Podcast Growth | Jordan Harbinger

Well, tonight on the New Media Show, we're going to be digging into what's actually grows a podcast or a show online nowadays. You know, it's the number one topic I get asked, and I figured I would bring a terrific guest on to help me kind of go through that process. I'm Rob Greenlee. I'm a 22-year podcaster, a 2017 Podcast Hall of Famer, and I am lucky and fortunate, and all of you as well, to have Jordan Harbinger on the show with me today. I appreciate it, Jordan. Thank you so much for jumping in here.

Thank you, man. It's so funny.

You've heard— you've said my name 100 times and not made a mistake, but then you do it on a live show and it's like, what is it?

How do you say this again?

That's really funny. Of course.

Yeah, of course it's going to happen that way, right?

Yeah. Now, I mean, I've known you for like almost 20 years or something like that, so it's kind of funny to hear you butcher my name after that long.

I'm glad to be here though.

It's kind of fun to come on and make fun of you on your live show.

Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah, likewise.

Yeah, well, Jordan's got a, a, a very popular show, uh, he, he does conversations and conversations like this, uh, he's been doing for many years, uh, and he's achieved a lot of success with it too. So really, I think it at the end of the day, the goal that I had with this show is to really help people understand the complexity of growing a podcast or a show now. And at the end of the show, we're going to go through what, what I consider to be kind of a good ranked list of strategies that could or may not work. It just depends on your show and what you're doing in in this coming new year and beyond. So, you know, so Jordan, let's go ahead and kind of start out. I mean, what do you think has been the key to you building a successful podcast?

So the number one ingredient is really going to be— it's kind of boring, but it's consistency. You know, I started my show in 2006. I rebranded it or relaunched it, I guess you would say, in 2018. So 7+ or 8 years, actually 8 years ago next month.

So pretty—

so basically 8 years ago. And that's really the key, has always just been putting out content over a really long period of time. And I think the objection that I always hear is, oh, I don't know if I can do it for that long because how long did it take you to monetize? And I think I started monetizing like 7 years in. Now that's not because I didn't have an audience for 7 years, it's because from 2006 to— what is that, 2012? How did you monetize a podcast? You sold a domain on GoDaddy using a code, and maybe somebody would buy one and give you $30.

I mean, or you could have a tip jar, a PayPal tip jar, whatever it was.

I mean, that was not—

you didn't make a living doing that.

And so early on, it was hobbyists and stuff like that. I don't think people have to wait that long now to monetize, but really, consistency over time. I mean, people find your show and they listen, and then they tell other people, and then some of them fall off. And, you know, over time, ideally that show grows.

And I still hear from people like, oh, how did you find the show?

And they're like, oh gosh, I've been listening since 2011.

So it's, you know, you get people that have been listening to you for 10, 15 years.

And so yes, there's tons of attrition in podcasting, but like, you know, let's say you lose 90 listeners out of 100. If you do it for 20 years, that's still a significant number of people if you're getting, you know, a bunch of new people every month listening, even if almost all of them fall off over time.

Yeah, I think that the early years of podcasting, yeah, the pathway to monetization wasn't very clear.

No.

And there wasn't a lot of the current technologies that we have today to enable it. And, you know, back when I think we first met was back in 2014, in that timeframe, back when I was working with PodcastOne. I think that's when we first met, but I'm not sure. It may have happened at a podcast conference prior to that. Yeah, maybe.

I don't know.

Yeah. That's probably more likely. I know in the early years you would go to a lot of podcasting conferences and events, but now you've gotten kind of so busy with your show and doing what you're doing and having a family and all this kind of stuff that it's a little hard to do now.

I still go to stuff, but yeah, I had two little kids.

So now instead of going to Podcast Movement and then Podcast Movement Evolutions, then Podfest and then South by Southwest, it's like, okay, which— my wife is kind of like, which one of those or two of those do you want to go to? And if you go to this, don't ask me to go to, I don't know, Germany to do a bunch of stuff, you know, next, you know, at the same time, or like, don't go to—

and so, and as I get older, I realized, and I guess not even just older, but as sort of more mature in the space, I realized, okay, going to this event, big ROI.

Going to that event, less ROI, less fun. I'd rather take my kids to Disneyland. So, you know, you have to sort of choose between those things. But I, I love, like, to your point, earlier days of podcasting was really fun because you would just go to a podcast meetup at some bar and it would be like, in New York for example, and it would be like, okay, this is every podcaster in New York basically right now, or every serious podcaster in New York right now. And there would be like 12 people there, you know?

And it was pretty cool because you'd go and you'd be like, oh, this is Grammar Girl and this is so-and-so and this is this person. And that was it. It was kind of like the— and YouTube didn't exist, so there wasn't like, which platform are you guys on? Oh, I'm on—

it's just, you know, where do you host?

