734: From Zero to 35M Downloads

25:50That's that's interesting. All right. Well, maybe we can kind of start to break down each one of these. Do you mind if I ask you more questions about that? How to get someone to move from one to the next? Okay, let's go strangers to listeners. I'll just leave it open-ended. How do you get people from strangers to become listeners? I basically just repeated exactly what I said the first time. Yeah, that was kind of the section I just went through with the compelling titles, with the podcast promotion, with the guesting on other shows. And then we try and play like some very simple, you know, podcast SEO with the, you know, we still want to make the title compelling, but we also want to make sure we're including what did we talk about?

26:34If we did an episode about Instagram marketing, we want to make sure we have Instagram marketing in the title of that episode. The iTunes search algorithm, the Spotify search algorithm, even YouTube to a certain extent is not nearly as sophisticated as Google is. It's just very keyword driven. So making sure if you have a well-known guest, including their name in the title of the podcast, like trying to make it easy for people to search and discover. Like, I don't think that's a huge driver percentage wise of listeners, but it's not going to hurt you. And then, but especially on YouTube, like it can be really evergreen.

27:10And a lot of the titles on YouTube are like how-to titles, like how to build a window washing business, you know, up to$10 ,000 a month, right? It's trying to capture both the keyword and the compelling reason to click. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you ever modify your titles after the podcast episode goes live? Do you ever modify it on YouTube to capture different audiences? Do you find that that has any effect? Because really you are looking at, especially on YouTube, like when you launch the podcast, it is serving one type of audience, your listeners who routinely wait for a new episode to go live on YouTube.

27:48That's their medium of choice. But then like you said, over time, you're really more trying to get into the search and discovery side of YouTube where you're trying to target people who might not be familiar with the podcast, might not even be familiar with the fact that they would be clicking on a podcast, but are really more topically searching for something. Yeah, the YouTube titles and really the website titles are much more keyword driven or SEO driven. And then the podcast title, the one that goes out into the Spotify feed, the Apple feed is probably more curiosity driven. And so instead of like leading with the keyword or the topic, it will often lead with the dollar amount, like$1 ,000 a month with this unique real estate strategy or something versus, you know, how to buy a co-living house.

28:36It's kind of just shifting it around differently where it's the same topic, but presented a little bit differently for different audiences. Okay, perfect. Well, then let's move on to that second stage. So again, we started with strangers. They've turned into listeners. How do we move them from listeners to subscribers? Yeah, this is really important. Now somebody has voted for you. They said, look, I'm going to give this a shot. Now you got to deliver on what you promised. That means cutting to the chase. It means being respectful of people's time. You can kind of see the evolution of this over the course of 12 years of the show, where it's like, you used to have this voiceover guy and this musical intro.

29:18And it would be 45 seconds before you even start talking. It's like, no, cut to the chase. Actually, a friend of mine had a productivity show, and she would start, we don't have an intro because we'd never waste your time. Boom. Three seconds in, and she's already onto the topic. And it's like, oh, okay, yes. So trying to get to the point quickly. editing for clarity, length, brevity. And that's kind of where I spend my time in post-production is saying like, what was the most boring 10 % of this episode, right? If we recorded for an hour, could we make it 50 minutes? Like that kind of thing, just being respectful of people's time delivering on that promise that you made in the title and description, and then trying to convert that one-time listener into a subscriber.

29:59And so maybe it is referencing relevant past episodes. Hey, if you listen to this, you might also want to listen to this. We do a lot of episode specific lead magnets where if we talked about building a Facebook marketing funnel or like, okay, we'll download your free companion worksheet on how to build your own funnel. Or we talked about renting out portable hot tubs. Here's 25 other unconventional things you could rent out for a profit. Enter your email here or kind of a broader podcast driven lead magnet would be like, look, there's over 700 episodes. I'd love to have you binge on the archives, but you probably stretched for time a little bit.

30:38So why don't you go build yourself a personalized playlist? Just answer a few short questions at hustle.show. You can do it on your phone and it'll build you like a, based on your answers, a custom playlist of our greatest hits. So you're not trying to drive listeners into email subscribers specifically in that case, but audio subscribers would be great as well. You've talked about it a couple of times now at different passages. And so I want to ask, how much of a flow do you have for calling people to take action at various points during a podcast episode? And what have you landed on? Have you discovered something works better than another?

