Rising to the Top: Unpacking Buzzsprout's Podcast Statistics with Tom

I just want to test out that this saves. 

Does this thing even work?

Transcript

Jordan 0:03

All right. So we're hopping on to do a quick cast today, talk about the Buzz Sprout backtracks for 2024. And with us today, we have Tom Rossi. Kevin is on the road and he has been banned from recording in his car. So unfortunately, he cannot be here. So thanks for joining us, Tom.

Tom 0:21

Thanks for having me. Kevin now has podcast immunity because he'll just claim, like, I'm happy to do it from the car. And we're like, no.

Jordan 0:29

That's true.

Tom 0:30

So we're talking about backtracks today. Uh, for people who haven't been with Buzzsprout for a while, backtracks are at the end of the year, we tell you all these stats about how your podcast performed in the year. And obviously, like the numbers are not success. The success are all the people you reached, but it's kind of powerful when those numbers get aggregated and you see the impact that your show had. I don't know if you felt this way, Jordan, but you know, our numbers for this show are mostly, in my mind, like pretty modest, somewhere between 1,500 to 3,000 downloads an episode. And then at the end of the year, we got it and it's like 82,000 for the year. And I was like, damn, that's like kind of a big number. I guess when you add the smaller numbers up, they get bigger. But um, I know math and still it surprised me.

Jordan 1:18

Yeah, I'm one of those podcasters that I kind of avoid looking at stats like as much as possible. And so it's really nice to get that notification where it's like, okay, here's how many downloads you got for the year. And I'm just like, oh wow, well, that's way more than I thought. I didn't even think about it. So yeah.

Your Buzzsprout Statistics

Tom 1:35

Yeah. I think that the downloads is one number that can be really encouraging. You get that number, you see how many people, you know, downloaded your episodes from that year, but just seeing the number of minutes too, uh the number of minutes that you've produced, the number of episodes that you created for the year, like you can forget that, man, that's a lot. It is a lot. And it's a lot when you think that Jordan's actually editing us down like yeah uh to a third of the time we record. Kevin and I just sit here and ramble. And Jordan's like, all right, gotta chop this up.

Jordan 2:04

Yeah, I think our last episode I chopped an hour off of it.

Tom 2:08

So we always have like a good 10 minutes at the beginning where we're all kind of warming up and they end up being like totally off topic. Sometimes it turns into a pre-show or something, but often Jordan's like, this makes no sense.

Jordan 2:23

We can't use this.

Tom 2:25

One of the stats that I really like was this like top percentage. Uh, we're we're trying to like quantify how successful a show is in comparison to other podcasts.

Jordan 2:35

Yeah.

Tom 2:35

Tom, can you tell us like what this is? It says BuzzCast is a top 10% show. Is that based on ratings and reviews? What is that? Yeah, really, you don't want to say, right? You don't want to say like this is a measurement of success, as much as it's just in terms of the number of downloads, puts you in the top X percentage of all the Buzz Sprout podcasts that are out there. And so it's based on the number of downloads that your episode gets in the first seven days. So we look at how many downloads do you get in the first seven days? If you get, say, for example, more than 466, you're in the top 10% of all the Buzz Sprout podcasts that are out there. And we really like that number because we think people in their minds they compare themselves to, you know, Joe Rogan or they compare themselves to these big podcasts, and they don't realize actually, you know, most podcasts don't fall into that category. And so you may very well find yourself in the top 10, top 25% without that many downloads. Top 25% is only 111. So we highlight those numbers and we highlight where that podcast falls in that category.

Jordan 3:39

Yeah, I love that we include this because on social media I interact with a lot of podcasters. And a lot of times they'll be like, I'm only getting, you know, 150 downloads and, you know, I feel like I want to quit. And there's so many podcasters that we have that don't know about the Buzzsprout Global Stats page. And it's buzzprout.com slash stats. You can look at it every month, it's updated. This is one of those statistics I love sharing uh with people because it makes them go, whoa, wait a second. I am way farther than I thought I was. And it just, I know stats aren't everything, but you know, sometimes it feels good to see how you stand against some other podcasters and you kind of go, you know what? I'm actually better at this than I thought.

Tom 4:20

I really like it because it's always more impressive to the podcaster than they thought. Um, we have lots of podcasters who go, I've got to be bottom like 2%. And they look and we go, you're actually above the 50th percentile. And they're blown away because they thought, I'm only getting a few hundred downloads an episode, I must be really low. It's just that we only hear about the shows that get the like hundred million dollar Amazon deal. And you're like, yeah, that's a big show. I'm a nothing show, but really you're probably doing pretty dang well. Even though it's not the only measurement of success, it's definitely something that like Albin said can be encouraging. If you know that this is compared to a hundred more than a hundred thousand podcasts, and you know that your downloads in the first seven days is more than 50,000 other podcasts, you know, if you're in the top 50%, that's encouraging. And so even if it's not necessarily the measurement of success, it does help people keep podcasting. It helps them feel encouraged in the work that they're doing, that you know, they're growing. And really that's what you want, right? Is that the the the downloads that you get in the first seven days is a good measurement of your reach. How have you built that audience that are downloading those episodes as soon as they come out? And that will grow and grow over time.