Libsyn or Libsyn, right?

Or Podbean or Blueberry. And that's about your total selection, right?

Exactly. And then it was like, oh, I'm using this new—

I remember really early, one of my air quotes contributions was people were saying like, what's new in the space? And I said, oh, I had somebody write some software that takes out all of my old ads and puts new ads in the show. And people were like, You have ads and you can actually do that?

Yeah.

And I remember it was like, well, they're ads for my own thing.

'Cause back then I had like a training program for sale or something. I don't have that anymore really. But, um, it was ads for my own thing and I would put a mention in every episode. And then as this kid wrote this software for us, he was staying on our couch and his rent was like, write this software. Yeah. So he wrote the software for us and he.

It was a game changer because it took out—

I remember I had to take all of my shows and divide them into 3 parts: the first part before the ad break, the middle part between the ad breaks, and the end after the last ad break. And it basically took those 3 MP3s and then merged them into one with whatever we wanted sandwiched between them. That was it, right? So we basically kind of— I won't say we invented dynamic ad insertion, but we invented a very, very rough-around-the-edges version of dynamic ad insertion, right? It was very not dynamic.

And I would, every month or so, I'd record a promo and I'd go, put this in every ad break, and it would just go into all of our shows.

And our little training program that we had for sale went from like 5 sales a week to 50 sales a week because it didn't matter where people were listening in the catalog, they heard that ad. And that was, that was just huge.

But it's kind of funny to look at all the tech now.

I mean, the sky's the limit with what you can do with podcasting. It's really kind of funny to see.

Back when you started working with PodcastOne, back when I was working there too, we, we had our own way of doing that whole dynamic ad insertion. And you actually had to create, you know, various sections of your show when you publish it. And the technology wasn't good enough to, you know, insert it in the middle of the audio.

Right.

The audio had to be cut up into pieces and then we slid it in between each of the segments. Yeah. So, so, you know, but the technology now is a lot better now. You can physically set an insertion point in the audio, not have to create separate sections of the audio to upload. And, and so now it's, it's a lot easier. That's why we're seeing a lot of programmatic advertising start to really dominate, and it gives access to larger numbers of shows to get into, into advertising, right? In a much simpler way. And because the whole dynamic ad insertion stuff was complicated and it was expensive and all these things. So you had to really— and it's still that way to some degree, even, even today. So yeah, but you know, that's where you can make the most money too. So that, that's the thing.

But yeah, yeah, I think there's still probably some impediment to really big brands jumping into podcasting if what they're already doing is working. I mean, I have ads on my show for things like a Land Rover Defender And whenever I see that, I'm kind of surprised because I think, wow, a car company wants me to endorse this product. But they hire an agency that specifically looks for certain— I don't know, whatever you call it— influencers. I hate that word, but whatever, let's just use it here.

And but I remember early in the game, I was like, hey, PodcastOne, can you get Ford?

Because my dad worked there and every car we've ever owned as a family is a Ford. And I remember Sue McNamara over there going, the problem is Ford wants to buy like 20 million impressions a month or something minimum, probably maybe add a zero to that. I don't you know, and they're not going to buy a podcast, and they're certainly not going to buy even a whole podcast network. They just need to buy all of— this is years ago— she's like, they basically need to buy all of podcasting to like hit this minimum spend target where somebody at Ford even bothers to look at this spreadsheet that's been emailed to them, right?

Because when Ford buys—

she used to sell for radio, and so when Ford— she kind of explained this to me, and I'm going off memory here, so don't, don't blame her if I get something wrong— but she explained basically when you, when you sell something for radio and she's buying for, I don't know, all of Clear Channel She's like, okay, we have 8 billion impressions available this week. Well, you know, how many hundreds of millions of those does your brand want? You know, or how many millions does your brand want? And they'll be like, well, let's start with 5, which is like more than any podcast generally gets, right, in an entire month. And they want that in the week so they can see if there's like a brand awareness uptick and whatever data they're looking at. It's just the scale of podcasting just wasn't there yet, and probably like is barely there now, because I think people still listen to the radio. I don't know why, but they do.

Well, it's kind of a generational thing, but I think, you know, podcasting has, has grown up, and I think you would probably agree with that. I think we're, we're gathering audiences at a scale that we never have before. And, and it's also, you know, for many shows, and I'm sure yours is one of them, the scale of your audience is surpassing what has been around legacy media, you know, which would be radio and TV and cable TV and all that stuff. I mean, popular shows now are pulling in multi-millions of listens per episode now. I mean, even the biggest shows are pulling in tens of millions. So it is reaching a scale that's really, I think to some degree, if you aggregate it all, is surpassing broadcast.

Yeah, and also people engage with podcasting in a different way, right?

