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.
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.
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.
If you averaged out the number of days in the month, the drop was only 15%.
Monthly numbers go up and down. Q1 2023 is still looking to be well above Q4 2022.
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.
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.
The growth this month was really solid, especially considering the growth I saw in December.
The only downside is that the growth appeared to have leveled off during the last 10 days. Absent another traffic surge, I assume traffic will probably dip in February, if for no other reason than there are 3 fewer days in February. (~10% fewer days)
I’m reaching a point where I’m going to have to start being more aggressive with promoting the podcast. I’m in an odd spot right now where I moved to a new network, and I’m waiting for advertising to ramp up and for revenue to start rolling in.
I’m probably going to have to find new ways to promote the podcast beyond what I’ve been doing before. Getting even a few hundred new subscribers won’t move the needle the way it did before.
That being said, based on the performance of similar podcasts and YouTube channels, I believe there is a LOT of room for growth. Easily enough to grow the show another 10x, given enough time and money.
In December 2021, I set a goal of getting 1,000,000 downloads in a single month.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to do it, let alone if such as thing was possible. In December 2021, the show had 189,603 downloads. Getting to a million would require growing the show by 427%.
Not doubling. Not tripling. Not quadrupling. I’d have to grow the show over fivefold!
Thankfully, I got off to a really good start in Q1. Despite some small setbacks, the growth was mostly steady throughout the year, with a really big gain in December.
Here is the monthly breakdown for 2022:
January 2022
255,160
February 2022
468,474
March 2022
608,685
April 2022
544,093
May 2022
679,462
June 2022
668,865
July 2022
702,871
August 2022
802,246
September 2022
848,841
October 2022
770,798
November 2022
831,418
December 2022
1,068,896
I normally post a line graph that shows downloads on a monthly basis since I launched the show. Given that the show has been around for exactly 30 months, and given that I launched the show on July 1, 2020, the first day of the third quarter, it might be more useful to visualize downloads per quarter since the show was launched.
Even though there have been some months with negative growth, the overall trend has been upward every quarter. Also, this chart really shows how dramatic the growth in the show was in 2022.
2023 Goals
As a podcast gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult to achieve similar percentage increases in growth.
I don’t think a 5.2x increase in audience size is reasonable, but you never know. If I get some major media mention or something, it could be possible.
My goal for 2023 is to regularly get 100,000 downloads per day.
My biggest download day as of writing this was 44,403, which I got on Christmas Eve.
So, to even hit that point for a single day, I’d need to more than double my audience.
To achieve this on a regular basis, I’d need to almost triple my audience.
*UPDATE* I had over 50,000 downloads on January 3, 2023. This was a huge one-day spike which I attribute to people catching up on downloads after the holiday.
Monetization
I entered 2022 with one podcast network, and I entered 2023 with another.
In December, after having talked to over a dozen podcast networks over the last four months, I decided to sign with Glassbox Media.
The decision to move networks was an easy one as I was getting far below the industry average in terms of an advertising split, and I also didn’t have anyone actively selling ads on my behalf.
Assuming the podcast has zero growth in 2023, I should at least see a doubling or tripling of my advertising income.
Until now, I haven’t really pursued any other monetization other than my Patreon account.
In addition to advertising, here is how I will be expanding my monetization in 2023.
Tours. I should be running my first listener tour to Rome sometime in 2023. I’m working with a company to help set up the itinerary. I first mentioned the tour a while back when my audience was much smaller and had over 100 people show interest. I should be able to sell it out quickly.
If this goes over well and sells out, and I have every reason to believe it will, I might expand the tour offerings to other major cities.
The idea for the tour is that it will be a super in-depth tour of one historic city. We’ll spend time doing the things that most tourists never get to see.
Ad-Free Podcast Subscriptions. Both Apple and Spotify offer this, and I can also run it on Patreon. I don’t expect this to be a huge money maker, but it will probably bring in some income, and help with Apple and Spotify podcast promotion.
Merchandise. Many podcasters try to sell merchandise the moment they launch their show. I’ve waited until I had listeners actually asking me about merchandise. I have no clue what I’ll sell yet, but it is on this agenda.
Books. As I have written the script for every single episode, I can easily compile them into a Kindle book. In fact, I could mix and match episodes by topic or by release date.
YouTube. This will be a huge undertaking but potentially lucrative in the long run. I can’t write, research, and record a daily podcast and then create a video for each one on top of that. I’ll need to hire someone to spearhead the YouTube campaign. This might have to slip to 2024, depending on how much it would cost.
Live Events. I’m not sure how this would manifest or if my show is big enough yet to pull off a live event. There is a good chance if I were to do this, this would have to wait until 2024.
Plans for 2023
My plan is to continue to be very aggressive in marking the show in 2023. With a team behind me working to do swaps and land guest appearances, I should be able to do considerably more.
As revenue will allow, I will probably hire my first person this year. The first position will probably be a marketing assistant. I really don’t need help with the production of the show. That is pretty easy.
I need someone to do a host of small things, which includes social media, managing an email newsletter, and a host of other tasks.
After that, I’ll probably start hiring writers to help me create new episodes. Even if a few episodes a week can be written by someone else, that will free up a lot of time.
If, and that is a big if, I can double or triple the audience and I can hire some writers, I might consider starting a second podcast. I have a list of possible ideas for a second show, but I’m nowhere near a point where I could do this right now.
2022 was a very good year for the podcast. 2023 should be even better.
When I launched the show I had a list of things I could do “someday”.
Someday is getting closer and closer as the podcast keeps growing.
