 Podcasts Roundtable round 108, no title today because we're trying something different. After 107 rounds, I think Dave and I always talk about, man, what's the topic this time? What do we come up with? And all of you, podcastsroundtable.com slash guest, if you wanna be on the Roundtable, it's gonna be easier now, I think too. Because that's where you go to submit to be on the Roundtable. And it's also where you can have suggestions of what you wanna talk about. Well, a lot of the things that people bring up over 107 rounds start to be the same. So I don't wanna repeat too much content. Obviously there are subjects we can talk about again and again and we will continue to do that. But we're gonna try the roundtablers that are on the round, including Dave and ourselves, myself. We're gonna grab stories from the last week or two weeks, any relevant story to podcasting and we're gonna discuss those. So I think it'll also give more people opportunity to join the Roundtable. Obviously nothing revolutionary going on here. You see this format all the time in our niche, whatever it happens. I think that our unique value ad here though is the roundtablers themselves. We get to hear your opinions. You don't hear the same two blowhards on every round and get their opinions only. We get different blowhards on here every time. Five blowhards this time, right? Six, yeah. So this is gonna be our value ad, is getting more opinions from the community. So hopefully that works out. Let us know if you like this format. You might not have a choice because in order to keep the topics going and interesting, we need to keep talking about new things. All right, let's meet the Roundtable, new roundtabler. We fulfilled our requirement. Chris, welcome, finally welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here finally. What's your podcast? My podcast this week. Actually a podcast at goodstuff.fm with some friends and that's sort of the main home for, you know, as some of us do and rather than setting up a new website every time, we just kind of collected all our efforts together in one domain and .fm went for the expensive .fm domain and that's what we do. So I have a podcast called Show Me Your Mic that's about podcasting interviewing other podcasters that's a bit of a hiatus right now but there's a bunch of other shows for anybody who's interested in either the band U2, some daily podcasting, a goodstuff morning show that a friend does, Clockworks, which is like a Legion podcast. Yeah, bunch of stuff anyways. Good stuff. I'm sorry, I slipped a couple in there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You're just filling Daniel J's the role for this week where he's good at giving those plugs in. But yeah, no, goodstuff.fm is one of my favorite brandings. You guys do really clean stuff there and I'm a fan of that. So definitely check it out. You know, oh, me, the content's probably good too. I don't have no idea. Just the logo, just look at the logo. Co-host Dave Jackson, welcome back. Yeah, I'm Dave Jackson from the schoolofpodcasting.com. .com. All right, and Emily, who has been here before returning roundtable, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, hi, I'm Emily Prokop from thestorybehindpodcast.com and I'm one fifth of my way to a shirt. Oh, she's keeping track of where in trouble. I'm in trouble. You know that means you never make it. I know. I get to number nine and then that's it. That's gonna be your best show because you get ghosted. Oh, I've never got to use that term. All right, she gets ghosted. Very cool. Returning roundtabler, who's probably close to being kicked off himself because we can't afford t-shirts on the roundtable. Paul Colligan, welcome back. Shirts? Shirts? I didn't hear about the shirts. Tell me about the shirts. I'll show up 10 times to get a shirt. Oh, man. It's a myth. Oh. What's your show, Paul? The podcast report at thepodcastreport.com. Yeah, and you know, speaking of switching formats, I'm pretty sure the podcast report has switched formats at least once in its iteration, right? Oh, oh, multiple times. Season five, actually closing up season five, good, go to six. Switching four, it's the playground for me. It's where I get to test everything. And so I do things that make sense and I don't know, sneak preview. I think the next season of the podcast report will be done live on Facebook. Invite everybody to the live studio audience recording and the whole thing, and then send it out by audio. So should be fun. Very cool. Yeah, I mean, almost made me want to go roundtable and dive into one topic there because I am curious, I have to ask, since you're here, when we get you on, when we get anyone on who does something different, we want to ask, why did you switch? How has it worked out? Well, well, this starts with the next episode. So the podcast report has always been a chance for me to test what's going on. You know, my audience goes with me, they journey with me, and so I've always purposefully tried to figure out what to do. Last season, I actually handed the entire thing over to a podcasting consultant. You'll find a report coming soon about what went well and what didn't go well with that. Those are the worst people who have been charged for podcasting. Exactly. So now I'm going to look at the live thing, and I think it'll work, I think it'll be fun. The audience enjoys the switch. I mean, just the fact that you brought it up means somebody's paying attention. Did you suffer? Did people, did you get more people, or did people leave? Did you get pushed back? No, it's about the same. It's more just the, well, I mean, for all podcasters, we have a message. And the second you hand that message over to somebody else, that idea that the consultant's going to pick up what the most important points were, what the bullets are for the show notes, that kind of thing, that just didn't happen. And so, and part of that was partially my fault because abdicating my authority to teach or whatnot was part of the process, but I wasn't necessarily thrilled with it. But it helped me learn. I mean, I do podcast consulting myself. So what's the good and what's the bad of it? There was a learning lesson for all. There will probably be a recap show. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. It's more than anything, a learning process for me. Very cool. And I will say there's always something to go see at podcastersroundtable.com. The video is what I'm saying. We do this video, it's for audio, but there is always an added value to go check out in the video. And I would say this time it's Paul's video. He's using DSLR video to me that looks amazing. It feels quite ironic that Paul's leading the way in the tech because his whole spiel is to, you know, don't let the tech, you know, it's not time for the tech. It's about the content, which I agree. Tech's important, and he does get that. I can see that. So his presentation looks amazing. You should check out his video. And I think he'll probably be talking more about how that's done. In fact, I think I've used it as well. So all right, let's move on. I have my first story here. And this is actually a round table I tried to create around one topic, but it just morphed into what we're doing here. And there was an article that came out. It's Dan, I don't know if I'm saying his right, his name, Missner. You guys think it's Missner? Something like that. Missner, yeah, it works. He said, do podcasters really need to beg for ratings and reviews? And I thought this was interesting because this is something you hear all the time. Please rate and review our show. Go rate and review our show. Really helps us out, gets us discovered in Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts, right? I think people, they put a lot of weight into ratings and reviews. And I'm wondering what drives that? Why? Why are people always asking for ratings reviews? First of all, let me ask, do any of you, is that a call to action in any of your podcasts? Do you guys, it may have been at one time, is it currently? Give me both of those, I guess. Chris, do you, ratings and reviews, do you ask for those on your shows? I think it's definitely not a regular reoccurring thing we do occasionally on some of the shows we will just to put it out there, I guess. But I'm always of the probably two, shooting myself in the foot with false humility almost and like begging for stuff and not wanting to sort of self promote. And so I avoid it at all costs generally. And so I think occasionally we've done it and it's fun when you see a good review. It's more like we kind of do it as a promotional thing of like, hey, leave a funny review and we'll read it on the next episode and that kind of stuff. And it's a way of just kind of getting audience participation. But it's rarely like a regular call for action in any of our shows, which maybe they suffer because of that. Dave. Yeah, I don't really submit for them on occasion. You know, maybe once a month I might say, but what I always say is go out and subscribe to the show. And while you're there, if you feel so moved, leave a review. But I would much rather have a subscriber than a five star review. Five star reviews are great for social proof, but in terms of actually getting me up the charts, as far as we can tell, it doesn't do a whole lot. And even getting up the charts is the big question of like, does that do anything for you? Right. That's a good one. Even if you manage to find a way to get up the charts, it doesn't matter. Let's stick with ratings and reviews because we could really go out and rattle on that one. You know, and Daniel has looked into this in the past and I think he did a whole presentation. I think it was a podcast movement, 2017. And he was saying that ratings and reviews don't affect ranking. And he showed data to back that. And there were shows that had zero reviews, but it ranked near the top. And that ratings and reviews may actually, it's sort of social proof, I say. And I guess there's a difference because I'd say in Dan's article, he talks about how some apps do use rankings and reviews. But of course, we usually deal with the 300 pound gorilla or is it 800 pound? Is it 800 pound? I don't know, it's a lot of weight gorilla. That is Apple podcast. So I guess we should clarify when we're talking about the two, but I don't know, Paul, do you see, do you know what's your thought on this? Well, last week we launched the Frank Kern podcast. And it was neat because we saw Frank go to number three in his category, which I think is a pretty good ranking with absolutely zero reviews. And that was last week. And now Frank is beloved and a couple of hours later, the reviews started flying in, but I have a screenshot of Frank at number three with zero reviews. And that was last week. So it's not, it's just not necessary. So what's interesting to me about that is that you screenshotted it as some type of proof. So you, so what's going