So like, let's say—

and I don't— because I don't want to discourage podcasters who are like, oh man, I have 10,000 downloads per episode. Imagine you have 10,000 downloads per episode but you drop, I don't know, 8 episodes a month or something like that.

Most, uh, a lot of podcast listeners—

a lot of podcast listeners listen to every episode of the show. I don't know what the data shows here, but I know When I hear from people, they listen to almost every episode, or they listen to one of the three I put out, because I put out three a week. So it's a full— it's a part-time job if you want to listen to every episode of my show.

But like, most people will listen to one thing or two things.

And so you get these people who've been watching and listening for years, and I'll say like, what TV shows do you watch? And they'll go, I occasionally catch this, or I watch this fictional series because I love Game of Thrones or whatever it is. But Very rarely are you going to find somebody— and I bet I don't have data for this, I guarantee you the data shows this—

nobody, at least in our generation, is like, I watch Anderson Cooper every day.

That just does not happen anymore, right?

Um, there's people—

maybe if you're over 60, maybe, right?

Right. Yeah.

But even my parents used to be like total news addicts. They read stuff on the internet all the time.

They don't know who those authors are. They'll watch a video that their friend sends them. They're They don't watch TV at all, TV news, sorry. They watch sports and dramas and stuff, that's it.

So if you think about it, legacy media has gone down like this in terms of like talking heads like me interviewing someone, right? There's very little of that.

When they do that, there's a reason those segments are 3 minutes long because that's what people wanna hear.

So if you're looking for somebody who's talking to somebody for an hour, okay, you're probably watching, what's that show on Netflix?

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman who interviews celebrity for that.

Otherwise, that's a— it's a unique format now for someone to just sit down and talk to somebody else for an hour long format.

It almost never happens on TV. It happens all the time in podcasting.

And so I guess my point here is that somebody might only have 10,000 downloads per episode, but if somebody's catching you for 4 hours a month or 8 hours a month, they're watching and listening to you way, way more than they are with your—

the newscaster that they love, or like even engaging on something like John Oliver Last Week Tonight, you know. Hit shows like that, podcasters with middle-of-the-road audiences are getting more attention minutes from those people than these big stars are, or, or an equal amount. Um, I did some research into how many people watched Last Week Tonight, and then I did— I could sort of compare it to my show, and I was like, okay, minute for minute, we're not that far behind John Oliver.

He has much higher impact with more people.

And I didn't count his social media impressions because that's like a whole weird game that I just can't even follow. But, um, the data would be crazy, the analysis would be crazy.

But like You know, I'm not instantly recognizable, but he is, and it's because of the format, right?

But like the amount of time people spend with you is kind of very— it's quite similar. Uh, it's, it's actually shocking. And, and so that explains the money that's involved with podcasts that are successful.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, you raise a good point, um, and it takes me into thinking about Netflix, right? So we've recently heard news of these talk shows of sorts that are getting added to Netflix. And I just have to sit back and say, I think the expectation of Netflix is different than a talk show.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure that that, that whole strategy that they're heading down is going to work out the way they think.

I agree with you. Look, I haven't done a bunch of deep research on this, but when I— just from my own personal experience, and I've asked a couple friends about this, so this is not— this is anecdotal if at best.

Sure.

When I go to Netflix, I'm like, oh, I want to watch this new Ben Affleck-Matt Damon movie that I saw got good reviews, or oh, here's a, here's a mindless action movie that's sort of like, what is it, John Wick or something, and I'm bored and I'm on an airplane and I want to download this before I go, uh, before the flight takes off.

That's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for, hey, do you have two guys on webcams talking about iPods or what? Like, I don't care. Do you have two guys on webcams talking about Pokémon? Because any other podcast app is going to deliver an equal or maybe even better experience than the Netflix app is.

And I don't need to watch this kind of low-end production.

Most—

I think it was, um, what's the guy who does—

who does Lore? His name is right on the tip of my tongue.

Oh, Aaron Mankiewicz.

Yes, he said something like—

and he actually— I might even be confusing him with the 10% Invisible guy.

Anyway, some big podcaster who everybody respects that isn't me, uh, said something along the lines of, would you rather make the crappiest TV show or the coolest audio show? And that's— Netflix is kind of like, hey, we make the coolest TV shows. Guess what?

We're also going to show the crappiest TV shows.

Why are you doing that? Why?

Right. And even, even Netflix a couple of years ago hired a podcast person from Apple and they tried to get into audio and I'm like, going, you know, you know, there's a brand conflict going on here. It doesn't make any sense to me.

And, and they're learning the Spotify— they're going to learn the Spotify lesson where Spotify goes, we do video now, and everybody goes, oh, okay.

