This is Kyle Bondo, and this is Timothy Kim O'Brien. And you're listening to PodRack, the podcast to help you navigate the podcast industry. Alright. And welcome to a very special episode of Pod Rec we're live from a coffee shop that shall not be named because they would not pay us the money to name them. Let's just say that they're a star in our shiny little eye. And boy, does it cost bucks to drink here?
Now, folks, I I I I'm gonna have to take full blame and credit for this 1. Yes. We are doing this and remote. And it was my idea. And that's okay though because I think it gives us a little extra ambiance there, Kyle. Don't you think? Oh, yeah. The coffee shop vibe. I mean, this place is packed. It's roaring with all sorts of people. It's just really kind of fun place to be. When you're talking about podcasting, you put your hair on the table. And the strange
looks that people give you. I think that you're from another freaking planet. And Kyle, you know, what better way to spend a Friday night with good friends, family, and good coffee? And podcast in the middle of a coffee shop at about, oh, 10 o'clock at night and have the barista give the stink guy and go get out of my coffee shop. That's not what gonna happen today, but that's alright. We're not gonna get get kicked out of this coffee shop. But what we are gonna talk about
is the long game, Kyle. Podcasting is a long game. Now we've done this episode this podcast together. For 10 episodes. I have another podcast. Folks, 10 episodes is pretty darn good. You're gonna see you're gonna hear some stats here. That are gonna show you that 10 episodes is a lot better than most people out there. And today, we're gonna talk about just how few episodes are really out there. 600000 podcasts. Where are all the episodes?
Now kind he's looking at he's getting his stats from Castbox. Now full transparency here, I've used Castbox in the past. I don't use it anymore. Because I I'm not happy with the with the player itself. I used pocket cast. That will be a hundred dollars pocket cast. Thank you very much. Well, also the the kind of the techie side of of this. If you think about Castbox and where they actually get their directory from, they're an Apple Podcast API
pull down. So it's a kind of it's 1 of those kind of services that they get their their RSS feeds from Apple Podcasts? Are they not? That's true. Yeah. They just about all your your podcast app out there are pulling well, not every single 1 of them, but a large majority of them are pulling from Apple podcasts. I I like Castbox. It's 1 of the few podcasting apps that when you submit an episode now full transparency I we use lipson. When I sub submit a podcast
episode to lipson, cast box will be 1 of the first ones that picks it up. They're pretty Johnny on the spot when it comes to actually pulling the RSS feeds. And I wonder if they're doing something else behind the scenes
in and above and beyond, just getting the Apple podcast API. Maybe they may get the RSS feed. They they do a little back back door action, maybe a little caching. I don't know what the what quite the magic is in the background. But what I do know is that they have pretty good stats on the podcast industry. Agree. And this article by Dan Meissner crawls through that. He goes and pulls, I believe, the number was 670000 podcasts. Hey, Kyle. There was a 654000 podcasts.
If we wanna be correctly correct. You'd probably keep that in there. 654566. You did. You found it. You found it. Okay. But there's a catch. There's a catch. And the catch is this. He discovered and this is from November 20 18 stats. He discovered that 79597 to be exact. You don't wanna round anything off here. Roughly 12 percent of those shows had only published a single episode. Now, what okay. When we're talking about the totality of podcasting and we say that there's 600 some odd 650000
podcast episode podcast out there. If 12 percent only have a single episode, is that really a podcast? Or you just get them in the beginning or like we like to say around here, did he just stumble onto the graveyard of forgotten shows, their podwrecks,
that we all know are hiding out there. Well, Kyle, I think that some people, like, for Christmas, will get some microphone equipment, a podcast, a quote unquote, and I'm using air quotes here, and you can take a picture of this and see it in the show notes. They get a podcast little thing for Christmas. And they think, oh gee, wow, this is fun. I'll go ahead and do a podcast and they do 1 episode
and it's 1 and done. They don't realize how much work goes into it. They they have to market it. That they have to have short, there's actual work that goes into the podcast. So the episode that you're listening to right now, if you're a podcaster, you already know. But if you're a kind of sewer of podcasts. You really don't understand everything that goes into it, all the equipment,
all the time, and all the editing goes into it. And I think a lot of people, once they see what happens to create a podcast, then 1 episode, they're 1 and done. They wanna get out as quickly as possible. I think Daniel j Lewis talked about he used the new term and would give Daniel j Lewis the credit of his term, which is pod flash.
