Is There Room for Another Podcast? with Joel Comm - The Podcast Report

People need to be creative and not be afraid to take risks. You know, Paul, you said this is not my first rodeo. I've had, I think, five other podcasts. This is the first one. This is the first time that I've had a massive success with one.

You are listening to the Podcast Report with Paul Colligan. Here's Paul.

Got a lot of themes for in today's episode. The big one is, is there room for new podcast? When you listen to this episode and you listen to all Joel and I chat about, remember this podcast is less than nine months old and is seeing these great numbers. And it's not from NPR and it's not from public radio, and it doesn't have a great pedigree behind it. It's just content that the audience is looking for and is hungry for and Joel delivers. So, number one, is there room for new podcast? Number two, let's take a look at the specifics of Joel's podcast, which is about crypto, and we'll get into that in the interview. Look at how he's getting revenue and where the revenue is coming from. And that revenue is coming from connecting a very specific audience to a very specific offer. That has always been the power of podcasting.

It isn't.

I love the Audible guys, but the power of this industry is not necessarily generic things to our audience. It's making really solid connections, just like Joel is doing. So I'm thrilled to have him on the show. Yes, 3 million downloads. Yes, less than nine months. You're going to enjoy this. But before we do that, let's get to the tip of the day. If you are considering sponsorships for your podcast, I want you to consider one thing. I want you to consider what sponsorship will still sound good in a year, two years, five years? When they go back to the archives of your podcast, will your sponsors seem like a desperate attempt to grab a few dollars, or will they seem like a strategic implementation of what it is that you're trying to do? If your sponsorship looks bad 2, 3, 5 years down the line, don't do it today. Your sponsorship tells a more complete story of what it is that you're doing.

As an organization and where it is.

That your podcast is going, feel free add it to your podcast and enjoy the checks.

I've got the Skype line. Joel, calm. The thing I love about Joel, I've known him for probably over a decade now. I don't really want to do the math, but Joel has been through reboot and reboot and reboot and new Product and new product and new product. But he's always stayed, Joel, and he's always stayed successful. He's always stayed intriguing. He's always stayed ahead of the game. Now, the podcast that we're going to be chatting about in today's episode is by no means his first podcast, but it is definitely an extremely successful one. And we're not going to necessarily just talk about the success, but we're going to talk about the timing, because it's also, in the grand scheme of things, a very new podcast. Welcome to the show, Joel.

Thank you, Mr. Paul. I think it's been 13 or 14 years, actually. We.

We go back quite a bit.

Oh, my goodness.

Now you wrote one of the first Twitter books.

I did. Twitter power, how to dominate your market one tweet at a time. In 2008, I think. 10 years ago. My gosh, has it been that long? Wow.

Yep.

Yep.

Now, I was looking up one of your most recent Twitter accounts, twitter.com bad crypto, I think, is the account.

Yeah.

Now, this one just started in July of 2017. So where have you and I have known each other for longer than my kids been in school. Bad Crypto isn't even a year old. The numbers on the Bad Crypto Twitter account are okay, but they're associated with a podcast. Podcast is fairly new. Or did you just get around to getting a Twitter account last year?

Well, the podcast is new, and we just started in July of 2017 on a whim. Truly on a whim. And it was a case of opportunity, meeting passion, meeting massive action, and the right combination and boom. Podcast.

Now, since then, at the recording of this, that's nine months, like you are where you're at today in less time than it takes to, you know, make.

A baby pop out that basically. Yeah.

Let's talk numbers. Let's. Let's have some fun here. We were looking at your Spotify a few minutes before we went live.

Yeah.

What is your average Spotify download today? We chatted about Spotify a couple episodes. We chatted about whether or not it's a thing. I shared percentages for different people in different places. What have you been doing on Spotify?

It's definitely a thing. That thing gets us over a thousand downloads a day, you know, just on Spotify alone. And, you know, if I set the way back machine, I think we've had as high as 3,000 in a day.

So Spotify, the place that brings you Britney Spears and Selena Gomez is sending a thousand people a day.

Your podcast content, that is correct. Sir.

Now, how's your podcast doing across the board?

You know, we, last month we had half a million downloads in, in February and we've had a total since July of about 3 million across all platforms. So, yeah, it's kind of a unicorn. It's really, it's amazing to me.

Now for those of who are doing the math, I've said the word bad. Crypto, It's a, it's a crypto show. It is, it's about Bitcoin, Ethereum, that whole wacky world. But again, as I, as I kind of hinted to at the beginning of this, you are someone who stays ahead the game. You are someone who kind of follows the trends that are happening. Why do you think 3 million downloads, half a million last month, 1,000 a day from Spotify. Is crypto that huge?

