Use Your 2024 Podcast Data to Assess Progress & Create Benchmarks Ep 150

Starting to plan out my year , and I also started to look back at what I did in 2024 and realized I did an episode on my podcast in the beginning of January of this year past year , I should say where I reflected upon my accomplishments with the podcast , and I decided to do another episode this year where , in this episode , I'm going to reflect back on my

podcast for the entire calendar year of 2024 . Now , as is probably common with a few of you , your podcast is an extension of your business and I always recommend that you look at your own data to assess your progress over time .

Some of this will be numeric data and other will be anecdotal data or qualitative data , but I'm a big believer that you should be looking at your results over time because it helps you first in establishing benchmarks so you can measure your own progress against yourself , and you can measure your success if you have specific goals set up for different initiatives of

your organization .

Now , with regards to my podcast , my year two goals were to make sure that I was publishing regularly , and I started at the beginning of the year with having a goal of publishing once a week , and then I realized I was already publishing twice a week , so I continued to do twice a week up until probably about early November I started to shift back to once a

week . Twice a week . Up until probably about early November I started to shift back to once a week . I also wanted to make sure that I was shifting my mix of episodes , and I learned this technique from Adam Shibley , who has a great podcast .

It's called Podcasting Business School , and he talks about the two-third expert positioning technique , where two-thirds of your podcast episode should be you talking and sharing expert advice to your listeners , whereas the other third can be a variety of different things , maybe where you're interviewing people or you're featuring others or repurposing content , etc .

But I really wanted to shift more towards that . All right , so how did I do ? Well , in 2024 , I had a total of 88 episodes that were published .

As I mentioned , I did have twice a week publishing from January through November , and then I shifted to weekly , and I think there might have been one week in there where I had a head cold or something was going on with my business , where I might have skipped a week . I had nobody complain about that , by the way .

So that's a little side note and key takeaway for you Don't stress yourself out if you miss a week of your podcast . You can always jump back on , like I did . And I did shift down , as I mentioned , from twice a week to once a week . Why did I do this and why this might be a good idea for you as well .

It's a lot of work publishing two episodes and I realized over time it was starting to become . It was feeling like a chore . I wasn't enjoying it as much . So I decided just to shift back to one episode a week . I didn't really make a big announcement about it , I just did the change and what I found is that nobody complained .

Nobody reached out to me and said , hey , I used to get two episodes from you and I'm only getting one now . So that was an effective shift and it really helped me from a workload perspective shift . And it really helped me from a workload perspective . What else ? Okay ?

So in year one I had 36% of my episodes were expert positioning and 64% were not , so I had definitely an opportunity to improve . In year two I did a little better . I didn't quite get to the two thirds , but I did get to 51% of expert positioning so a little over half and 49% other .

I made the move in the right direction and that's what I'm focusing on here Now in 2024 , I did add in profile audits where I featured people but it was really me doing the asking , me giving the advice to other people . So it's really great expert positioning and I did do a total of 22 episodes of those LinkedIn profile mini audits this year .

That represented 25% of my total podcast episodes . Now , a few of those did convert into clients and that really wasn't a goal . It was more or less just a goal to move towards expert positioning . So it was a nice little side benefit .

A few of them did convert to clients and a few of them I featured my existing clients students who are involved in my Recipe Pro , for example , or other current clients that I just felt like had a really interesting background and could be a great guest on my show . So that was a part of that mix .

I also increased solo interviews , which were 23 episodes in 2024 , or 26% of my total stats . I can compare that to 2024 . So I have a year over year comparison data point that I can look at and definitely this is exponential .

The more you have in terms of podcast episodes , the more people can binge listen to your episodes and I think that really does help with your total downloads over time . If I look at my top five episodes of all time , this was kind of interesting . Four were from 2023 .

So again , it just shows that people aren't just listening to current episodes , but they're also listening to a lot of those past episodes . And I'm really not doing any marketing or merchandising of my 2023 episodes . Every once in a while I'll drop a link there , but I'm really focusing more on marketing my current episodes .

So that to me , shows the power of having a great podcast and people scrolling through that podcast directory and looking for some of your past episodes . In my top five , I also had one was from 2024 .