on there? What are you trying to prove? No, well, there's just this, we as podcasters like to hold on to ideas and concepts that maybe aren't necessarily true. And, you know, all the time you hear, give me a rating and, you know, when somebody says give me a rating and review because it's the only pay I get, I actually like to go review those people because, you know, for most podcasters, it is the only pay they get. But when the podcasters says, you know, give me a review, it helps us in iTunes, I just want to shutter because, you know, what else are they believing that is incorrect? You know, and what else are they focusing on? I had a consulting call today with a client who's like, well, and we can't launch until I have 10 episodes. You know, another guy, okay. You know, and so I like to get the screenshots whenever I can of the things that prove the common mistakes wrong. All right, so since we're all about starting somewhere and then going down a different, falling down a deep well, that 10 episode thing, why is that a myth? Why is that bugging you? Well, because it's, well, first of all, people say, because it gets me a lot of downloads, it doesn't, all the podcasters download the most recent episode, period. And so if you pour out your heart, your soul, your vision in episode one, do a big launch, put out 10 episodes, everybody downloads episode 10. They don't know what you're doing. They don't know why you're doing it. They don't get any context. They don't get anything. Sure, we can do the tag for the serial ordering. But the other thing they say is they say that it increases your downloads and it just doesn't. So it's a bad experience for your customer. It's people don't get to find out what it is that you want. It's not true, but other than that, it's a really good idea, I guess. Okay, I actually do really like, you're bringing up an issue that I don't, that hasn't necessarily thought of before. And that 10 typically would show up first, which is very important. I think, I don't know, anyone who finds a podcast usually comes in at 50 or 59 or 159. So I don't know how much that matters on a launch. I do like to have at least three episodes just because if someone does find it and loves it, they typically, like, I want more, right? There's a lot of binge listening happening. So is there a happy medium in there? Well, it all depends on what you're doing. If you are launching your podcast to find your audience, it doesn't really matter. And many of us did that, many of us started there. What do you mean, what do you mean? Well, if you don't know who your audience is and you're hoping to be found and you're hoping to be discovered, it really doesn't matter how many episodes you have. But most of my clients are ready for the big launch. They do the big mailing, they do the big promotion, maybe a press release or that type of thing. So they're introducing thousands and thousands of people to their show in a 24-hour time period. And if you get the opportunity to introduce thousands and thousands of people to your show, put them to the pilot, give them the vision for what's going on. And then the other thing too, when you ask people to subscribe now like Dave, always ask them to subscribe because that's the power of podcasting. And the thing is, if I go to a podcast page and there's 500 episodes, I'm not gonna subscribe because I know I can come back and take a look at, but if there's one and that episode really called to me, subscribe to get the next one, the moment it's released, people will do that. And it just depends on what you're doing it for. Oh, there's so much we can go. I feel like we just keep going. I don't know, anyone else want to come back? Any of that? Come back, like refute it, I'm saying, any ideas? Or refute it, have fun, it's a round table. Yes, we do want to punch holes, but what do you guys think? I mean, how many, Dave, you help people. Emily, you help people, forget Dave. Dave Cyril, you help people start podcasts. What, where are you at in this philosophy of having episodes? You know, what I do understand that like if people say, I can't watch till I have 10, sometimes they just never launch because they can't even get those 10 out, right? We don't want to prevent things. And I think that's a big thing that Paul's probably trying to prevent is like, you gotta get out there, right? So I don't know, where are you at, Emily, on the... I tell them three. Three would be the magic number for me just because that's what they're putting out to the audience they already have. And then that's also going to be the audience who will give them the feedback of this didn't work. I didn't really like how you did that. I want you to talk more about this and this, whereas, you know, and I'm basically repeating Dave. Like I feel like I have a little Dave in my head because I know he said this before. It's like, if you put out 30 and you put out one every day, you already have 30 in the can. People are already like, oh, this isn't what I wanted from that person. I'm just gonna tune out and go to another podcast or something, but you put out three, ask for that feedback from your audience, get that feedback. You don't have to take every single piece of it, you know, keep it your show, but being able to have just a few right in there and especially for binging because I am a binge listener. Somebody comes out there like, I'm putting out this podcast and it's brand new. I mean, I'm not gonna say no to a new podcast that sounds amazing just because they have one or two episodes, but like you, I am going to subscribe so they don't miss the other ones either. Can I give some hard numbers on three? I have a case study. Yeah. So JJ Virgin, who by the way, Dave's interview with JJ Virgin is like, what if my favorite interview is in a long time, Dave? Hats off, that was fantastic. Thank you so much. JJ wanted to launch with 10. I wanted her to launch with one. We compromised on three, three as many as compromised. So the simple facts were this, we had more than three times as many downloads of episode three as we had of episode one and two combined. Right. Make sense. So it's just the stats. So there's the experience, but there's the reality. And she did in her mailings, she did say that there's three episodes, grab them all and get the idea of what's going ahead. And sometimes TV does that. Sometimes TV will launch a show and they'll do episode one, episode two, you know, that type of thing. But in JJ's case, more than three times as many downloads of three as one and two combined. Whatever that's worth. I've seen that not quite to that extent, but I've, anytime I see somebody that's like, hey, I just launched, I want to add my stuff to iTunes and I'll go in and I'll see what I have three episodes. And I'll like flag it and like, okay, go back and look at them in a week. And it's always episode three is more than one and two. And I'm amazed. I always thought like number one would just get like no downloads at all, but it does. People do go back and listen, but it's not as much as three. I will say that your third episode is probably better than your first episode. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I've heard people go extreme on this though, like don't launch until you have 30. And that's when I was like, oh, now come on. Did they, did those people launch? Cause highly likely. His point was launch with 30 and then by that time you're good. And so when you get to episode 30. Well, then that point is delete episodes one to 29. And so you launch with one episode 30 is number one. Yeah. I love how Dan starts off this article cause he says you could call it a thought virus or podcasting's most enduring meme. If you like this show, remember to leave us a rating and review. It really helps. And he goes on to say, I mean, he goes on to show that Breaker, which is an app I'm not even aware of and Cast Box, another app that I don't really know that well, apparently do use their ratings and reviews as a way to chart shows. But when you're asking for ratings and reviews, are you really asking for ratings and reviews at Breaker? I think everyone is, there's this implied idea that you're asking for ratings reviews at iTunes, which I, or Apple podcast, which I have to say, Apple needs to make this better. This is a bad process. And maybe that's part of the problem, right? Chris, have you ever tried to rate and review a show? Yeah, it's awful. Especially if you're, you know, we're podcast nerds who will spend the time obviously going and finding Dave's show and willing to like, you know, help them out with a four star, five or whatever. But yeah, for the average listener, I remember when we launched the YouTube podcast and like these are diehard YouTube fans who are like will go to the wall for whatever fan, you know, and they were just confused and asked I had to send screenshots and, you know, movies and how to do it and all that kind of stuff. And I think, yeah, it's definitely got to be easier if Apple wants to actually make use of that in some sort of social proof the same way they do on the app store where your, you know, apps or podcasts that have four or five stars will, you know, populate higher in search results, let's say for the other ones that maybe don't have or only have two or one stars. But I think where Breaker is interesting, I've heard a little bit about it on another podcast and sort of general idea, not necessarily specific to Breaker, but is social proof in like, I think you almost be better off going with like, hey, can you guys tweet about my show or write somewhere, somewhere socially, write a blog post, whatever about my show, then the actual like Apple podcast rating or review because like it's easier for people generally to they know how to tweet or they know how to write something on Facebook and share it with their friends. That to me seems like a better call to action of sorts than sending them to Apple podcasts where they'll just get lost and probably go find another person's show before they can read yours. Yeah, go ahead Dave. For a while on the desktop version, if you could go in, you could write a review and then you'd find out that you weren't logged in. And when you logged in, you would then lose your review because I've gotten that ticket before. It's like, my audience can't leave reviews. I'm like, they have to log in first. And I haven't even tried on the app. I've always done it. I'm old school. I still, because I live in iTunes basically. So I haven't tried it on the app, but I know. It's actually, if you want to send him swag, just send it to iTunes. He literally lives in iTunes. It's a small box on the web. Now, I'm not saying that ratings and reviews are not, they're not good. They're not important. Emily, what were you gonna say? I was just gonna add to that joke because my mom doesn't, she still doesn't know what I do. So she tells people I work at iPod. Nice. Nice. Sad or