Why Podcast Metrics Doesn't Tell The Whole Story w/Barry Luijbregts

Unlock the secrets of podcasting's profound influence on listeners as we chat with Barry Luijbregts, Creator of Podhome.fm.  Barry transformed his love for the spoken word into a thriving podcast hosting platform.

Explore the intimate bond that blossoms between podcasters and their audience, a connection that's woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Whether you're multitasking or just unwinding, podcasts offer a versatile and personal soundtrack to our routines. Barry's own leap from software developer to podcast pioneer is as inspiring as it is enlightening, showcasing his belief in the power of accessible, engaging audio content that educates and entertains.

Feel the weight of every download in our candid discussion about the real impact of audience numbers. Imagine a gathering where each unique listener represents a person who has chosen to let your voice into their world. That's the perspective we adopt when evaluating the success and reach of a podcast, regardless of the number of downloads.

We reinforce the importance of your commitment to the craft and the special relationship that forms when you share your thoughts with an engaged audience.

Barry's wise insights remind us of the steadfast nature of podcasting, even in the face of changing advertising landscapes, proving that this medium's connection with its audience will endure despite the big wigs folding up their tents and going home.

Connect with Barry: Podhome.fm and get your first 3 months free when you use code 'gopodcasting'.


"I know how much work it takes to create the best experience for your listeners. That’s why I created Podhome.fm, to make it easy for you to bring your message to your listeners." Barry Luijbregts

Transcript

Barry Luijbregts: 0:00

Don't be discouraged because you're making huge impact in the world, like if you have a hundred downloads on one episode right, that doesn't sound much, but Try to invite a hundred people and put them in your living room, for instance. That's a lot of people and all of those people chose On purpose to listen to your thing, to listen to your episode. So that is exactly the target audience that you want, because those people opt into your content.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 0:28

This is tools of the podcast trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources you can use the start and grow your podcast. Tune in as we talk about the help you need to remove the mystery from Podcasting so you can become a successful Podcaster that can reach your audience where they are. My guest today is Barry low blood Thanks for coming and talking to us. And tools of the podcast trade, barry.

Barry Luijbregts: 0:56

Thank you very much, and that's that's good pronunciation. It's, it's difficult, it's a Dutch name.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 1:01

Ah, Okay that's why yeah, nice name, thank you. Thank you and thank you for your patience. So before we get into what you do, could you tell us who is Barry?

Barry Luijbregts: 1:13

Yeah, so I am the founder of pod home dot FM, which is a podcast hosting company, and I Started out as a software developer. I gradually moved on to course creator about software development. I create courses about cloud computing, web development, all sorts of stuff. And then I also love podcasts, listening to podcasts, learning from podcasts about all sorts of topics, including technology, health, spirituality, even you name it, and I want to learn about it. So I, you know, I combined the two passions really software development and podcasts into podcast hosting company.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 2:02

Okay so, but I can understand software and computers and that, but how did you? What got you? What interest intrigued you about podcasting? I?

Barry Luijbregts: 2:18

think there's something magical about listening to a voice or a conversation of multiple voices, right? So you have it in your ear and the use case for podcasting is usually for me at least, and I think for most people that is, you're doing stuff like you're cleaning your house, you're running around, you're traveling or something, and you listening to a conversation to somebody in your ear, and there's something very intimate to Listening to somebody, right? That sparks your imagination. Maybe you don't even know what person looks like, so you have, like this image in your head and after listening to Somebody for a couple hours or many hours, you you form a relationship with that person. It's like a one-sided friendship, right? So you're your friends with that person. You know this person, you know what, what they think, what they talk about. You can even imagine them saying something completely different that they've never said in their own voice, because you know their voice so well. So this whole relationship then ingrains into your life as as a habit, like, hey, I listen every Friday to this podcast, for instance, because it comes out every Friday, and like listening to it, even though the topic might not interest me, and so that special bond with voices and the fact that there are so many podcasts on all sorts of topics that you want to, that I can learn from, be entertained by, be inspired by, is really what attracts me to to the medium of podcasting, and it's it's super easy to Consume, right? I don't have to sit down and watch a video or something, I can just do stuff. I Awesome learning.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 4:08

Yes.

Barry Luijbregts: 4:09

It's awesome.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 4:10

Yeah, I like that. It is and it's interesting because you know people talk about, you know YouTube and it's the age of video, but you can't watch a video while you're doing laundry right or fixing the car.

Barry Luijbregts: 4:28

No, but there is something to that. So you see that the younger generation especially. They consume videos all day. So they just they're walking around with the with the phone in front of their face, and a video of a conversation does provide more context, often, right? So, for instance, if I listen to Joe Rogan podcast or something I have Spotify on on my computer, I just turn on the video. I'm not watching the video constantly. Yeah sometimes, when they say something, I just like what, what did he just say? And then I can see the reactions on their face or something, and it provides more context.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 5:02

Right.

