Hey, my name is Mark Asquith and I'm the managing director and co founder of Captivate, a podcast hosting distribution and monetization platform. And today I'm going to give you a tip about podcasting and podcast growth. I'm the co founder of Captivate. We are a podcast hosting monetization and distribution platform. And we really focus on helping the serious independent creator to.
Not only create a podcast, but to build a scalable, meaningful audience, and to create a lot of diversity in their monetization opportunities. I'm a big fan of not putting your eggs in baskets when it comes to monetization, so diversity. In that monetization is completely, completely paramount to the modern podcaster. I got into podcasting actually back in, around 2011 ish, and it's a bit of a weird one. So I'm a bit of a nerd collector of, of all things DC comics and all things Star Wars.
So back in about 20 10, 20 11, 20 12, somewhere around there, DC comics relaunched their massive line. Of comics that they did new number ones for absolutely everything, absolutely everything. And I was just deep into reading them. And at the time I was sort of running an agency, I was running a design agency and I was wanting to get into, I suppose, having a bit more of a different creative outlet. I wanted to do something different outside of work.
And I was getting a little bit jaded with agency life, always having to pitch for work, always having to kind of, you know, put proposals together. Always having to, uh, justify that proposal to people that really didn't understand what they were trying to commission. So I was sort of frustrated there and wanted this new creative outlet. So we started blogging. Gary Ehlert, who's now the head of design here at Captivate.
He and I started blogging about comics, about pop culture, about movies and so on. And he said to me, we should start a podcast. And I said, that is absolutely ridiculous. Why would we want to do that? It's not 2005. No one's watching Lost anymore. And I like to wear trousers and I don't live in my mom's basement. So why would I start a podcast? Cause that's ridiculous. Anyway, we did.
He sent me a microphone, which for anyone that ever sees me on camera, the microphone is actually still behind me. It's a blue snowball microphone. And I was big into listening to podcasts. I was big into listening to things like Kevin Smith and, all sorts of kind of pop culture shows. So he forced me into starting a podcast. And I was completely hooked, completely hooked. So I started that podcast. I started a business podcast because people asked me how we'd grown the business.
And I thought, well, wait a sec, maybe I could just answer that in an evergreen way by recording a podcast. And then I realized that podcasting back then was really difficult for the normal person that wasn't a nerd like me. You know, I was building software, I was doing creative work for people. So I knew how to do the technical elements of it. But not many other people did.
So I put together a software platform and I've frankly been working in podcasting ever since and speaking all over the world on podcasting for way too long now, like I said, over a decade. So that's how I got into it. And I absolutely love it. The one big thing that I love about podcasting is. It's actually the thing that I started falling in love with the second that I went to my first conference. So I went to New Media Expo out in Las Vegas.
So I went from over here in the North of England and, uh, went out to Vegas. To a, it was a blogging and a podcasting conference. This is not, it wasn't a podcast movement or the podcast show or a pod fest. I'm talking, it was like the NAB show with the tiniest little thing bolted onto it, which was almost a series of small meetups and we called it a podcast conference. So I went out there, I sort of, I came from this agency world where it was very much, all right, it's dog eat dog.
You do your quote, we'll do our quote and never the twain shall meet, we'll never be friends, we'll never see each other. And I thought that's crazy. So when I got into podcasting, it was insane to me because everyone was really supportive. Everyone was collaborative. Everyone was friendly. I've made some friends.
At that very first conference that I still talk to, I'm still great friends with people like Jonathan Oakes, who I still see to this day, wonderful, wonderful people and people I've gone on to work with Rob Walsh from Libsyn, Todd from Blueberry, Elsie Escobar, so many people that I class as friends that I've got to know over the years. And that's the thing I love about podcasting is that no one's dragging you down, No, one's got tall poppy syndrome. We're all allowed to grow.
We're all allowed to flourish because there's enough room for all of us. And that's, I think that's the beauty. And that's what I still love about podcasting. My big tip for a podcaster would be focus on sustainable growth. All right. Let me explain that a little bit more. So everyone's looking for a quick win. Everyone's looking for a hack. Everyone's looking for the next big thing.
Everyone's looking for how do I go from one download to 10, 10 to a hundred, hundred to a thousand, thousand to 10, 000, so on and so forth. But what they want to do is they want to connect those dots too quickly. So what they're tending to do, especially now, because companies are popping up that will give you quick downloads. And what they're doing is they're seeking that next jump in downloads. But what they're not doing is growing a sustainable audience.
So that's what I want you to remember. Downloads are different from audience. What we're actually trying to grow is audience. Because if we have an audience that's genuine, if we have an audience that wants us and that likes us. Think right back to what I said about the diversity monetization. One audience member will probably be able to buy more than one thing from you. Merchandise, live event tickets.
If you go and do a live recording, they will be able to do things like give you a tip via something like Captivate's tipping system, or they will be able to subscribe for five, 10, 15 bucks a month. and access bonus content, exclusive content, early access windowed content, and you'll get that all from one person. Whereas if you're chasing downloads. The only thing that you can do is keep chasing those downloads and you have to keep getting more of them. And it's not sustainable.
In fact, you make less money that way as an indie You will make less money that way than just focused on a smaller, stable audience base. So focus on sustainable audience growth. You can find me at markasquith. com and at captivate. fm. And you can see all of my links in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to podcasting people.