depressive? Have her watch Alex Inc. Yeah, have her. How about not? Is that on? It's not in us in ours. I don't, yeah, if we should talk about that. Uh-huh. That is not on our list, but let's talk about it because it's the round table and I do not care because a lot of the people here. So first of all, as anyone, I predicted the show would not, I mean, one season probably won't make it two seasons. It just, I saw the previews in it just, but as they're coming out, I'm seeing a lot of things. It seems like a lot of cliche stuff and just a lot of, I think he's carrying around a high LPR 40. Yes. I've watched all the episodes. It's a family-friendly comedy. Okay, here's the problem of mass media. They have to appeal to everyone, right? They don't just need the podcasters to watch and like it. I mean, if they were a podcast, that might be enough, podcastersroundtable.com, but they need everyone to like it. So it has to be some generic show with a skin about podcasting, right? But I think the thing is, we're watching it the same way doctors would watch ER or Grey's Anatomy. Right. This is the first time I've ever felt like a doctor. This is amazing. And you're like, you do not put a high LPR 40 in the middle of the table and just have your kids in the kitchen talk about. No, you don't. We email doctors or just like, that's not how you perform a tracheotomy. So it's kind of hard to judge it from a podcasters perspective. I'm trying to watch it as just a show. I just don't know what it has to offer is just a show. Like is it, is it funny? Is it funny? Elsie's kids thought it was hilarious. That's when I went, okay, that's... You know what my kid watches? YouTube and Netflix. Isn't it too much? Yeah. That's it. So it's, and I cannot get over the fact that the one guy was on the Sopranos. So the whole time I'm just waiting for him to like turn around and whack somebody. So I cannot not see that guy in the... Who's podcasting from a coffee shop? Who's in the background? That's Emily's husband. No. No, you want a coffee shop? No, we've just got some issues next door. Yeah. We'll get that fixed. I'm cleaning out what I can. No, no, it's totally cool. He's got the Sopranos next door. Anyways, so yeah. Well, this should be a fun video to watch. Anyways, yeah, I don't, I have not seen an episode. So I'm guilty of that. I have seen WTF, which is the other show that's based around podcasting. Now that I feel like, it's not called WTF. It's, what's it called? Marin. Marin, yeah. That one I felt has more success. And I think it has seen success. I don't know if it's still in the air or not. No, he's doing, he's got other shows he's moved on to. And the one guy that was on it is now on Silicon Valley and blah, blah, blah. Good show. But there's some great scenes in there. One of my favorite scenes is where he's being interviewed by like a morning radio show. And they were kind of like, hey, you know, podcasting's this little fun little toy you play with. And he's like, aren't you guys like doing fart jokes? Like seriously, gonna make fun of my podcast? That's an awesome scene. Nice. All right, well, anyways, ratings and reviews. I don't know if it's the best way to, to spend your call to action. That's what I'm actually most curious about. You have a call to action. I don't know how many you can make before people just turn you off. Maybe you have one. What's the most important one? Is ratings and review it? I don't know. Paul, do you think that's where you'd spend your call to action? No. Yeah, where do you, how, so do you think it's worth getting ratings and reviews? I think ratings and reviews are gonna come naturally. You do. And I think it's something that you can ask for an email, maybe ask for in your website, but it's not right for the, it's not right for the show. I think we, maybe we had you on like a call to action. What would be your call to action if you had one to spend? Well, email list. Yeah. Email list, that's the call to action. It's amazing how that is endured, right? I mean, the email list just won't go away. Like it's still the way to get, and maybe the best way to get in touch with your audience. I don't know. Anyone else have a better call, anyone else like to have a different call to action? What would you rather people do for your podcast? I have people join my Facebook group. Because I can talk to them, I can go live and tell them updates with the show. Do you then try to move those people, it always worries me to build on a third party, right? Where they could shut you off. Do you try to get people on email list after that? Well, that's the thing with my show, it's a history show and the only, I'm not really using it for my business, but at this point, I have a book deal because of my podcast. And so now they're just like, oh, do you have an email list? I'm like, no, but I have a Facebook group. They're like, can you get an email list going? So I kind of had to put that call to action in. And I really, that's the other thing is I don't really put that in my show as much because I know what people are doing when they're listening to the show. They're driving, they're going to the grocery store, they're walking their dog, they're doing their dishes. They're not gonna sit there at the computer and say, oh, I really wanna join this email list. So it's more, I'd rather get them, hey, I have show notes, go to my website to get the show notes to learn more about what I'm talking about. Also on my website, there's a way to sign up for my email list or join my Facebook group. So the show notes are super, super important for that sort of stuff because I know as a listener, I go back and I will click on the links and people show notes. I've never looked at the, are there any kind of metrics for a Facebook group? Because the nice thing about an email list, you can see like who is and isn't clicking and things like that. You can kind of see how engaged your email list is. Yeah, with a Facebook group, you can see not only how many people join, they do give you metrics of as far as age and how active people are. They actually give you a list. I did this once in my Facebook group of, hey, if anybody guesses the number one active person in this Facebook group, both you and that person get stickers. And people were just like, oh my God, am I number one? And I'm like, no, you're number two. And they're like, next time. I love calling people number two. No, you are number two. Chris is definitely the number two on this show for sure. For sure. It's new round table or hazing, Chris. That's what that is. Nothing personal at all. And because you hate Canada. I hate Canada. Who does it? Canadians are the meanest people I've ever met. They're not, sorry about that. So you see that? You get the joke there? That was funny. I like that. All right, all the funniest Canadians, all the funniest Americans are actually Canadians, if you don't know that. That's always the joke at the Academy Awards. You're like, they're Canadian? What? Okay, never knew. All right, well, anyways, hey, by the way, Emily's audio is awesome. You hear that? And she's using an ATR 2100, just saying. Yeah, ATR 2100 moving blankets. Then that is the key to your sound right now, because what I'm hearing is a beautifully treated room and it's moving blankets. I love it. Yeah, moving blankets. Speaking of moving, I'm sorry, Emily, we haven't moved on. This might be the problem in this format, but I like it anyways, because it's a lot of fun. Let's go, who wants to go next? Give me a story. Do you guys have your own stories? Because I have them here if you don't have. Let me see, I can pick one that's interesting. This Pandora CEO is doubling down on podcasts because that makes me almost laugh. That's false. Why does that make you laugh? Why does that make you laugh? Well, because they're doubling down on something I didn't even know they were involved in. Oh, okay, okay. So I've got a screenshot here of the article just having fun with the camera software, but a couple of things to think about stat-wise, okay? 83, this is all from Infinite Dial. 83% of the country has a smartphone, okay? Statistically speaking, they have a smartphone, which makes all the podcasters get wacky because if they have a smartphone, they should be listening to my show. 64% of them do online audio. So right now we've got about 20% of the country one out of every five people have a smartphone and they're not doing anything smart with it. But what's really important is 85% of the population has an awareness of Pandora, 85%. iHeart, 67%, Spotify, 65%, podcasting, 64%. More people who go to the internet for audio know about Pandora than podcasting by about 20%. Okay, we've seen some interesting things happen to some interesting podcasts by getting on Spotify and they're about the same rate we are. When Pandora introduces podcasting, we're gonna be a good place. There's a new place for us. Now think about Pandora. Pandora has a choice, either pay to play Britney Spears or Katy Perry or whatever the kids are listening to these days, or grab Dave for free. You know, or grab Paul for free. So we've got an audience that is going to Pandora for internet audio that's bigger than our existing audience and Pandora has a reason to send them our stuff. Think about it. Here's what I really love. Yes, being in a new place that is popular. Awesome, I love it. Distribution rocks, get me out as many places as you want. It's more chance for people to find my stuff. Here's what I don't care about it. Here's what bugs me. The last paragraph of this article says there's nothing personal with that stuff. Lynch explains it's just what everyone else does. That's what music was. You know what to look at on the billboard chart. Okay, what's popular. And then Pandora came out and said, we need discovery. For music, that works great. The skip button, my favorite thing. I listen to Pandora at a time because guess what? I can tell if I wanna hear a song in the first 10 seconds. Not so much with a podcast. He says that hasn't happened yet in podcasts but we're going to make it happen. He's going to solve discovery, Dave. But anyways, if you think there's a problem with discovery, that's a whole other system. But he wants to do, the CEO wants to do for podcasts what they did for music and I just don't think they worked the same. I don't think people come to browse podcasts in five second increments the way you do music. But, but we, everybody who knows that they wanna listen to Dave is listening to Dave. People who wanna listen to podcasts about podcasts don't know about Dave. So just like you go to Pandora and say I want 80s music or you go to Pandora and say I want country music, you can say I want shows about X. And I'll tell you, there are a lot of shows that I can tell aren't for me in the first five seconds. It's just not that hard. And as podcasters, we should be doing a better story. Right now we have these three minute intros and we have these, if we're Tim Ferriss, we have six minutes of commercials about, you know, about our sponsors. If we can hook our audience in the first five seconds, which some of us do a lot better than others, we will get people to give us the thumbs up. And so this, we've always been asking who's gonna bring us an audience? Pandora has got the option. And it's really, really exciting. And I know it's really cool to say that the discovery problem, you know, doesn't need fixing. Well, for us, it doesn't need fixing. But for the average person who doesn't know where to start, the same one who goes give me some 80s music, give me somebody who sounds like Cher and give me some country in Western. They're gonna say, I want podcast about you too. You know, now it's Chris's chance to prove that it's a good show. Wait a minute, you know Chris very well, apparently. He's paying attention. He is paying attention to the YouTube bucket. But that's what I'll be interested to see. Cause what they do is they go in and say, okay, you liked this song, it had a thumping bass, two guitars and a singer who can sing higher than dogs can hear. I will say they are so good at knowing what I wanna hear. That I will say. So I'm not sure how you set up an algorithm that goes, this guy's talking about, you know, chameleon breeding. Well, it's gotta be in the, it's gotta be in the description you submit. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Yeah. That's true. People who, you know, you take a guy like me, I've subscribed to Dave, you know, and I've also subscribed to X. So they're gonna compare people with David and people with X. And then if I go, this show is so freaking boring and I click the down button. And it's true. It's gonna, it's the thumbs up, it's the thumbs down. And it's gonna be the, okay, Alexa, skip this show. Just like we're doing with Pandora all the time. Yeah. Not convinced it. I mean, look, iTunes did this the best. They've always did this the best when, when they showed you other shows that people were listening to when they listened to this show, I could glance at the artwork and the title and know. Oftentimes I'm like, yes, I wanna check out that show, but I'm not going to check it out now. Like a lot of times I would subscribe and check it out later. It's a harder ask for me in a, in a skip audio, in an audio format. It may work. I have no idea. I'm not against it at all. I just think Pandora has been talking about Pikes for a long time. We've been waiting for it. As, as us in this community, I haven't seen it really implemented. I haven't seen them do anything with it, but they probably have the luxury of coming in whenever they want and still dominating, right? Spotify had this luxury. Not only did I would say that they botched podcasting when they first brought it in. They were terrible. Like you heard that it exists. You couldn't find it. It weren't letting anyone on, but it doesn't matter because they're so big that once they find their place, people, they still have enough people built in to come and consume it and make it successful. So I don't know. I don't even know if I'd consider it successful yet on Spotify's for some people. Yes, but again, distribution, if people are consuming audio there, I know I want to be there. Yeah. Let me clarify. I'm excited that they're coming on board. It's about time. It'd be great if they could, you know, go over and knock on the door and bring Google with them and maybe get Microsoft involved. That'd be cool. But I'll just be interested. I'm really interested to see how they're going to do this thing. Cause I just know how they approached it from a music standpoint. I'm really interested to see how they're going to do that on a podcast, but I'm excited. Chris, do you get Spotify in Canada? Like I know it's just like so far out in space. No, actually that's what I- It's called Spudify. It's called Spudify. We have Spotify, but Pandora is not available in Canada at all. They have a restricted to the US. Are you serious? I was actually joking. No. Wow. Cause music licensing outside. Yeah, it's all of that. So what I was going to say though with Pandora is and probably Spotify too. I'm not subscribers of either, but they do have seemingly where Apple doesn't really care if you listen to more podcasts. They just want you to, obviously you buy more devices. Pandora, Spotify, it's in their interest to get you back on their platform. And so I would guess that they'll be, I don't know, you guys are on Spotify or Pandora. Do they send you emails outside of the app where it's like, Hey, you listen to you too. You might want to listen to this person. And could they not do that as well with podcasts, I guess, where they're reaching you outside of the actual app itself with, Hey, you listen to Dave's show. You're probably like Paul's thing. That kind of idea and pulling, you know, all the metadata obviously that we're handing over to Apple podcasts is available to Pandora as well. And so they know the genres. They know the texts that we're throwing in. They're probably doing a little bit of audio sampling and all that kind of stuff. And figuring out what you're, what you're talking about even if you're not telling them very well in the description and combining all that in some sort of crazy algorithm soup to know that you might like this other show in addition to the thumbs up, thumbs down thing, I guess on Pandora or the app, but you're shaking your head ready. They don't do any sort of outside. Well, I may, I may have turned it off. I mean, you definitely going to get, you're going to, I do free version. So I get ads, right? So, but yeah, I don't know you guys. So do you guys, I don't recall getting emails. I fell into one because I'm always looking at the concerts to see who's in town. And somehow it was like, I ended up on an email list called bands in town. And so they'll say, here's who's in your town. And I've actually gone to a couple of concerts because of that. That's why I'm still subscribed to it. But it was something in Spotify at one point. I was looking at somebody's calendar and it was like blah, blah, blah bands in town. I was like, what is this? And I clicked on it and it was like, oh, subscribe. I think I bought, I might have bought tickets to a concert. And in the process of that ended up on bands in town. So, but I've seen some cool concerts. The other thing about Pandora is, didn't they just spend like a bunch of change on AdWiz or something like that? Was that Pandora that bought? It was in that article. Pauling it down like next to the second to the last paragraph at the bottom or something. I thought I saw where they had just bought a big, because that was half the thing. They doubled down on advertising, blah, blah, blah. And I thought it was AdWiz, because I remember thinking it came in like a big, giant orange can and you shook it up and sprayed it. Sprayed AdWiz on your eyes. Oh, man. All right, well, anyone else? Emily, are you excited about Pandora doubling down on podcasts? You know, I wasn't excited about Spotify. I really didn't think that that would be as big as it was. But I remember Rob Walsh on the feed saying, something like 10% of downloads now come from Spotify. It's like number two, but isn't that a low bar? Like I feel like that's always been a low bar. It's a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of people. I'll still take that 10% who maybe weren't listening to podcasts before. Well, I mean, because look, no one stepped into that number two spot, right? I mean, Stitcher was there for a while. I mean, Microsoft could have owned it if they'd stuck with it. Google should own it. Google should be number two hands down. It should not even be a competition, it feels like. They're not. There's the number two feels like it's just been wide open for anyone to take. Stitcher kind of fell off. Do we know why Stitcher fell off? Anyone? Why did it be? Is it because they force ads in your content that you don't ask for? They do that. Didn't they also used to take your files and make them all kind of wonky and low quality? They did, but I'm sure that only matters mostly to us. I mean, I used to rail against that because for several reasons, but I always also said that if people are listening on Stitcher, they don't care, right? Otherwise they'd go somewhere else. But I don't know. Paul, I mean, why do you think people migrated away? Is it better apps? I mean, is it because Stitcher was probably the easiest way to get podcasts on Android for I feel like quite a long time and then overcasts came along or pocketcasts or is there other options now? Theories? Stitcher is just mad. There's no passion there. There's no desire to serve the audience. There are a bunch of people looking for a business plan and we'll re-encode, we'll try ads, we'll do this, we'll do that. Even though Midroll took it over and now I feel like Midroll is great understanding podcast audiences, but I'm not sure that it's a different division. I don't think it's the smart people at Midroll that are in this district building right now. No, the Stitcher people are smarter than the Google people and the Smarter trust me this than another company that I'm not allowed to talk about. But so Stitcher is, it's sort of like other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play kind of situation? But there are some opportunities here for someone to do really, really, really well. Yeah, I know like Corey Finneran had a huge audience for whatever reason with IVNV on Stitcher and then it just quit working. There were times when it'd be like, his feed was valid, everything was fine, it just wouldn't update in Stitcher. So I think there may be some cases where people are like, they didn't promote it as much as they used to and then it's like you said, when Pocket Cast comes out and these other alternatives and I did see in the article that, yeah, Pandora purchased AdWiz with 2Zs because it's cooler that way for $145 million earlier this year. So they're all set up to throw ads at us even more, which I was like, okay, because I do, I listen to Pandora on occasion, if I wanna do the lean back, I will throw on Pandora and throw on my 80s metal and I'm happy. Nothing wrong with that. Gabe in the chats says he can't stand Pandora because they interrupt the music way too much with advertisements, which I agree. And actually it's more than it used to be, but you gotta pay. Like if it bugs you that much, then it's time to pay. Like I've almost paid so many times, but I'll deal with the ads. Before there was overcast, I used to use Stitcher because I love the fact that I could go on my computer at home, I could go on my phone and pick up where I left off. What drove me off of Stitcher is they started every, it used to be in between episodes, they would put ad. Then they started every time I hit pause, when I would unpause, I would put an ad and I'm like, all right, deal breaker done. And that's when I found