Trevr Smithlin — How To Leverage Podcast Sponsorships

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe Fear. Hey, what up? Sup?

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. You back. My name is Matt Wolfe. I'm here with Fo, Jeer and who dat? Oh, Joe Fear.

Sorry, that's it.

Sometimes I get the letters mixed up.

Yeah, you're confused. It's okay. It's okay. Happens all the time.

Today on this podcast, we're gonna talk about podcasting with a guy who does stuff in the podcasting world with podcasters about podc.

But guess what? He knows how to make money with podcasts, which a lot of podcasters don't know how to make money with podcasts.

So podcast.

Did you follow along?

Podcast.

Cool. Yeah. His name is Trevor Smithlin. That's right. So this dude. So preface this really quick. If you don't have a podcast, keep on listening. There might be some. Well, there are going to be some tidbits and things you can apply as well.

But I thought you were about to say something dirty. Oh, there are about to be some tu.

Didn't even cross my mind. But no.

Now I got you all thrown out of whack. I got you out of flow. This is awesome.

How is flowing? Good, man.

So, yeah, if you don't have a podcast, tune in, because here's why. We're not going to only talk about getting sponsors on your podcast. We're actually going to teach you how to use podcasts as a traffic source by sponsoring other people's podcasts and getting on other people's podcasts. And if you do have a podcast, tune in as well, because we're going to talk about podcast growth strategies and podcast monetization strategies.

You sound like a TV host.

I am, but it's.

But in your earballs.

But in your earballs right now, right here.

Not mine, yours. All right. Yes. So Trevor's amazing, though. Yeah, he's. Honestly, we didn't have much of an agenda for this one, but I think it covered so much and so much actionable stuff that everyone can apply. Yes.

And he's the founder of AdvertiseCast.com, which is a service where if you have a podcast and you want sponsors on your show, if you. He helps find you sponsors. And if you're a sponsor and you want to go and get on other people's podcasts and sponsor shows, he can make that connection, too. He's kind of that middleman, broker who's going to help make those Connections for people.

And you can contact him. We'll give you his email later in the show. Just listen on. And we have been chatting a lot about Traffic lately. Today is no shortage of that, because podcast is like our personal traffic kind of first impression that a lot of folks in our little ecosystem, they see us initially on the podcast, but there's a whole machine that a lot of people aren't seeing. It's like this invisible thing that's happening where, you know, there's email lists, there's chatbots, there's offers, there's affiliate things, sponsorships, a lot of cool stuff. And we actually teach how we do that inside our traffic course.

Yeah, it's called Perpetual Audience Growth. It's actually available@evergreenprofits.com traffic now, if you go and read the sales page about purchasing our traffic course, one thing that we don't really mention on the sales page we should probably update this is we actually have a forum. And in this forum we post new training about once a week. Ish. You know, don't quote me on that. Sometimes we'll put three, four videos in in one week. And some weeks we'll go a couple weeks without posting new stuff. It's just whenever we experiment with new traffic strategies and test new things and something works, we make a video and we share it with the community. So it is literally the cutting edge. What's working now with Traffic constantly. New videos, new training all the time. So that's available over at Evergreen Profit Slash Daily.

Along with, of course, the main core training, which is around Facebook and Google advertising and a whole community.

All that fun stuff over in there every day. But yada, yada, yada, go check it out. Evergreenprofits.com traffic all right, let's talk to.

Trevor Smithlin and talk about actually using podcast for money and for traffic.

Let's do it.

Hey, Trevor, thanks so much for joining us. How you doing today?

Hey, doing great, guys. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we're really looking forward to this conversation today because you run AdvertiseCast, which is a company that helps podcast get sponsors and helps get people sponsored on other people's podcasts and things like that. And it's a world that we're starting to explore a little bit more because we ourselves have a podcast. And so I think it's going to be a really fun conversation.

Hey, I'm looking forward to it. And yeah, it seems like it's definitely coming up with more conversation lately than it has been in the past. So, yeah, I'm Glad to be here and help you guys out and maybe answer some questions along the way. And, yeah, I'm excited.

And shout out to our mutual friend, Justin Malik from.

Absolutely. Yeah, Justin hooked us up.

The old podcast dudes. Yeah, he's an avid listener.

Yeah.

Thank you, guys.

Super cool.

Very cool.

Let's just crack into it because it sounds like you have a. In full transparency, we don't know your backstory, so we're super curious. How the heck did you get to this point? So can you walk us through that?

Yeah, you bet. So my backstory is. Well, about 15 years ago, I went and started this other company, and this other company is like an online publishing company. So we make photo counters, photo books, photo cards, and whatnot. So we kind of created this website that allows people to log in and they upload their photos, add their events, all this good stuff, and they can create their personal creations. Primarily, we print the photo counters. That's our big product. So along those lines, I kind of learn the craft of Internet marketing, creating a website.

And all the things that go along with that. And, yeah, it's been a great business. It's done well for us. I still actually run it and operate it today. It's funny, because that business I kind of cater to. Now these Instagram influencers, they're starting to use our site where if you have a great Instagram following, they'll use their photos and they'll put them into a calendar format, and then they'll point people to. To sell this calendar into our online marketplace, and then they make revenues off of that. So it's a great way for Instagram influencers to make money off this new vehicle. We built this whole online marketplace, which is pretty exciting.

And what's that called? What did you say that was called?

Yeah. So that company's called Create Photo Calendars.

Create Photo Calendars.

Easy to remember. I like it.

You know what? I get so much crap for that domain name. But back in the day when Google didn't care, we're talking, like, early days, guys, right? Like 0506 07, I launched this thing. So back then, Google actually put weight on the keywords in your domain. So I had all of them covered. Create Photo Calendars.

That's my money.

Back in the day, I owned the SEO world. You typed in Photo Calendar, Make a calendar, Create a calendar, Online Calendar. I was always the number one listing. And I think that, honestly, that domain name definitely didn't hurt things.

That's awesome. We ironically chatted with a guy, Brian Dean. Recently, and he's all about SEO, and we were talking about that, that exact thing. It's crazy.

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. How times have changed. You know, back then, too, it was the glory days where, you know, you could buy, you know, you know, Google Ads, and the cost per clicks were 5 cents, you know, per click. You know, it's just a way different world. And when we actually launched, we had so much business from those channels alone, especially, like, from the paid stuff on Google where, you know, I had to pause the campaigns, like, we couldn't manufacture enough counters, you know, to satisfy the clients fast enough. So what a blessing. You look back to have that kind of control, where everybody wants to have that kind of demand. And we were just super fortunate, blessed to witness that in our lifetime.

Where's that time machine, that DeLorean?

I know we all want to go back, and now we're trying to find what's the next platform that's on sale today? Is it the new Snapchat ads and all that stuff? It's always like, you got to try to explore and figure out what's next.

I think it's podcast sponsorships, but we'll get into that later.

What a great segue there. I think you are correct. You are correct. I missed that one. That was my own fault.

Matt's a professional here.

