Jonathan Green: Podcasting as a business with special guest Matthew Passy on today's episode.

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Announcer: Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master Podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by bestselling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

Jonathan Green: So as someone who's been podcasting for quite a few years now, six or seven years, I'm very interested in the business side of it and people that. Produce podcasts rather than being the star of the show, the production team, the editing team, there's a lot of things that go into a great podcast. How did you first get interested in kind of the podcasting world and this part of it?

Mathew Passy: So actually I produced my first podcast all the way back in2007or eight ish. I can never remember the right year, but. The iPhone had just come out. I was working for a radio station. Apple announced the first iteration of the podcast store. And so I basically turned to my boss working at a news station and said, Hey, we should put out a podcast of our content. He said, sure, why not? If it doesn't cost me money enough, have to do anymore work, why not? So I had been doing that for a few years, then worked for a large media organization for almost eight years doing a mix of radio and podcasting. But it wasn't until that company decided to exit the radio business and laid us all off that. I really started to create my own podcasting ventures. That was, beginning of2015,trying to figure out my next move. And people who I had been working with asked if I could help them produce a podcast cause they saw that there was value to them for marketing. And I said,sure,why not? I can figure that out. All I really need is a computer. And so it was then that I started to. Edit and produce podcasts for other people. And that's when I really started to understand the potential power of the podcast, the limitless opportunities of podcasting and how this could be a business on so many. Different levels, right? Like you asked a lot of people, they just wanted to talk behind a microphone, have some fun. But there's so many different ways that you can use this content as a way to make money. It's just incredible.

Jonathan Green: So a lot of people dip their tone of podcasting, especially about10,12years ago. Do four10episodes and then they quit. So what do you think people are doing wrong when they come with the mindset of, I wanna make money, big money, day one, the first day of my show, it should be making huge money. And what is the kind of the right mindset now, especially with how sophisticated podcasting in the market has become and it almost feels like it's so crowded now. That, how can I enter, how can I get my

Mathew Passy: voice heard? I think right there is the first main problem. A lot of the folks that we've worked with over the years, or a lot of the folks who I've consulted with the big issue that happens is you have folks who come to it and say, I really wanna start a podcast, but I don't know what I want to do it about. Or, I really need to make money, so I'm gonna start a podcast. And there were some folks who were early into the space who really created this. Illusion that podcasting was some sort of, panacea to instant wealth and riches and it really wasn't right. The people who the smart marketing people who launched a podcast and were very successful then turn around and sold people on this belief that if you have a podcast, it'll automatically equal riches. And the truth is, For most people it won't. Right? Like anything else, not everybody who starts a YouTube channel is gonna become super famous. Not everybody who plays football is gonna go to the N NFL and make millions of dollars. Same is true with podcasting. And so for people who are entering this space, what I usually tell them to do is to think about why you're doing it first. The people who are very successful podcasting usually have a few things in common. Either one, they are doing something that is. New and different and unique, right? They are. They're trying a new format. They're investigating a new area, or they're bringing up something that you just can't find anywhere else. Two is folks who are super passionate about something. Doesn't matter what that is. Teaching chess. Their business, helping others being funny, telling stories, right? It's not limited to the business, but the truth is the people who do well in podcasts aren't in it because they're staring at the numbers, because they are praying every day to get more downloads and earn money from it. They're doing it because what they do, they absolutely love. They are just, they wake up every day just thinking and dreaming about that thing, and then it turns out that. A podcast is a great way to share that passion, share that love, build that community, create that kind of fandom or excitement. So, I think it really shouldn't be, I wanna start a podcast. What do I do it? What do I do it on? It should be I am bursting with passion, or I am itching to do something, or I've been trying to find this specific kind of content and it's not there. And then you realize. Oh, this is the right medium for me to get to that end goal. I think if you do it that way, you have a much bigger chance of success. And then also the folks who are doing it because they're focusing on the numbers it's a slow growth, right? If you come to podcasting with hundred thousand social media followers, or you know a million people on your email list, yeah, you're gonna put out content. And even if1%follow you, you will be successful. But for most folks, When they show up in podcasting, it's not field of dreams just cuz you're there. People aren't going to necessarily show up. It takes time. You have to build an audience, you have to build relationships, you have to engage with people. You have to turn people who are casual listeners into advocates for what it is you are doing. And so if you wake up every day and the first thing you do is you check your download numbers, what you're quickly gonna do is get yourself. Really frustrated because you're not at whatever level it is that you think you need to be at to be successful. That frustration is gonna creep into your performance and you're gonna drive less people into wanting to listen to your content. The people who do this, do it is if only. One person or no one was listening because they enjoyed being there, and the folks who get hyper focused on numbers, they're the ones who usually fade out because they're wondering, how come I don't have a million listeners on episode five or six, or right. Whatever that number. Also, I would say not everybody needs the same number of downloads to be successful, right? If you're doing a general entertainment comedy show, Yeah, you're gonna need a lot of numbers because HelloFresh and Athletic Greens, right? They just want big numbers for them to advertise on. But if you are hyper niche, if you've got a very specific subset of audience that you were targeting, and there are companies that are trying to reach that subset they don't find a lot of places that they can reach, a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand people. If you can get that, you could probably make more money. The people who are doing tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand downloads of just a general population audience that may or may not be interested in whatever the advertising product is.