Jordan 5:37

So another thing that we have on our backtracks is the number of episodes that you published in the year. This is another one of those things that's really fun to see at the end of the year because you go, holy cow, I published way more episodes than I even thought I had. For BuzzCast, it reminded me that it was this year that we went weekly with the like QuickCast and Snapcast and experimenting with that. So we had so many more episodes this year than we did last year. And that was kind of a fun thing to see too.

Tom 6:06

Jordan, I'm curious, did you do the math of how many episodes you produced across all of your podcasts?

Jordan 6:11

No.

Tom 6:12

A lot if you add them all together, that's really incredible.

Jordan 6:16

Oh my gosh. If I added them all together, I don't even want to think about it. I I try not to think about how many podcasts I produce, to be honest with you. Yeah. It'll stress me out.

Tom 6:26

And how many minutes? How many minutes? Because you figured the number of minutes that actually make it into the episode, let's say that's 50 to 75% of the actual recording, maybe less than that. And that's how much material you had to go through to edit. I mean, that's a lot.

Jordan 6:41

Okay, Tom. I think that this is actually gonna be a really fun thing for me to do. I think I'm gonna have to post a check-in or something. This is editing, Jordan, interrupting your episode to let you know that I did, in fact, go back and total up everything after this recording. I recorded a total of 4,206 minutes in 2024, and I published 2,827 minutes, which means I cut over 1,300 minutes. So basically, 67% of the content I record makes it to publishing. Yikes.

Tom 7:12

We always do these stats around uh the locations. I have a few questions about locations. This is just turning into me questioning Tom about my backtracks, but 157 countries, which is really exciting, but like half of those downloads are all in one country, United States of America, very US-centric show. But you know, it's funny that I think of so many of our listeners that we interact with are based outside the US.

Jordan 7:38

I know, yeah.

Tom 7:39

And it so that made me really happy. I'm like, I know there's a few percent in the United Kingdom, a few percent in Canada and Australia, but then I'm looking and I'm like, well, I know a few of the people in Australia. I know some of the people in the UK. So it's fun to see like those numbers and then realize like there are real people behind those numbers.

Jordan 7:58

I think it shows that our UK and Australia listeners are the actually engaged ones. Like the US ones need to step it up here because we're not hearing from them.

Tom 8:09

Specifically, the listeners in Ashburn, Virginia. Do you see this, Tom? Is this showing up in a bunch of things? Let's not talk about Ashbourn, Virginia. Is that is this another like uh Lake Stevens? Yeah, where there was like a data. Yeah. It's a data center. And so it could be a VPN, it could be a service. Uh, it's really hard. I mean, one, you have VPNs, so VPNs will hide the location. Um, and so sometimes it'll show up as the data center. And then sometimes they're clearly bots, but they're not clear enough that we can actually filter them out. You know, we filter a lot, but still, you know, it's really hard to tell. A good bot looks like a real download. That would be a really fun stat to get next year, Tom. How many we blocked? Here's how many bots we blocked from your podcast. One of the things that jumped out to me was top episodes. Me too. I was pretty surprised by which of these were near the top. Now, I know number one, do you know why what makes a good podcast is our number one episode for the year?

Jordan 9:15

I mean, to me, it seems like a very SEO-rich title. Like, what makes a good podcast? People are gonna be like, what makes a good podcast? This is gonna pop up. That seems pretty simple, right?

Tom 9:25

It's it's actually uh a little more gamed than that. Uh, what makes a good podcast? I'm pretty sure that's the episode we embed in our embed player on the Buzzprout website so that people can see what our embed players are like. And so people play that episode a lot. And if you click into its specific stats, most of those are the embed player plays.

Jordan 9:44

Well, it sounds like we need to do that with more of our episodes. I gotta find different places to stick these.

Tom 9:48

That's true. That's what we need more click farms.

Jordan 9:51

Yeah.

Tom 9:51

We we absolutely do. Uh, but the number three was when we talked about acquired, the acquired podcast, and we kind of went deep into their episodes and what they were doing that was different in podcasting. And that got a really strong response. Uh we had lots of people listen to it. And that was an episode I really enjoyed. I think our last episode was probably the best of the year.

Jordan 10:13

Easily. Yeah.

Tom 10:14

But the acquired one is really interesting to see so many people still going back and listening to it months later.

Jordan 10:20

Well, and the episode that actually surprised me was the answering tons of fan mail coming in second under what makes a good podcast. That actually shocked me because I thought we had so many other episodes that were so much better. And then I was like, well, actually, you know what? That was our highest like listener engagement episode, other than the one that we just did last week. But to me, that says listeners were like, yeah, sweet. They're gonna be just responding to us and talking to us. And I think that that really helped with the engagement of the episode.

Tom 10:50

All right. Well, this has been fun. Thanks for having me on. It's always fun to be with you guys. Thanks, Tom.

Jordan 10:55

Thank you for hopping in. We we appreciate it. And for our listeners, our sound off question last episode was to listen back on an older episode of your podcast and let us know one thing that you like to improve. I will say we have had one response. So that tells me that you are not doing your homework. And so I hope that you are able to do that over the weekend and get back to us so that we can include it on our next episode of Buzzcast.

Tom 11:19

I have an answer. I just didn't want to send it in because I don't want you and Kevin to know what it is until I until I say it. But uh I listened to the episode, I really enjoyed it, and there is something about me that stuck out. So we'll have an answer for it, Jordan.

Jordan 11:34

All right. Well, we like to hear your responses. As always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.