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so I did the calendar business, like I said, still going strong. But then I've always been a huge podcast fan, and I've been listening to podcasts for probably over 10 years now. So I wanted to get into the space. I just really enjoy it. I'm pretty infatuated with this. I'm like, how can I help get into the space? And what can I do that's going to bring value to the space? So my original idea was I listened to a lot of shows back then where I learned a lot from these show hosts. And they talk about people, places, things. And while I was listening, I kind of wanted to see the book they're mentioning on air. I wanted to see this visual thing that they're talking about. So why can't there just be this visual overlay that happens when you actually hear the audio? So I actually went out and built my own app that actually did this. And so I made this app and I time synced visual content to the audio for a thousand plus episodes. It took me like three years.

Wow.

And it was awesome, and it worked pretty well, but it just never got the traction that I thought it was. Going to take it never really got to fruition.

I think you were before your time, huh?

It was, it was like 2012, 13. It was before my time and it might be a project bring out someday again, but I think it was before my time. But it was cool. That's why I kind of got into it then. Like I said, that project, it wasn't super successful. So I'm like, well, what else can I do to help people out in the space? And there's definitely the advertising thing. So a lot of indie podcasters and new podcasters need help monetizing their podcast. So I'm like, why can't there just be more of an open online marketplace that everybody could kind of come to and, you know, it's more of an e commerce system where podcasters come in, they add their show listing, they talk about their show, they can have sample audio clips, and then they list their spots for sale. What do you want to sell? Do you want to sell a 30 second commercial spot, a 60 second spot? And they can outline that within our system. And then on the contrary, the other side, the advertiser would come in and they could shop those spots. They could see that, okay, for instance, your show, how many listeners do you have? How many people are you going to reach? And then how much are the spots? How much do they cost? And you simply can check out those spots right through our online e commerce system. Then the platform kind of walks you through all the steps from the start to the completion part.

That's super cool.

That was my segue, I guess, changing into this whole thing. And I made a bunch of iPhone apps along the ways too. That was kind of fun dabbling into that. It's been a fun ride, but it definitely took a while to, you know, to get here to where we are, you know, to the advertisecast level that we are today.

Yeah, well, and it's such a. The podcast medium in general is just, it's obviously been around for a while.

But it's, it has.

The demand is just kind of ridiculous because, you know, like Matt and I, both of our sisters are listening to podcasts and like, we can all kind of relate on that. Whereas just a year ago that wasn't the case.

Oh, for sure. You know, even my wife, my wife is, you know, I mean, she's more like, I think mainstream pop culture type content of a person. So, you know, she needs to hear people like from the Bachelor, you know, to get her attention. Right. You know, she's, she's not into the Highbrow or the business shows that, you know that, you know that we all kind of like, let's call it so. Yeah, I think you're right. I think, you know, we're starting to see more of those shows pop up and I think that's going to be the next wave of, you know, probably bringing in the next batch of new listeners into the medium. And that's exciting for all of us. That's where we're going to start to see. I think the numbers just come in droves, let's call it.

Yeah, before we hit record, we were kind of briefly starting to talk about kind of podcast trends and things like that. Do you have an idea of how podcasting is growing? You've obviously been in it for a little while now, so what sort of evolution have you seen?

Yeah, it's funny because on the listener side, how many new listeners are coming into the space, the medium?

It's not like this huge hockey stick growth that everybody kind of thinks it is. The media outlets, I think, are portraying it to be as such, but really it's been on a gradual uptick for the last 10 to 15 years. And I think that the great shows like Serial that came out, it definitely had some spikes of new people coming into the space, but still it's been, I think, a relatively modest general increase. Let's call it 2, 3% audience that just keeps coming in and growing it every year. I think that still steady growth has definitely helped and it's probably more of a stable growth. But yeah, it's not this rocket that everybody kind of deems it to be. I think the media kind of portrays that. That's what we're hearing from the metric side on these hosting companies. So following their side of things, I think they're probably definitely accurate because they got all the numbers.

Yeah, I feel that podcasting is. It's becoming more mainstream from a awareness perspective, but I can see it being maybe from an adoption perspective. It's been a little bit slow going. Like there's like a sitcom on TV now with Zach Braff all about a guy starting a podcast. You know that Cereal came out and Cereal was a really, really popular podcast. I listened to it. I think Joe listened to the whole season. You know, there's that and then the startup podcast, the one that that sitcom on TV was, Zach Braff is actually based off of. That podcast was really big. And now you got guys like Joe Rogan and pretty much like, yes, every stand up comedian or like actor seems to have a podcast now. You know, like, I think like, Alec Baldwin has a podcast and.

Jesus, I'm.

Blanking on names, but there's a ton of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100% agree. I think you guys like what you alluded to with the Joe Rogans and like, all these new or all the. All the comics that are out there, the comedians, you know, now they're starting to get into podcasts because they're seeing as being a real viable channel. You know, it's a real viable channel that, you know, to reach more of a listener base. So, you know, they're starting to take it seriously. And honestly, I'm having more discussions recently with the Hollywood types, you know, that are maybe a little bit, you know, celebrity status. They're looking to come over to this channel and start a podcast because they see it as being a real thing. So that is really exciting for all of us. And, yeah, there's so much opportunity, I think, still to come. And. Yeah, and I think it's too. It's our generation, it's the gen X, gen Ys and the one millennials, we're all listening to this stuff. We're kind of getting more used to it. It's becoming more common listening practices, and I think that's just going to become more so tomorrow as well.

Yeah, I mean, we were actually in a Mastermind yesterday and we were all kind of discussing there's speakers and all that stuff in the Mastermind and professional speakers that travel and all. And they're just kind of like, you know, podcasting is way more effective or using these different channels that you can control rather than packing your bags and leaving and then coming back and then decompressing. And it's like.

Right.

Like you can talk to millions literally just in your office or bedroom with a microphone if you have an audience.

Right. It's so crazy.

And I think one thing that a lot of people don't really think about with podcasting is how much time your listeners are spending with you. So, you know, you hear of people that, you know, their podcast maybe gets 200 downloads a month or whatever, maybe, you know, their audience isn't that big, so they get discouraged quickly. But when you think about, let's say you have a 30 minute to an hour long podcast and people are spending, you know, once a week with you for 30 minutes to an hour, that is a lot of time that you are in that person's ear. You know, that person getting to know you, that person getting to like you. And so the people that listen to Your show are going to be your hottest sort of business prospects, for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's a good lead generator. You know, people have used it for just that. But you're right, it's such an intimate format where, you know, I listen to so many shows where I feel like I could walk up to the host and give him a hug, like. Or, like, we're best friends, and give them a high five, like, you know, who are you, you weirdo? But it's like. But you listen to it for. For hundreds of hours. So it's like, you know, like their favorite things pretty much in life, you know, and, you know, like, who they are as a person. Because it's just the. Yeah, it's just the way the format is.

Yeah. So it's. I don't know, I feel like we're just riffing on how cool podcast is.

Because it's really cool, you know, like, it's so cool.

I'm sure.

