Pursuing my podcast as a business

Let's talk about your podcast.

Is it a hobby, is it a business, or is it both?

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Small Lessons with Big Value.

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Dave Jackson.

I see this all the time.

And a person on Reddit said, I'm wondering if it's worth pursuing my podcast as a business.

Right now it's a creative outlet.

Well, he says, I've launched an independent podcast this time last year in Australia, which seems to be growing.

Well, it's for mid-20s people who are navigating life, including career pivots, dating, moving abroad.

It also got some silly fun stuff.

And when there's something happening in pop culture that's worth my commenting on.

So he's a little all over the place or she, I don't know, doesn't say.

I'm just doing it every fortnight as a fun little hobby.

I'm in corporate and so this was a creative outlet for me, which has made me so happy.

And I've had really great feedback.

I've only had 100 followers across platforms, but about 60 listeners per episode and nearly 2,000 streams, slash downloads with 350 consumption hours.

I fear that my podcast is really only growing with my friendship circle and not really going to expand to the public outreach.

But I wanted to know if that's something we all start at and it grows quite organically, which I'm happy to have.

I don't know whether to pivot and put out episodes more often or keep it as my hobby so I don't get burned out.

You've kind of already answered your question and you think it's going okay.

I don't really post much advertising, which doesn't help things, of course.

I just don't have much marketing knowledge, so I'm kind of learning as I go.

And so there are a couple things about this.

If so, you're getting 60 downloads an episode, and I know he threw in all sorts of other stats, but 60 downloads?

And that is if that's a podcast, it sounds like he might have a YouTube channel, but there are things you want to look at.

Number one, how far are people listening slash watching whatever you're doing?

Check that out because that will show you how engaged they are.

Number two, ask your audience, hey, I'm kind of all over the place.

Do you, you know, how am I doing?

Because you can Ask me, hey, is this good?

But the people you really want to ask is your audience.

But here's the thing.

If you go to.

In terms of making money, if you go to one of those places that says you can make money from day one, and we take their.0005, which is $5 per cpm, we multiply that by your 60 downloads, that's 30 cents an episode.

And so you're either going to have to podcast more or cram a boatload of advertising into your show, which will drive your audience away if you try to sell your own products, because that's the most profitable way to make money with a podcast, then expect about 3% of your audience.

So your audience is 60.

That is basically if we round up two customers.

And so most of the people who are making a living that I know with a podcast started out doing it for fun.

And if they were very, very good, three years later, they might consider trying to monetize.

You don't monetize a podcast, you monetize an audience.

So what you need to do is enjoy the making of your podcast and stay consistent, both in schedule, but more importantly, consistent in value.

You're a little too early, and I know some people are like, but I got 60 people.

And being the old teacher that I am, that's two classrooms.

Actually, it's three.

Let's see, 60 people.

Yeah, let's go.

Three classrooms of 20.

That's really full.

But you're looking at those 60 people going, will you pay me enough money to where I can quit my day job?

If that's the goal.

Now, if you're just asking those people to contribute like a Patreon, again, 3%, if you're really, really good, will contribute.

And if you ask them for $5 a month or whatever you're asking, you're going to get $10.

That might pay for part of your, you know, hosting bill.

But the other thing you have to think about, you're not doing anything to promote it.

There are a lot of things you're not doing here.

And if you want to do this consistently and properly, et cetera, it's going to take more time.

And you brought up, should I just keep doing this as a hobby or if I try to do all this stuff, it's going to burn me out.

Well, then don't do the stuff that's going to burn you out.

You have to take care of yourself.

I'll give you an example is as I record this, it is almost Easter.

I'm very involved with my Church.

And I have quadrupled my output for church stuff.

And it's kind of weird because even though they're only five minutes here and 10 minutes there, anytime I do a presentation, it still takes time to figure out what am I going to talk about, is this going to deliver value, etc.

Along with all my podcasts, along with my day job.

And last night I was like, I have been putting out and putting out and putting out and putting out.

Everything was out, out, out, out, out, out, out content.

And I was like, I need to sit back and just either turn my brain off or just let somebody else entertain me.

And so I went and saw the movie project Hail Mary.

It was very good and it gave me a chance to recharge my batteries and smile and laugh and etc.

Etc.

And when you do things like this, where you just are continuing to make content along with your job, it can really burn you out.

So what you want to do is, and I see a lot of people do this with their schedule, is record everything you do for your podcast.

You can use a tool like Toggle, it's T o G G L. You can put it on your phone, you can put it on your computer.

And every time you're researching, every time you're editing, every time you're recording, every time you're publishing, every time you're promoting, you start that timer and you do that for a couple episodes.

And then you go, how long is it taking me to do an episode?

And then you look at it and you go, wow, that took me, you know, 11 hours to do a 45 minute podcast.

And then you ask yourself, do I have 11 hours every week?

And if the answer is no, because you've got to take little Jimmy to soccer and you have a spouse and all these other requirements that take up your time, I see so many people try to squeeze their life into their podcast.

That is a recipe for burnout, divorce, and really upset family members.

You want to do is put your family first, always, and then say, okay, do I have 11 hours a week to do this?

No.

Do I have 11 hours every two weeks?

Maybe.

What if I shorten this down from 45 minutes down to 20?

Oh, well, then it would only take me six hours.

Okay, do I got six hours every two weeks?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because that's how you keep going without trying to just, you know, do everything.

And we're kind of used to that as we, I don't know, how would you say this?

As civilization moves forward, we're not used to hearing no as much as we used to.

Man, I heard that all the time when I was growing up.

My dad would know and I'm like it's not fair.

And he'd say life's not fair.

I don't know that we say that enough to people now.

But don't burn yourself out.

And just keep in mind you don't monetize a podcast.

You monetize an audience.

And step one is grow an audience.

And we're talking about thousands of people.

Now there are always going to be exceptions to that, super niche shows and such.

But if you need help with this, simply go out to schoolofpodcasting.com start.

There's now a free version if you want to put your toe in the water.

And I would love to work with you.

Why?

Because I've been doing this for 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.