Which is someone tried this out. They did an episode or and then it wasn't for them. It's really what it is. But in the stats, they also talk about something even more disturbing. And we get kind of in more of the pod fade terminology when this stat And that is that the medium episode count present for each 1 of these was 14. What's that? Now, Kyle, you said something very interesting there. You have podfade. And you're the host of pod fader,
a very fine podcast about pod fader that I think, you know, if a lot of people with Lyft doing I'm gonna make a plug for you on this. You're modest. The irony of it is I've pod fated that pod fader podcast Say that 10 how fast. And I don't think you hit 14 episodes with that. No. I hit 17. Oh, you hit 17. I I beat the median. I beat it. It's So, I mean, you know, 14 episodes doesn't seem like a whole lot because I've had a podcast, chemo's den of iniquity, which is now called KDOI,
but I did it on blog talk radio. I've got 65 episodes on that, 65 horrible episodes that I will never release, and Kyle will never see the light of day on these. And they're horrible episodes, but then I recently put out another podcast, and I only put out 2 episodes for that. The intro in 2 actual full episodes for it. So I'm under the muteian for it myself with a separate podcast that I had. Cut all that out. Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that 14 is
it's a tough it it's hard to believe that number is the median out of the 6 okay. So we have 600 yeah. 50 or 70000. Podcast. 12 percent are, you know, just 1 episode, but the median is 14. I'm not buying that. Well, if you think about it, the tension span of the hobby podcaster. 14 episodes, if you do 1 per week, gives you roughly 3 months.
You get about 3 months and maybe you do a podcast here and there and you kinda like you as you dwindle down, as you pod fade away. That I mean, we're talking media in here. That doesn't mean all of them are that. I mean, somewhere below, something high. Right? But it gives you kind of a 3 month window that people try this for 3 months and they quit. I mean, really, we talk about fly, pod flash, and pod fade. We're really talking about quitting.
And people are are trying this medium out and something is stopping them. Now let's speculate a little bit on that. The the things, the barriers, the podcasting. We start with the very first 1. Starting 1. And coming up with an idea. A lot of people have, like, they get the exuberance. They go and buy some equipment. They buy a microphone. They start throwing it out there. They find a host. They throw the media up there. They share the link.
And the feel the dreams happens with them where they expect suddenly thousands of downloads and an instant success. See it on Facebook all the time. Hey, I just dropped my first episode and hit 10000 downloads. Is that normal? Well, we know those are all fictional. Maybe 1 half or 1 percent is true because, you know, statistically speaking, 1 of them is probably true. Out of the thousands of people that do this and 3 months later, quit the stats don't lie. 3 months and done.
So we know that that's a problem. That people start half bakes. They don't design their shows. They don't have an actual mission they don't treat this like a real thing and they fade out. We know the second thing is true. I'm looking on this table here. There's a lot of boxes and wires and gadgets and lights. To the average person, this is quite intimidating. In fact, for the people here in this magical coffee bean,
smell of storium, if you would. A lot of people looking at us like we have space age equipment on the table. Whether taking a disposition for some, like, you know, true crime podcast or maybe, you know, maybe we're really into music and we're getting ready to start a DJ dance off here, some live ill open mic nights. We're neither one's true because this is a podcasting equipment. The gear is intimidating.
So what do you think are are some other barrier? I think the 3 month window has some there's some bite to that because of the the non I wouldn't say non friction. The friction of podcast entry. Well, Kyle, yeah, the the the equipment that we got on the table here, I think if we added up the dollar amount, you're looking at, you know, 3 50 for that, 2 50 for that, microphones, all the
all the other gear, the battery packs, and all that jazz. Yeah, we're we're looking at about, you know, 506 hundred dollars to a plunk down to get good quality equipment there for yourself. I think another thing though too is that the hosting that you have that you that you're paying for every month. Now you're gonna have some hosts out there that are gonna give you free hosting. And that's fine. Free is, you know, free is fine for some people. But really how much of a reach do you get?