You know what's kind of cool? Did you see that Saturday Night Live skit or the Saturday Night Live skit on this. On the podcast thing, like, a couple of weeks ago? That was pretty cool. I'm like, well, is that, like. Is that, like mainstream validation right there? Like, that was kind of cool for the whole industry.

I remember seeing that. It was like a podcast award.

Yeah, it was pretty funny. I laughed.

I mean. Yeah, I mean, we mentioned the media and now comedy. I mean, and celebrities. That's a sign of the times right there that something's shifting.

It is, yes.

I also find it fascinating that it seems the trend is going longer and longer form. You know, we're constantly talking about attention spans being very, very short these days. You know, Twitter is 140 characters because people don't have time to read 142 characters.

And Twitter expanded that.

Yeah, the Twitter expanded. But then you look at, like, podcasts, and if you look at the trends of podcasts, you're seeing more and more shows going beyond an hour. You know, Joe Rogan's three hours. Tim Ferriss is two to three hours. Like, these shows are getting longer and longer and longer, and I find that really fascinating.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, me too. I think that's where you start to have real conversations with these people, too. It's not this fake, you know, kind of like your typical, you know, style interview, as the same questions have been asked a bazillion times. You know, like Joel and, you know, Tim and those guys, like, they're professionals at what they do, and it's so Interesting to hear like these other questions that they have and hear the other side of things. And I know, like, he interviewed Elon Musk, you know, how cool is that? The other day? Right. I mean, you learn so much more about, you know, deeper things, other things that, you know, have gone on in his life that you don't hear from a typical, you know, broadcast type of thing.

That was like a life. That or that not life. That was like a lesson. A deep dive into Elon's brain, into one of the most brilliant thinkers in our time right now. And in a raw way that you're never gonna get anywhere else from some media that's chopped up in the short form, all that.

Right. I'm 95% sure he might be a robot.

Oh, yeah. I think he even kind of admitted it.

Yeah, I think he thinks he's a robot. If you listen to his interviews, he thinks he's a robot.

At least an alien.

I know he does. He does. Yeah.

Well, he thinks we're all in a simulation. Right. But we won't go down that rabbit hole.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, how cool is that to like. Yeah. Hear a first handling from him and. Yeah. To get to that level. And Joe did a good job with that.

Oh, yeah, he did. And also by adjusting the Tesla stocks and whatnot off of a certain.

Yeah, yeah. Then he hits the joint and the whole stock market crashes on Tesla the next day. It's like one puff a week. It's just. Yeah, it's just a world we live in.

It is. So I'm curious with like from a monetization standpoint. I mean, obviously you're seeing some stats from sponsorships, but with like the long form versus short form, are you seeing a difference there in terms of any of your tracking?

Yes. So, you know, we say like the longer the show, the more ad spots you can really have within your shows. So, you know, for Joe, for a three hour show, you could probably get away with, you know, you know, four spots in it. I mean, you're talking maybe, you know, three, four pre rolls if you want. Or you could do two pre's, a couple meds. So you do have that added value benefit. But yeah, I guess. What's the question more along just the lines of how long are the shows from a format perspective.

Yeah. That if you're just seeing any trends with short versus long or maybe a frequency thing, how many shows are going on?

It's still all over the place. I mean, I still like the quick 10 minute show sometimes I could listen to on my way to work. And my work's maybe 15 minutes away. Let's call at my office. So those are kind of nice. You could bang one out in that time. But then I do like the longer format for the weekend play. You know, I'm walking the dogs and, you know, or driving the kids here and there. I can just keep cutting into this thing when it's like two or three hours. So just seeing what I'm seeing out there, like, I think if anything, we're starting to see maybe the shorter format become a little bit more popular just because I think people are getting more strategic about, hey, I want to kind of, you know, put something within their commute time, which is about 35 minutes, let's call it. So I think they are getting more strategic that way. And, and if anything else, but the long format is definitely here to stay and I don't see that changing at all either.

Very cool. Now, so I have a question. We're going to. I want to get into the mechanics of all of the advertising and sponsorship stuff in just a second. But before we go there with. When it comes to podcasts, you obviously see a lot of them. You work with a lot of podcasters. I'm just curious if you have seen anything work for those people to help grow their podcasts. So anybody who might be listening to this show, it'd be interesting to hear from your perspective, like, oh, some of these podcasts have grown really quickly and here's some of the things I've seen them do. Have you noticed any trends or any sort of kind of cool, tactical ways people have grown their podcast just being so immersed in this community?

Yeah, you know, there's, there's a couple hacks. You know, I mean, there's no easy way. I mean, most of it, honestly, it's just audience building that usually happens on your social channels. So, you know, I think you need to extend beyond podcasts and build up your social channels, whether that's your Twitter feed, you know, your Instagram or your, you have a Facebook page or you do some video on YouTube, like, you know, keep, keep working those channels. You know, I think that's the big part of it. And, but, you know, some, some quick hacks too is what's working is, you know, is cross promotional stuff. So, you know, we have over 2,000 podcasts on our platform and most are cool, you know, with cross promo type ads. So what that means is, you know, you guys would, let's say, you know, cross promote your show with Maybe Nick on the side, Hustle, you know, so we're starting to see that be really effective. So it's. It's shows that are similar in context and content, where you guys cross promote each other, and that seems to be really working well for finding new listeners and subscribers. Yeah, there's other hacks, too. Like, you could go on, like, the Overcast, you know, app over there, you know, and. And I know Marco. He's done some cool things where you can, like, you know, you can sponsor pretty much a category, I think, is how it works. And then, you know, your show's recommended to listeners in that category and shows, you know, off impressions, and then new listeners can find you that way. So we actually have, like, a growth guide, and maybe we could put that in the show notes. And it's all the stuff that I've actually, you know, I've read online, and I kind of scan through these Reddit forums, so. So all the stuff I kind of learned myself through the last three years, and I'd love to have you guys have access to that if you want.

Oh, that would be awesome. That'd be awesome. Yeah. Actually, the two things you've mentioned are two things that we've actually noticed. Work to grow this podcast. We've actually. We ran advertising on Overcast for maybe four or five months straight when we first kicked off this podcast.

That's awesome. Did it help you out quite a bit too, then?

Yeah, it did.

100%.

Yeah. It probably doubled our listener base, like, with the first month we did it.

Yeah.

And then. And then it was kind of marginal improvement beyond that.

It kind of went down a little bit, but it definitely was. I mean, that is a key. I forget what the investment was, but it was. I mean, for what we were getting, it made a lot of sense.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

The big problem that we had with Overcast is they've got there's this, like, scarcity element baked in, where basically they have a specific amount of slots available each month, and the more slots available, the cheaper the price. And so it's very, very competitive to get in there very quickly and try to buy up the slot that you want. And so if you don't get in really quick, when slots open up, it's either sold out or very, very expensive. And so we were actually very lucky in our first few months of doing it. We actually got in very, very inexpensively. And then when we wanted to continue doing it, they don't, you know, you can't continue to, like, recurringly just Pay them for a sponsorship. You have to go in and sign up again. And so it just got more and more and more expensive. So it kind of became a little too cost prohibitive. Didn't really make sense anymore, but it was extremely, extremely effective. And I think it's a great way to kickstart a show. And then the other thing you mentioned was getting on other people's shows and kind of doing like podcast swap sort of things.