31:16I'm just curious because it's evident that you are not just looking at a podcast episode as a piece of content, but also as an opportunity to get people engaged to different phases of the funnel. Yeah, I used to do it beginning and end. And lately, it's mostly just been at the end, like that specific call to action to go do that thing. If I'm really organized, I'll do it like as the lead into my first ad break. Like, hey, we put together a special bonus, special listener bonus for this episode. Make sure to grab it here. And we'll be right back with Jared after a word from our sponsors. And so just trying to tease it a little bit, putting that, putting it out there.

31:52You know, it's this is kind of like radio advertising where it's repetition, repetition and awareness. kind of um that's another thing that kind of you know to go from when we get to subscribers to fans but like verbal cues verbal repetition we've taken a page out of the like the morning radio playbook where they got they run the same segments every morning like the the commuter traffic kind of knows what to expect and there's like yeah if there's inside jokes they kind of feel like they're in on it and so trying to incorporate those types of elements into the show as well yeah traffic on the eights i don't really listen to radio anymore but i remember that from commuting back in the day.

32:27They'd always have some flow to that. Okay. I know fans are the holy grail, but is getting listeners into subscribers, is that where you can kind of start to see things tip, where you start to get the scale? Where does that start to happen? Yeah, this was a really big inflection point for me in the business because this would be a little over a year into the show and kind of this embarrassing that it took this long, But like this epiphany moment of like, look, the show at that stage, especially is not a business on its own. It is a content marketing arm for the business. And when I started treating it as such and really got intentional about converting listeners, what few listeners I had into email subscribers, that was the turning point.

33:14Right. So I had like a thousand email subscribers at that point, a little over a year into it. Grateful for every one of those, like very early audience members. And some of them are still around today. It's been awesome. but once we got intentional like hey look you're out walking the dog you're at the gym you're driving in your car you're not in a great place to take notes don't worry we did it for you all you have to do is go to side hustle nation.com slash whatever the episode was download the free pdf we called it the highlight reel like the sports center version the highlight reel of what we just talked about with all the guests top tips you download it for free within three months of doing that consistently the email list was three thousand within six months it was six thousand within a year.

33:53It was 12 ,000. So it was just really big kind of like inflection point or hockey stick moment for the email growth. And now all of a sudden, instead of this anonymous medium, I don't have any idea who's tuning in. I could see the little blips on the download chart, but like who knows who these people are, right? All of a sudden I have email, I can promote my latest offer. I can promote the latest episode. Hey, you might want to check this out if this is relevant to you. They've got something in their inbox. They can easily forward and share to a friend like, Hey, you should, you should check out the show or you should check this out.

34:27Um, for affiliate offers for newsletter sponsorships that we do now, that was really, really, uh, important. And that's why I think that listeners into subscribers step is really crucial because otherwise it's just anonymous. You're kind of like relying on, on somebody to download your thing, even if they have like, you know, the push notifications or like, you know, but another touch point, get people into the, into the inbox. Really powerful. Yeah. Um, you mentioned that you, uh, have a good, you know, this is all about driving people from the podcast to become a subscriber for email. But then you also said earlier that you are constantly pushing email subscribers back to different podcast episodes.

35:09I mean, it sounds almost like a flywheel effect. Like how important is that flywheel effect? Is, is that just happened because you're looking to give them more content and thus the podcast is what you recommend? Or is it more strategic than just that? Yeah, I hope so. I mean, the most of the stuff they send out, probably 90 % of the stuff I send out is just a newsletter based on what the latest episode is about and trying to do it in a text version. Look, if you don't want to listen to this, I'm going to give you the meat of what we talked about here, or at least a high enough level overview where you could say like, oh, that's interesting.

35:40And then make the decision. I want to go listen to it more and more. And that's been an evolution over time, whereas they used to be very short, like check out the latest episodes. Like, give me a little bit more before I commit to this. But it's also a channel to promote affiliate partners, promote my own products. And so it's been just having that extra touch point where it does kind of like you mentioned flywheel or where it just is trying to. But I mean, the whole goal is, you know, when somebody thinks side hustle, like hopefully they think of Side Hustle Nation and the Side Hustle Show and like being being part of that ecosystem or being kind of at the center of that hub.

36:20We're almost to the top of the pyramid. Stick around for that. Plus the all important monetization question coming up right after this. So last month, it was time to replace the air filter in the car, which is about the level of vehicle maintenance I'm qualified to do. So I Google up the part number. I find this random store that is selling it. And then to my absolute delight, I see that they're running on Shopify. How could I tell that little purple shop pay button at checkout? It meant not having to create yet another new account. It meant not having to find my wallet. I am paid and checked out in just a couple clicks.