Well, yeah, and it's getting bigger. But here's the thing. Up until myself and my co host, Travis Wright, who's a marketing technologist until he and I started the show, the crypto shows that were out there, they could be highly informative, full of some really great guests, but they're kind of dry or technical and over people's heads. And we came along and are just our goofy selves, you know, we call ourselves the crypto clowns, the blockchain blockheads, crypto medians. We have fun. And so, you know, we've gone down the crypto rabbit hole. And rather than putting ourselves out there as experts, which we're not, we told people, hey, come with us on this journey, let's have some fun, let's explore this, let's learn together. And you know, here we are, 130 recordings in. We calculated that in the first nine months it would take you more than three full days, 24 hour days to consume all the content that we've created. You know, 3 million downloads later and it's like, what happened?

Mutual friend of ours, Gary Leland, he told me at Social Media Marketing World a couple of weeks ago that he only, and this is Gary being Gary, he says, I either only listen to crypto podcasts or yours, Paul. So it's definitely a genre. Are there other shows out there? Who do you see of note in this space?

Well, you know, you mentioned Gary doing the crypto cousin show. Of course. Laura Shin, who used to be with Forbes, has been around for years doing the Unchained podcast and high quality. In fact, we had her on the show recently. There's some YouTubers that have a lot of followers, but, you know, none of the other ones really stand out. They kind of feel same same to me, and I feel that maybe that's because we're doing something really different. I also tend to not listen to other crypto podcasts because I like our ideas to stay within our own realm, and I don't want to be inspired or take anything from anybody else.

We're going to do links to Gary's show. We're going to do links to the shows that Joel mentioned@the podcastreport.com 145 so you can head out there and get to those links. When you started this, we chatted a bit, and you were very new aware, but new to optimization, new to some of the ways to make sure you're found for search. When we first chatted about this, you were at a position where, hey, how come these guys are coming up first? I don't even think they get as many downloads as we do. But your approach to this has been strategic, but still playful. You know, it's. It's not like there's this. This big grand marketing plan and a whole crack team of podcast consultants up against this. You found a trend, you were true to it, you serve it well, and you've been yourself, and. And the downloads have come. Do you think it is a testimony to podcasting? A testimony to the fascination the world has with crypto, or maybe a testimony to how unique it is that something new can come across Podcasting, which also for many is still new. Is it sort of a right place, right time type of situation?

Yeah, it's a combination. Right timing is one of those things that you don't know until it's actually the right time. I had been hearing whispers of bitcoin and cryptocurrency from some of our peers for a couple of years. And usually as a futurist, I'm on the front lines of stuff, and I'm the first one to play with the new toys and check them out. But I was really slow to do it with crypto. And Travis Wright and I had been having crypto conversations since probably around this time last year. And they became so frequent, Paul, that one day he messaged me on Facebook and he said, what's next? The Joel and TW crypto show? And he, you know, he had a winky face and was being mostly sarcastic and funny about it. And the moment I saw that, I thought, yeah, why not? I mean, we're talking all the time about this, so let's just do it. And we had no idea, Paul, two days later. So it was July 16th that we had this conversation, and two days later, the web, the domain was registered, a WordPress blog was up with the logo, the social profiles were grabbed and registered, the Libsyn account was set up, and the first show was released. Now, who knew that the big crypto boom was coming, you know, the first big wave that hit late last year, and all of a sudden there was this mainstream media attention. Well, we got in before that. It's like we said, okay, we're going to get surfboards and we're going to be ready to hand them out to everybody to catch this wave. And that's exact what happened. And combine that with our approach, which is, you know, speaking to every man, real easy to understand, with a lot of humor in it. And it was just. It was all the right elements, and it just struck a nerve.

Do you think your Spotify numbers reflect your demographic, Reflect the newness of it all, reflect just as new people come in, you know, people who are kind of stuck in their ways are always going to go to the. Their original podcast platform. You know, I don't know a lot of people in the old school podcasting world who, you know, have jumped to Spotify because it's cool. You know, they like their original apps. Do you think these numbers are just reflective of, you know, the sure numbers you're doing? You know, because, I mean, we joked before the line that, you know, you're getting more Spotify downloads than most podcasters can dream of, but the fact of the matter is, 1000 a day is pretty impressive in the grand scheme of things. Do you think it's just dumb luck? Do you think it's a demographic match? Or do you think it's sort of maybe the timing where. By which you came out? And when did you jump on Spotify, by the way, that wasn't in July. That was a little bit later, right?