Yes. And.

Yep, that's. That's sort of been our game plan. That's. We've been doing a lot of that. We're going on about a podcast a week right now.

Mm, that's awesome. Yeah, I know, I know that space is limited over there, you know, on his app, you know, and. Yeah, like. Like another thing too is just like, you know, it is across. Promote or just being on other shows. Right. Just being a guest, ideally. And then you promote your show that way or, you know, or you. Then you, like, you have this show tweets you out and you get to, you know, the social media benefit of that. So, yeah, it's just kind of raising awareness, you know, so it's just putting yourself out there. I think it's a lot of it.

Well, you mentioned something too, and I forgot. Yeah, we have a connection through Nick Loper as well, because he was on the show and I think he gave you guys a shout out on our.

Yeah, yeah, we work with Nick actually quite a bit. And yeah, Nick's been great.

Cool. Yeah, he's a super cool dude. And the cross promo thing we have not done in terms of ads, and it just makes sense. If you have a podcast and they have a similar audience, they already listen to podcasts. It's like a seamless integration right there.

It is, it is. Yeah. It works so well.

Yeah.

So I think, yeah, I want to. I want to kind of switch into actually talking about sponsorships and the sort of mechanics behind it. And it's. There's really two sides to it that I want to dive into. There's the side of if you have a podcast, like, what are the benefits? What's the big. What's the why behind getting sponsors on board? And then the other side of it is if you have something that you want to get out into the world and you want to build a brand and you want to drive traffic, you know, going and sponsoring other people's podcasts. So I kind of want to go down both those paths sort of one at a time.

Sure, you bet. Love it.

So let's let's start with, you know, we have a podcast and we're considering getting sponsors right now on our podcast. And our listeners are probably hearing this for the first time, but it's a little peek behind the curtain. We don't actually have sponsors for our podcast. We have affiliate relationships with people. But when we go on our pod, when we record our episodes, we say, hey, this show is sponsored by X company. But it's really just an affiliate relationship where we get a commission when somebody promotes. So I'm curious, from your perspective, what is the, you know, the benefits of affiliate relationships versus sponsorship relationships for.

Yeah, you know, shame that, like, no shame with that, guys. I mean, a lot of people do the affiliate route, right? And honestly, sometimes the affiliate route, if your audience is really engaged or really likes that product or service you're promoting, you could clean up. I mean, you could do quite well. So it definitely depends, you know, the relevancy factor of that product service you are pitching. So you can do really good in that regard. But yeah, what we sell, you know, we sell fixed spots, you know, so it's at a, it's spots at a fixed cost. So we sell 30, 60 second spots. And typically what you're going to make with us is, you know, the industry average is about $25 CPM. So what does, so what does that mean? So that means you make about $25 per 1,000 downloads off each episode. So whatever your episodes are receiving, you could kind of do a multiplier of 25. That's about what you're going to make per spot and it starts to add up. So if you're a 10,000 reach show per episode, you take 10 times that 25, that's 250 bucks per spot. So if your frequency is you air once a week, well, you take that times four, you're at $1,000 a month for this income. So it is real money.

But you do got to reach these certain minimums. We're going to start, let's call it where before.

We'Ll kind of spill the beans a little bit today. But before we were kind of like serving everybody, our minimum requirement was 100 downloads per episode to come into us. We're starting to find that our advertisers just don't want those types of shows. And honestly, it's too much work for the podcasters at that level to do any kind of work for that little bit of money they're going to get from that. So we are going to raise our minimums coming next year to it, it's either going to be 1000 or 2000 downloads because then it starts to make monetary sense for everybody on both sides.

Got it. So from a podcaster perspective.

It kind of makes sense to maybe kick off the show without sponsors until you get a. To a certain level and then start chasing the sponsor route.

Yeah, you could do that. You could do the affiliate deal like you guys are doing. You know, you could try the, you could try the Patreon style, so you could have your listeners actually, you know, pay money and be on a subscription thing. Or you can maybe, you know, give you more value add for something like that. You know, there's the paywall stuff is kind of, you know, becoming a little bit of something right now. So there are other ways to monetize, but, you know. Yeah, it's like you got to think first of all too, like, what do you want out of this? I mean, is this a passion project where you and your bros are riffing off your local sports team and it's just a fun project? Well, that's fine. Can you make enough money to maybe subsidize your hosting costs? Probably, but much past that. Probably not. Right, so it's all, what do you want out of this? I mean, you're going to take this thing super seriously. Wouldn't this be your business and your platform? You want to reach 100,000 listeners? Well, that's a different animal. So if you want to go that route. Yeah. And there's just new mechanisms now to get to that level and it becomes almost a full time career. Then you need to do things where to get to that level, which it's hard, but then once you get to that level, you're talking about some serious salary type money.

Yeah. And just to relate it, right now there's a big trend of influencers, mainly on Instagram. I almost see that as a very similar approach. People are like, oh, I'm gonna make so much money being an influencer. And. And then they find out they only get like a pack of protein for free per month, you know, being sponsored.

Right, right.

So it's like having that. Because we've failed podcasts in the past and they've died off because we had the wrong intentions. So I think that is so damn important before you ever step foot into any of this, you know, podcasting or influencer stuff.

It is, at the end of the day, if you're not passionate about what you're talking about and you have to talk about it frequently, the podcast is not going to survive for sure.

Yeah, I agree. What a visible experience that would be for anybody, right? Like, oh, my God, I gotta record this thing again. Like, oh, we're gonna go.

Yeah, for sure.

No, I'm with you. Yeah. So, yeah, your expectations gotta be realistic, you know, so where do you want to be? Like, do you want to just have a couple hundred listeners? You're cool with that? And then not to be little. That. Right. I mean, people are putting a couple hundred people in a room listening to yourself. That's a. That's pretty awesome, honestly. Right. But are you really gonna make some serious ad money? Not so much, you know, so you got to figure out where do you want to be with this? What's your goals and expectations?

So do you have any sort of rule of thumb for maybe once you start getting around this amount of downloads, this is when you kind of start exploring the sponsorship route?

Yeah, I think with us, like I said, our minimums are going to be increased next year. So if you get to 1000 or 2000, we actually can sell that. We can sell that to our advertisers. And not everybody, but we have definitely a handful of advertisers that, that are okay testing those types of shows. So I think at that level you could start to explore it. But I would say more, the sweet spot would be when you hit like 10, 20,000 plus, and that's where you're starting to see the magic really happen.

Now, are you saying 10, 20,000 plus downloads per month or per episode?

That's per episode.

Got it.

Yeah. So per month, it depends on your frequency. You multiply that out. Yeah, so that's about where it is. I mean, and of course, you get to the bigger levels, you know, the 100,000 and millions, you know, then. Then, yeah, do it. The world is your oyster.

One day.