No, though I think they're starting to pick up some traction on the video side. But, but I think, as you know, that there's a big conflict there with how they're going about it and how the content creator wants to monetize. So, yes, it's, it's It's not as great as it sounds.

Well, the other thing, a little birdie told me that if you want your podcast on Netflix, you also have to take it off YouTube. So the money has to be good enough.

And maybe not everybody has that deal, but a lot of people apparently do. So you have to take your podcast off YouTube and put it on Netflix, which means Netflix has to essentially pay you more than YouTube did, probably, or at least make some big promises and pay you something. Right. The only shows that are not going— the only shows that are— let me give you an example, and this is a hypothetical.

Let's say your show makes $100,000 a year off YouTube. Netflix has to say, we're going to pay you $100,000. Okay, so they have to put that show on there and then they're never going to make that money back because they're not running ads or anything. So that's just a loss. Whereas for YouTube, they were making a lot more than the $100,000 in ad revenue that I was making as a creator, right? They're winning. They control the margins. I know they're making more than $100 grand off of me., on, on those ads.

So how is Netflix going to monetize this? And then the other thing is, if it's a really big show, they've got to pay you a lot.

What if you're making $1 million a year off YouTube?

Now they got to pay you $1 million a year to put it on Netflix and make no money. And for the creator, it almost seems like a bad idea because, whoa, I've— oh, okay, I make $1 million a year off YouTube and Netflix is offering me $1 million. Maybe they're offering me $1.2. Cool, you just got a raise. Yes, but you also just nuked your momentum in the algorithm on YouTube. So as soon as your Netflix deal is over, you're You're essentially starting over on YouTube, right? You're just gonna suddenly start uploading videos on your old dead-ass channel on YouTube, and what, the algorithm is maybe gonna say, hey, welcome back?

Or is the algorithm gonna say, you're dead to me, I don't care about you anymore, we've moved on?

And now your business is—

you're a traitor to YouTube now.

Yeah, I mean, you just don't know. I know a lot of big YouTubers that don't—

not podcaster people, this is a different thing.

I know a lot of podcaster folks too. They go, I can't take a week off and go home and visit my family for Thanksgiving because the YouTube algorithm will punish me, right? They won't be featured as much.

Even my own YouTube team is like, we got to release 2 or 3 things a week. We just got to— if you do one and it's a massive hit, maybe we'll wait a few extra days. If you do one and it's a stinker, I got to release another one. If that's a stinker, I got to release another one, right?

You want to keep the algorithm happy and fed. So what do you do if you take a year off because you got a Netflix deal and you come back?

And then what? You got to really massage that algorithm again. And there's just no guarantees that you're going to be able to regain in that flywheel of momentum.

So if, if I can't—

if Netflix came in and offered me 110, 120% of what I'm making on YouTube, I just, I don't know if I would take that deal.

What other— what else are you promising me?

Because I'm basically shooting my business momentum in the foot and reloading and doing it again by taking that deal just to make a couple of extra bucks.

Not worth it. Um, a long time—

I know I'm going off here, but a long time ago A really good friend of mine who's been in podcasting for longer than me, so like 20+ years, she took her show and she said, hey Jordan, I'm gonna put the whole thing behind a paywall. And I said, this is a really bad idea. She goes, no, no, my manager said if I put it behind a paywall and only like 5% of my subscribers actually pay, I'm gonna be making this, and right now I'm making this, so I, I'm just— the math works out, I'm gonna make way more money. Well, she put her show behind a paywall, she did not get 5% conversion, she got like half of 1% conversion because it was early in the game. Who wants to exclusively get their podcast on some crummy, you know, pre-Patreon, pre-good-tech paywall thing that you have to listen on a website.

So, and then she was like, oh, this isn't working. Oh well, you have a 1-year deal.

Oops.

And then a year later she comes back to podcasting and it was like, oh, your, your feed is dead.

Everyone unsubscribed.

This show basically was over after your tease to go to the paywall, and those people are probably not coming back. You have to go find them all again and then they have to resubscribe.

And she was like, Jordan, you're right. Basically nuked my business, and I'm never making that mistake again.

That's kind of what Netflix is asking creators to do.

Take your podcast off YouTube, come to Netflix.

Now, you don't have to take your audio podcast down, I don't think, thankfully.

Be even worse.

I never heard an answer to that question.

Oh really? I'm curious what the, what the steps are there, because if you can only create for Netflix, you literally have to pay me 10 times what I'm making. No, you have to pay me 50 times. I have to be able to retire after this Netflix deal if it fails.

I can't just come back and start over. That's a massive heavy lift. No one should be agreeing to that.

Well, we've seen this happen before. We saw it happen with Joe Rogan. His initial deal with Spotify was exclusive to Spotify, right? Yes. And like, what, 2 years later, a year and a half later, uh, they renegotiated a deal where it opened it up for full distribution again. Yes. So, so I think that's what we're going to see happen with the Netflix stuff.