Jonathan Green: Now, I've found that the data in podcasting is really murky. It's really hard to find out how many listeners a show has or how popular a show is, and I often use like secondary tools like looking at. Kind of the SEO rankings of someone's website or how many views they're getting on YouTube, right? But most podcasts, the actual download numbers or how many viewers listeners are getting, it's so hidden. And also there's the huge difference between downloads and listens, right? A lot of people, I download tons of episodes I never listen to if shows. We all do that if we listen to podcasts. So it's very hard for someone, I think, to get that clean data to figure out what the market is like. Like when I'm trying to figure out if a podcast is making money, the first thing I look for is like, do the people on the show have other jobs? Do they have other full-time jobs? Are they doing other types of business? Are they go okay. They haven't been on a hundred percent on the podcast yet. They're still having to generate revenue somewhere else. And some of the really big shows I listen to someone's been host for eight years that are still working full-time as a bartender or still working full-time. On other projects. So I think that's where a lot of the kind of illusion of like, oh, I'll be the next Joe Rogan, right? Yeah. You're gonna get a huge deal. And it's no, he's, that's only one. The next dropdown behind to the next person is really big drop. Right? But how can people start to get a real sense of the data for like, how many downloads is good downloads? How big is the market? What should I be doing? Because, It's hard to self-assess because there is no kind of me measuring stick to