overcast and you're going to have to pry overcast out of my cold dead hands at this point. That'll make Marco Armin very happy. Yeah, I mean he does. I mean, that's my wife uses ad, it's good tech. I was already a huge fan of Pocket Cast, but anyways, we won't go down. Everyone loves apps, they love their cell phone companies and banks and everyone's got a different opinion. Let's find another story, because it's clear in this format I'm going to have to have people pick one story because it's getting too short. Yeah, yeah, I love it. We just do it two hour shows, what do I say? But whatever. I'm game. What do we got? That was Paul's. Emily, I actually, I'm curious about one of Emily's stories here. Is it possible to game Apple Podcast Charts? Yeah, that was a really interesting story that I saw a few months ago and then I finally read it tonight and this person was tracking one particular podcast that was always at the top of the charts and it was like, well, how is this possible? And then at first they looked at their Twitter account. Because it's not a podcast that typically... Yeah, it's not. You're like, what's the reason? It's called Kick-Ass News. Like it's not a major brand. It's not a Pod Save America. Come on, let's... I know. It's not, you know, so they tracked it. At first they looked at their Twitter account and kind of analyzed if there were any fake followers on there and they found 22% and then they were looking through all the rest of the data to kind of track them and wondering if there was a click farm at work. And I mean, we're all in, for the most part, Facebook podcasting groups and we've probably started getting the spam. This became really popular the past few weeks is getting the spam from people on Fiverr saying, I will get you to the top of the iTunes charts and stuff. And you realize these people, like, is it a click farm? What's going on here? And I just, I feel bad for the new podcasters starting out that's like, oh yeah, I will totally pay $5 to this person for either a click farm or it's just absolutely a scam. And they have to realize that it's subscriptions and do you really want all these subscriptions to get you to the charts, to the top of the charts if no one's actually subscribing, if no one's actually listening to your show, they're just hitting subscribe in a click farm. So Paul, were you in on the original game, Apple podcast charts with Rob Walsh? You remember that? Yes. Okay. You guys did it, right? Yes. And isn't the algorithm, is it still the same? What was the secret? Um, it's subscribes. Yeah. It's subscribes over a 24 hour time period is some significant part of your score. Right. So I mean, yeah, podcast, I mean, I feel like Apple podcasts, they only care, we hit on range reviews, they only care about subscriptions, mostly, right? Yeah. Well, um... And Paul's, if you're not watching on video, Paul staring at the ceiling, it feels like he's determining what he can and can't say, but he knows it, he knows it. Well, Paul made a good point on his show, the podcast report about when subscribers, what do you do that brings you back to your phone? Like Apple wants you to use their phone. And when you subscribe, you go back to the phone and I was like, that was a really good point. I have seen a show stats that have climbed up the charts ridiculously with absolutely zero additional downloads. Okay. The only option, well, there are two options. This show either could have had a bunch of ratings and reviews, because it really helps you in iTunes or there was an automated system that there was an automated system that subscribed people without even downloading. Right. And if you think about the idea of ClickFarms, downloading actually takes time. Clicking subscribe doesn't. So a ClickFarm would actually make more sense. I do not condone, I do not recommend, I do not participate in this process. I've been looking at some stats and some information. I can tell you, I used to be, I used to sell climbing up the charts. That used to be one of our big things is we help you get a campaign, we help you run up the charts legitimately. And two things, A, it's a lot cheaper to do it other ways now than to do it legitimately and B, it just has no impact. It just has no impact. Wait, you're saying being at the top of the charts has no impact. Yeah. That's huge. Okay. Why? Why does it matter? I mean, it's gotta get you something, right? Why is everyone clamoring for it? Is it because just you wanna win the trophy and be at the top? Or do you think, or do these people think that it's gonna bring them? I think they think, I think, I had a guy with all, I had a guy who has purchased everybody's course. He's a member of the school of podcasting. He's a member of Paradise. He's a member of all these things he told me today that, but if we do that with eight episodes, I can't launch with the 10. You know, like that was a statement of fact. You know, I had a gal once post on my Facebook page saying, what do you do if you have a hard time getting interviews for your show? I suggest you don't have an interview show. She, her response was literally, I kid you not, is that allowed? Yeah. I think in some people's parlance, we have these thoughts of what's happening. Now, there are a lot of really dumb advertisers out there who don't know what they're buying. And someone who's number 10 in category X is worth more than someone who's number 100 in category X when you don't know what you're buying. And that's back to the old, what was it, Twitter bombing days? You know what, it was just downloads. I'm Twitter bombing, of course, because it's downloads. The only thing it rips off is Libsyn. You know, it doesn't go through the iTunes system at all. But if all you're tracking is downloads, you know, that you can do. So I think it's a bunch of very misinformed people with some stuff. I believe Apple, Apple has to change the game. New and noteworthy is dead. Yeah. That's what I'm gonna ask you. Emily, is there anything in this article, I didn't get a chance to read about how does Apple fight against this? Or first of all, what did this article say? Is this, did he find out this is what's going on? It's just. It's going on. It's going on. It's going on. Yeah. And what does Apple, does it say anything that Apple's doing? Can they do anything? Would you like my? Would you like my? Yeah, I mean, is this the, is it still seems like the subscribes are a great way to tell if a podcast is popular, but I don't know. For Emily, do you have any thoughts? I mean, at the very end of the article, it's like, well, how much harm is this really doing? It's victimless. But the thing is, it's victimizing other podcasters and because of something like this, the same thing when people used to stuff their author tags and their show titles is Apple was like, oh, you're doing this. No, we're going to penalize all of you. You know, we're not, if you do that. It's the army, right? We're all doing pushups and you're, you're being the. Exactly. Jack will get this all pushups. Paul. Yeah, you have solutions? Well, so Amazon used to be gamed in the Kindle world. By accounts doing the Kindle unlimited stuff. Amazon changed the game to where now it's pages red, not acquisitions of your book. Okay. Pages red, yeah. Pages red. Apple has now started to track how long people consume a podcast, which is the podcast conversion of Pages Red. I believe that it's going to change very soon to consumption. There's going to be some sort of consumption percentage. You know, obviously, you know. It's usually the YouTube model, right? What counts at YouTube? How long do people watch? Exactly, exactly. It's where everybody else is. It's where it's where Apple has to be. And now we know that Apple tracks this. Yeah. Which we already knew that, but they're giving it to us. Yeah. And of course, if every system, someone will game that too. Yeah, I was going to say. But it's just how do you combat the. But the thing is it takes a lot more money to run. You know, you know, the thing is, I mean, Emily, you know, you pointed out here that it's fiver that's doing this. Okay. You know, it's five bucks to rank the system to get, you know, 5,000 machines playing an hour of the podcast. That's actually going to take some money and take some time. So at least people aren't going to be able to game for five. Yeah, I mean, you could be mining crypto for that kind of time. Exactly, yeah. And make more money at mining crypto, so. Maybe. So it's going to, it's going to be, it's going to be consumption. And the other thing that Apple can do, and it's not that complicated and Apple call me, is you can simply only chart accounts with credit card numbers. Because, you know, no, no, no click farms going to generate, you know, 5,000 credit cards. And everybody's, everybody, it's the accounts without the credit card numbers that everybody's playing on right now. So if you track consumption for people with credit card accounts, that's going to be pretty hard to hack. Sweet. So help is coming. I like it. All right. Let's move on. Cause time is ticking. It's lightning rounds. No, we don't have one of those. We don't have one of those. We might need to get one. See, this is, I can tell, this is too much fun for me. This is, I love just bringing stuff up and talking about, that was the whole concept of the round table in the beginning. And then I steered towards topics. But you guys are going to let us know if you really do enjoy the more focused one topic thing, let us know. And then, you know, we'll factor it in. We don't know that that's what we'll go. It's Ray's algorithm. It's my, it's Ray's algorithm. It's really, it's super gameable. Super gameable. Just send beer. Chris, the infant dial in Canada, no one cares about that. No, I'm kidding. I thought this was cool. I thought this was cool because the infant dial for the first time, we know we're familiar with this research in the US. They do, they've been the longest running research on podcast consumption, right? But now they're doing it for Canada. Yeah. And it's, I mean, as you'd expect, it's, we're similar. We're not all that different, obviously, being as opposed as we are. Such a thank you. But with, with a few... You put mayonnaise on your french fries, so. Why would you not? I don't, I don't understand. They have poutine, okay? They win. They don't have Trump. So I'm going to be there soon. There goes your algorithm. But the, yeah, similar stuff in terms of results as you'd expect, but we don't have access, or we only recently got access to Amazon's smart devices, the Echoes, et cetera, whereas Google Home was around for longer and all that kind of thing. So minor differences aside, I guess. The big one to me that has been growing, at least in interest from people that I've talked with in the podcasting space is the smart speaker stuff. And I don't know what it's like in your guys' very, your people's, your various worlds, but like in mine, I feel like it's, with, I don't know if you can hear the, my kid's playing hockey right outside the door here. It's because we're Canadian, obviously. They're playing hockey. Such a cliche. I'm living that. That is fantastic. Are they listening to Rush while they're doing it? Yeah, that's fine. Wait, Rush is Canadian? Say it, there you go. Come on, Brian, Adam gets a joke. But anyways, we don't, it's still a newer, I guess, new to us, new to Canada in terms of availability and all that kind of stuff. And so there isn't, it isn't as popular, I would say. But it's certainly an area of interest whereas in the States, they've been around longer, you've had access to them for longer, is the podcasting world kind of really interested in this? And is there actually a sense in like pushing into this area or is it kind of like, because for me, I just, I bristle at the idea of like having a speaker that I, because as soon as I leave the room, that speaker's sitting here in my office and whereas my phone comes with me, you know, I can take it to the car, take it with headphones, whatever I'm doing, that is more mobile to me. But that's just my own personal preference. So I'm just curious with your shows, where you're at with sort of recommending or are people listening on Smart Speakers? What's- Paul is really into the Smart Speaker thing. I think he did a talk recently on Smart Speakers. I've always been, here's my theory, is that podcasting is not a shared experience, right? We listen, it's very personalized. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that a lot of people don't live alone and they play the speaker. I don't know. Again, it's distribution. Like, I don't want to block anyone from getting my stuff the way they want to get it, right? Yeah. So, and is that it, Paul? I mean, what do you see with Smart Speakers? Smart Speakers saw more market penetration in one year than podcasting saw in its first 14 years. They have the advantage of being way- Oh, fine, that's by Google and Amazon. Yeah, but take what, you know, if Google wants to spend a Gajillion dollars to promote something that plays my podcast, you know, I thought it would have been their app. You know, silly, silly me. But, you know, if Amazon wants to spend a Gajillion dollars to get someone to play my podcast, I'm going to be behind that. Anybody who spends crazy money making it easier to consume my show, I want to get fully and completely behind. Yeah, there was a study that came out that said by the end of the year, 90 million people will have a smart device just for this year. And of those, it was 28% said they're going to listen, that already have a smart speaker, listen to more podcasts. So when you take 28% times 90 million, it's 27 million people are listening to more podcasts because of a smart speaker. 89 million people have a treadmill, 28% say they're going to use it for a week, 1% use it. I will say this, and this is a mistake I see a lot of people making, they'll make their podcast a flash briefing. And a flash briefing is the keyword there is brief. So it should be, you know, I hear the weather or I have Alexa tell me something new that you can do with her. And what happens is when you put your whole podcast there and you got, you know, there are 30 episodes that you just launched with, when I go next because I don't want to listen to you, it takes me to your next episode. And I go, what? Hey, what's her name? Next. And it goes to your next episode. And the first thing I do when I grab my phone is get you out of my flash briefing. Your flash briefing should have one episode. Dave, do you have a show about the A-L-E-S? I do. Yes. No, Dave can't say it. Otherwise he'll have problems inside the studio. Right. Well, I hear, I can mute her. There we go. The Alexa cast. Yeah, but it's, I've found that a couple of times you can make a skill for your podcast. All this jargage. I mean, what is going on? No, no, listen to me. Well, skill is an Amazon app basically. Kids today. So confused. From a purely circumstantial standpoint, I submitted to movement my follow-up to this one. Smart speakers one year in and they weren't interested. So maybe, maybe, yeah. Who knows? So who knows? We don't know that algorithm either. So we love, we love the movement. We're talking about podcast movement. You, everyone should go. I definitely have fun. I mean, was everyone at the last one? Chris, you gonna think, Chris, have you ever been compelled to leave your borders there and go to a US based podcasting conference? I don't want to get too political. So I haven't, they're actually, I was going to mention for folks who are in Canada, there is PodSummit. PodSummit, yes. Definitely, definitely, check it out. It's only a five hour drive from where I am. So that's a little more attainable. Are you going? Not yet. You should be speaking. I can hook you, I could make that happen. All right, you can just wave your wand and I'll be. Yeah, yeah, I have connections now. I don't know. Great people at PodSummit. Did we not get to one story from everyone? I don't think we got to one from Dave. No. Dave, do you want to pick from your two? I will pick, yes, because I can do this one really quick. And that is, I just find it's accepted, buddy. Exactly. Radio public, you can make money with your podcast. Now I will give them credit. They'd say it right up front. It's $20 CPM. And they even have a cool little tool where you can go over and see how much money you'll make. And the fun part is you have to send them an absolutely ad free episode. So they say, if you have ads in it, you need to rerecord it, put it on another host and give us that RSS feed. But my favorite thing about this is you don't pay them anything from what I can see. They just pay you. And I'm like, really? You're paying them with free content. You're paying them with free. But there's this other little company, you may have heard of it, called CBS Radio, that is shutting down their podcast division because they got in it to sell ads against this stuff. Free hosting, I'm assuming. I'm not sure if Danny Pena was paying for stuff over there or not. But they took a cut of the advertising and it didn't, at least for them. Oh wait, what's the network called? Play it. Play it. They're shutting that down? Yeah, Danny Pena. Well, I heard about it from somebody and then Rob checked into it and sure enough. Yeah, it's going down. They're shutting it down because they couldn't get enough ad revenue out of podcasts, is that what the problem is? I'm assuming. That's their only value. They never had ad revenue. They ran out of money. Yeah. And so here's another company doing that, along with, there's a bunch that are just like. The radio public thing. I mean, so most of the best. Yeah, that's another one. Some of the great podcasts are gonna make 20 bucks. Well, that's my whole thing. CBM is not a good model for most podcasts. So I did that and I took my weekly web tool show and I think I would make $34 by the end of the year. And that's when I went. End of the year. And I was like, excellent. So I just saw that in, cause there are a lot of things. There are a lot of new companies now that are doing this that you're getting your point. Oh, oh, oh. Don't forget the third zero. Oh, oh, oh, two cents a download in some cases. What is 20 cents, $20 per a thousand is. Do you even get paid if you don't hit a thousand? You have to get $25 before. They pay out. But I'm saying like, if your episode is. $30 check writing fee. If your episode hits 500 downloads in two weeks. Do you have to hit the CPM in a certain amount of time? Or is it just whenever this episode hits? I don't know. And I don't know if it's cumulative. Like if you had multiple podcasts, can you tie them all together into one check or is it only one check per podcast? Don't do it. Yeah, exactly. $20 per thousand downloads is two cents. And I've seen other companies, SNES, that pay you .002 cents. And like I said, I don't think the real thing here is that CPM is just not a general model. It's not. It doesn't work. But I just, when I saw that, I just thought, hey, let's take another 10 seconds to say, CPM doesn't work for people. For most people, I mean, we, we, we pedal niche. And it's not like, doesn't often speak to, you know, I don't know. I mean, making monies should be secondary anyways. But anyways, I don't know. I don't know where to go with that other than, we could dive down a whole whole about CPMs versus other ways to make money. Just go to Fiverr and list, often list other people's podcasts. And they'll make more money probably. That's how I'm making all my cash here. Shut up. We can do another story. Cause I mean, you know, I'm saying that we go two hours. We've barely hit an hour. So Dave's other story is trash. Let's see what else we got. I'm just kidding. I'm still doing my percentage on radio public. I think I would make less than Dave. It's not even, no, not worth it. Then it has a comparison chart. Let's see how it compares to pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll on your own. That's interesting. Emily, you have a related story. It says the rise of voice technology means new opportunities for podcasting. Since we, since it's related, what's that about? Yeah, I have to double check. The rise of voice technology means the new, I mean, so, I don't know, Paul, that must spark some stuff there. Voice technology, that's Alexa, that's Google. No, this was actually more, I believe it was finding people to read your podcast for you. Wow, this is weird. Yeah. Audio books, those are called audio books. Turns written text into a voice product. Yeah, there's an Amazon product right now that they keep pushing and every day, some smart Alec who has yet to launch their podcast says, you know, well, I could just have a podcast that was this reading my blog. Oh, yeah. You know, and it's- Repurpose content for the win. It's terrible. Well, it says each piece is read by a real person. We looked at text to speech, but it was robot. Right, so this is going to be hugely lucrative for them because every new podcaster hates their own voice, right? Right. So before you even launch your 10 episodes, your 37 episodes, you're gonna be like, I hate my voice, I have someone else read it and it'll land with nobody because it's coming through basically at their party. But I mean, that's the whole thing with podcasting is like people connect with the host. I listen to shows where the host are like, you know, I hate the sound of my own voice. I have a voice, I have a voice for writing, you know? And I'm like, no, I don't care if you have a terrible voice. If I connect with you, what you're saying, how you're saying it, if you make me laugh, I'm not gonna- Right, and that's the whole reason that my audio probably daves at some point. Chris is all muddy, he's all garbage in the beginning because we're all like cranking up the bass and we're like, I want to sound like the rate, you