And for as far as I know, he took a massive dent in his audience. Now, does it matter? No, because he has $200 million and he's Joe Rogan.

But he also had crazy huge social media, crazy huge name recognition, and he was the MMA announcer guy.

So it's not like he faded into Spotify and nobody else could find him.

He was always—

he was on primetime TV a zillion times a year.

So like, he came back from that. But he's also the Oprah for dudes of podcasting, right? So like, he came back from that, probably didn't fully recover, but doesn't care because he has hundreds of millions of dollars.

Let's assume you and your show are not Joe Rogan if you are getting an offer for Netflix.

Yeah, I agree, uh, and that, that's why this whole deal isn't gonna, uh, last. It's gonna fade out in a year. I heard that most of the contracts that those shows signed were only one-year deals, so there's a good likelihood that there will be no deals like that a year from now.

So yeah, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm waiting because my agent was like, do you want me to go for this? And I was like, uh, you can fish, but if this, if it has these steps, I'm not going to just like remove myself from the, uh, the podcasting gene pool to test Netflix's half-baked strategy.

I will wait till next year when they go, oh, you know what, we need to have podcasts on here and pay them, but we also need to let them stay everywhere else at the same time, just like Joe Rogan and Spotify. Then now talk to me. Now mail me a check because you're not asking me to put my business on the chopping block to see if your idea works.

Yeah, I mean, if, if Netflix is going to compete with YouTube, they need to actually compete with YouTube. YouTube, right? Because doing this strategy is not going to compete with, with YouTube. And it's the same thing that's happening with Spotify. Yeah, they think that doing it the way they're doing it is going to compete with YouTube, and it's not.

It's not. It's not.

The other, the other problem is, man, I know a lot of people that watch podcasts on YouTube.

They don't only watch podcasts on YouTube, they watch their favorite creators, they watch documentaries.

There's all sorts of content up there, right?

I, I mean, my kids will watch a Mark Rober video about science, and then they start watching Shorts, and then they want to watch cartoons. They're watching podcasts, obviously, because they're 4 and 6.

But the point is, people consume multiple types of content. Netflix is assuming that you're going to do the same thing, except the only content you want are two dudes on webcam podcasts and movies.

Yikes.

Or in TV. That's a— that's a— why? Why wouldn't I just continue to get my podcasts on YouTube where I get all of the other stuff that's of the similar quality?

It's in the band, right?

It's creator stuff.

And then when I want to go primetime with the family or on an airplane or whatever, that's when I open up Netflix and then I see the Matt Damon flick and I watch The Dave Letterman Show and I watch Alex Honnold climb Taipei 101. I don't need to see like washed-up comedian who needs to pay his rent, uh, podcast on, on Netflix, or Jordan Harbinger where I can get him literally anywhere else on Netflix.

It just doesn't make sense.

So they're— and they're trying to manage that by being like, aha, we're just gonna not make that guy available anywhere else. And it's like, okay, but you have to pay for that privilege, right?

And people like me are too expensive, and people who are cheap don't have the following to pull into Netflix. So what's the plan?

It's not going to help— it's not going to help the creator, it's not going to help Netflix, so it's going to be a lose-lose.

That's what it looks like to me. I mean, I'm willing to be proven wrong.

It would be kind of cool to see another player in the space, um, that's not Spotify and, you know, SiriusXM and like other big companies, because it's, it's good for creators when companies have to compete for talent. But this current strategy is a little bit like Yikes. I'm not sure, man.

It's early.

I mean, it's early.

I mean, they, they have time to adapt or change their approach, but yeah, will they is the bigger question. Yeah, I'm doubtful. I think that each of these platforms has their lane and I agree, expect a certain type of content from each of these, and what they're trying to do is blend it together, and I don't think it's going to work.

It looks like Meta trying to acquire Instagram not because they can blend Facebook and Instagram together seamlessly, but because Instagram was eating Facebook's lunch and they were like, crap, we need them to stop competing. And so we're gonna own them. Right.

It's, that's what it looks like as Netflix is like, oh my God, the reason people don't watch as much Netflix is they're also watching podcasts.

We need to have podcasts on here.

Okay. But now you need every podcast.

What are you doing? Let's call, call a spade a spade here. The only reason they're doing this is to siphon audience that's currently in podcasts and on YouTube over to Netflix. This is a customer acquisition play. Yeah, it's not a content play. So, so, and you know, who knows, it might work. I don't know, it'll work to some, some small degree, but I just don't think it's going to be worth it.