Mathew Passy: metric against. There's a lot to unpack in that question. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with the numbers. Yes. It is a little murky because when you are running a podcast, the metric that we work, the metric that we get from our hosting companies is, Downloads and every listen is a download. But not every download is a listen as you were alluding to, right? We all download podcasts. We don't necessarily get to listen to them. However, downloads are downloads are downloads, and it's like the unifying metric that allows us to compare ourselves to each other. So while I might get a hundred downloads, you might get a thousand downloads and we don't know how many are listens. Right? Based on some survey data, we have a sense that probably about80%of all downloads do wind up being listens, or at least that's the common number that we work with. So while it is hard to know specifically who your listeners are, or that exact number of subscribers that you get, like you would from some other platforms, it is still an apples to apples comparison. When you are looking at it from other shows. Now you see your metrics, right? But nobody else gets to see them unless you disclose them. And so in many cases, folks who are claiming that they're the number one show for this, or they're doing that, or they're getting this, A lot of times, yeah, we have to take it on face value because many of them are exaggerating or flat out lying or they're using marketing language from a platform that might say, oh, you're the top3%of all people on our platform. It's okay, but you've sent that email to everybody, so how do I take you seriously? Or how do I take that seriously? That said, I agree. There's more metrics that you can think about, right? What is your SEO ranking? What is your social media following? How many email addresses are in your list, and what's your open rate when you send that kind of stuff out? When you do post an episode, right? Don't tell'em you've got 10,000listeners.You post an episode to a hundred thousand people on Twitter and you get two likes, right? The numbers are just not adding up there and you're probably buying listeners or bots or whatever, right? It just. The math just isn't there. How do you figure out what's the right audience for you? That's a really tough one to say. It depends on what is your target audience, and that's why it's so important to know who it is that you are really doing this for. Right? Whenever we work with a client, we always ask them, why are you doing the show? Who is it that you want to reach? And once you reach that person, what is it you want them to do? Now for a lot of business shows, that could be something as simple as. I want them to reach out to for new business.Okay,well,if10new people reach out for new business that month, that might be a fantastic month for you. Depending on what it is you do, or if you want more new followers, you get a hundred followers. That might be the number that you're looking for. With shows that are less business centric, it's just we want people to keep listening because the more people who listen, the more money we can earn on ads and other types of listener based revenue. Okay? So if you see your numbers going up each time you drop an episode, That's good for you, but I also don't think you can always compare yourself to somebody else. Right. I have certain clients who run podcasts in the money space. Some of them get50,000downloads and feel very, very successful. Some get10,000downloads and feel even more successful, and some get about25,000and feel like they're failing. And it's not because any of them are necessarily wrong or right, it's just. What they have in mind as far as their goals and target for what this content is supposed to do for them. And so I think you have to really go into it knowing why you are doing this. And to your point about people having other jobs. For many of the folks that we work with, the podcast. Isn't meant to be a revenue stream. The podcast is meant to help bolster, or grow or funnel people into what really is their revenue stream, right? They treat their podcast as part of their marketing budget or their advertising budget. So many times it can be a loss leader. Because on the other side, they're getting new clients, new subscribers, new whatever, and that's gonna equal more money at the end of the day. But to your point, you bring up Joe Rogan, right? Joe Rogan, ostensibly one of the most famous podcasters there is some of the other famous podcasters who are out there right now, right? Megan Markle is out there. Oprah Winfrey is out there. Mark Marin is out there, right? Like you have all these names of people who we consider to be. Successful podcasters, most of them have other jobs, right. Joe Rogan still does announcing for MMA or still does standup comedy, or maybe he doesn't anymore. I don't know. I don't follow his career anymore, but, right. Like Joe Rogan isn't just a podcaster. He does a lot of other things. Oprah Winfrey runs. Magazines, television networks produces movies, right? This is just a small piece of what she does. Megan Markle, same thing, right? She's out there doing all sorts of other things. The podcast is just one piece of it, so I don't think because you have a second job or need to do something else while you're podcasting necessarily. Makes you less successful than somebody else unless you know that is what you want to be. If you wanna be a full-time podcaster, it's a hustle. And even full-time podcasters, I guarantee most of them, their income isn't driven by the podcast itself. It's driven by additional revenue streams for right membership platforms, selling merchandise. Doing live events right, like there are, there's typically other things that feed into that total annual salary that isn't just direct podcast monetization. Yeah. 

Jonathan Green: So a lot of people think that the. Monetization model for podcasting is you do episodes, get enough listeners, and then you run ads. And I think there's this belief that these, you get paid per download, but most of the ads I hear on show bigger than mine, they always have that promo code or that special link, which usually to me means it's an affiliate link. They get paid per sale, not per download. Are there any shows that are actually big enough that they're getting paid? In a non-affiliate way that they're just getting paid for running a commercial, like a radio station, or are they all still doing pay per sale?