As far as top apps , buzzsprout was telling me that , as of today , apple represents 54% of my listeners , with 67% listening on an iPhone no surprise there and 79% from mobile . The second highest category is 10% of my listeners coming from the Buzzsprout and Bed Player .

Not a surprise , because I've started directing people to that landing page where they can then just listen to the episode direct or choose their favorite directory .

The next category , following that , would be 8% on Spotify , and I've not really put a lot of time and emphasis into being on Spotify , but it does show me that I'm getting a small portion of my listeners coming from there . At this point last year the numbers were just a little bit lower . Apple represented 51% compared to 54% and 79% were coming from mobile .

That's the same year over year . I also poked around a little bit inside of Buzzsprout and they give an achievement section inside there and it's kind of interesting because they give you milestones to work towards , and they had two categories that I'm looking at here podcast downloads and episodes published .

In terms of podcast downloads , I've acquired 12 total achievements and my latest was the 75,000 downloads achievement and they tell me that , as of today , I'm 1,219 downloads away from 10,000 . So stay tuned for details on that . Now , as I earn these badges , I think they send you an email and I definitely see them inside the platform .

What I recommend that you do is share the badges in social media posts that they provide you , but I recommend that you include the link to your show , whether it's your podcast page or your main platform , if it's Apple or other , because we want to , not just to celebrate those achievements , but we also want to drive more listeners , and what I found is this

technique is really

powerful . If you're telling people , gosh , I've gotten to 7,500 downloads , people are like , wow , that's impressive . Now they don't know that 7,500 is not as impressive as 75,000 . There's not a lot of people out there that have gotten to 7,500 . So it's still an impressive number . And if you provide them a place to listen , that success creates more success .

I think that's really important . Now , I always include both the link and I include the graphic , and sometimes I make modifications to the graphic that Buzzsprout gives me . I'll go inside Canva and I'll add in some animation , like some confetti in there , so it has a little bit of movement to that graphic .

So that's a technique you could think about doing as well . In terms of episodes published , buzzsprout says that I've had seven total achievements and the latest was the 100th episode achievement . Now , as you go up , so the achievements become a little bit harder to get , and they're saying that I'm currently 103 episodes away from 250 total episodes .

And if you've been following me along here , you know that I said I was decreasing the number of episodes that I do , so I'm only had 52 episodes in 2025 , unless I change my mind and start doubling up . So I'm not going to hit that next achievement until sometime in 2026 . I'm okay with that .

I know why they put these different milestones in place here , but something to look at and something to consider in terms of your own achievements . Now , from an editing perspective , some months in my business I work with the VA , and other months it's just me . In the business , I have a process in place that I loosely follow .

When it's just me , I'm a little bit more loose on it . When I'm working with the VA , I'm a little bit more structured on that process because I want to make it easy for that person to help me . My goal is to prep the social media assets at the time of post-production and I'm trying to keep that work to a minimum .

Now there's been some times where I've just published the episodes and I really haven't done a lot of event marketing and I can see that in my downloads I'm not getting as many download episodes in those weeks .

I do rely heavily on Descript and the more that I'm using Descript , the more that I love Descript , especially these features Remove filler words really good for removing those ahs and ums in the editing . I'm going to use this feature in this episode here today Finding the highlights I find that that's really helpful If you're looking for soundbites .

It can find the highlights quickly and then you can go back into I go back into Buzzsprout and then I create the soundbite downloads from there . Draft show notes is really helpful . I find that that is even better in Descript than it is in Buzzsprout . Isn't that crazy ? But I find that it's true .

And most recently I started moving these episodes into a blog post in the form of a LinkedIn newsletter and I I've been using that feature and I really like the summaries that they're coming up with . So I have to say , whoever's working over there at Descript love the work you're doing and the AI tool has been really helpful for me and my business .

Now inside Buzzsprout , they do have some additional features create soundbite . I like that feature where you can create like a 30 second or so . You can expand it or you can shorten that , but a sound bite where it has the show art in the background and you know some quick sound bite of the show itself .