know what I mean? Cause we, yeah, that's just a podcasting, that's just a rite of passage. You gotta get over your own voice, get past that and realize that a lot of people are showing up to podcasts because they're looking for an alternative to the thing you think you're supposed to be putting out there because you grew up on traditional media, right? Yeah, when I hear a real voice, I can connect with them more. Dave, this goes to your story because Mr. JLD actually said this in his MSNBC interview that you linked me to that he was talking about how, you know, he leaves all the ums and ahs and sneezes. He leaves everything in there because that's real and authentic and that's what connects with the audience. I wouldn't go that far, but that's fine. What was he saying in that? The thing that I loved, that I loved, I was watching it and just the fact that it was JLD on whatever it is, MSNBC, some business show. Were they at a social media marketing world? Was that what I was saying? I was trying to figure out what it was. I think it was NAB, wasn't it NAB? Oh, that makes more sense. And they asked me, like, you know, what kind of money can you make? And he said, look, you're looking at three to five years. He's like, so when you start your podcast, you better be ready. He goes, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I was like, hallelujah. But then again, it's like we're talking earlier about, you know, the, my, I've got to get ratings and reviews. It's like, there's one person that said it that a lot of people follow. And I swear that a lot of people, when they hear that, they go, well, not for me. I'm going to be the exception or something. I don't know, just because I've really been trying to kind of, I've always been saying that it takes a while to build an audience and you monetize your audience. But I saw that and it was like, yes. Okay, please, everyone see what he said. Now I'm going to take that clip down and say, you don't believe me, believe this guy. I mean, part of me that that's the beauty of content creation. Like anyone who gets into content creation, just in general, not even podcasting knows that it's a long slug. You got to be here a long time. I mean, why would people, why do you get popular if you put out five things? I mean, yeah, could you do a viral video on YouTube? Sure, once and people watch it once and they never come back. I mean, it's a long time investment. You just, you can't build up a great catalog of content without doing things for a long time. So, and I do like that he put that out there publicly. I mean, but, you know, being hard, being consistent, having to be patient, all this stuff that Gary V, all these guys talk about that we talk about, it weeds out people who aren't here for the right reasons. So I don't, I don't have a problem with that. But, you know, the beauty of our medium is that it's open for anyone to try. You think you're going to be the next one? Good, give it a shot, see what happens. And if it's not what you thought it was, then, then you'll leave, but anyone, anyone can try, right? Yeah, Jessica Rhodes had a great Facebook post where she said, what do you say to a new podcaster that is thinking of quitting because they're not getting enough ROI and they're really just fresh out of the gate. And most of the people in that group said quit. If they use the, if they use the letters ROI in their question, that's all I need to know. And that's where a lot of people in that group said, forget it, you're not, you're in the wrong spot. Yeah, Paul, I'm going to be to the center here. Good. So client, recent launch, ROI from day one, but, but realizes that there's going to be some time. There's going to be some effort. There's going to be some money spent on audience building. There's going to be some money spent on production. There's going to be some money on stuff, but, but is going into it from ROI from, from day one. And trust you, me, this, if anybody over at, you know, your, your friends that you've been touring the country with, you know, they're looking at ROI and, you know, the, the makers of other things than Alex, Inc. You know, those guys are looking at ROI for their new shows. So it's, it's okay to do if, if it's a spreadsheet that is reflective of reality. Yes, there we go. I remember 10 years ago, you know, when we were doing websites for people, you know, I'd ask, Oh, how are you going to advertise this website? And they would look at me with all conviction and all belief, Oh, we're just going to go viral. Like that was a marketing plan. You know, and I think so many podcasters think, Oh, I'm just going to go viral, you know, I'm, you know, or, or, you know, I'm going to, you know, I love that tomorrow is JLD's 2000th episode. You know, and, you know, I love people. Well, you know, I was on, I was on entrepreneurs on fire. How can I not be popular? Well, you know, there's 2000 episodes. It's not, you know, and again, love, love John, love what he's done. And it's, it's funny what John says versus what other people hear. I think it's the most interesting thing. He does say most of the right things. Yeah, yeah, you know, he does wrap it in a sales wrapper that enables him to make the money he's making. So I think ROI is fine if the spreadsheet is based on reality. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, ROI is good if the spreadsheet, and many times the spreadsheet is, if you don't have the money for production, you don't have the money for marketing, you don't have the money for this, this, this, then it's a three to five year run. And it's exactly, and it's very different. I mean, you're talking to a lot of people that came into this with no audience, no email list. They didn't, they weren't known, right? And so you probably have a client who actually has a significant place to already put it out there and the ROI is gonna be much different and the return is gonna be, it's just gonna be much different. So yeah, it's, you can't paint with a broad brush, right, of course. And then I'm joking about the ROI thing, but yeah, it's, I do, I like that, but I know you kind of hit on it. I do wanna hit on one of your other articles here, Paul. He said, podcasting's New World. Groupies, stage fright, and sold out shows. What's that about? Well, it's funny. I kind of see this as part two. Four or five episodes, Dave went to, what was the event in Seattle? PodCon. PodCon, which is from the makers of VidCon. And Dave saw this whole new world and it was, I really enjoyed the interview with Dave and there are people because of the intimacy that we've been chatting about, because of the difference that we've been chatting about, who will pay good money to go see a show, get recorded. And of course, maybe someone here might have some experience with shows getting recorded in front of a live audience. But this is where we can begin to look at models that make sense. This is where we can begin to look at the things that might actually work for us. Having Dave speak at my podcast event, I don't have one, but I'm saying, to have Dave speak at my podcast event, everybody's done that. But to have Dave record an episode of the school of podcasting and my podcast event kicks it up an notch. What if at PodFest, you did the round table? And there's threats to become a interactive option that's really, really exciting and it's the t-shirt sales. It's all the ancillary stuff that really becomes interesting. It's not, I'm gonna get rich with CPM or even though I only have three listeners, all of them are gonna pay $1,000 each on Patreon. This is a model that begins really, really interesting. And I personally, I'm involved in a little project right now where we're looking at a batch of performance centers around the country that podcasters could tour to. And everything would be set up, because the thing is you just need a table and a microphone. And you don't need all the stuff that you need for a traditional show. And so, if Dave came to town, I'd show up and if the cover charge was 10 and I had to buy a beer, I'd do that in a heartbeat. And I think there's a whole opportunity for podcasters, groupies, maybe not so much. But the whole game, it's- Oh, it depends on who you are. I've seen, just being associated with a show that has crazy fans. Try being a female, yeah. I know. I don't wanna try that. It sounds way too hard. It sounds way too hard. You guys rock. But we wouldn't judge you if you did. That's right. And you know what? It might still happen. It's a lot like the music business, because you think about it- It is the music business. Yeah, the musicians aren't charged, you can't make any money on your product, but you make it on the tour, so. I asked when I went on tour with Podsave, I asked one of the first things I asked. I said, is this more about pressing the flesh with the fans, or is this a money generator? Oh no, it generates money. And it has to, the costs that go into taking a show on the road, if just a mid-sized venue, which is 2,000, 3,000 people, massive. But I've seen, when you have shows that have a rabid falling, which most podcasts do, and the venue can fit the size of your audience, right? I mean, it could be 100 people, right? That you get paid to come out. And if you promote it well in advance, I think that the podcast fans are the type of fans that will show up. I mean, I'm wearing a shirt right now. I mean, we'd see all their product got sold out before the show even started. They couldn't even ship enough product. I mean, it's just insane. And it's a whole new world, I think, for podcasters who are being able to think about doing these shows in person. Has anyone taken their show? We've done podcasters roundtable live at that defunct conference. I don't know what it was called at the time we did it. New Media Expo, one, two. We did it there. We did live at, maybe podcast movement? No, maybe not. I don't know, we've done it live at, I think at least twice. Total fun. And we generate, I think, at the New Media Expo. We called the line. Yeah, people were jealous. They said, what are you guys doing? Send some of that audience this way. So it's a ton of fun. I mean, even just for the experience of doing it, you should take a show. And I know a lot of podcasters in this community have gone out and done live shows for their community and it's been real successful. Depending on what you call success. I mean, you're not, I'm not talking about getting rich. I haven't gone live with my show necessarily, but when the book comes out, I put this out to my Facebook group and on my podcast, I said, you know, I'm willing to go on a tour. I'm in Connecticut, so I can kind of go on. Yeah, well, not even just a book tour to different bookstores, because if I'm sitting there reading my book, I'm basically doing the podcast live in a bookstore. So I put it out to my fans. I said, hey, you know, if you want me to come down, if you're on the Eastern side of the