This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube video titled "How To Grow A Podcast to 1 Million Monthly Downloads" (uploaded 2020-02-21). It is a solo talk/monologue by the channel host sharing firsthand experience and tactical advice for building large podcasts. The speaker describes his two shows—Leveling Up (started ~7 years earlier, grew to ~80k–100k monthly downloads) and Marketing School (co-hosted with Neil Patel, ~1.1M monthly)—and gives guidance on setting the right goal, consistency, leveraging other audiences, listening to feedback, experimenting with formats, audio equipment recommendations (Scarlett mixer, Heil PR40, Blue Yeti, Audio-Technica), and delaying monetization until the audience is established. The piece targets creators looking to scale podcast audiences and ends with typical YouTube calls to action.
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Today we are going to talk about how to build a podcast to 1 million monthly downloads. So for context, I have one podcast called Leveling Up that one gets about 80,000 downloads a month or so. And I have another podcast that I do with a co-host called Marketing School. That one gets about 1.1 million downloads a month as of, uh, as of this recording. And so the question is, how do you build a podcast that has scale? And What I would say first is you have to have the right goal. If you don't have initial right goal, if your goal is to make money or build, just get a lot of listeners, you're not aiming for the right thing. With the Leveling Up Podcast, initially I started it out, man, this was 7 years ago. So I started this podcast to learn because at the time the only kind of big podcaster, at least in the US space, was Andrew Warner. He's actually gonna speak at one of our conferences coming up called the Growth Accelerator. You know, I learned from him. He was really good at interviewing. He would research people, And he was just really curious, and he was interviewing really good entrepreneurs. And my whole spin on it was, I'm gonna interview really good entrepreneurs, but I'm gonna talk about it from a marketing perspective. And that worked out really well, because my goal was to learn. It was tough times, I was trying to save a failing company, and I was doing this podcast, and I wasn't getting anything from it, because after the first year, I was only getting 9 downloads a day. And I kept doing it for another year, and I was only getting 30 downloads a day. And most people are like, dude, you should just like give up. That's the wrong way to look at it, because the way I was looking at it was, I was still learning from people, I was learning. While I was trying to save my business. I was getting free education while I was trying to save the business that I bought at a fire sale price, but still there's a lot of work to do. I was getting a lot of education, sure, on some peer groups and things like that, but I got so much wisdom from people on things to sidestep. And don't get me wrong, I still make mistakes all the time nowadays, but I was able to move a lot faster because of that. So set the right goal initially and be consistent because I was consistent. I was doing it week in, week out, like For the first 2 years, I did all the work. I didn't have a show notes person. I didn't have anybody posting to social. I was the one reaching out. I was the one, you know, initially it was a video podcast and I was consistent with that. I had an ugly background and I had spiky hair at the time too. And like even the background wasn't fully covered. So you can see like there's like a little like, you know, hole in the back, but I made it work. Even times where I didn't want to do it, where I had to, you know, spike my hair up again, you know, shower and then put on a single grain shirt. And it like, I didn't want to do any of that. And then I kept doing it because I was learning. That allowed me to eventually get the Leveling Up podcast to about, you know, at a high point, 100,000 downloads a month. But what I also learned at the same time was I could leverage other audiences. So we would be posting to Product Hunt, we'd be posting to, which is like, uh, we're kind of tech people hanging out to look at products. At the time they had a podcast section. We're leveraging other people's audiences, but we were also leveraging our own audiences too. So at the time I was building my email list up, I was building traffic up at the same time. I stuck with it. I leveraged my own audiences. I had the right goal. And then at the same time too, I listened to feedback. People are like, I don't want to watch 2 talking heads. So what I did from there was I just switched to audio. I, and then I realized something else. It's really important to have a really good mic. It seems like it's trivial, but it's important because all you really have with audio is you have the content and you have the listening experience. If you can't get the listening experience right, That's your fault. So at the time I was using a USB plug-in, I was using a Blue Yeti and I was plugging it in. But what I realized was I needed to have the right equipment. So what I would recommend if you're ready to invest in good equipment is I'd recommend a Scarlett mixer and I would recommend a Heil PR 40, which is about $400. Or even if you get a mixer and you buy like a Blue Yeti microphone, um, which is like $100, or you can buy Audio-Technica or Audio-Technica or whatever for $30, it's still going to be a better experience than using your AirPods. So you have to take your audience into account. And listen to the feedback too, because people are like, dude, I can't, like, I don't like watching 2 talking heads. So I switched off to audio only. Dude, I can't stand the audio. Then I switched over and, you know, I improved my, the audio experience. And then at the same time I experimented with different formats too. People are like, Eric, we'd like to hear from you more. I was like, oh, okay, interesting. So for a period of time I did these quick tips, which are daily, and eventually they became Marketing School. That format became Marketing School where we talk about tips every single day. So just because you tried an experiment and it doesn't work on one thing, it might work somewhere else. So keep that in mind too. So you wanna listen to feedback, you wanna experiment as well. I would say this too, you don't wanna monetize too early. When I think about the Marketing School Podcast, we're at $1 million a month and we're making, or $1.1 million a month, and we're making close to 7 figures a year right now on that podcast. We didn't monetize it for 3 years. And keep in mind, the person I'm doing it with, Neil Patel, like we're both entrepreneurs, like we're both capitalists at the same time, but we're also very long-term focused. So to be able to say, you know what, we're going to do this together, we're going to do it for 3 years, we're going to build the audience and we're not going to try to get anything from it. That takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of restraint to do it. So if you're able to have that restraint and you're able to focus on the right goal, for sure you're going to grow your audience and then you can even think about monetizing it later as well. So I would think about it that way, but it's a long, hard slog. Keep it, keep in mind the first podcast I've been doing for 6 and a half, 7 years now, which is crazy to me to think about. And then the other podcast I've been doing for about 3 years. And I didn't start monetizing the Leveling Up podcast for maybe a year or two ago. So 5 years, nothing. Marketing School, 2 and a half years, nothing. So it takes time to get there and you just have to be consistent with it because most people tend to give up and the average podcast only gets about 150 downloads a month or so, or I think 192 now downloads a month. And you just have to stick with it because if you look at the trends, if you look at where China's going, China's podcast marketing is getting bigger and bigger. The United States, I think it's on track for about 681 million this year, but China is over 8 billion now. I think that's what it is. And they have teachers on there. The way they behave in China is way different, but just keep in mind the podcasting market, look at them and then look at us and us meaning rest of the world and you know there's a lot of potential there. So I still think now is very infant stages for you to build something to get up to, you know, $1 million a month. Maybe you don't need $1 million a month. You can even just get, you know, a couple thousand downloads a month, but you are running a podcast for people that play, um, I don't know, Dungeons and Dragons in Los Angeles or something like that. But that's a very strong community and you can have a little community around that. So there's a lot you can do. All right, so let me know, what do you think in the comments? Do you think I missed anything in terms of getting a podcast out there, building a big audience with the podcast? Um, if you think I'm wrong, let me know in the comments as well. If you're on YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there. Subscribe, whatever channel you're coming from, and hit the bell button as well on YouTube because you love us and we love you, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