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38:35That's Quo, Q-U-O.com slash side hustle. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. Let's talk about turning people, turning subscribers, sorry, into fans. And, you know, I think of Seth Godin, when I think of Tribes, his book on that, I think of like the idea of a fan maybe define what that is for the context we're talking about here. And then I'd love to hear some ways that you found work well to turn subscribers into fans. Yeah. A fan in my case would be somebody who buys a product. This would be somebody who shares the episode with a friend. This would be somebody who listens to everything that you put out.

39:17That's kind of fandom in my case. Maybe they support the sponsors of the show. It's kind of the pinnacle of the pyramid because that's like what you would want everybody to be. If you had an audience of only fans, that would be incredible, right? And you could imagine the flywheel that would start to spin. So some of those elements that get people there, having the additional touch points, they've joined the Facebook group, they've joined the email list, they are engaging with other listeners maybe in the Facebook group asking and answering questions. That would be really cool. Somebody that does it really well is Sam and Sean from My First Million.

39:57They don't talk about it as much as they used to, but they used to always harp on the gentleman's agreement where it's like, look, we're making this content for free. We don't ask for much, but there is a gentleman's agreement and that's it. You hit the subscribe button, that you hit the follow button on whatever platform it is. And it's like, oh, I'm just got to hold up my end of the bargain, right? It's kind of became some of their internal language that they use. Same similar, like no small boy stuff, right? It's something that they would say over and over again. And so they kind of have built their own little language.

40:25I think they even have merch for this stuff now, if you want a shirt that says no small boy stuff. But stuff like that to send people into fandom and making offers. It was like one of the first things I ever offered on the show and to the audience was a private mastermind. For the really low price of$100 a month, I will host this private mastermind. And I think I got like five or six applications, maybe seven applications for this, a little less than a year into the show. I don't think I would have gotten any applications if it weren't for the relationship having been built over the course of that first year through audio.

41:04So, I mean, you're 700 episodes in now. So surely I can ask you some questions about like what works well, what doesn't work well. I know it will be specific to you and your podcast, to you and your listenership, to you and your topic. However, I've got to imagine you've got some somewhat global thoughts on what works well and what doesn't work well. What keeps people coming back? What types of episodes work well? And don't worry, folks, I'm going to talk, I'm going to ask them all about monetization next, as soon as we get through this. So if you want to know about monetizing a podcast, it is on the agenda coming up.

41:44Yeah, I think for both of our shows, one of the transition points or elevation points from subscribers into fans is somebody who has heard an idea, taken action on it and seen the result. Like, oh, I heard about this strategy on your show. I tried it. And what do you know, it worked. I actually made money from this. And now all of a sudden it's like, this is real. And so that's really cool. I got an email, uh, the other day from a listener, from a subscriber, like, Oh, I took my family to Disneyland family of six to Disneyland because of something that I heard on your show. It was like, that's like, that's incredible.

42:21Like I, you know, have a little tag in Gmail that says, you know, testimonials like, okay, I'll file this one away, you know, for those rainy days when you get some hate, but it was like that kind of stuff is really, uh, really cool to hear from listeners. And I imagine you get the same. From time to time we do. You're right. Uh, it is nice to hear. Yeah, it is nice to hear, especially like I remember, um, at various points, either having a guest on and then we get stories, you know, many months later, um, having, uh, even something that we've talked about as hosts, Spencer and I, or Thomas and I, and talked about it a decent amount and seen people have success.

42:56it's really, it's, it's pretty amazing to, to kind of play a role in that. And you can kind of bring those, you know, now that the show has been going for a long enough, you have like almost generations of it where it's like, okay, we first aired this topic about becoming a, you know, a mobile notary loan signing agent. And then like a year later, oh, somebody listened to that episode and is now doing the thing and making thousands of dollars a month. And now, you know, somebody listened to that episode. It's like almost like there's like their grandchildren or their podcast, grandchildren, inspiration babies.

43:27And it's been really cool to kind of breathe new life into these, you know, topics that we've talked about, like, Oh, that still works. And that is something that people are seeing results with. That's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah. The longevity can only help in those situations. Um, all right. Well, I could ask a lot more questions about it, but I want to make sure we leave some time for monetization here. Um, sponsorships are, from what I understand, either a big part of your podcast or really the biggest part of your podcast when it comes to monetization. Talk about it from a high level.