So basically, to sort of back it all out a little bit, sponsorship kind of is more of a sort of almost not really a fixed income, but it's kind of more like a, you know, you can sort of project how much you're going to make off of the products you're talking about where affiliate marketing, there's really no guarantees. We may mention a product on the show. There's no guarantees we're going to get a single cent from that if nobody ever goes and buys it. So there's a little bit more uncertainty, but it's a little bit lower barrier to entry.

Yep, 100%. You nailed it. And one more thing too, like, there's uncertainty with the paid ads that we're doing. Meaning if you come into us and we sign your show onto our platform, our network, if the advertiser doesn't see results, and we try this across a couple of different industry clients and there's just no results. Meaning is that ROI effective? And there's no engagement, there's no conversions, and then honestly, your show kind of gets put in the back burner because it doesn't produce results, and we can't keep selling that. And it just might be the audience is too widespread. It doesn't reach a specific demographic. So there's no shame or following that. It's just the way it is. So there is that variable, and that gets to be a little bit complicated.

So how does it work with, you know, keeping those sponsors happy is. I'm sure it kind of. It's like a team effort with you guys, because you guys are. I'm pretty sure you're writing proposals, you know, you're sourcing them. They're your clients, you know, and then you're essentially, you know, brokering the deal over to us. Is there.

Correct.

Are there some ways that even. Like podcasters? I mean, I'm sure you doing your job great for us to keep sponsors happy.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's really like, how well does your audience convert? You know, that's part of our job too. So there's the relevant relevancy factor where we make sure that product service that we do put on your show, it does align well. You know, that's a lot of it. And then what you guys could do on top of the audio ads is you could promote it to your social channels, you know, give it a little more boost, you know, so, you know, try to win over this client for a rebuy. Right. So if your downloads are a little. Are performing like we all thought, you know, maybe go to your Facebook page, you know, Facebook it there and tweet it out there and maybe drop a line on something else. So maybe hit them up your. Maybe mention them in your email newsletter list, you know, so they all usually go to the same, you know, URL that they're all kind of tracking. So if you do have those resources, that extra social media, you'll leverage that. Because all you're trying to do at the end of the day is to get that big rebuy and then your goal, you know, because they're watching the conversions on their side.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people think of this, the sponsorships as, you know, I'll make A little audio spot for my podcast and then I'm done. But really, I feel like the real magic happens when you produce results for the people who are sponsoring you, which means do whatever you can to get them sales out, even outside of your podcast.

You got it. You know, everything we're talking about today, it's all focused on results. It's results, results, results. So it's like it's these doctor Direct response clients that want results. You want, you know, ROI. Every dollar they put in, they want to see $2 back. Right. And I think we're starting to see a little bit of a shift now where we're starting to see some brands come into the space where, you know, it's not, you know, it's not like direct roi. It's more of a brand awareness type campaign now. They're measuring it off, you know, brand case studies and whatnot. You know, they have their measurement technique, but it's not, you know, a one for one, let's call it. So it's much more broad and I think that's going to be, you know, definitely lucrative for, you know, a lot of the bigger shows coming to the space. And we're gonna see some advantages to that.

Got it. Now if someone were to like, what are the prerequisites of someone becoming a sponsor? You know, so actually being on that side of the whole thing?

Well, I don't want to go there quite yet. I still want, I still.

Skipping ahead.

You're skipping ahead. I still want to stick, I still want to stick on the bucket of like, pod sponsorships on our show and then I want to shift over to that.

Got it.

But for having, having sponsors on, on our show, you know what, what's a good way to sort of vet out who would be a good sponsor? You know, I, we don't want to mismatch either because we want to make our sponsors happy. So how do we, how do we find good sponsors that are going to be a good match for our show where everybody's going to get a win win out of it?

Yeah. Well, first you're going to come to advertisecast.com you're going to sign up. Okay. I'm just kidding. So you guys, you guys doing it directly, you know, I honestly, how you do it is just think about the products, tools and services that you already use that you're kind of in love with and think about those types of products and maybe approach them and saying, hey, you know, I got this great podcast. You know, we kind of, you know, Target these entrepreneur type people. And I love your product. You know, let's say it's like asana, it's like your workflow task management system. You know, say, hey, I want to, you know, want to promote your product or service. You know, like, how about we work out a deal? I have this many listeners. Maybe you kind of, you come with your own sponsorship package. You kind of present that to them and it's just numbers you keep trying that you hit these people up, that you actually love their product or service. So it's truly a natural endorsement on your side to promote them and you might make a deal happen. Right. But it gets complicated because a lot of those types of companies are working with agencies. So you can't even work with their marketing people. You have to go to the agency level. So this whole thing is just relationship building and that's a lot of the business where it takes years to gain trust and credibility. And once you have that, you get more of their ad dollars. It's kind of how it works. We definitely fast paced that, but somebody fresh coming in, it takes time. It just takes time to make these deals happen.

Got it. You guys. Basically that's what advertisecast does. Basically, a podcaster like us would come to you and you would sort of source them and vet them for us and then present them to us, right?

Yeah, yeah. We already have the hundreds of brands, you know, and that we work with the major agency partners in the space. So we already have good relations with all these people. So yeah, we're your fast pace, we've got fast step. All that you have to give up in return is, you know, is 30 points, which is not that big a deal, you know, so, so yeah, so it does take time to do it, you know. Can you do it yourself? Absolutely. It's just, it's just going to be a time consuming. Is that, you know, do you want to take time to do that or do you want a time, you know, to perfect your craft and make your content maybe better?

Yeah, it's kind of like a balance you got to figure out.

Okay, it is. You know, and yeah. What do you feel like doing? It's totally up to you.

For sure.

For sure. That makes sense. Any other.

No, I think, I think I'm ready to flip to the other side of the coin.

To flip it.

Yeah. So I mean if you're, if you're, I want to go back to that question and if, if you want to become a sponsor.

I guess for you. You said you work with hundreds Are there metrics or certain things that you're looking for in a company who wants to sponsor or become a sponsor?

Yeah, some data points we find that are helpful where it seems like your conversion factor of your product or service, it has to be a pretty good dollar amount, right. So your order size or your cart size, your total order size, it has to be something pretty substantial for this medium, at least for what we're seeing on our side for it to truly work. So if you're an app developer and you want to try to promote your app and gain money by people buying 99 cent in app purchases, this media is probably not going to be the best for you. Now if you're a consultant, you're trying to sell some consultant services for $1,000. Now that could be a really good fit. So we are seeing that as a true metric that we're kind of looking at. So we turned down some sponsors because we're like, yeah, it's just not going to work. It's just not a good fit. And I think too, we are getting more targeting capabilities, but for the most part you should be a national brand and maybe have a national online presence. It'll definitely seem to do the best.

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. It's definitely not be like a local company trying to sell whatever.

Yeah, yeah, that's tough. I mean, it's coming. I mean, the GEO stuff is here today. You could certainly target that, but your targeting capabilities are limited in regards to how much reach do you have in a specific market. So, yeah, I mean, you could try a campaign, but you're probably still better off getting your local billboards and whatnot.