What's most like—

what would have been cheaper probably in the long run is for them to acquire another company that has a ton of podcasts on it, and like a medium podcast company. I won't throw any names out there because I don't even have somebody in mind per se, but they couldn't acquire iHeart or Spotify. Probably they can't acquire SiriusXM, but there are other other players in the space. They could even acquire a bunch of networks, and what they could do is just make a bunch of ads for Netflix shows that go in every single one of those shows into that audience, and they would have done the same thing except they would actually own a money-making enterprise instead of just bleeding.

Well, and they would probably be able to grow their subscriber base, and they would be able to siphon off that podcast audience. I, I think the content approach here is wrong.

I, I agree. No one's listening to my show and going, oh man, what I should have been doing is watching Matt Damon and Ben Affleck black movies this whole time. Like, if, if I'm competing with them, then I've already lost because I don't make movies. It's just a completely different thing. This is like a Chinese restaurant being like, we need a pizza oven, guys.

That pizza place is getting a ton of business.

Yeah, because sometimes people want pizza, but they don't always want pizza. They're still coming in for Chinese food. You don't need to start making pizza, Mr. Wong.

You're fine, right? Well, let's kind of change course a little bit here and talk a little about what you're seeing with your own show. And, and I'll throw in my two cents too around What is different about the audience in 2026 now? And, and what's changed most about their behavior? And, and what they're looking for? I know that, you know, on the YouTube side, there's a lot of influence by the algorithm on the content creator. But that's also influencing audience too, in the content that they're finding, if they're a big consumer on YouTube. Now, granted, this kind of algorithmic discovery is not come into podcasting too much yet, but I do think that maybe that's coming. But how do you think the audience has changed in their expectations of a podcast?

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I, I personally have had to resist the urge that many people have caved into to create for the YouTube algorithm, much to the chagrin of my YouTube team. They're like, hey, we want you to get these guests and this guest and this guest and this guest.

Well, they want you to get views, right?

Yes.

Oh, right, that's the game.

So it's like, hey, the more controversial— can you get this guy on who says that this this thing, COVID vaccine, this, that. And I'm like, uh, no, that guy's like a grifter.

And they're like, oh, but he gets so many views and you see him on a ton of podcasts. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing that. This is—

so I call this the Jerry Springer effect.

I don't—

you're old enough to remember, we both are, that Jerry Springer used to have a serious talk show. Remember that? It was like he would get—

bring on intelligent people and they would sit up there and they'd have lively debates and it was really, really good.

And he would do his final thoughts, and you were just like, this is a smart guy. And then Geraldo Rivera got hit in the face with a chair because he had like Nazis and Black Panthers on the panel at the same time, and it started a huge fight.

And pretty much, uh, Arena, who I just pull up on the screen— yeah, Arena used to work for Jerry Springer.

Oh, no way.

Okay, so she's gonna have, uh, she's gonna have her two cents thrown in in a second here.

Here.

Um, hi, Reena. So, so pretty much overnight—

maybe she even worked there at this time—

pretty much overnight, Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Ricky Lake—

I don't know, probably a million other shows, even maybe Donahue was still in the air, whatever. I know I sound old as hell right now.

They all kind of went, uh-oh, I've got to have like trailer park fights on my show now too. And so all of these serious talk shows— Jenny Jones and Ricky Lake used to have serious conversations They immediately started dressing different, having security guys on the show, uh, adding all this great—

great in air quotes, sorry, I should put— make it down, sure people know I'm, I'm, I'm being facetious. It was just always drama and it was manufactured and it was nonsense. And it was—

oh, Maury Povich, right, also used to be serious.

Now he's—

now he's—

oh, let me find this soundbite for you really briefly.

He's this guy. Right, he turned— every show became that. Why?

Because that's what gets views during daytime TV with people who are like watching daytime TV and watching that stuff. YouTube is daytime TV.

If you start creating a show and you put it on YouTube, what you will find—

mark my words, because this happened to every creator that I know who started YouTube, uh, and hasn't resisted this urge—

they will do something like this. They'll go, my show is about science, it's about psychology, it's about new inventions, new technology. They put those up on YouTube and they get like 10,000 views. Then they have this like kind of semi-famous actress who hasn't worked for like 5 years but is still really good looking and a great, you know, entertaining person, and they put that on and it gets 20,000 views. Then they have an episode with a guy who says that there's microchips in the COVID vaccine and that gets 200,000 views. And now their next show can either be a new technological invention that gets 10,000 views, or they can look for more insane conspiracy theories, uh, that are going to get 200,000 views. And then suddenly they're addicted to those—

one, the money that they're getting from the ad revenue on YouTube; two, the amount of engagement they're getting from conspiracy theorists and click farms.