44:04What does that look like? Where have you landed with that? What has worked historically over the years? What hasn't worked? I think that's a big fear for people is when they start a podcast, it's such a big unknown that they don't really know much about that side of things. We can go look at what it looks like to get YouTube followers and to get more YouTube views. But it's very hard to understand how to monetize a podcast. You're 100 % right. The big piece of the monetization pie is traditional sponsorships, which is something that I'm really grateful for. It's well suited for me, which I can focus on just making the content that I want to make, like playing the part of the curious host and finding brands that are in alignment with the audience and making that pitch.

44:48That's something that I feel really good about. And it's like, I can get paid. The audience gets the stuff that they want for free and the advertisers get access to that audience. What I was hesitant to do for a long time, I think for a lot of years, I sold the show myself in terms of the sponsorships. And for the sake of disclosure, it was probably three years before this was even a meaningful source of income. So definitely put in the time before any sponsors really came knocking and be like, oh, can we sponsor the show? So if you have less than 5 ,000 downloads per episode, this may not be a viable path.

45:25So the audience size has to be there. Podcast sponsorships is kind of this game of amplitude and frequency where it's like, how big is the audience and how often can we reach them? And so it was like, if you have a daily show with a big audience, then yeah, this could be a really viable path. But if you have a weekly show with a smaller audience, like, ah, does the math really work out? But I was trying to sell the show myself for a lot of years because I had brands reaching out. That's where it started. Like brands were reaching out proactively to me, Teachable, FreshBooks, some of the early sponsors.

45:56And I was like, yeah, let's make a deal. What I was really hesitant to do was the industry has shift toward dynamic insertion and it has shifted toward third-party like ad brokerage agencies to go out and sell the show. And so I've been with Yap Media, Young and Profiting Media with Halataha for the last two-ish years. And again, I was hesitant to do it. It's like, why do I need to pay 30 % to some agency when the brands are coming to me directly? Yep. But way bigger brands, way bigger deals, way longer term contracts. And it's just freed up so much time to like focus on actually making the show, actually making the content.

46:34So I'm making more than I ever did before and doing less work on the sponsorship side than I did before. So I was like, oh, I should have done that a long time ago, dragging me, kicking and screaming into the era of modern podcast monetization. But I'll say this too, sponsorships is just one way to go. And if you don't have that audience size, you have to get a little more creative. And in a lot lot of cases, it's selling your own stuff or using the podcast as a promotion channel for your own services, for your own products, for your own community, for even promoting your guest stuff as an affiliate, perhaps, although that's kind of driven by audience size as well.

47:14But lots of different ways to kind of ring the cash register as a host. You didn't say it this way, but I almost heard almost a summarize, like step one, get an audience of some size. Step two, brands start to interact with brands that are good fit. Hopefully they're also interacting with you. And then step three, to some degree, get big enough to where the deal size, the agency route can really give you those economies of scale. Yeah. So if a typical, you know, mid-roll cpm is 25 and if you have two mid-roll spots and a thousand people listening like i can make 50 bucks an episode and it's like but it's uniquely scalable it's like well if i have 10 000 people listening now that's 500 bucks an episode or if i have 100 000 people now it's whatever i can't do public math but maybe it's 5 000 um so it's it does scale pretty well and that even you know Mahala and the ad sales team is like longer episodes, more ad breaks, more, you know, could you publish three times a week?

48:20Like, come on, what's going on? We need more inventory to sell. It's like, Hey, look, I'm, I'm happy with where I'm at, but how about, how about we add pre-rolls? Like, uh, it's, you know, it's really okay. Can you give us any sort of idea? And again, I don't want to put you in a spot for exact amount, but can you give us any sort of idea? Like what, um, what, what type of, if you're consistent, if you're publishing a weekly show, the kind of the things you talked about, like what kind of money is a podcast going to bring in from sponsorship just to give people an idea, whether it's use your own as an example, or whether you kind of go down the route of maybe, you know, 25 ,000 monthly downloads, like whatever it looks like.

48:57I just want to give people a nice, an idea of what a primary, a primarily monetized podcast could look like. And then I want to ask you a few more questions about using the podcast to drive value elsewhere in your business. Yeah. So for me, the show earns, between$10 ,000 and$20 ,000 a month for the six episodes that we put out, like every Thursday and every other Monday ends up being five-ish, five or six hours worth of content. And of course, there's work behind the scenes that goes into that. But it's a tough gig to give up. It's like, I got to make my hour of radio a week and to be able to get paid what I do on the flexible schedule that I have, like never, never would have imagined that.