Mathew Passy:  It's actually both and in fact, if you listen to radio shows often also have that promo code attached to it. That's not necessarily to track the sales in order to determine what the show is going to make. That's usually just a way of either creating a bonus for that show, like, okay, we're gonna pay you for your. Hundred thousand listeners that you have, but if you hit a certain goal, then we're also going to give you this. Or they're using it because they wanna see, is this working right? We're giving you a lot of money, are we getting enough sales? And so without that, they have very little transparency into what is going on. But I would say that while advertising is consider the most popular and is probably the most widely used way of monetizing a podcast. I don't think it's necessarily the most effective in podcasting. Advertising is sold on what's called a CPM, right? Cost per mil or cost per 1000 download. So if your show gets a thousand downloads, $25 per download, right? You're getting like, what is it,25cents or two and a half cents per person that listens to the show for that advertisement. But if you're, some of my clients who they run premium podcasts, right? They give the show out for free over here with ads, or we have people who subscribe to the show who get the show ad free. They're getting 5,10, 15, $20 per person. And even if you spread that out across four episodes a month, that means that person is paying they're getting $5 per person to be a subscriber to that show. That's way better than two and a half cents that advertisers are gonna pay you for that same individual. So, I think advertising is a great way to get, monetization for podcasting. Should you have the audience or should you have the right audience? Plenty of advertisers will. Take a show of the a hundred listeners, if those are the right listeners, right? If it's a very targeted niche set of listeners that they're looking for, but I think you can supplement or even go beyond that with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a great way to get started because it typically costs you, nothing cost the company nothing. It's only measured on your success. And also if you do that, then you can turn to a potential advertiser and say, look at the success we had. Pushing this product out there, right? You can show somebody what you're worth even before they'll start paying you in advance. Premium memberships, donations private podcasts, right? Those are all the same things. Listeners pay for access to extra value or extra episodes or whatever from the show. The difference is basically just marketing, right? In some cases, we're begging people for money. Make sense? If you're a nonprofit or an individual doing this, other times you are charging people for access to extra value. Makes more sense. If you're a Fortune500,right?Fortune500companies shouldn't have a patron going, please, will you donate to our show? Like, no, that's not going to happen. You have plenty of money and if you want me to pay for it, fine, but don't act like you need the money. You are begging us to do it. But all of those. Different premium models. There's lots of value you can give listeners that cost you nothing to provide. That's a great way to start generating revenue. On top of that, you can do things like selling merchandise, right? Start a T public account and start selling t-shirts with your logo on it if you want to. It's not great money at first but it's a start. Most of these things are gonna take an audience in order to earn anything from it, but they don't necessarily cost you anything or don't worry about. The podcast just drive people to the other products, services, events, whatever it is that you were selling. That's a way to make money. And not that I think everybody should do this, but there are even folks who are making money by charging guests to be on their show. Right? If you are running a large enough podcast, you have a decent enough audience, a hyper-targeted audience, you could say to a guest, listen, yeah, I'll talk to you about your book, but I've got20,000people who every time we. Bring on an author,right?15,000copies of the book sale. That's worth something. Now the only thing I would say is if you're gonna do that one, disclose it to your audience that that's what's happening, and two, disclose it to the guest. Right? I don't. I've been in a situation where I've been asked to be on a podcast, I appear, and then it's like, okay, now here's your invoice. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't say, you know, like that to me, I think is a little bit shadier, but there's nothing wrong with charging people to be a guest on your show if that is your. Business model, if you're transparent about it, if you're upfront about it, and if you are actually giving people value in exchange for that time on your show.

