Garaphernalia 7.5

TLDR: 2022 was a very good year for Everything Everywhere Daily.

Downloads and Audience Growth

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

On July 1, 2020, I dove into the deep end of the pool and launched a daily podcast. It wasn’t just a daily podcast, but it was a daily scripted podcast. Each episode was approximately 10 minutes long (although they have gotten about 20-30% longer since I’ve launched) and each episode had a complete script written for it.

Everything is done by myself. I am the writer, host, researcher, editor, producer, and head of marketing.

When I pitched the idea of a daily, scripted podcast to my friends with successful podcasts, they all had the same reaction: 1) this was a really good idea, and it will probably do well, and 2) you are crazy for doing this.

Two years and 740 shows later, I’ve learned a lot about producing a daily show. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned…

Lesson 1: The Show Must Go On

The single most important thing when you are producing a daily show is that you have to get it out the door.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Just like a daily newspaper has to get the presses running by a certain time to make sure all their subscribers have the paper when they wake up, so too does a daily podcast have to get their show recorded and uploaded by a certain time.

The promise of having the show ready for download every day is part of having a daily show. If you can’t ship every day, then this is definitely something you don’t want to consider doing.

Lesson 2: Get Your Process in Order

To get a show out the door every day, you need to have systems in place to save time and have an efficient workflow process.

One of the most time-consuming elements for most podcasters is editing. Because my show doesn’t have guests, I’m able to record my show with minimal editing.

By far, the most time-consuming thing for me is writing and research. Every day, I have to research and write an 1800-2100 word script.

Having done 740 episodes, I now have a system in place where if I’m really comfortable with the show topic, I can usually write an episode in as little as 2-3 hours. Some shows take as long as 4-6 hours. A few have taken as long as 8 hours.

If you want to launch a daily podcast, I recommend you figure all this out before you launch. Record some test episodes and pay attention to the time it takes from start to finish.

Lesson 3: You Have to Commit

Most podcasts will end before they hit seven episodes. Almost all of the shows that podfaded were published on a schedule that was weekly or less.

There are very few daily podcasts out there for good reason. I don’t have the data, but I would suspect that most daily shows are radio programs that are repurposed as podcasts.

I don’t think you can do a daily podcast as a hobby. I mean, you could, but the temptation to skip a day would be too great.

You have to treat it like a job. You go to work, you put in the time, and you get the job done before you can rest.

Lesson 4: A Daily Podcast Has Benefits

There are many variables that are part of the equation for podcast growth. One is obviously the quality of the show. Another big variable is how long the show has been around. The other big variable is the number of episodes you have produced.

Each episode is an opportunity for discovery. Each episode can be found via search or shared by listeners, regardless of its length.

A daily show will get you the most episodes in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t guarantee growth, but it can accelerate it if you market the show properly.

A daily show also allows you to put more ads in a given amount of time without appearing to be onerous to your audience.

Just to make the math easy, let’s say you published a 10-minute show 6-days a week. Sixty total minutes of content per week.

If each show had one advertisement, you’d run 6 for the week, and two ads would be 12 for the week. 1 or 2 ads per episode don’t appear to be overwhelming, especially if you keep the ads reasonably short (1 minute or less).

However, 6 to 12 ads in a single 60-minute weekly podcast would probably come across as excessive.

Lesson 5: Daily Podcasts Have Different Consumption Patterns

What I’ve found (and I freely admit this is anecdotal evidence and not hard data) is that more frequent, shorter shows tend to be consumed before longer shows.

A 2-hour interview podcast will require a lengthy commitment of time. A 10-minute show can be started and completed in a short trip in your car.

If you know you won’t complete a longer podcast, you will probably listen to the shorter shows and get them out of your queue.

I contend that most podcast listeners will listen to shorter shows first and will tend to listen to a higher percentage of the entire show. (Again, I have no hard data on this, but it is consistent with what I’ve seen.)

I would like to see some more research on this subject to see if my suspicions are correct.

TLDR

There are rewards to doing a daily podcast, but if you do it, you had better be prepared to put in the work and have systems in place to allow you to produce and publish the show every day.

As expected, March was another good month.

Total downloads were 539,260.

I’m still getting a drizzle of residual downloads from Libsyn even though I moved my RSS feed on January 1. I had 1,187 downloads from Libsyn which I find really surprising. There isn’t one single player which is responsible for the downloads. They are all over the place.

My theory is that, for whatever reason, some people subscribed before January 1, and then the feed didn’t get refreshed. Maybe they just stopped listening, so the feed had no reason to refresh.

Regardless of the reason, the April downloads from Libsyn are looking to drop by at least half.

There is a very interesting story behind what happened with all the growth I’ve experienced so far in 2022. However, I don’t think I’m in a position where I can share that yet.

There are no villains and there is nothing shady, but I have something going that I don’t want to jinx at the moment, so I’m going to hold off on the story for a few months.

It involves a bit of good luck, which turned out to be bad luck, but then was solved by more good luck.

I realize that sounds cryptic and mysterious, but I will reveal all eventually when this plays out.

I spent very little on promotion last month other than an ad that ran on Overcast. It performed well, but it wasn’t the best performing ad I’ve run on that platform.

I’m going to be doing some larger ad buys soon. I’ve been building up a war chest as some of the places I want to advertise that give the best ROI require a larger ad spend.

My goal for 2022 was to do 1,000,000 downloads in a month, and I’m currently 1/2 to that goal just 3 months in.

My April downloads will be less than March, but that’s all good for the mysterious reasons I’ll explain later. It is more an issue with statistics than actual downloads and people listening.

Wow. What a month!

This month saw my biggest increase in traffic since I launched the podcast.

When you launch a new show, there is a hope you have that it will eventually “take off”.

I think this was the month that things “took off”.

Total downloads for the month were 446,335, which is an average of 15,940 per day.

Oddly enough, almost 1,300 of those downloads are from Libsyn, and I moved my hosting from Libsyn on January 1. All of the downloads, I assume, are coming from people who haven’t refreshed their podcast feed in their players.

The number of downloads for individual episodes is now crossing 13-14k. I have no idea what the 30-day numbers are yet because the growth was so fast in February that I don’t have 30 days to look back at yet.

The numbers at the end of the month were such that even if the growth plateaus in March, I should see around 550,000 downloads for the month.

I just joined my network in January so I still don’t have much to report as far as advertising income, but I should have my January results next month. I don’t expect anything special as they just started to sell my show in January and the first host read ads I had ran in February.