United States, come down for Bartrivia, come down for a game night. I couldn't believe so many people. You got to come to Atlanta. We have the Coca-Cola Museum. I want to take you there so bad. So now it's like, oh, wow. These people out of the woodwork, and my husband's like, are you sure? Really? Are you sure you want to do this with these strangers on the internet? And I'm like, that's fine. It's fine. It is kind of like the, you know, you start off, maybe a lot of us start off just recording a podcast and putting it out on the internet and the MP3 goes out to the world. And then like Paul was saying at the beginning of, you know, going to Facebook Live or whatever, but you take the next step of, you know, live streaming your show somehow. And so then it becomes an event that people are tuning into and they get the sort of live effect, I guess, in an audience and they see each other, even in the chat room or wherever. They see that they're not alone, wherever they happen to be in the world and they're listening to your show with other people and commenting and stuff. And I think, yeah, it's just a natural sort of evolution of this medium to go to like an actual live thing, not just Facebook Live, but Reality Live, where you actually have people in a room together, drinking a beer, listening to your podcast and hopefully laughing at your jokes. Yeah, I could tell you one weird experience because on the show, when we're recording live in a theater, there are no ads. We're not doing ads. They do host red ads, but they don't do it in a live show. People screaming out, demanding that they do the ads because the ads are so compelling and funny that these people are like, no, that's part of the show. We want the ads. So I thought that was, sitting back there recording and hearing people, from the stage you're like, wait, what? Oh, you want us to do the ads? Hilarious. There's the dynamic of live and people that we begin to forget about as well. I went to a buddy of mine, went with a buddy of mine to an 80s band that at times was opening actually for you too. And of course, now we were to venue where they couldn't even, the balcony was closed that night. But the funny thing was my buddy was like, really $25 for a ticket? I can't believe that. But at the end of the show, he goes back to the merch table and he gets a T-shirt and a five CD set of tunes that they haven't released to the digital. And what was funny was the guy goes, hey, it's still set for pounds. Is that okay? And my buddy says, yes. We turn around, we walk away and I asked my buddy, do you even know what the pound exchange rate is? And you guys say, no, but I really wanted the T-shirt. And he spent a hundred bucks in addition to the beer, in addition to the $25 for the ticket because it was a live event. And that's where it begins to get really interesting for us because if we showed up at an event, and even if there were only 20 people there, but if they each spent a hundred bucks, this, I mean, we're at the point now, we're almost paying for plane tickets, we're almost paying for hotel. And the dynamic of live is really interesting. And even more importantly though, is just the dynamic of, you know, so many people think it's CPM is the only model. Like, you know, I'm gonna make all my money by GoDaddy ads. And we just have options that are bigger than I guess GoDaddy hasn't been doing it for a while, but Audible ads or Blue Apron ads or that type of ads. You know, we just, we've got some really, really interesting options. And we just need to explore them as an industry. Very cool. Anyone have a piece? I felt like someone was gonna say something. Do you feel that live shows, when you repurpose them and put them out to your regular audience, do you get a different reaction to them? Because I know I've talked to you right before because my husband and I both listened to the show and my husband is just astonished that a live show has that good of audio quality. Cause I've done that where I've listened to, oh, we're doing a live show and they put it out and it's like this echoey room and you kind of have other people laughing and you're like, I don't know if I'm into this as much because it's not that intimate. You're right. It is different. And, you know, it almost goes to the same question with the back in the day. Back in the day, Dave, where sometimes you'd throw a video into your audio feed. It's just different, right? They're putting something different in your feed. Can throw off your audience. And I've run into people who say, yeah, I don't care for the live that much. Sometimes, you know, you'll have a show that doesn't interview once in a while. I'm like, yeah, I don't care about the interview so much. So I think it's more about just something different. I don't, do you guys ever put something else different in your feed or have you done live shows where people are like, yeah, I don't like the live so much, but... I almost always, whenever I get to do a big how to podcast speech, I always record something and I put it in my feed. That's right. And you know what? Okay, so I guess we're not the good target audience. And we are because that's who's listening to the show. When you do that, my feeling is, hey, I'm glad he was able to share it, that they let him, right? And I find that a lot of, I don't know if you guys have given talks before, but I find that most places let you do use your talk, like in your podcast, which I find, I appreciate that. It's not just stuck behind a paywall. Second of all, I always think I'm glad he took the effort to record it and share it with me. I feel like I got to be there for something I didn't pay for, but that's my personal feeling. I did an event once way back in the early days of when it was the podcast brothers and they had that show the day before. They had the paid thing. And you had to pay to go to speak at it and whatnot. But what was funny was there were gonna be 20 people in the audience, yet the Gigabox channel that this thing went on had 25,000 downloads. So I said in front of the group, I said, welcome to a live taping in the next episode of the podcast tool show. And then I just got to play with them while the most of the people who heard it were the ones who heard it later. So it's a mix, just set it up. Just don't try to pawn it off as a regular show, but just set it up that, hey, I got the chance to do this live. I did this here, here's the recording. Thrilled to bring it to you. Present the value at that point, right? Not just throw it on top of somebody. Well, I mean, to me, going back to my days as a teacher, half the success of a class is in the setup. When you, here's what's happened. So when I'm getting ready to put a, I forgot I had it on my phone. I have a recording of Dan Miller explaining how he got taken care of business on his show. And he just, I was on my phone. And so when I put that in my show, I'm going to say, hey, this was recorded in the hallway at Social Media Marketing World. So when people go, and it's, who cares at that point? And they get the content, so. Yeah, it'd be different if you were like, I'm now going forward, going to always record my podcast that was previously recorded in the studio on my iPhone next to a wind machine or something. And obviously everybody just unsubscribed, right? Like whereas, you know, if they don't like the crowd or they think it's whatever, they'll just skip that episode, but they'll still stay subscribed. You would think anyways for the most part. So it should be safe to do that. Yeah, and I would think anytime you do something different, you're going to lose some, gain some. So, you know, you do have to wait. And I do sympathize, I get it. The sound is very different, Emily, in that case. And I have had people someone tell me to my face, I didn't like the sound of live. And I was like, oh yeah, well, I recorded that. So it's nice being friends with you. Just kidding, appreciate the feedback. I appreciate that, but there's some PR verbiage. I got to say, Paul, I clicked on this article. It must have been the second time I clicked open this article and now I can't read it because it's the Wall Street Journal, so it's the Wall Street Journal, you suck. Paywall, it's a whole other round table. We put out our podcast for free, Wall Street Journal, come on. The whole, whole, whole to fall down there. Anyways, all right, we should wrap up. Not should, but we will. It was a good one, I enjoyed the format. So hopefully if you were listening or watching, you enjoyed it as well. We will probably try it again. And whatever, we're always tweaking here at the round table. Like Paul likes to experiment at the report, we're happy to experiment here with the round table. So that said, give us where we can find your one podcast, Chris. And thanks for joining us. Chris, you're up first, actually. Oh, I was just about to take a seat. Yeah, I know, that's why you're up first. Goodstuff.fm is where you can go and find one podcast or others, if there happens to be others there. All right, well, Chris was talking about, I don't know if you guys have recorded any or you re-launched as a similar format to what we're doing even here today, right? Just discussing topics on Show Me Your Mic. That was, that's a podcast about podcasting. This audience would enjoy it. I don't know, is it coming back or not? I hope so, I hate promising and then not doing so. You can do that here, it's okay. No one's listening at this point. No, it's definitely coming back then, for sure. Go subscribe and leave a rating or review, for sure. Very cool. If anything, go check out the logo. Is it help? Is it help? That's right. I'll tell you. Dave Jackson, thanks as always for doing the heavy lifting as the co-host of this show. Yeah, thanks. This was, I'm with you. I thought this was, it went really fast. I was like, holy cow. So yeah, you can find me, Dave Jackson at schoolofpodcasting.com. Yeah, we almost did 1.5 hours. So, you know, people in the chat seem to enjoy it. I don't know, oh, there's some jokes about ROI. I'll have to check those out. Emily, thanks for joining us once again. Yeah, thanks for having me. You can find my podcast at thestorybehindpodcast.com and that is a Lipson podcast page and it is amazing. So, love for Lipson. There you go, making it easier all the time. All right, Paul, welcome back, of course. And thanks again for joining us. Where do I get my t-shirt? I want my t-shirt. You're not gonna make it, buddy, sorry. Thepodcastreport.com. Season six, very soon, so it should be fun. Very cool. I'll probably talk to Paul why he's doing seasons, but we'll save it because that's content. No one wants, no one's listening at this point, so we don't wanna waste it. All right, so thanks everyone. PodcastersRoundTable.com, of course, YouTube.com slash PodcastersRoundTable, if you enjoy viewing. There's a whole library of stuff over there and we will see you for round 109. Wave goodbye, we're out.