Jonathan Green:  Yeah. You brought up something interesting because I sometimes run into that, the pay-to-play thing, and I find it very distasteful. Usually it is someone, they're like, oh. A free episode is this long, but if you wanna cut to the front of the line, and especially, it usually shows that are hiding their numbers. I don't really know how many downloads there are, and I'm in a place in my career where that's not something I'm used to. Usually people are asking me to be on their show, so it's very surprising to me. But I think that I usually find those things most of the time. Right. I do know larger brands that do it as well, but most of the time it's taking advantage of people that don't know any better, where they're like, oh, cut to the front of the line. You know? Or they're like, oh, our calendar's full for the next year. Unless you pay extra for the earlier openings and stuff, or you pay for like premium stuff and I'm not really sure I'm comfortable with that for most of the people doing it. Most of the places I find it, it's usually they don't, they ask you to be on their show and then they ask you for money, which is like really uncool if you ask me. It's different if someone approaches me, right? If someone reaches out to me and wants to be a guest on my show, then it's one thing. But I find that part of the market is something that I just really don't like. I think that it's just not how things should be. I do know some really larger brands do it, and I get it why they're doing it, but, Yeah. I find that's something that like I'll be really annoyed. I can understand why you're upset. If someone had me on their show and then they invoiced me, I'd be like, oh, no way dude, because you're paying for my time. Like, it's the opposite, right? You're getting a star.

Mathew Passy: I don't disagree with you at all that a lot of people doing this tend to be shadier player. Right. They tend to be doing it because like you said, there are folks who are desperate for attention and they see an opportunity and they don't know. Like a lot of times you'll see a show that's like, we could be in front of a million people, right? And it's like, oh, you're in front of a million people. That's a pretty sizable audience. What they don't tell you is that the reason why they're in front of a million people is because they are on a cable channel that has distribution through Comcast or files or one of those places. Doesn't mean anybody watches, but yeah, if I'm on Comcast's channel lineup, I'm in a million homes. That doesn't mean a million people are listening. It's like when Sirius XM used to say, heard by.200million people in the country. It's like, no, you're in200million cars cuz it's pre-installed. That doesn't mean. Any of those people are necessarily subscribing. So yeah, you have to be really, really careful. You have to really be on guard in those situations of people who are soliciting you or people who are, like you said, they're tricking you. So that's why I'd say if you are not, if it's not fully disclosed, if it's not clearly upfront, if you're not a big enough brand and you're not willing to really show me your numbers, listen, like we said earlier, my hosting numbers are not public to anybody else. But if somebody wants to see them, I'll share my screen and show them, or I'll take a screenshot of my numbers and show it to them. If somebody asks you for numbers and what they do is they write it out or they send you, something that anybody could have just made up I would take it with a grain of salt, but I think there are folks who can do this and who do this well and have earned the right, or have created a model that it makes sense. And listen, if you're not disclosing it, it's not just, A bad look in the space. It's also illegal, right? This is what happened to one of the Kardashians. I cannot remember which one cause I don't follow, but right. One of the Kardashians got in trouble with the s e C for promoting a crypto coin via Instagram without disclosing that they were getting paid to do so right. Now listen, we're not all big enough to be of the attention of the s e c cause we're not Kardashians, but they can come after you for doing this kind of stuff. If you're not being honest and upfront about it with both the guess who you are. Trapping and with your audience. So it's not just about not being a good look, it's also about really the law.

Jonathan Green: I think that's a really good point that I want people to think about a lot. So this has been a really great episode, very informative for me. I'm always interested in people that have that really focus on the business side of podcasting rather than just on the content side. So this is really great, Matt. Where, or Matthew, where can people spend more time with you, find out more what you're doing, or maybe even have you help them grow their

Mathew Passy: podcast. So thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here. The best way is the podcast consultant.com. That's where you find our editing business production business consulting business. We do video editing, remote recording. We do podcast audits. If you've already got a show and you need some help with that, or if you just want to follow me, I'm on all the social media platforms, just. Under my name, it's Matthew Passy. Matthew is one team at PASSY is P A S S Y. If you Google that name, I'm probably the one who's gonna show up. Okay Awesome. This

Jonathan Green: has been really informative. I think people are gonna dig this. So thank you so much for your time.

Mathew Passy: Been my pleasure.

Jonathan Green: Thanks for listening to today's episode. I love podcasting and it's never too late. To start your amazing podcast, get started with my free guide at serve master.com/checklist.

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