Spotify was a little bit later. And so the answer to all of those is yes. You know, it's hard to quantify. Why does anything hit, you know, the way it does? From the feedback we get from the people who listen, we're doing something that's unlike anything else that's out there. And so that tells me something, the rise of it. I think there is that timing element. We can control when Bitcoin was going to hit the media, and so we're happy to be part of that. And Spotify came, I want to say, in September of last year is when we started there. And it just kind of tracked right along with the Libsyn stats that we were seeing for itunes and the others.

What about the other platforms? You doing any significant numbers on Stitcher or have you chatted with the tunein guys? Their whole radio thing.

You know, if you look at the breakdown, of course, the majority of it is itunes, and I know we're getting some on the others, but I haven't really looked at the stats too much. I tend to look at the overall stats, then the individual breakdowns, and I tend to look at, you know, how many countries are we in? And it's something like 190 right now, which is, you know, mind boggling. You know, this one guy in Pakistan or something.

When we chatted about this initially, I saw it through the lens that I think most of my audience will see it through. I thought, wow, those kind of downloads, you can do the traditional, you know, add insert and see some change and have a good time. That's not your monetization pattern at all. And when you told me what it was, I'll be honest with you, Joe, I got more excited about crypto when you explained to me your podcast monetization strategy than crypto ever did for me, because I think what it represents for both industries. So tell us about, you know, tell us where the money comes from in this show.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of people, unfortunately, in the crypto arena because it is a financial sector that pump and dump. You know, they talk up various cryptocurrencies like they would a stock, and they have ulterior motives to profit from it. And we are super transparent. We really respect our audience, and we tell them when we are monetizing anything. And that's why we don't have any courses or trainings that you can buy. The show is free. We usually do about four episodes a week. But one of them is a show called the ICO Spotlight. ICO is short for initial coin offering. It's when a company chooses to do crowdfunding using cryptocurrency or a token rather than doing a stock offering. And so we. We let companies, and there's lots of them, know that we have those opportunities. And we regularly get solicitations from companies that want to be on the show to tell our listeners about their company and their ICO and how people can participate, while there's so many that we. We begin vetting them and saying, okay, you know, we can't speak to whether or not a company is going to succeed in having a successful ICO or even if they're going to be able to execute their Business. Business plan effectively. But if we think that what they're trying to do is interesting, we will offer them a sponsored slot on an ICO Spotlight show. And basically we charge them for that slot for what ends up being a 15 to 18 minute interview. And we'll usually do three of those in an episode each week. So once a week, one of the four or one of the five, depending how many episodes we do that week will be the sponsored episode of a company that is doing something that we think is creative and shows ingenuity and disruption in their particular vertical using blockchain technology.

In the traditional podcast advertising world, we speak to CPM. 40 on the average for a decent show, 100 if you're knocking it out of the park, 5 if you're going with some of these platforms. CPM speaks to, you know, how much money you make per download. I don't want to give away any of your numbers here, but are you, where are you in that realm?

We're on the high side.

High side. Exponentially multiple. Typically that's not even a word, but you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, you know, I haven't even, like, I need to actually sit down and look at the numbers, but I know that if one of the ad networks come to us and they do, and they're like, you know, what is, what are your CPMs? Because we have clients and, you know, they're talking about like audible.com and that type of stuff. We wouldn't take those for two reasons. One, it doesn't really fit. You know, we want, we want the ads that we run because we actually do have additional sponsors, but they're crypto related. You know, they'll sponsor eight episodes and get the 30 second shout out in it. You know, we want them to be crypto related. And two, the CPMs are not what they're used to and not what they would pay, so it's not a good fit to go that route.

So less than nine months ago, you launch, you're seeing half a million downloads. Last month, 3 million downloads so far, thousand a day. Spotify people are approaching you to spotlight their ICO people are approaching you to sell crypto related content and product, paying a higher level of CPM than you get elsewhere.

And not just that, Paul. We've taken the show on the road.

Yeah, you were at south by last week.

South by, and before that, San Francisco at D10E and before that at the Crypto HQ in Davos, Switzerland. We've taken the Bad Crypto podcast and created a Live experience. So, you know, I'm used to getting paid to go do keynotes and talk about a number of different things, as is Travis. You know, Travis is a leader. He gave the, one of the keynotes at the big Martech conference this, this past time. And so we're used to giving keynotes and talks, but now we're being hired to come and entertain at these blockchain conferences, to do our show live on stage. You know, they have all these speakers that come and they teach blockchain, or they have panels where they're discussing the latest cryptos regulation, whatnot. And then we come on stage and do a one hour show that adds this different element to these conferences that nobody else is doing. It's entertaining, it's funny, it's interactive, it's engaging, it's educational. And so this is an unintentional consequence that we didn't see. And now we're getting asked to emcee events and do bad crypto live because we have a space now that nobody else really. I mean, you could copy it, but then other people are going to say, oh, they're just copying Joel and Travis. It's a really unique niche within this vertical, and right now it's kind of ours.