49:43Like when I started with a$60 mic in the corner of the living room, like in all of the self-doubt, like no idea what I'm doing. Is anybody going to tune into this? Is anybody going to care? Is am I just going to embarrass myself? Like what it has turned into and kind of the lifestyle that it has allowed and afforded us is like something I'll just ever forever be grateful for. And I mean, you, you, you put in the time and the years at the same time. I mean, you've also talked about how, you know, once you start to, to, to figure out the levers to pull, once you start to figure out what works with your audience, when you start to figure out how, you know, you find the, the, the frequency, you find the amount, the type of people you find, all those types of things, when that starts to fall into place, you talked about how it does get a lot easier.

50:30and became part of my identity. It was probably like my second kid was born. You have to fill out the birth certificate. This would have been 2018. And like, you know, parents occupation. It's like, who cares? Why is this on the form? But I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to put podcaster. I don't care what the stigma is. I'm going to put it down. And, you know, that was kind of the identity flip of like, this is something that I do. And it was the commitment in the early years. Like, I'm going to do this for free because I enjoy doing it because I kind of see where it could go.

51:00And I'm really happy that I stuck with it, even though, relatively speaking, the audience was really small. We just finished talking about how sponsorships can play and be a primary monetization method for a podcast. But there are so many other ways that a podcast can earn for you, especially really to look at really the flow of people. Looking at the podcast is the first touchpoint for your business, but certainly not the last. You've talked about moving them over to an email list. You've talked about affiliate offers, obviously selling your own products. Are there any things we didn't touch on from a monetization standpoint, though, that you think a podcast can also add value to someone or a business to?

51:37Yeah, really popular one that is probably worth mentioning. It would be a listener-supported show in terms of a membership community or in terms of even just like a Patreon type of offering where it's like, you know, for 5, 10, 15 bucks a month, like you get exclusive content or you get something else we did an episode with garrett and sabrina from the i know dino podcast it is a dinosaur news podcast and i was like is there really that much dinosaur news coming out like to support a weekly show i didn't feel like that we're in a golden age of paleontology and there that's how they were monetizing they did i think they did have some sponsors but primarily through patreon i came across a guy with a taylor swift podcast he was co-hosting i think it was called evolution of a snake and they had like an estimated you know 70 80 90 000 a month in recurring patreon revenue for their like exclusive taylor swift takes it was like this is i mean good on them for like you know piggybacking on the popularity of you know one of the most famous people on the planet but like being consistent with it like obviously producing a good show that the fans like the super fans like wanted more of yeah um And that was a really unique monetization method.

52:49But we've seen other hosts kind of monetize in that way where it's becoming like member supported. There was even a guy, Scooter, he hosts the Sleep With Me podcast where it's like a sleep bay. I'm going to tell you a progressively more and more boring story. And he goes to this podcasting event and Casper is there like, how are we not sponsoring your show? Well, it better be a pre-roll because the whole goal is to get people to follow. Yeah, exactly. Lots of creative ways to do it. And even some of the more interesting ones, even if relatively speaking, nobody is tuning in, like selling to an audience of one.

53:31Like if you have an agency service or kind of a higher ticket type of offering where you have a very specific customer avatar, like using the podcast as an excuse to get them on the phone, right? We've seen people reach out on LinkedIn. in, hey, you're a thought leader in your space. You're the exact type of person that we're trying to interview for this podcast. And it's an excuse to get them on the phone and start a conversation and be like, well, what is it that you do? Oh, yeah, we do PR for exactly your type of business. Like, oh, we got to talk. Tell me more about that. So lots of different ways to get it done.

54:07That's fascinating. Now, that's an interesting angle right there because you're right. Like that's an interesting way to meet people. Wow. Okay. Man, Nick, thank you for coming on the podcast. Congratulations on your success. I've known about your show for a long time, which tells me that it's that you're definitely consistently doing something great. I know a lot of people who listen to our podcast also listen to yours. Tell people where to go. Not just the podcast, but tell people where to go to follow along with what you're doing. Yeah, of course. Would love to have you tune in to the Side Hustle Show.

54:37It is my labor of love, and hopefully that comes across on the mic. If you want to go deeper on anything that we talked about today, I just put the update on my podcast, Growth Playbook Course. It's podplaybook.co, and you can use code NICHE35 for 35 % off that one. Again, Jared, appreciate you having me, and it's been a blast. We'll get those links and details in the show notes, so if you want to click down, you can see those. Nick, great to talk to you. As always, good to reconnect. And congratulations. Looking forward to many, many more good episodes coming out in the future. We'll talk again soon.

55:14Cheers.