Yeah. Now the big question that I've had about, and I'm sure this is probably a big question a lot of people would have around going and purchasing sponsorships on other people's podcasts is how do I know if it's effective? You know if somebody goes on a podcast and just says, hey, you guys gotta go buy, you know, this product from this company, go to this site dot com. How do I even know that I'm getting traffic as a result of this sponsorship?

Yeah. So the way we track it today is simply through promo code. So you mentioned the promo code in the cart system where you're checking out. Or they track it off a unique landing page URL. So they'll track it there. But that's pretty much it. Those are the two mechanisms. So, yeah, unique landing page or the promo codes.

Got it.

Yeah. So it's like go to 99designs.com, and plug in the coupon code, hustle to get 10% off your first order or whatever. And then we know that it worked.

You got it. You got it. There's so much arbitrary or attribution loss there because podcasts do bring a lot more conversions than what those metrics tell you, because some people forget to put in the promo code or whatever. Right. So now they have surveys, too. Like, hey, how'd you hear about us? You know, was it on TV or digital ads or was it on Facebook or was it on podcasts? So people are starting to come up with those surveys and those exit surveys, and they're starting to see that, wow. Like, there's actually quite a few people, you know, choosing podcasts. So that's definitely, you know, weighing in our favor then for rebuys and whatnot from these clients.

Got it. Now I'm curious. And you already started to talk about it a little bit. The Geo.

I don't want to go there yet either.

Oh, where are we going now?

I wanted to stick on the topic of going and advertising on other people's podcasts for a minute.

Okay, got it.

Sorry.

We're good at the tangents going all around. All of us, I think, are all so excited.

Let's go down all the rabbit holes we can.

Seriously, that's what it feels like.

I like to go deep.

Hey, I love that. I love that I annoy my wife with that too. You know, I always like to go deeper conversations. She goes, God, you're so annoying. She goes, just. Can't we just surface level like any conversation? I'm like, no, that's not fun.

You probably have a very similar relationship that I have to my wife because I go deep on topics.

I love it. I love it.

So when it comes to the sponsorship ad creative, I'm curious about that. Say I have a product, and I want to go and be a sponsor of somebody else's show. Do I go and write some copy and say, here, go read this on your show. Or do they just try to work it into.

This is the name of the product. This is the benefits. And then they just kind of work it in and use their own wording.

Yeah, you never really want to have a full, like, ad script made or audio script. Like, you want to have, you know, like, talking points about your product or service. So we would ask you, like, you know, tell us your best features or why is this product useful to the world? And then, you know, we actually have the host, like, you guys riff on your own you know, verbiage and your own words to why you like that product or service. And that seems to resonate the best with your audience because they could tell if you're reading a script and it sounds fake as heck. Right. I mean, nobody wants that. So it's definitely. We give them a few bullet points about the product, service, and then usually the best is like when they actually have a personal story behind something behind their product or service, and they, you know, they kind of promote it that way and endorse it that way. Those, those are super effective. So, yeah, so definitely never verbatim off a true, you know, script. It's just more talking points.

Yeah. Okay, so last question on this rabbit hole.

You're good.

And then, and then we can move on.

I'm fine with whatever. I love it.

So with costs, if I'm going to go and sponsor somebody else's show with the cost of it, how do I sort of forecast what it's going to cost me? Because let's say I go and sponsor a handful of episodes for somebody. Like, I don't necessarily know how many downloads they're going to get or how many downloads they're getting, or like, I don't necessarily have access to their Libstin or Blueberry stats wherever they're hosting their podcast. How do I know that I'm getting what I paid for and how do I sort of forecast those costs?

Yeah, well, they need to tell you honestly. So they need to upfront tell you that in their sponsorship deck that you can create or with us, like every listing, you see exactly how many downloads each episode typically produces, and you're pretty much guaranteed that number. So if you buy a show that has 5,000 downloads, you're pretty much guaranteed $5,000. If it doesn't hit that number, then we call, we'll do a make good episode. So we'll have get another free ad just to get to that point. So, yeah, you definitely have to be transparent in reporting their numbers to you. You could do that through screenshots and whatnot. And yeah, you get that information from your podcast hosting provider.

Right. And so we're basically paying based on historical numbers, so.

You got it.

So this podcast typically gets X downloads gone.

You look at your last four or five episodes, you know, and like, what are those producing? And you tend to take the bottom number because these are what you're guaranteeing. It's not an average, it's the bottom number because you want to make sure that you hit that benchmark.

Got it? Yeah. Because I mean, I'm sure there's scenarios where you're, you know, you're paying for, let's say I don't know any of these numbers. So I'm making off top my head. But let's say just like Joe Rogan, to keep it simple, since we already mentioned him, let's say I'm going and buying a sponsorship on Joe Rogan's podcast and the average episode gets a million downloads. But then he releases one with Elon Musk and that one gets 3 million downloads. AM I paying for that overage or do I get the benefit of I just got lucky and I got my sponsorship in that really good episode?

Yeah, pretty much. That's just bonus impressions, you know, so you just get lucky.

And how about like the average, Are you looking at average of each show per month or is it like right when it's released least?

Yeah, it's within the first 30 days.

30 days?

The first 30 days. And that's usually when most of the downloads occur anyways. Some will do a 45 window, some do 60 days, but we typically like to do 30 days and by then most of the downloads have been done. Unless your stuff is super evergreen, then you might see less than that, let's call it. But yeah, for the most part, you see most of that come through.

Makes sense.

Okay, you're right too. You're right. And you guys, the thing is too, you should always try to over deliver. So let's say, let's go back to Joe Rogan where let's see if he reports a million downloads. Well, I can tell you what, he's not going to do a million. He is going to do a buck five or a buck seven or two every time because he's providing that extra value because he knows how valued that rebuy is and he wants a long term relationship. So if you over deliver constantly, just like anything else, like anything else in business, you're going to keep making that relationship that much stronger and encourage more business to happen.

Well, hey, it only helps if you have a platform like you said. And it's like what we have is we're big on Facebook, we have ton of Facebook videos and that get a crap ton of impressions. Well, you can always trickle in your sponsor there to make up for anything or just make them happy over deliver that way.

Exactly. Yeah, it's like a little light on the download side. It's like, hey, put a little gas into Twitter, maybe mention more on Twitter and next, you know, it's like you're Kind of up to par where you need to be. And that does work.

Yeah. I mean, for us, every single podcast episode we record, we go and buy advertising on Facebook and, and other places around it just to make sure we get that extra little boost.

Yeah. Yep, there you go. And look at that. That's treating it as a professional. So, yeah, congrats on that. That's smart.

Thanks, man. I feel like a lot of people, it actually surprises us a lot of podcast owners or hosts don't do stuff like this, like just simple things to make their podcast evergreen or these episodes evergreen, where we're going out and targeting specific, specific brands and folks names that were on our podcast and we'll essentially do a perpetual ad to those episodes. So I actually kind of want to go look at our numbers now and see what are like the after, you know, what's the 90 day after the podcast drops?

