guests for Mike (And a Podcast Promotion Update)

He's also the co-host of the podcast Gauntlet with Me, which you can find at PodcastGauntlet.com. He sent me this email. We're gonna read through it. It's a really short email so this might be a short episode, but there are a couple things we can notice here. So I'm just gonna go ahead and read it. The email starts out, "Hi Mike. "Wanted to see if there's a way "that we could work together.

"If I could send over eight to 15 qualified guests "for your podcast every four weeks "without paying for advertising "and on a pay for performance model, "would it be worth jumping onto a five minute call for? "Until next time," and then this person signs off with their name. Short, sweet, to the point. I actually really appreciate that because I've received some of these really long pitches that are a bit frustrating to read through. However, I'm not sure this is a great pitch.

I do like that it's short and sweet and I do like that it's kind of structured to help make a quick decision. However, there's not a ton of information here. And I think let's start with first off, can we understand maybe what's going on here?

If I'm reading this correctly, I believe this is a person who's wanting to get paid by Mike to provide eight to 15 qualified guests for his show every four weeks. So that could be two a week. That could be, I guess, about four a week depending on how the weeks all fall. And not paying for advertising and not paying for performance. So this is where things start to get a little bit weird.

I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that this person is wanting Mike to pay him for a service and that there won't be any advertising involved that he'll have to pay for. Conversely, I suppose it's also possible that this person is offering people to pay, that he will help them pay for placements onto shows. Regardless, it does kind of, it kind of makes me wonder. Now, again, I'm operating based on really limited information and my assessment of what I think might be going on here.

I think that it's very likely that this person is asking Mike to pay to help find some guests. Which, in some cases, could be a valuable service.

Although, I think you might be better off with something like Pod Match or some other service that operates kind of as a marketplace. But is it worth having a person in the mix? Maybe so. However, the part that concerns me is that it's very likely that this person is offering to receive payment for the service of providing guests. It's also likely that this person is receiving payment from the guests to be placed on shows.

And so, while there's nothing necessarily wrong about that, for me, I would want to understand better before I go forward. Now, is this worth replying to? If you're having trouble booking guests on your show, yeah, maybe so. Maybe at least have that conversation.

However, my suggestion to you, if you're considering something like this, is before you start talking about results and all that kind of stuff, start with some of the stuff that would have happened in my sophomore year or junior year debate class in high school.

Start by defining the terms. What does this mean? Like, what does pay for performance mean in this context? Personally, I understand all of the words in this email, but that doesn't mean that I understand what they mean in this email, because pay for performance can mean more than one thing. It can be you pay me, it can mean I pay you, it could mean we both get paid, I don't know. So what does that mean?

What does it mean without paying for advertising and can you help me understand who you believe would be a qualified guest for my show? Now, if this is a reputable person, might be, if this is a reputable person, they're gonna have some kind of discovery call, and they're gonna figure out who is the right guest for your show.

Not, I'm just going to provide you with eight to 15 people who are all promoting a book similar to the topic that you have, although that might be a qualified guest for you. But they need to know what is a qualified guest, and not so much who are the guests that you want, although that's important, but that needs to then go to who are the guests that you want that will serve your audience?

They need to understand more than just, I want a person who has a book on logistics transformation or how to lick the doorknob on a, I don't know, right? You don't necessarily need something general. You might need something very specific for your audience. And let's take that logistics transformation thing, because for my day job, I work for a company that has logistics as part of what we do. Logistics transformation can mean more than one thing. So who is it that's really listening?

Is it senior leaders? Is it management and internal leadership? Is it sales and marketing? Is it the person at the warehouse loading a truck? Like, who is that right audience? Who's the right person to receive this? Because they need to know that. And then have that conversation. It could end up being a perfectly good thing for you. I don't think it's a great pitch, because I don't think it gives enough information. However, I do appreciate that it is short and sweet. So that's all for that one.

I guess also I would say, if you're writing pitches, maybe do a little bit more research,

because if this person had researched Mike, they would have a really good handle on who might be the right kind of person depending on which show they're talking about, because Mike's got a few. And right now, the ideal guest for the show that he and I co-host, the Podcast Gauntlet, nobody would know, because we haven't had a guest on the show yet. So unless they really know the audience, they wouldn't know who that ideal guest is. And I think that's where I would leave this.

If you're that person writing that pitch, maybe try and figure that out first.

Now, I also want to mention that over a couple of episodes, I've talked about having my show promoted. We went through in the most recent episode some of the results of that. And I shared that I would share some more results with you if they came through. So if you want all of that in episode seven, and then episode nine of the podcast, you'll find all of the information regarding that promotion. As you might recall, that promotion ran. They did deliver on the ranking that they said they would.

However, I didn't believe that it was real organic audience. And my assumption is, if we stopped the promotion and it was real organic audience, the downloads would continue. When we left this, the downloads were decreasing, so I thought it was probably not real. I'm happy, I don't know, sad to report to you that the downloads have returned back to their normal one to two downloads a day for this show, which is not a surprise. It's a small show, didn't really expect this to grow it.

But if my assumption that increase in audience would then result in increased ongoing downloads was true, then I should have seen that increased downloads continue. I haven't. So I don't think that the promotion was really truly my ideal audience. So share that with you. This again is Bad Podcast Pitches.

If you have received a bad pitch or a pitch that you're questionable about and you would like me to put it on the show, send that to me at pitches@badpodcastpitches.com because I would love to have some of these pitches that maybe are coming out to you because I'm getting a little bit bored with the ones that I keep receiving, and I would love to have some additional things to share.

If you do share them and you have a podcast, of course I'm happy to mention that and to provide a link to that show and make that part of this episode. And I also wanna mention as I record this, it's middle of December. As we approach the end of the month, there may be some interruption in the publishing schedule due to holidays and stuff like that.

I may be able to prerecord, but just if you're sort of waiting for this to drop every single time, which is probably zero of you, but if that's the case, just be aware that with holiday and stuff, there may be a little bit of an interruption. This again is Bad Podcast Pitches. I'm Bryan Entzminger. If you've stuck around this long, I'm happy for you and maybe a little bit scared for society, but there we are, and I would love to hear from you.

In fact, if you just wanna reach out to me, pitches@badpodcastpitches.com, love to hear from you. Thanks so much for being here.