And then how much work are you putting out there to market your your stuff. If you got your mom and your cousin, but Bill, listen into it, and your uncle Bob, listen into it, and that's about it, and you're not talking to everybody and their brother. And, you know, when we're in this coffee shop here, I'm gonna be handing out business cards for my podcast
and letting the new breweries to know and, you know, that's how I tip them and all that kind of good stuff. I'll let them know, hey, listen, I've got a podcast. Would you like to be on it? But, you know, if if you don't do that, if you if you don't go out shaking hands and kiss babies, nobody's gonna know about it because there's 650000 other podcasts out there that somebody else can go listen to. And if they're already listening to podcasts, how do you pull them off of that podcast
and onto yours? Most people don't know how to do that. Oh, that's a very good point. I would even say that the free the free hosting Tim is another interesting technological friction point is when it's free, sometimes it's not free free. Free free free free free. Didn't mean to copyright infringe there at all, but if if you've been watching TV, you might know where that's from. I think there's an issue with and if I'm not mistaken,
SoundCloud only lets you have like 12 episodes at a time. If you look at the media number of episodes that he's talking about,
of number of podcasts out there, maybe it's because everyone's doing something very low key. They're only releasing 12 episodes of the time. There's no archive. There's no deep library of podcasts from the past. They're only giving you their top ones. Especially if you're using your web host to do any kind of podcast hosting, So if you're really kind of limited by a free hosting company, you may not
actually release everything or be able to release everything because you're prevented by the conditions of it being free. So maybe another barrier to podcasting is you just wanna pay for the actual hosting. Which would be kind of sad. But if you think about it in the technology of this, learning to do this, buying the gear, now hosting for it, mean, now that's 3 barriers. What's another barrier? You just talked about other 1 with marketing. What do you think about that being a barrier?
Well, Kyle, I mean, we've been to a bunch of conferences on how to podcast and networking with other podcasters. Those conferences cost
a pretty penny to get into. We were at Mavcon, which is but a hundred hundred and 50 bucks to get into DC Pod Fest, another hundred hundred and 50 bucks to get into. You gotta get to the conference and then you gotta shake the hands of all the people that are around there. Now with podcasting, I gotta say, I was very impressed in my first DC podcast. Of course, I was, you know, going through neck surgery and I'm, you know, some really good pain killers. But everybody out there was very friendly. Everyone wanted to shake my hand. Everyone didn't want me to talk because I had a horrible voice and they didn't want me to hurt myself. But then the next year I come back and they're like, hey, Tim, how's the neck? How's everything going? And they remembered my name. Of course, they re remembered me as a guy with a voice. But all these was your weird thing for sure. That was definitely my weird thing. It made you memorable.
And you gotta have something that makes you memorable of, you know, from everybody else. But if you're having an issue with marketing, then the thing of it is that you need to go onto the Facebook groups, you need to go and ask, you don't need to be feel stupid about it because Kinda I know you didn't go to school for marketing. I don't I didn't get a degree in marketing myself. So it was a whole other world, whole other kind of thing that you have to go and teach yourself.
I listen to a lot of Seth Godin, myself, full transparency on that. Because he's got a great he's got a lot of great ideas on marketing without using the old ideas of marketing. I think your your dead on with that being a friction point because people don't like to sell themselves. So what makes 3 months worth of work turn into I can't sell myself and your podcast doesn't go anywhere
so you quit because no one's listening because you don't sell yourself. It's a vicious circle. You really kind of get stuck in that infinite loop where you start thinking about, wow, no one's listening. Why is no 1 listening? Or maybe I need to sell myself? Oh, I hate selling myself. Okay. Well, I guess then my podcast isn't going anywhere.
And I think people get on at hamster wheels. That's the fourth thing for sure. I think there's the fifth horsemen in this 1. And the fifth horsemen in this 1 is the amount of work it actually takes to do this. That you even if you design it, even if you buy the gear, even if you market yourself, if you you put in your sales and you do all that,
you still have to show up. This requires you to actually think about something and have a topic and that'd be be interesting on the microphone. It's not something you can just wing. And even though, you know, the better you get at this, the easier you can, you know, a little more impromptu, you can do. But at some point, it has to have a purpose. You have to be going towards something. And I think that a lot of podcasts,
they shoot their best stuff out really early if he could call their best stuff or maybe they find their feet like episode 3 or 4. And then they kind of lose their way, they get they get lost
in the work and the amount of struggle it takes to actually get this done. So Kyle, that reminds me of something that Dave Jackson actually said to me personally on his podcast asked the podcast coach because I was talking about starting up I have KDOI and I was like, oh, I'm gonna start up 2 more podcasts in the New Year. And Dave was like, but what are you gonna have to give up in order to do a podcast? Because it takes time. Right now, it's a Friday night.
We both have full time jobs, 40 hour a week, 50 hour a week. Well, speaking of hard work -- Mhmm. -- and we know this is hard work. We've done this couple years now, and we know that this does not there's no magic formula. There's no oh, what if I do this cool organic and suddenly everyone loves me? Not true. You know, what did they say that that took me 10 years to become an overnight success? In this article, what's to say? It highlights hard work as being the reason podcasters are successful.