How's that looking?

Yeah, because if somebody was to say sponsor our show, obviously you look at maybe a 30 day window for the amount of impressions the episode gets. But we advertise perpetually, so we. So we recorded episodes a year ago that still have ads running on Facebook that are still getting consistent downloads every single day. So anybody who is to sponsor our show, they would almost get like that sort of feeling of an initial podcast spike all the time.

Yeah, that's super smart. Yeah. I mean that's definitely a way to keep the advertisers happy and. Yeah. Keep more impressions coming in. Yeah, that's cool. I haven't heard too many people doing that, honestly. So that's been effective though for you guys on the digital marketing stuff. We have to paid ads, we come.

As marketers first, so we have that mindset.

Yes, you get strengths there. Because I know too, a lot of people too, they won't waste money on those digital channels for growing their podcast audience because maybe their podcast is intended to actually get them to the real conversion, let's call it, which is their product or service. So they still will drive ads right to that product, product or service and not to some other vehicle that's creating numbers and generating. What am I trying to say? Reach audience.

The way we look at it, it's the top of the funnel for us.

It's one of the first discovery tools.

And here's I think most people's problem when starting a podcast, they don't know their numbers outside of the podcast. They don't have a good idea of what the value of a lead in their businesses. They don't have a good Idea of what the value of a customer is. If you don't know your numbers, it gets really hard. But we're 100% okay spending money to advertise to our podcast, knowing that all of this money we're spending may not even return to us for 60, 90, you know, whatever. How many days. Because if we get podcast listeners, again, it comes back to what we were talking about earlier on in the show. If we get podcast listeners, these are people that are spending an hour, twice a week with us. We release two episodes a week that are usually around an hour. Ish episode. So these people are spending two hours a week with us. That is so valuable that we have no problem spending money to get those people to us.

No, I love that. That's. That's a great way to look at it too. And it makes perfect sense. Yeah. So don't think about like, okay, yeah, they're going to be at the top of your lead funnel. You know, maybe if you go direct, it might be more the middle of the funnel, but so what? Like there's. There's nothing lost, there's no waste because there's still going to be maybe a listener. And then like you said, they're the most intimate type of customer that, because they are listening where they are probably going to, you know, their chances of converting through that channel is going to be much higher than something else in the long term of things. So I think that's pretty brilliant.

Yeah, thank you. We'll keep it up. We'll keep growing this bad boy.

All right. So the last kind of little tangent is. Yeah.

Was kind of the future of sponsorships, I guess you said, even the now with the GEO type of ads, can you go into those, like some of the most exciting things?

Yeah. So I think the industry today and yesterday, I mean, it's mostly these hole spread spots where a lot of times these hole spread spots, they live in perpetuity, they're baked in, so they last forever. And I think we're starting to come out of that. That style. And I think it's going to be much better to come out of that style because we all know that listening to a show that was maybe two years old and you listen to an ad for the company without a business, it just doesn't make any sense.

That delivering style, it's a little bit antiquated. So I think we are seeing a lot of progress on the dynamic side of things coming to the space. And actually, honestly, it's here. I know we partnered with a company now that does all kinds of crazy targeting off Geo and they also can do off, you know, demos and all that kind of good stuff. So, you know, it is here. It's just going to get stronger. So we started doing that. You start to, you know, selling it truly off downloads and oppressions where, you know, once you met your 50,000 download requirements, or it's going back to Joel, once you meet your million download impressions, maybe do a little, you know, kicker on top of it just to keep them happy. Like we said that value adds important. Once you meet that, you take it off and you replace it. Somebody new coming in, you know, so there's never, there's no waste ever. It's always like current, relevant, you know, content. So I think, I think that is the future and it's actually here in the tech is working extremely well.

Yeah, yeah. I think. I can't remember if it was Justin Malik or Nick Loper, but it was one of those two conversations that we had where we were talking about how Libsyn is starting to have some sort of dynamic advertising where they'll actually replace sponsors based on criteria and numbers of listens and things like that engagement. And to me, I'm honestly surprised that it took that world this long to get there because I feel like, you know, everybody else does that, right. When you watch tv, it's all geo targeted to your location. When you listen to the radio, it's all geo targeted. YouTube, Facebook, YouTube, Facebook, Google, search ads, they're all looking at your location and showing you the best ads based on the criteria that you're going after plus your location.

Right.

And to me, it feels like podcasting almost took longer than you would think to get there.

Yeah, no, I know. I think it took a long time too. And yeah, I'm not sure why it took so long. I don't know why the tech is so challenging at that level. But yeah, it's definitely making good inroads today. And it's here. Geo's one thing, Geo's semi interesting, but the true Internet digital marketing stuff, it's much deeper than that. I mean, you go off contextual relevancy and personal interests and segments and demos and stuff like that, that's. You start to get the, you know, that's where you start to get the heavy targeting, where you see the conversions come up, because now you're targeting that end user based off their interests, you know, so you're always showing relevant stuff. There's zero waste. And I think that's going to be exciting going forward. You guys are digital marketing nerds, as am I. So it's like in the next level, too, is like retargeting, you know, like retargeting somebody that bought X. Now I know they also buy Y because, you know, that's connected. You know, how do you start, you know, you know, figuring that out from an analytical standpoint. So I think that that could be coming too. And, you know, we'll see where that, how that progresses.

I think what, what's exciting about it for me too is the, the ability for the smaller guys to get involved at some point. Like, let's say, for instance, Joe Rogan as the example. We want to, we want to advertise on Joe Rogan podcast. But we have, you know, maybe our budget isn't quite where it needs to be to advertise on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Well, right.

With this sort of dynamic sponsorships, we can go and say, look, we want to buy 10,000 impressions on Joe Rogan's podcast. And you.

Correct.

Not saying that Joe Rogan or some of these bigger podcasters would do that, but it will start to give people the ability to. It gives more access to. Sponsoring is basically what I'm trying to get at because you can, you can buy smaller, lots of impressions, 100%.

Like Joel, let's say he's at a million. And yeah, most people can't afford that. Right. I'm just going to be tens of thousands of dollars. So, Right. I want to buy maybe the minimum is like 1,000 impressions. Well, most companies could probably come up with that kind of money. So you're right. That is much more achievable then.

Yeah.

And what you think it too, is actually not quite right, where you're not going to buy 10,000 impressions off Joel. You could, but why would you do that? That's, that's the old school mentality. It's like, like Joel's audience is so vast, right. He has females, he has males, females. It's all certain ages. Like, you're going to say, I want people that are 25 to 35, you know, that are maybe, you know, this kind of. I'm trying to try to figure out, like, you know, the demographic, income earners, you know, demographics. And they're in there and they, their interests are A, B and C, and they're also located here. That's who I want to target. So that's it. So then we're going to broadcast, we're going to only target your ad to all these shows as a cumulative effort. But we're only going to pull out the listeners that meet that criteria. We don't care what show they're listening to, frankly. We just care about that listener and what their interests are. Right. So that's the difference.

