Categories
Podcasting

September 2023 Podcast Report

Total Downloads: 1,114,656

Month-to-Month Growth: 9.28%

Year-to-Year Growth: 31.32%

Average Daily Downloads: 37,155.2

Month-to-Month Daily Growth: 12.9%


It has been a while since I’ve posted a report, but I figure it’s time.

One of the things that skewed my perception of this year is the fact that I had a spike in downloads in January. Take away that spike and I’ve experienced pretty steady growth.

It is also becoming harder to achieve percentage growth in the show once it gets to a certain point. This month, I had over 9% growth. That is actually huge for a show, getting over 1,000,000 downloads.

The increase in the number of downloads I experienced in September is more than most podcasts ever see. Yet, when seen on a graph showing the total history of my podcast, it appears like a blip.

September saw my biggest single day for downloads. On September 19, I had 64,393 downloads. It is hard to predict when those days will happen, but I’ll certain take it.

This summer, I spent a lot of time trying to buy promotions and feed drops on smaller podcasts with similar audiences. I’ve mostly given up on that. It is simply too frustrating.

Most smaller podcasts have no business sense and it takes a lot of time for something that wont really move the needle.

I’ll probably have to invest more in doing fewer promotions on larger podcasts.


One thing I did do, and I have no idea exactly how much this has affected my downloads, in improved my SEO.

I’ve started using a tool called Voxalyze. It is basically an SEO tool for podcasts to see how you appear on Apple and Spotify in search results.

It turns out my podcast does very well in terms of search visibility.

My show currently ranks #43 in the world on Apple Podcasts for all podcasts in terms of visibility. That is out of 2,624,164 on Apple Podcasts.

I’m ranked #233 on Spotify, but Spotify also claims almost twice the number of podcasts as Apple.

Either way, that puts me in the top 0.001 percent of podcasts world wide, at least for this metric.

This is primarily due to the fact that I’ve published over 1,100 episodes on a wide variety of topics.


One of my biggest challenges going forward is finding help.

Creating Everything Everywhere Daily has been a solo effort since I started the show in 2020. Simply writing and getting a show out the door every day is a challenge and doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to do other things that I should be doing to promote the show.

Right now, I’d just be happy to find an assistant to take some of the daily tasks off my hands, like creating episode artwork, website admin, and social media.

I have no solution. This is just a rant.

Categories
Podcasting

May 2023 Podcast Report

Summary

Total Downloads: 1,022,439

Month-to-Month Growth: 1.99%

Year-to-Year Growth: 50.48%

Average Daily Downloads: 34,081.3

Month-to-Month Daily Growth: 1.02%


I pretty much called my shot last month with how this month would go. I figured growth was going to remain steady in May, and that is exactly what happened.

If I can mix my metaphors, 1% monthly growth is nothing to write home about, but it also isn’t anything to sneeze at.

If you look at the graph above, if you take out the big spike I had in January, there has still been steady growth.

However, as I’ve said over the last few months, I can do better, and now I’m ready to start turning things up on the podcast marketing front for the rest of the year.

Plans for marketing the show are still in the works and will be a process.

At first, I’ll probably be doing advertisements on podcast apps, which I have experience with.

Then I’ll probably be doing more paid feed drops and paid ads on other podcasts.

At some point, probably not this year, I might even investigate promotions outside of podcasts, but I need more data before I go down that path.

I’m guessing next month’s report will be far more interesting than the last few months have been.

Categories
Podcasting

April 2023 Podcast Report

Total Downloads: 1,002,444

Month-to-Month Growth: -1.55%

Year-to-Year Growth: 84.24%

Average Daily Downloads: 33,414.8

Month-to-Month Daily Growth: 1.73%


As expected, April was steady in terms of growth. Technically, the monthly downloads dropped by 1.5%, but there was also one fewer day in April compared to March.

If you look at average daily downloads, it actually grew by 1.7%.

So, I’ll call it a wash.

As I predicted last month, April was going to be about the same, and I predict the same in May. I don’t expect to see a growth spurt until June when I already have some promotions lined up.

A few months ago, I mentioned that my focus wasn’t on growth at the moment but waiting for the sales pipeline to fill before I focused on growth again.

It’s a good problem to have.

The good news is that my inventory is pretty much 100% filled right now. I actually can’t do promo swaps right now because I have no inventory to trade.

March and April have had record earnings, which is going to set me up for my next major marketing push in June.

The big news in April was more personal. I moved into a new apartment. A much larger place with a room I can devote as a studio.