And then your whole show becomes this ridiculous thing. And I, I've, I've looked at old shows that are—

old friends, I should say, that run shows that have went from very serious audiences and audio to YouTube. And, and the comments are always—

there's always on every episode one of the top comments is, what happened to this show? It went downhill. What happened to the show? And it's like, yeah, what happened is this person found where they got their clicks and it became a disingenuous bunch of crap. And that's the Jerry Springer effect. That's what happens when you start creating for the YouTube algorithm.

My team will say 'Hey, we really want these people and these topics.' And I go, 'No thanks, I'm just going to keep doing what works in audio, which is stuff I am personally interested in.' And I will tell you, I'm much happier than a lot of these YouTube creators. A lot of these guys, when you get a whiskey in them, they're like, 'I hate every episode that I do, it's so dumb.' But that's because it's not part of their, their, their core reason for being a content creator, right?

They're having to fabricate their, their content, uh, based on what the algorithm wants, and they're always copycatting And exactly, that's the other part of this whole conversation that I wanted to have with you is that, you know, what is the proper approach to grow? And I think we have a conflicting scenario between engagement, how engagement is had in audio podcasting and how engagement is had in YouTube. And I'm increasingly starting to feel, and maybe you feel this way too, that this chasm may not be able to be spanned, right?

This—

yeah, there's just too much different between, you know, because I started the same way, Jordan, back when I started doing my radio show many years ago, is I was doing content that was interesting to me, right? And but of course, of course, back then we didn't have AI and we didn't have these algorithms, you know, saying, well, this topic is trending and I'm going to make sure the audience gets directed to that topic because it's trending. The technology wasn't there. So You know, but now we're being forced into being inauthentic and creating content that doesn't really come from any place. It's just coming from a place of, you know, either making money or just trying to get views or pandering is what I like.

Yeah, exactly right.

What's your thoughts on that? I mean, how do we navigate that?

I really think it's the best way to turn something you love into something that you hate doing but makes money. Um, I, I, again, I've seen it happen with a lot of creators for YouTube.

What, what people— it— well, the trick to avoiding it is realizing that you probably—

well, for some of us, we have enough, right? Like, I could probably make twice as much money spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation and using YouTube and TikTok and whatever to do that, but I don't want to do that. I'm not going to enjoy doing that. It's actually something I fight against on the Jordan Harbinger Show in the first place. So why would I ever do that? And the, the trick there is realizing I don't need twice as much money. I'm actually happy with what I have, very happy with what I have now, and really enjoying my work.

I think it's less—

it's sort of one of those easy for you to say kind of situations, because what if you're making $10,000 a year doing something you really like, but you could make $50,000 a year and quit your job that you hate doing something that you didn't really love? But was better than what you're currently doing, you know, then you're in a different kind of position to have and have having to make a choice. But for a lot of creators, I think they would do just fine if they actually realized that they could build a show doing something they love. The problem is it's slower. It's slower. You know, if you want to build for an audio audience like me, you're going to grow at like, I don't know, maybe 5 or 10% per year if you're lucky. If you do something on YouTube and it's really controversial and you get a bunch of like hate clicks and then people criticizing you, you could grow 100% in a week, right?

Try to get all sorts of death threats too at the same time, right?

You could, but a lot of people who do this, they don't care. And also, by the time they realize the downsides to creating disinformation for a living, they're already locked in, right?

They're locked in and the death threats are already there, but so is the money. And they're like, oh, okay, I kind of have to do this.

This is especially true for political commentators. They can grow really quickly. Right. Extreme political opinions can grow you really quickly, but then you have to be in that camp forever. There's no way—

there's no such thing as going into a political thing for the left or for the right and then going, you know what, I actually want to do a more measured show that's just about current events that doesn't have any bias to it. Your audience is going to fly away, right? Because they're looking for those extreme opinions. The algorithm is looking for those extreme opinions.

You're never going to see, you know, Ben Shapiro go, you know what, You know what, to heck with this. I want to do a show about history.

Let's just do that. That's never going to happen. You know, the 99% of the audience is like, no, no, we're here for your takes on woke, you know, lefties or whatever.

Bill Maher, same thing, right? He's never going to go, you know what, this is ridiculous.

I just want to, without any bias whatsoever, cover current events.

No, he wants a panel of people to crap on Donald Trump, right? I mean, that's like what gets right views for that show. And fine., but like, don't— you can never go back from that. There's no coming back. Jerry Springer can—

could—

well, RIP, but he could never— and he did try— you can never go back to being a serious talk show host again.

He actually tried to do that, from what I understand, and then what happened? They ended up making Judge Jerry, where he was like a fake judge for people having ridiculous disputes, because that's what people saw him as.

You can't run for office after doing that. If you're a professional wrestler It's really hard to go, oh, you know what, I'm actually going to be a politician now. Just not going to happen.

All the footage is going to be you tearing your shirt off and jumping onto a bed of nails or something, right?