Barry Luijbregts: 5:04

It adds a little bit of information, but I think the medium of video is just a different use case. It's not the same thing, it's a whole different thing. So it's not. I don't call that a podcast, not really.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 5:16

Right, yeah, and I brought that up because there has been some concern about the number of podcasters that are not active compared to the ones that are. And you know, at first glance you think, well, podcast is dying out, but it's not because you mentioned connection, that bond you you build as a host with, with the person who is listening and that's why they listen, because they have that connection with you, right.

Barry Luijbregts: 5:50

Yeah, so I'm not afraid of podcasting dying out. So there is let's call it industry news that there's a podcast winter and it's all going bad. And podcasts is no good. We should all use video and go to YouTube instead. And I think that all comes from what I call the podcast industrial complex, which is the big platforms, right, so Spotify, apple, google with YouTube, because it is very difficult to monetize a podcast, so just get money for the podcast that you're doing, and they all thought that you could do that. So that's why, for instance, spotify poured a billion dollars into it. Turns out that's not the case. Maybe if you're Joe Rogan, but then not even not really, because where's the money coming from? From ads. So I don't they call it a podcast winter because advertisers are pulling back because they, they, you know, they see it and they're like well, this is not really the space for us because we don't really have the intricate data as well as they have in other markets, which I think is a very good thing for consumers, because we don't want ourselves to be tracked. But from a creators and a listeners point of view, I think we're doing awesome because listening is up. People are listening to podcasts more and more in all age groups, which is great, and people are still creating podcasts as well. Yes, the people that thought that they would just make money with podcasts and that's why they created the podcast. They might fade away, but that's, that's just how it goes. That's fine. Yeah, because they didn't add much value anyways.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 7:32

Right, yeah, I was saying to I was listening to a conversation with Buzzsprout, Buzzsprout has a podcast and they were talking about how you know, now you could put your RSS feed on YouTube and they weren't impressed because they didn't think YouTube was going far enough in the podcasting. And I said I was saying to Alex and Philippa of Podmatch that you know, this just shows that podcasting belongs to us, the independent podcaster, and I think it's time we embrace podcasting as our media, as our way to connect with our audience. Right.

Barry Luijbregts: 8:17

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. This is really really good point that you make, because these big platforms, they just want your content. It just sucks it up and then packages it in some videos or something so that people can stream it, they can show you. So ads to the people, that's all they want to do. Yeah, because they don't sell anything. You're the product If you use YouTube or Facebook or any of those platforms. Yeah, this just goes to show that you know, podcasting is our thing, it's ours and I, you know, I don't want to call ourselves indie podcasters, because we are just podcasters, not indie, because we're we don't have a big platform, or are not the Joe Rogans. But creation is important. It's important to create and to add value. If you do that, then value will return and comes back to you.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 9:08

Yes, all right, thanks. Tell us exactly what you do and then give us your contact information before we move forever.

Barry Luijbregts: 9:22

Yeah, I create a podhomefm, which is a podcast hosting company. And what podhome does? There's lots of podcast hosting companies, of course, but why we are so special at least what I think, of course is because we are, first of all, unlimited. You can host unlimited shows, episodes, unlimited uploads and unlimited downloads, all for one simple price of $50.99 per month, and for that you get all features. So that's one thing. And the second thing is that we try to make it as easy as possible for a podcaster to create their podcasts and to create all the metadata around that, so titles, show notes, all that type of stuff. We do that with podhomeai and I know that sounds very gimmicky, but what that means is when you upload your episode, you flip a switch. You say, hey, generate for me a transcript, chapters, clips to text some people and suggest some title ideas and some show notes as well, and we do that for you. And also, that is unlimited. So if you have a million episodes, you can use that a million times if you want, and that just takes some work out of your hands and just makes it easier, because that's the type of stuff that takes time. Right, you need to go through your whole episode to create chapters, for instance. It's difficult and it's easier when that's already done and that also improves the listening experience, because then in a modern podcast app you can see all those chapters and you can see what's being talked about and you can skip to whatever topic you like, for instance, or you can see the clip, listen to the clip. So that's the two special things that Pothome provides.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:02

Okay, and I'm just doing this for the benefit of the audience. So Pothome is a hosting platform.

Barry Luijbregts: 11:08

Yes.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:09

Okay, all right. Okay, all right. I like that. Why FM though?

Barry Luijbregts: 11:15

Yeah, it's, I don't know. It attracted me because that is what lots of podcasting tools and stuff use in this space. So Pothomefm.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:24

That FM All right, okay, and how can we get in touch with you?

