Is There Money In Making Podcasting Complicated - The Podcast Report Episode #16

Is there money in making Podcasting complicated? It's the podcast report episode 16 show hotline, 503-897-1290 it's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul Long and short of it is if someone tells you podcasting is complicated, they probably bill by the hour. Someone tells you podcasting is complicated, they probably bill by the hour. And you can quote me on that if you happen to be listening to this on September 30, 2014. Happy podcast day. Paulcolligan.com howtopodcast we'll send you to a live event that we're doing today at 6pm Pacific. Paulcolligan.com Amazon will send you to the Amazon page where my latest book, the Podcast Report Transcripts, should be free on Podcast Day. If for some reason we aren't able to make it free, Amazon's being a little bit wonky. We'll make that free on October 1st. We'll make it 99 cents on the 30th. But anyway, happy Podcast Day. If you're listening to this the day at launch, let's get to the content. My name is Paul Colligan. I'm author of the Business Podcasting Bible, the number one in seven countries selling top selling podcast strategies and also to be released today when you're listening to this, the Podcast Report Transcripts book. I've been part of podcasting since the beginning. I love this. I have since day one. I love showing people how really simple it is. I mean, this whole concept of why some people make it complicated is one of the bees in my bonnet, if you will. I've been here since day one. Two audiences for this show, the podcaster, those who are podcasting. It's funny, there are some podcasters out there who've been thinking of podcasting as complicated and if we change their mind, some great things will happen. Then, of course. And it's really neat to release this on Podcast Day. There are those of you thinking about getting into podcasting and if you're one of those who's thinking I'd get in if it wasn't so complicated? It's not that complicated. And we'll take a look at that. The Podcast Report is not a massive play. I will never be on the front page of itunes. I will never be on Oprah or that type of thing. Thing. But it's a deep one and it's a needed conversation. I would love you to be part of it. The website for this show, all the past episodes, thepodcastreport.com make sure you get the in there. Why the topic? It's podcast day. And at least this is being released on podcast day. The beautiful thing about podcasting is that you can listen to this whenever you want, wherever you want, however you want. And podcast day can make things complicated. If I am told to give you a four hour class on podcasting, I'm going to have to unfortunately fill it up. If I've been contracted to write a 300 page book on podcasting, I'm going to have to fill it up. If I going to legitimize my expensive course or something like that on podcasting, I'm going to fill it up. There is reasons to make podcasting complicated. Some of them just nasty and wrong, some of them understandable. Let's explore them here. But basically the first question is, is podcasting complicated? No, it's not. Podcasting is three things. Podcasting is a media online. It's cheap to put media online these days. There are free options. Most of us have some sort of web hosting option. If you don't have that, companies like Libsyn and Bluberry and some of the others make it ridiculously cheap to put media online. That's the first step. The second step is an RSS file. A lot of platforms do it. Blubrry does it, Libsyn does it, Everybody does it. Very, very easy to do. Not something you need to build yourself. And then really those two things done by computers very, very cheaply. And the last thing it is, is it's content. It could be me monologuing into this microphone right now. It could be you monologuing in your car. It could be a group of you, it could be a team, but that's it. It's some content, it's some media online. And it is an RSS file. That's it. An RSS file is something that the computer makes, not something a human makes. If you're studying rss, yeah. You don't understand the simplicity and the beauty of podcasting. Podcasting unfortunately has been promoted a lot of times as a means to an end. You get your podcast, you get out there and the whole world's going to come knocking at your door. Sort of the Kevin Costner school of marketing. If you build it, they will come. That's not the case. Once you have the show, once you podcast, like anything in life, there's going to be some intricacies to it. There's some things that you got to do about it, but in short, it's what you do with the podcasting that is important, not the fact that you make the podcasting. Now, I said there's some companies who are making the production much easier, the process much easier. We've explored some of them in past episodes. We will explore some of them in future episodes. But no, podcasting is not complicated. Now, why would somebody make podcasting complicated? Why would somebody approach podcasting as complicated? Well, we got two options. Number one, I'll be honest with you, they could be making money and making it complicated. There's a whole industry out there who loves to make things complicated, and they love to charge to help uncover things and help you realize how to make it less complicated. And these types of things, some of these are consultants who charge way too much per hour, or some of these are people who have hundreds and hundreds of pages of a book to write or hours of courses to develop or that type of thing. Or there could be a less sinister option here. Number one, podcasting inspires a tremendous amount of passion. Passion for the possibilities makes it a bigger subject in some people's minds. Some people are so excited and so empowered by podcasting that they start to play with the intricacies of things, with detail and focus and attention because of what it's enabled them to do. They kind of feel like they owe podcasting something. Now that I'm speaking to the world, and now that I've made a few bucks on it, maybe I should do the best possible microphone recording or make sure that the lighting is absolutely perfect or make sure that 37 years in the future, computers will be able to read my RSS code that I write by hand or something like that. Sometimes passion gets in the way, and hopefully in this episode, I'll help you just kind of sort through it. The passion for the possibilities doesn't need to make this a bigger subject than it is. And then also on the less sinister side, but deeply annoying, is technology. Tech has always kind of sadly generated a certain group of people who like to keep things complicated. You know, you've met them. You know, you want a simple answer to something, and they can't give it to you. You know, you want to do X, and the only option is software that does X, Y, Z, all the way through to double M and that type of thing. And, you know, my poor parents, they want something other than a flip phone. They're stuck with smartphones. They don't want to play with Apple, so they're an Android. And Android's wonderful and techy, but, oh, it's just complicated because some People like to keep it complicated. For the phone company who wants to have all that extra software and that type of thing, it's a rabbit trail. But tech has always generated a