As of the day I’m writing this, I’m going to be installing acoustical tiles in my studio.

This has been an across-the-board improvement in my work environment and quality of life. I have a great view of the Fox River, I can hear geese outside almost all the time, my windows are south facing giving me a ton of sunlight, and I have lots of fresh air.

In addition, I have a gigabit internet connection and just a much better work environment. This might not sound like it is podcasting-related, but I assure you, it is.

For much of May, I’m going to be preparing my June marketing push. Talking to other podcasters to line up feed drops and promotions.

I’m also ready to finally hire an assistant to help with much of busy work associated with show promotion.

Categories
Podcasting

March 2023 Podcast Report

Here is a summary for March 2023:

Total Downloads: 1,018,233

Month-to-Month Growth: 5.57%

Year-to-Year Growth: 67.28%

If you take away the big spike I had in January, total downloads are still on a steady increase.

I didn’t do any major promotions again in March, so growth has been slight.

That, however, is fine because, as I mentioned last month, my probably now isn’t growth but sales.

The BIG news for March is that the sales pipeline has been filling up, and it was my biggest revenue month by a wide margin.

Glassbox is finally hitting its stride with sales, and the sales pipeline looks to be strong for the next several months, with a few potentially very big deals.

So, my problems have gone from growth to sales and now to cash flow.

Now it is just a matter of waiting for cash to come in from the ad sales when I can start investing in growth again, but this time at an even higher level.

On a personal note, I moved into a new place yesterday.

This might not sound like it has anything to do with the podcast, but it actually has everything to do with the podcast.

For the last two years, I’ve been living and working in the same room….in a basement. I’m now in a place where I can have a proper podcast studio…and a kitchen, and a bedroom.

I didn’t launch the paid subscription version of the podcast this month, but it is still high on the to-do list.

Absent an exogenous growth spurt over the next two months, I assume April and May will have steady or stable growth.

Categories
Podcasting

February 2023 Podcast Report

As expected, my total downloads for Everything Everywhere Daily in February were down.

Total Downloads: 964,503

Month-to-Month: -26.57%

Year-to-Year: 105.88%

There are two reasons for this decrease:

1) I had a big spike in downloads in late December and early January. It started to level off in late January, so I assumed that February was going to be soft, at least for the first week or two. It was.

2) February has three fewer days than January, which is about 10% fewer days.

Even though this is a pretty big drop, I’m not panicking for a few reasons.

  1. If you averaged out the number of days in the month, the drop was only 15%.
  2. Monthly numbers go up and down. Q1 2023 is still looking to be well above Q4 2022.
  3. Downloads decreased, but my total audience didn’t really go down. I have a very large back catalog of evergreen episodes. When I get a new listener, I often see a spike in downloads as they download older content. However, that will eventually level out to just one download a day.
  4. I didn’t run any promotions or ads in February.

Basically, February was almost the same as December, which was the first month where I hit one million downloads per month.

New Focus

I’m also not hyper-focused on growth at the moment. The vast majority of my ad inventory is currently unsold.

Doubling my downloads right now just means I’m increasing my unsold inventory.

I’m not going to turn down more listeners, but until I can get my sales pipeline filled, there isn’t much point.

I’ve just joined a new podcast network (Glassbox Media), and they are working on filling the sales pipeline. I’ve had to deal with sales in the past, and I’m aware that it doesn’t happen overnight.

The pipeline is starting to be filled, so again, I’m not panicking.

Once the sales pipeline looks strong, I’ll go back into growth mode and probably will be investing even more into podcast promotion. I’m guessing I’ll be back into growth mode within three months. When I do, I’ll have more resources at my disposal.

March Plans

The big plan for March is to launch an ad-free paid subscription version of the podcast.

This will be more difficult than normal because I put baked-in ads in the episodes for the first 18 months. So I have hundreds of episodes I have to go back and fix.

It isn’t particularly difficult to do, but it is just a lot of busy work. I figure I have 500 episodes I have to go back and fix.

As an incentive to get people to subscribe, I’m going to launch a new weekly show called Everything Everywhere Weekly (original, I know).

The format will be similar to PTI (Pardon the Interruption) on ESPN. It will be myself and a guest giving short takes on the week’s episodes and a few shows from the back catalog.

If it proves popular, I might release it to the public with ads two weeks after the subscribers get access.

TLDR

I’ve been focused on growth since I launched the show. I’m certainly not abandoning growth, but I need to round out other aspects of the business.

My 2023 growth goals are still in place and I think they are achievable, but to hit those numbers I’ll need more resources, which means sales.