Barry Luijbregts: 11:31

You can reach me there on Pothomefm. If you have any questions or anything, you can send me an email at Barry B-A-R-Y at Pothomefm and if you're interested in hosting with us, you can go there and use a promo code gopodcasting that is go podcasting and one word, and that gives you three months for free on top of the seven day trial.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:56

Okay, so I'm gonna play Devils Out of the Cat because I use Buzzsprout. I use Buzzsprout and Captivate. Buzzsprout has that, you know, AI to call co-hosts. That creates the transcript and the show notes and chapters and stuff like that for you, as well as an audio leveling tool, sort of kind of. What makes your platform different, apart from because I do like the pricing and I like the unlimited, because you can only host one podcast per account with Buzzsprout. So I see that difference what else makes it different stand out?

Barry Luijbregts: 12:46

So, if you compare to a Buzzsprout, for instance which is a great podcasting hosting company, by the way, but they have indeed similar capability with their co-host AI, which also does the same things, our AI is way faster. So, for instance, for an hour episode takes two minutes to do all that stuff, but Buzzsprout takes a bit longer. Plus, with Buzzsprout you're tied, limited by the number of hours that you can upload and that you can use your AI feature and also your magic mastering. So the audio enhancement feature, yes. Now we also have an audio enhancement feature and that is a pay-per-use thing, so it is unlimited in the way that you can use it. You can use it for 100 hours if you want, but then you pay for those 100 hours as well, in addition to your subscription. We're working on making that free. That will be later this year. That's tricky to make the technology work fast enough.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 13:43

Right right.

Barry Luijbregts: 13:45

So the unlimited factor is what puts us apart there, and also we support a lot more podcasting 2.0 features than Buzzsprout does.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 13:55

Okay, all right. So more upgraded software? Yeah, All right. Okay, so you were a podcast to yourself.

Barry Luijbregts: 14:08

Yes, it's difficult to keep the consistency going. I did developer weekly what is it called? There was a limited podcast of 52 episodes that a couple years back, where I interviewed leaders in the field of technology about their specific thing, and then after that and that's still running I created a podcast called Improving Barry, where I try to, or I tried to, interview doctors and medical people in all sorts of areas just to learn from them so that I can improve my own health right. And just go in there open and question ask, questions about what they do and what they think about certain things health related.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 14:56

Okay, all right, thank you. I want to dig into you as a person in this space. What is the most important thing to you as someone who serve podcasters but also serve an audience via podcast?

Barry Luijbregts: 15:19

Yeah, well, if you're asking about the most important aspect of podcasting, in that sense, I think audio quality is key. So when I listen to a podcast and the audio quality sucks, I'll probably turn it off or I can't listen to the whole thing because I'm doing stuff right, I'm out in a bar, I'm outside or something. I might not always have this type of stuff with noise cancellation in, of course. So audio quality is very, very important and that's also why we have the audio enhance feature, so that you can just flip a switch and it gets normalized and we do some noise reduction stuff like that just to make that easier, because previously I then needed to upload something to my editing software and then do all that audio enhancement there to make the audio great. So that's very important, and the metadata around it I find very important. So, especially chapters, because I want people to be able to see what we are actually talking about and when, so that they can skip things that they're not interested in and or go back to certain things that they might have missed, because I do that myself, basically. So those are really other things.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 16:39

Okay, and so don't skip the chapters, right?

Barry Luijbregts: 16:42

Yeah, absolutely not. Okay, I know it can be difficult to make and that's also why I try to automate that.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 16:48

Yeah, okay, I'm guilty of skipping chapters. Yeah, all right, I appreciate you, barry, for coming and speaking to us on tools of the podcast. Right, and I can ask you to give us a parting shot like tip strategy to an aspiring podcaster.

Barry Luijbregts: 17:11

Yeah, so not so much a tip or a strategy, but more words of encouragement, maybe. So if you have a podcast and you look at your download numbers in your host analytics or wherever you look at those, you see, well, maybe I got 10 downloads for this episode, or 100 for this episode, and you might be discouraged because you hear that Joe Rogan gets 300 million downloads or something, or your friend might get 10,000 downloads. You'll be discouraged because you're making huge impact in the world. Like, if you have 100 downloads on one episode, right, that doesn't sound much, but try to invite 100 people and put them in your living room, for instance. That's a lot of people, and all of those people chose on purpose to listen to your thing, to listen to your episode. So that is exactly the target audience that you want, because those people opt into your content. They didn't just hear that on the radio or something and that's a lot of people that you just touched there, that you impacted with that. So that's all I want to say. Even if your numbers seem low, you're still making a huge impact because this is a very targeted medium. So keep going.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:25

Yes, I actually like that. Thank you, because we do get caught up in the weeds or the downloads and forget our unique listeners right.

Barry Luijbregts: 18:37

Yes, exactly.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:39

Okay, all right, thank you. I appreciate you coming and speaking to us. Barry, appreciate you.

Barry Luijbregts: 18:44

Thank you very much. I appreciate you too, and thank you for having me on.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:47

Okay, and we'll put the links in the show notes and also the code, so we can get three months free. I like that. I like free.

Barry Luijbregts: 18:57

Free is good yeah.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:59

Thank you All right, all right.