This is why podcasting is so damn exciting. And that us as marketers are constantly like, how do we do exactly what you just described?

Right.

Or create something or work with someone. Like, if there's someone listening that knows how to do this, just contact one of us.

Right, right.

I think, I think it'll get there. I think, I think, you know, there's a lot of companies working towards that. You know, they're seeing what Google and Facebook and YouTube and all these other platforms are accomplishing with that sort of granular level of targeting that I do think there's got to be some smart minds really, really working on that right now. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually want to look at that too, maybe down the road, you know, like, we're not opposed to that either, because I think there's going to be some huge opportunities coming up with that.

Sure.

You know, it's just. It's just a natural disconnect. You know, it's the audio and then, like, you listen to something, you go, you know, type it in somewhere else. That's the trouble that we're having. But they are starting to do matching things off, you know, like, okay, well, if you're listening on this, this is your ip, so I know your IP is over here. And you can do some things in that regard.

One thing that would actually be really cool, just kind of thinking out loud. I mean, now that we're just sort of nerding out on the future of podcasting is some sort of, like, way where, you know, somebody's listening to a podcast and you mention a sponsor, and then all of a sudden, like a push notification comes to their phone that's like, hey, this URL was just mentioned on the show. And then it's like a link to it. I don't know. Just there's some cool potential.

Yeah.

Because the hardest part, Right. Is I listen to podcasts when I'm either driving or I'm out walking my dog or I'm doing chores around the house. I'm pretty much never, ever listening to a podcast at a computer. So if somebody throws out a URL, my thinking is I'm going to go back to the show notes later and I'll look it up. But how often does that actually happen?

Like platform based, like overcast that knows. You listen to this episode it's tagged with this category and then maybe has, like, a reminder when you're, like, not driving, maybe it's sensing where you're driving. I don't know. Something like that.

Right.

And then they pair up.

My app I made back in the day that had that visual overlay where when you heard that sponsored ad, you'd see the visual. The visual banner pop up. So then you could save it or bookmark it for later on so you can go back and then pull it up right from the app. So that was kind of my basis idea.

I love it, man.

It's exciting. We love this industry. We love this medium.

I'll let you know if we come up with some ideas.

Yeah, please do. Please do.

Well, is there any other rabbit holes you wanted to go down before we kind of start rapping?

No, I'm cool. What do you guys want to do? I'll follow your lead.

No, no, we were. I think we covered more than what we had on our board here. So.

Yeah, just to. No, that was good. I'm glad we followed up too, like that. The new technology is coming up because I think that's going to be pretty important. It's just going to, I think, expand opportunities from both sides. You know, even, like, this indie podcast is coming in. It's going to be a real. A real vehicle for them to monetize and. And contrary to the other side, too, it's going to work well for the smaller advertisers looking to come into the market.

Yeah, I agree. And that was one of the big things, is we didn't want to totally alienate people without a podcast. It's like, hey, even if you started, there's opportunities for you all over the place. But get a strategy for sure. Cool. Wrapping up. We always like to ask, is there a book or a handful of books that you recommend or that you find yourself reading pretty often?

You know, I'm not the biggest reader. I've been kind of geeking on some sales books lately just because we're so focused on sales. So let me try to figure out the one I just read. Let me pull it up here once. Cool, thank you. Yeah. So the last one I read was the sales acceleration formula, and this is the guy that was. I think he started the sales team over at HubSpot, and it's awesome. Like, you know, just how he put together this team. You know, how he. He tracked the results of the sales team and all the analytical things that he figured out. Like, it was a really good read. So I Did read that one on the plane the other day. I did enjoy that. But then. Yeah, there's. There's other ones too. I mean. Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

No, is that good?

That's good. Yeah. It's a new one to us. That's one I don't think has ever been mentioned on the show before. So I think that's.

Oh, cool.

You know, that's. That's. That's very cool.

It's always cool to reiterate, like you just said, you know, you're working on sales, so you chose that specific thing. A lot of folks would just, you know, they'll just do blanket. Oh, pick up a book because it sounded good or someone recommended, but no, you have a purpose and apply it.

Yeah, I mean, we're big fans of filters. Right. Like, if there's a problem we're trying to solve in our business, we're diving into books that discuss that problem. So, you know, I think that's a very smart approach. I personally am not a fan of any sort of general business books.

I need that filter of what problem am I trying to solve right now? And going down that route.

Yeah, no, I'm just like you guys. I'm a student of life and I love learning things, and I think that's how you grow as individuals. So same thing. What are my business needs currently? I kind of try to read up on. Right. And you do learn from these books and these authors and. Yeah, there's just so much great content out there, that's for sure.

Filter is needed. So where advertise is, the Advertecast is your company.

That's Advertecast.com, right?

Correct, correct.

Cool.

That or the calendar website, if they're looking to get.

Yeah, what's that called again? Yeah, make some calendars. Let me know. Just go to create photocounters.com and we'll hook you up there.

Is there anywhere else you want to send people or do you have a social media channel? You like people to follow you on anything like that?

You know, I'm on LinkedIn. You can look me up there. You know, I do have a Twitter following, but I don't really. I haven't posted on that thing for years. I just. I just kind of watch more or less. But I'm going to get my email. You know, if you want to hit me up. If you questions about advertising on podcasts, I'm happy to help and just hit me up. It's just trevorvertisecast.com now. My name is spelled different. It's T, R, E, V, R. There's no E or O. And do you want to hear the story behind that real quick?

Yeah, actually, I am curious. I like this.

It's not a much story, but my parents, honestly, they couldn't agree on the vowel, so they said, you know what, the hell with it, let's just leave it out. So that's the honest to God story behind it. And yes, they have been divorced for 20 years and that's where we are today.

That's pretty hilarious. Yeah, I'm like, I've never seen the name Trevor like this, but I like it.

So people are like, are you Trevor? You Trevor? I'm like, oh, it could be Trevor.

You're like, you're like a startup company name, you know, like where it's.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

You're able to drop the vowels and then pronounce it that way.

Yeah, I'm sure you can get the dot com. Or maybe you already have. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I should look at that. That's pretty funny. But I had to fight to my teachers, you know, elementary days. Like, you spelled your name wrong. I'm like, no, I didn't. You know, my parents always had to like, you know, talk to him about it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good story.

Well, this has been fun. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show here.

No, thank you, guys. I enjoy it. And thanks for what you're doing, you know, putting some really cool content out to the, you know, the entrepreneurs and whatnot. And yeah, that. This is why I love, like, I love business shows, you know, that's kind of why nerd out on for the podcast stuff. So keep it going. And thanks for. Yeah, your contribution.

Rock on, man. Thanks for your support too. On it all. And we'll, we'll keep in touch with, with obviously the sponsorship and the future of ads.

Yeah, you guys want to make it easy on yourselves. Just, just, just one email away for sure, man.

Thanks, Trevor. Appreciate you, man.

All right, thanks, gents. Appreciate it, guys.

Have a good one.

All right. Yep. Bye.

See ya. All right, thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Every everybody's on Facebook and go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learned there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training, and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes, and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.