certain group of people who like to keep things complicated. Well, how does podcasting change? What's different about podcasting when it isn't complicated? Because this is really important for the very beginning. And if you have a copy of the business podcasting bible from way back when I wrote about it a lot, I had this concept of easecasting. How do you podcast in such a way that is as easy as possible to who you are? And for the big nerd with a lot of tech who has a bunch of wires and things hanging down, it might be easy to take things and process things and that kind of stuff. Maybe for others, it's easy to just go to the microphone and hand the process over to somebody else. Maybe for others, you know, you go to the studio for a couple of days and do a season of shows or that type of thing. Ease casting is a concept, is a sentiment that do it as easily as is possible. What this lets you do is all those cycles and all that time that you spent focusing on wires and focusing on sound pops and focusing on filters and focusing on all these things you can spend focusing on content. I guarantee every minute you spend on tech is not going to help your content. And content is the core content, is the heart of podcasting. And the other thing it gives you time to do is focus on revenue generation. Now, revenue generation is not mandatory by any means. There are some people who are podcasting purely for passion. And if you're doing that, for goodness sakes, don't make it complicated. You know, don't make this, this cloud of requirements that arbitrary arbitrators of complicationness are throwing at you. Focus on the content if you want to focus on the revenue generation. It lets you accomplish more and lets you reach more people. The saddest thing to me in the world, the saddest thing, is a podcaster with content capable of paying the bills. That isn't because they're spending so much time on other things like the technology and that kind of stuff and the complicated side of things. Things change when your podcast isn't complicated. It becomes more fun, your content becomes more fre. You get to a better place. It's really cool. So what do you do with this? Where do you take this? What is the next step in all this? Well, the first thing you want to do is just figure out why are you making podcasting complicated. Is podcasting complicated for you? Figure out why you're making it complicated. If for some reason you just added a bunch of steps that didn't need to be there, get rid of those steps. If you have swallowed some sort of lie that things happens to be absolutely perfect and whatnot, before you release the world, get rid of them. I mean, do what you need to do and definitely play to your convictions. But the content is the most important part. Get that out why? Figure out why you're making it complicated and eliminate that. Then the other thing, something to do is ask yourself, can you simplify the process? Are there things that you can do that will make podcasting less complicated for you? Then finally, dream a little bit. Grab a sketchpad. However you think things out and work things out. And what would happen to your podcast if you're able to spend more time on the content? What would happen to your podcast if you could spend more time on the monetization and less time on the tech? Gosh darn it, if you're listening to this, maybe this is your first episode, maybe you're considering podcasting. Yeah, Paul, that's what I want. I want to produce content. I don't want it to be complicated. It doesn't need to be complicated. Now, Paul, those of you who know well, Paul, aren't you selling a big old complicated course? Isn't this everything that you're talking about? No, I'm not selling a complicated course at all now. I'm selling a detailed course. I'm selling a course with a lot of great content that directs people to do great things with their podcasting. It's certainly not for everyone, but it is for people who want to make it a business. But you'll find at the core of my training and ask any of my students, throughout the years, it has always been about taking the tech of podcasts and making it as simple and as simple as is humanly possible. Not a complicated course at all. A complex course, a detailed course, but not complicated. And that's important. Podcasting is the easiest, easiest part of this. And boy, once you get that down, then you can do the cool stuff, you can do the fun stuff. So please do what makes sense to you. If you are in podcasting because of the tech games and the toys and the things you get to play with and that kind of stuff, then certainly enjoy it. But if you are in podcasting to get the word out, to communicate your passions and communicate your message to the world, either because the world just needs to hear your message, or you know that there's profit to be made. If the world is able to get your message, please do that. Do what makes sense to who you are and what it is that you are doing and podcasting will become so much more fun. I can't think of a better message for podcast day then it doesn't need to be complicated, it needs to be about the content. Thank you so much. Love your thoughts on this one. We are at Twitter odcastrpt wasn't able to get the full podcast report with the character limitations at Twitter. Would love a follow if you got it. We are at facebook.com thepodcastreport and of course we are at thepodcastreport.com 15 for all the things in this episode. If you want a transcript of today's episode, go ahead and text I'm sorry ep 16 as in episode 16 to 500 38971290. You can also feel free to leave me a voicemail message if you'd like. We've had voicemail messages on the past and it's been fun. We don't have one this week for you, but somebody go ahead and leave a message and we'll go from there. This is the podcast report. You can listen to itunes and Stitcher and Pocket Cast and Tunein and Overcast. We're at all the podcast locations, but definitely subscribe. One of the powers of podcasting is that once you subscribe, it comes to you on an automatic basis. It comes to you on a regular basis. You don't have to go out and find it each time. You don't have to go, oh, it's Wednesday. I wonder if there's a new episode of the podcast report. And head out to the podcast report. When you subscribe, it comes to you and it comes to you automatically. And that's one of the powerful things about podcasting. Again, it doesn't need to be complicated. I hope you see that theme next episode. Next week I'm going to share. I don't know what I'm going to find out because it hasn't happened yet, but I'm going to share what I learned from Podcast day. Was it good for the industry? Did people try to make things more complicated? I don't know what's going to happen. I'm excited with the potential. I'm definitely going to play part of it. But next week I do want to take a look at what we learned from podcasting. So that should be fun. If you've got it in you a review at itunes would be great. Thepodcastreport.com iTunes Email thepodcastreportoutlook.com that's it. I'm going to let you go. See you next week. Maybe you can join us in the podcast event tonight. Maybe you'll pick up the Kindle book, maybe you won't. But either way, just promise me you're not going to make podcasting more complicated than it needs to be. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.