTube channel. Sacrifice for. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the well, yeah. Yeah. That's where we started. That's not originally where it started. But listen. Yeah. I think you had some good thoughts on, you know, it it thinking through,

50:33 like, you know, what do you what do you do? And and in in our case with this YouTube channel, we probably should have recognized that maybe around a 100. Like, hey. This thing's this thing's probably gonna stay around a while. Yeah. Now for for you for you and I, did that really not having it on its own YouTube channel really change much? Probably not. Like, talking heads on YouTube, not the most popular thing in the world anyway. Did it affect your other YouTube gem? Probably. So now spilt spilt milk under the bridge. That was in a in a movie. I think that was in, it was one of the movies I just watched. But you you can't go back. I mean, I guess we could think about, like, are you gonna upload? Could you upload all 500 maybe then 480 videos to a new YouTube channel and create that and go after it? Maybe if we were thinking I mean, if all of a sudden this thing got real popular, we we we might, like, be, like, well, maybe we do wanna do the work. You know?

51:36 Maybe we do wanna make those, or maybe we just start a new one and load the last 100. Yeah. And then what we'd have to do is that would take some planning to go, hey. Don't forget. Starting this date, if you haven't followed this show on YouTube, you're you're not gonna get the note. That's my biggest worry is, you know, the people that have signed up for notifications. You know, like today, we have 35 I see right now in the chat room. So Yeah. That's kinda cool. It's on, on my Stream Deck. I'm using Ecamm and somewhere in either the Stream Deck software or something, I have a button now and I can look down and see how many people are in the chat room, which is kinda cool. So, yeah, it's it's just one of those things. I don't think it's a big deal. Dan says for him, as a viewer, I don't care about length. If something is too long for me and well, you know, for me to watch, I'll watch it later or I'll catch the next one. The topics is what matters. Yeah. Because going back to Valerie Geller's thing, there is no such thing as too long, only too boring. I know my my save for later playlist on YouTube is long. There are times that I'm like, oh, this is good. I don't have time to watch it. I'll watch it later. And then Renewed Mindsets TV says, YouTube is is just a pain in my rear. And I did see somebody in Reddit, and I almost hate to say this because I really am turning into a broken record. That was like, I'm thinking, like, I feel like I need to do YouTube. Like, I just I had a guy on the podcast review show, and me and Eric are talking to him. And he said

53:09 he's like, well, you know, in the future, we we really just need to get on YouTube. And I go, why? And he's like, well, because, you know, it's YouTube. It's the number 2. Like, he really felt compelled, like, I'm an idiot if I don't. And I was just like, look, I'm not anti YouTube. But if you guys don't have the time and the budget, don't. It's okay. And and so when I hear people say it's a pain in my butt, I'm like, yep. There's another person. It's like, oh, I need to be on YouTube. Dave has a question. Does anyone know if there's a place where I can get get old, like 10 years or so, Mac PageMaker or Adobe software with manuals and a floppy. There is a phrase I've not heard in a long time. PageMaker.

53:52 Wow. If you did, I wouldn't trust it. Like, I wouldn't you know, if you're gonna find that on the Internet, I I don't know I don't know if you'll trust it. Daniel says, yes. It's in my trash can from 3 years ago. Okay. Actually, he says, that was a Windows version. Sorry. Yeah. So beauty bubble says, about having the topics on YouTube, you know, maybe, having 2 playlists or something like that. At any rate, Jim, what are you what are you running off to? Anything fun? Oh, yeah. I have my brother in laws are in Kansas City this weekend, and they said, hey. Can you know, remember when we were kids and they knock on the door? Hey, can Dave come out and play? So they they knocked on the door this week. Can Jim come down and play? So we're gonna drive down. I'm driving down. That's so great. I'm taking my way to San Jose and enjoy some family time. So it'll be a good No.

54:44 Just just kinda get out of town with all the tornadoes we had yesterday. So maybe good to get out of town. Well, I was gonna ask you. I was like, are you gonna weather down there. Is is the weather cleared up since then? Are we for us, we're they're expecting some thunderstorms tonight, but the severe weather moved south. So we're gonna have to keep our eye on the weather ourselves and make sure we're we're being safe. But I'm not gonna change plans for that. I think we need to move. So head headed south for me. Yeah. That'll be fun. And I was looking at how many questions we had left, and really, the answer is none. So we're we're gonna just call it here. Here's here's a novel idea when, when you don't have enough content, or you don't have more content, you know, an episode should be as long as it needs to be, and that's it. So on the school of podcasting, I have to look and see. This is question of the month.

55:30 And the question was, have you ever quit listening to a show because they changed their format and went back later? I have to remember. It was a weird question. If I look back now, I go, that was a bad question. But I don't think I have many responses, so I'll have to see, what the deal is. So it might be it's definitely gonna be part of that. Because if somebody sent an answer, I'll be doing that. But I might then that little, episode cocktail little week. As always, I don't really have anything planned coming up. I I think I have something in May, but that's in Cleveland, so I'll be here. That's no big deal. But, thanks to, Dan over based on a true story podcast and Mark over at podcastbranding.co. And thanks to the chat room and, of course, all of our awesome supporters at ask the podcast coach dot com slash awesome. That is so much fun. Jim right now is making fireworks. He's got every little fun little comes up Tom's up and the like and all those other things. Yeah. We'll see you again next week with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.

56:45 Hold on. And I hit the mic on the way out the door.