And let's let's get into the raw stat data that Dan puts in here. He claims the top 100 most played shows when coming from cast box stats medium episode account was 203.5. So let's just break that down. The top 100 most place shows had at least 200 episodes. So what's that mean? That means after 200 episodes, you'd refined your craft. You've pictured niche. You have a niche. You know what you're gonna talk about and you're putting the work in to do it. 200 episodes doesn't happen overnight.
It's not something easily done. And you can't just say, oh, that's people who do daily shows. If you try doing a daily show, that's probably harder than a weekly show. Unfortunately, these are not these are not all just daily shows. A very few of them are daily shows. A top 100 most listened to shows, a lot of them are are serialized.
Some of them are weekly shows, and that means they're putting the work in every day. So think about it. You put a show out every week. That's 52 episodes a year. 2 years is what? Hundred and 4? 3 years is what? 4 years is what? This is almost 5 years worth of work. They never missed a day on the mic that would at least be 4 and a half years. But that's not all. The top 1000 most played shows in cast box had a medium episode count of 191.5.
You can't beat those numbers. Those numbers actually make the total argument for why hard work pays off. The long game matters. I think Dan is spot on with his article. And it's short and sweet to the point. People who do not put the work in don't last. People that do put the work in do last. But there's no would I find interesting about this? There's no in between. There's no successful podcasters at episode 52.
That's that's a lot of camera cast or it's like an episode 100. In fact, some people would say episode 100 is your graduation to becoming a podcaster. Episode 101 is your first day as a podcaster. It means a hundred episodes until you become a podcaster. So you're not a podcaster.
Until you hit episode 100. What do you think about that, Tim? That mean, that's I mean, I know that's pretty bold, but looking at these stats, I think I I think these stats back me up. Well, Kyle, I've got 65 of the old episode. I've got about 30 of the new episode. And we have 10 on this 1, so I hit podcast status. With this episode, I am now a 5 congratulations, but it took me 3 different podcasts to get there.
I'd like to say to my fellow students here in the podcast university and with our senior Dave Jackson that it's a wonderful day in the podcasting universe. And I want everyone to go out there, get their ATR2100s, and not get out of the ballpark. And now Dang. I'd like to toss my hat into the ring for 20 20. Welcome pillow podcaster to the real, the podcasting of the real. And, realistically, I think that's what it is.
Hundred podcast episodes is you're just figuring this medium out. And I would I would attest that as a fellow 100 very recently is is too is when you hit that 1 hundredth episode,
You figured out mic technique. You figured out your show, how to run a show, how to do beginnings ends. You figured out audio. We didn't even talk about software as being a friction problem. But audio editing, we figured out what it actually cost to do this. And by the way, you know, yeah, we bought a bunch of money. We bought we've paid for all this equipment over time. We've kind of added this to our little kit. It ain't free. And
I don't know. I don't know about you, but I haven't made 1 1 dollar of this yet. I hope to. 1 day, make money off of podcasting. But as for as for right now, I'm I'm I'm I'm in a deficit of the amount of money I put in a podcasting versus the amount of money I got out of podcasting. Yeah. It's not it's a negative balance, which means that you have to put a lot of sweat equity into this. This does not come by by winging it, going to 1 class, going to 1 meetup, listening to 1 episode
of someone telling you how to podcast. This comes by doing it. You can't get around that. And and I think this this is dieting. This is getting big muscles. This is this is, you know, how you'll how do you learn to do no JavaScript? You know, you can't just say, you know, I'm gonna open a book on doing JavaScript. Page 1, Joe, no JavaScript is is is really cool JavaScript.
Now I'm an expert. I'm sorry. I think the 10000 hour rule worked applies. And just about any other industry, this 1 included. Well, and Kyle, we look at some of the big podcasters out there. Let's look at Joe Rogen. Let's look at Dave Jackson's, you know, asked the podcast coach. He's up to 600 episodes. Joe Rogen's over 400 episodes. How stuff works, which is something that I really enjoy.
And all the how stuff works that whole network Each of those are are running, like, you know, a thousand episodes for Joe Rogen, you know. Way more than 400. Yeah. Way more than 400. So I and that's my bad. But, you know, all these guys and gals that are running their episodes
They are definitely in it for the long game, and we definitely want you to be in it for the long game. And if you are in it for the long game, let us know about it. If you're sitting here listening, to us at a wonderful coffee shop. Shoot us an email at pod rack at gmail dot com. We would love to hear how you are doing the long game ourselves. We both hit the hundred century we both hit the Century Mark. So we are brand newbie podcasters. Essentially.
