Growing a podcast

A snapshot of the podcast:

• In October, podcast had 810 downloads.
• The eight most recent episodes at that time had an average of 84 downloads each in that month alone.

Not shabby, but plenty of room for improvement.

When answering the question "where do we go from here?" there are several ways of looking at it.

1. "How can I grow the audience?" or,
2. "How can I earn enough from the podcast to make it self-supporting?" or,
3. "What can I do differently that would add even more value to the product?"

Being something of a purist, I tend to keep coming back to angle #3 and to avoid the other two.

I really want lots of people to enjoy the show. But more than that, ultimately, it needs to be something I enjoy (creating and listening to), and I don't want to do anything that will make the show less enjoyable -- not for growth/promotion, and not for monetizing, either.

And yet, if it was bigger and more self-supporting, I'd be able to spend more time on it and (I'd like to think) improving it. The classic scenario.

The Myth of Merit:

When you really look at it, has merit proven to be enough? Or do you need to consider breaking some of your own rules in order to get your work out there?

Realization: all three questions deserve attention, and can be addressed in ways that don't cheapen the final product.

(re 1. Growing the audience)

• Consistent weekly production is a big one (already begun)
• Network with local people (already begun: Social Media Breakfast, etc.)
• Facebook / Reddit opportunities (I have direct knowledge of probably about 8-10 listeners I've picked up there, worth it?)
• Idea: well-designed mini cards and other printed material, hand out at events, post at coffee shops.

(re 2. Earning enough to make it self-supporting)

• One listener basically offered to subscribe if I offered memberships; very heartening, but I feel members should get "something more" and I'm still thinking about what that something is.
• I've thought of offering sponsorships: say, two per month available at $15 apiece, only to creative individuals and ventures looking to increase awareness of their own work. Price would increase with audience size but remain affordable.

Covering costs would be nice. But there's a large gap between that and bringing in enough to devote, say, a full workday each week in addition to early morning/late evening hours already spent. It's worth debating whether "calls to action", sponsorships, etc. are really worth the time and inelegance without the popularity to justify them.

(The phrase "covering costs" can be a bit misleading, since by far most of the cost is personal time spent writing, recording and editing. Expenses amount to probably $30 a month in hosting and music.)

Key point: monetizing is only interesting to me inasmuch as it might give me more time to better write and produce the show I hear in my head.

(re 1. Growing the audience)

On this topic, via @WriterRundy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4&feature=youtu.be

• Artists create their own audiences
• They do this by speaking to themselves, not trying to serve the wishes of others which they can never truly know
• Artists create their own mediums/formats to suit their messages

(re 2. Earning)

via @mja:

• "Handling subscriptions/sponsorships comes with its own costs in terms of your time (payment processing, refunds, invoicing, chasing new business for sponsorships)"

• "Sponsorships are probably best not to consider until you have thousands of subscribers."

This jives. I now see sponsorships as a fair way of coping with costs that come with unexpected popularity. In the absence of that, unnecessary.

Follow-up to last card, I think I'm on the right track with sponsorships not being important at this stage.

"'How do I make money with my podcast' shouldn't be your first, second or even likely your fifty-second question when starting a podcast but if you've built a solid brand that’s listened to and/or viewed by thousands, you might be ready to start reaching out to sponsors."
-- Ray Ortega, writing for Podcaster's Studio

Thoughts from listening to Roman Mars of 99% Invisible in today's webinar "The Challenge of Visualizing Sound":

• A key difference between the "pros" and solo hobbyists like myself is that the pros divide responsibility among several team members. Roman says he doesn't write comprehensive scripts with "cogent sentences;" he cobbles ideas together and hands them off to another team member to clean up. He is also able to pay producers for many of his stories.

• Promotion: Roman says "I've exclusively relied on word of mouth." However, having a radio background, he also had access to a very high-quality network of first-circle listeners. Milestones included being picked up by Jesse Thorn, BoingBoing, and Radiolab.

(ctd...)

• The main thing to do is to make something great. Having a thing is the prerequisite to success.

• KALW was a great incubator; beyond that, most public radio stations didn't care about his work until he succeeded at fundraising. And it took him a long time working on his own before it got to that point, even with the incubator.

• W/regards to using different forms of media to complement each other. "Make each thing the thing that it's supposed to be" I've always liked this about podcasts that work well as part of a cross-media plan. The New Yorker podcasts work extremely well solely as podcasts. They could just put out something that amounts to a shill for their magazine, but they did it right: they take their magazine content and refactor it to make a great radio listening experience.

• Addendum to "Promotion" bullet point two cards back: RM pushed listeners early on to write iTunes reviews, and feels he has a lot more iTunes reviews than many other NPR podcasts that have much wider audiences.

• Roman Mars's preferences for podcasts: quiet, personal, conversational (between host and listener), some level of production quality.

• "I worry that if public radio doesn't encourage innovation, then the guy who's ten years younger than me will just decide to do his own podcast (which is inherently so much more rewarding than radio), and won't even make the call. PR will miss out on great new content and they won't even have any way of realizing it." This is pretty much exactly where I'm at.