You know, you've brought up an interesting sidetrack that's almost a second episode, but I want to explore it briefly here. The characters that come out of podcasts because they are able to be more of themselves and more of who they are. And I think, honestly, Joel, as cool as I think you are, I think that this show couldn't have happened 10 years ago with you. This show couldn't have happened. And not just because of the whole time with crypto, but just your awareness of who you are, your awareness of what it is that you have to offer. Podcasters now are becoming these fascinating entities. You know, we look at Marc Maron, who was, you know, a C level, a C level standup comic in la, barely making it to now, interviewing the president because he was true to who he is. I think any podcast consultant probably would have given him enough notes to cause him to stop the game entirely if they were in charge. But Mark was true to himself, and a lot of the great podcasters are being true to themselves. They're getting an audience where live makes sense and what's beautiful instead of the massive machine. That would have to be a traditional show, you know, I mean, the Today show, you know, went out to South Korea to do the, to do the Olympics, but that was a, you know, A huge, huge, huge investment. And these other entities will go out and do things live. But it's just kind of crazy. But now it's an entirely different game. But it's really an exciting one. I dare say they're better shows, and I dare say the ability to say, nope, this is the model. This is what we're going to do versus this. Even though, you know, the other model might be more popular or might even initially look better on the spreadsheet, kind of taking control of your future is providing benefits financially. But also, at the end of the day, like, I mean, I've got to imagine it is tremendously more satisfying doing Bad Crypto live than it is doing a traditional keynote.

Oh, my gosh, it's so fun. You know, we're both professional keynote speakers and, you know, you can put us on stage and just say, go. And we can talk about our topics without slides or, you know, without notes. But this is improv. This is like, you know, we have an idea, the format of the show. We have some news articles that we're going to reference. You know, we kind of know who we're going to interview, but other than that, it's really unscripted. And we have the same type of vibe that we have when we're sitting behind our microphones. You know, I'm in Denver, Travis is in Kansas City. So almost every show is recorded remotely with us in different locations. But put us together on stage live and hilarity ensues. It just. It's a really great chemistry that we have, and we do the yes and improv really well with each other.

What's next?

You know, that's a great question. We're going to keep. We're growing the organization. We now have a team to help support the show because, you know, ad sales and show production and all the different elements, you know, social media posts, it can be really draining. And Travis and I do best when we are focused on creating content and speaking. So we're putting together a team. We've got six people, I think, already that are, you know, helping to support the growth of bad Crypto crypto. And I don't know where it's going to go. I didn't know where it was going to go when we started it, and I don't know where it's going to go now. All I know is we're having a blast and we're just going to keep seeing, you know, follow this road and go wherever it leads.

So to go back to the question at the beginning of this podcast. Is there room for a new podcast? Are you a fluke, but. Or is there room for new podcasts?

Of course there's room for new podcasts. You know, tell a story in a way that is unique and that is true to yourself. And, you know, odds are there there could be an audience, you know, when people are like, well, let's see what others are doing and let's copy that. Like, why would you want to copy what anybody else is doing, you know, if they had success with it? How many. How many nations do we need? You know, I think Fire Nation is enough. I think John Lee cornered the market on that. When I see, you know, if we were like crypto Nation, I would gag. That's not what we are. We are the Republic. We have citizens of the Republic of Bad Cryptopia, you know, that's our nation. And people need to be creative and not be afraid to take risks. You know, Paul, you said this is not my first rodeo. I've had, I think, five other podcasts that I have done, you know, several episodes, some for a year or so. And, you know, 155 episodes. I think this is the first one. This is the first time that I've had massive success with one. So, you know, sometimes you try and it just. It doesn't quite resonate. And sometimes you step up to the plate, you swing and look at that. We connected, and that one went out of the park. And so I'm really grateful for that this time.

Thanks so much, Joel. Again, everyone. The show notes are@the podcastreport.com 145. We'll link to bad Crypto, some of the other shows that Joel mentioned. We'll link to that Twitter account, and heck, we'll even link to Twitter power 3.0. Thanks for coming on the show, Joel.

You betcha. Stay bad.

Yeah, you probably, after having listened to this, will be heading out to the show, and we have all the links to the podcast@thepodcastreport.com 145 Bad Crypto is a fascinating example of what a podcast can be. It's a fascinating example of monetization in the podcasting space. Joel is a fascinating guy, and I'm thrilled to bring him to you. Thank you so much for listening. We'll chat next week.

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