I like to use that on social media , especially on Instagram and sometimes on LinkedIn as well . Email link to the episode . I've been using that more often , so just driving people to the Buzz Sprout page to listen to it , as opposed to the landing page where they pick their favorite show .

Okay , I've been using that a lot the share link and that's the one that drives people back to the landing page where they can choose their podcast player of choice to find your show , and that's helpful . I use that link in my monthly podcast summary email .

I have that going out to about 5000 people right now and I also give my email list , by the way , the opportunity to opt out of podcasts if they're not a podcast listener . Now I do pay for the upgraded version of Buzzsprout and I had to take a look at what I'm doing right now with this , and this is a good thing to do if you are self-employed .

Just look at how much you're spending for these subscriptions every month and look and see are you using all the features of that ?

Right now , I'm paying $47 a month , which isn't a lot , but I took a look at this and actually discovered that I'm getting up to six hours of uploads a month Now if I'm doing only four episodes a week , and those episodes are 20 to 30 minutes . If I'm doing a longer interview it might be 40 minutes in total .

I'm usually falling well under the six hours per month . That does give me the ability to add in more episodes for future months and I can get those banked up and ready to go , but I'm really falling below that six , so that's fine . The other thing is Magic Mastering . I'm using that from Buzzsprout .

I do find that that helps with sound quality , of equalizing the sound between myself and my guest if I have two of us on there and just making sure that's a really good sound quality . So I think that's worth paying for . I did discover I'm paying right now $20 a month for their co-host AI tool and I really don't care for their AI tool .

I'm sorry Buzzsprout if anyone's listening , but there's too many mentions of phrases like treasure trove . I never use that and I don't find that their summary tool does a good job of really summarizing my language and the content from within the show .

I was finding that I was editing over top of their summaries too often and it was becoming a chore for me to do so . So I stopped using it and I started using some of those same tools inside Descript and I really find them helpful . So just notice , I'm paying additional $20 a month for this as an add-on .

I'm not finding an easy way from Buzzsprout to cancel that . So I sent them an email and I do see it's a $20 add-on on my bill , but I can't find any place to cancel . Now , that's a marketing technique . They're trying to create a hurdle because you might have someone go . I'll just keep paying for it . Nope , not me .

I'm going to try to reach out to them and get that canceled . So again , some really helpful insights there as it relates to editing both from a descript and from a Buzzsprout perspective . Now , while I was in Buzzsprout , I was also poking around and I realized that there's a way that you can sign up to run Buzzsprout ads .

I don't know if you knew that , but you can . You can monetize your podcast if it sits on Buzzsprout , but you have to have at least five episodes , a thousand total downloads in the past 30 days , and your episodes have to have at least 23 minutes long in terms of content . Now , I meet all criteria except the thousand downloads .

If you recall earlier I said the past 30 days . I was think I was under like 400 total downloads . So certainly could be something to aspire to .

I'm not quite sure if I want to start running ads or not , but might be something to test out , see how much revenue is coming in , and that could help to offset some of the costs that I'm paying for this podcast .

Right , and there's also a support show link option that you can add inside Buzzsprout where people can randomly show their support by sending you money , and there's a couple different ways that they can do that . I remember PayPal and there's a buy me a coffee and a couple other things like that .

I'm not looking at setting that up right now , but I might look at setting that up for 2026 . We'll see . And , by the way , I am an affiliate for both Buzzsprout and Descript . If you use my links , you get discounts to sign up for each of those services and I get incentivized for you in case , in the future , you do sign up for the paid services .

So use my links if you'd like to try either . I do have those inside of show notes . All right , my friend . That is it . I hope you enjoyed listening to my podcast summary for 2024 . And I do hope that this episode inspires you to look at your stats if you're a podcaster like me . By the way , if you're on LinkedIn , send me a DM .

If you do have a podcast , and tell me the name of your show . If I'm not already listening to it , I'd love to give it a listen . I'm always listening to podcasts when I walk my dog , pepper , in the morning and I'd love to put yours into my rotation . I hope you enjoyed the show and I look forward to seeing you on LinkedIn . Have a great day .