But we wanna hear how you're doing it. Absolutely. I think that's and I would like to add a footnote here is some of those podcasts out there are series that are evergreen and they can refresh them over and over again and they don't have to be more than 14 episodes. That's cool. I think those are far between. They are audio dramas, they are courses, they're someone's workshop, and they're out there kicking around.
But if you really wanna get into this, I think you you can't just have a 14 episode podcast and call it a day. If you wanna call yourself a podcaster, you actually have to have away more into this. Like like we said earlier, the overnight success took 10 years. Podcasting is no different. The long game is true. And I do believe that this article
by by Dan Mezner, and say his name right, Yeah. Damn it, sir. Oh, we got it right. Oh, hey. That'd be horrible with names. Just ask anybody at a mountain bike race. How bad I am. It comes to names. I got stories. We'll we'll talk about it another time. But this the article really, I think, is is is something that you should take the heart.
That if you put the work in, what they say what they say when when opportunity meets preparation, that's really where luck comes from. And people will say, oh, those guys are lucky. If you ask some of these people that have been in the game for for for a long, long time that just now got noticed, who just now got monetized, who just now got sponsors. It wasn't a podcast they launched yesterday and hit 10000 downloads. I don't think that exists. I think that's the myth. I mean, it's a unicorn.
Think it really is. Or what do you call it? A a unicorns. You wanna source rex? That's a unicorn trans transformer sex. It's a very colorful meat eater. Do we get any last words for this this 1, Tim? I think I've said everything I think I would need to say, but give us give us some play us out. Play us out at the the donut star we're in right now. The the donut star coffee? That's our fictional name for the other place we're at. We don't expect coffee. Absolutely.
Well, Carl and your your Tom. Right? I'd prefer to be called Neil, and I'm Huston. So I I think that I'm gonna make a couple of predictions here, Kyle, because we haven't done our predictions yet. Hey. Yep. I mean, like, special music for predictions. You know? It's a funny thing. I have some music here that you need to listen to. I was gonna play for you tonight. Okay? Anyhow. So here's my predictions. Okay. Prediction number 1 is about this podcast. We will make it to that
50 episodes this year, and then we'll do another 50 next year -- Right. -- and we'll hit our hundred podcast. Hundred episode podcast next year sometime around 20 well, not 20 yeah. 20 20 will hit it at the end of 20 20. Prediction number 2. Okay. We are going to see a lot more people do that 1 and done episode, unfortunately. But that's okay because at least they're getting their feet wet. They're understanding what goes behind
making a podcast. Even if it's just a 1 and done thing, they're like, oh my god. This is a lot of work. They're gonna appreciate when they hear a podcaster, and they're gonna appreciate when they hear a podcaster. Go, hey, listen. Hit my Patreon account.
Support me for what I'm doing here because there's a lot of podcasts that I listen to that have been, you know, hey, you know, toss me 2 bucks, toss me 3 bucks, and I'm getting to the point where I'm like, no, I really understand what they're doing, the quality that they're putting into it. So, yeah, I'm gonna toss them a couple of bucks here and there and everywhere and get some cool swag and, you know, put some stickers on my equipment and go, yeah, I support these guys and it makes me feel good to go, hey, why don't you support me as well? So those are my 2 predictions there for you. Excellent point. Excellent point. And I think that this is a this really kind of sums up the
the putting in the work. We're gonna put in the work. So why don't you put in the work? So and and next week, we're going we're gonna be live the studio again. We've got squad cast version 1.1. We're gonna try out. And I just worked out all the kinks with Zach with Squadcast. I got my thing working really well. And it turns out that, hey, if you reboot your computer and wipe your cache, Squadcast works pretty good.
Took with knucklehead like me and IT guy, the masters in IT to have to this podcast guy, like, why don't you try rebooting? I did. And it's magic. Yeah. There you go. Sometimes the simple solutions are the correct ones, and the lock comes razor there for you as we as it close. But but, yes, next week we'll be in the studio, and thank you for listening to Bob. Correct?
Thank you for listening to Pod Direct. If you'd like to contact us, if you have some ideas for something to talk about or you have something you want us to discuss in the podcast industry, reach out to us at pod rack at gmail dot com. And Kyle, to get to that website, it is pod rack dot com, and that's where you're gonna see all of our show notes and all the articles that we're referencing for all of our episodes here. So go to podrick dot com and check us out. Thank you again for listening. And we hope that you found this interesting. It helps you navigate the ebb and flow of the podcast industry.
And this part of the podcast was brought to you by Kyle soapbox. Kyle soapbox. Nothing gets you squeaky or clean than Kyle soap. This podcast is part of the Gagapod network. Find more podcasts like this at gagapod dot com.