You can't become a serious person after doing something unserious to build your platform. So that's what I would warn creators against doing.

It's personal brand is what you're talking about.

It is. And it's really hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

It's very, very, very difficult. And And then when people decide they want to cut you down, all they have to do is go back 5 or 10 years and find something embarrassing that you used to do.

You said this, and they cut a clip out, and then they use it against you, right?

Exactly.

It's very hard to pivot, and you basically can't do it.

And the algorithm hates when you do that.

Um, one of the reasons my team always says, man, your show should be crushing it, but the problem is you'll do an interview with a criminal, then you'll do an interview with a psychologist, then you do an interview with a scientist, then you do an interview with an astronaut, and YouTube is like like, where do we put this guy?

What do we do? But my, my team's like, but if you just did interviews about crime, if you just only did interviews with people who had crazy political opinions, if you only did interviews with, uh, drug cartel assassins, YouTube would eventually figure out where you belong and it would feed it to these people. So I do an interview with Sammy the Bull Gravano, former mafia enforcer, and I'll get like a million views.

And then the next one is like, here is a scientist talking about how functional MRI is finding brain disease.

And the—

my YouTube will go, look, this is the people that clicked on the first video with Sammy, and this is the video that you released after that.

And the drop is like insane. It's like, it's like the most disliked video that I've ever had comes after the most liked video that I've ever had because it's too different.

And I would love— I want to be able to create different things based on my interest.

If you can't do that, you have painted yourself into a corner thanks to the YouTube algorithm. So that's why I just warn creators against doing that. You're really making a deal with the devil in so many ways when you do that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, the algorithm wants to put you in a particular lane. Yeah, I see that even on my own channels too, because I created a channel that had a variety of different topic shows inside of it. And what I found is that's not the modern strategy now. You have to create a separate channel for each content area. Also, the algorithm gets confused about, you know, what your channel is all about. It does. Yeah. And it doesn't drive views to you. So, so you have to play into this algorithm, and it is causing us to silo our topics and to become much more narrow. I mean, I built my radio show based on a kind of like a big topic of the internet and the web, but I drilled into like internet security and wireless internet access. So there was all these subtopics that went under that, but, but it was— I felt like it was a variety show, right? It was always a different topic every week and all this kind of stuff. And I think to some degree you're doing that too. So, um, but, but what I see happen on the YouTube side is that people are being pushed into this— well, it has to be the same topic. You know, there can be new information about that topic, but it— the, the narrow and narrower it goes, the better YouTube likes it.

Yeah. And you have to create clickbait teasers where you oversimplify things. So by, by sort definition the algorithm and social media has to distribute misinformation and disinformation because it's designed for that, right?

It's not deliberately like, hey, we want to spread fake crap to everybody. It's what gets them to click within the first 5 seconds.

That's not going to be a thumbnail, right?

It's going to be a thumbnail that says like, you'll never believe what this brain scientist says. Yeah, yeah, it's like, yeah, the answer is like like eggs, or, you know, what—

but it's, it's—

and it's like, no, that's not true, who cares, whatever, I got clicks.

But the beauty of audio is people are getting your feed, so it's like they've subscribed to a magazine that they love.

And so when they love, I don't know, GQ, they're subscribing, and they don't go, oh, I'm not going to read that issue because the person on the COVID I don't know who they are.

They're going to go and thumb through it and go like, oh, a couple of these articles are really good. That's so audio is kind of like a magazine subscription, right? You get what you get and you trust the curation of that magazine up until you don't.

The algorithm is, we think you're going to like this and you tell it what you like and don't like. And unfortunately what it's doing is operating at your most base instincts with your shortest attention span in mind. So audio, you can make a really good living creating anything you want as long as it's of interest to a majority of your audience most of the time.

So what's great about this is I, I love—

my favorite letters to get are, hey, I listen to your show and honestly I never think that I'm going to be interested in the topic, and then I listen to it anyway and I always am interested in the topic in the middle and after the show is done.

That is a high compliment because what YouTube does is go, hey, we already know you're interested in this, here's 87 more videos about pretty much the exact same thing.

And you go, okay, great, and you watch that until you fall asleep in your cereal bowl.

But with audio podcasting, you go 'Jordan interviewed a mafia enforcer?

That's kind of weird.

I'm gonna check that out.' 'Oh, Jordan interviewed this brain scientist? I'm not really interested in that, but you know what, he does a good job with some of these things. I'm gonna listen to it anyway.' 'Jordan's got an advice segment on Fridays.

That's—

I don't really care about advice shows.

Wow, that was really entertaining and insightful. I'm going to keep listening to those.' So your audience learns to love what you create, whereas the algorithm says, 'You are going to tell us what you like, and we're going to serve you really stupid crap that just scratches most of that itch, but it's got to be 30 seconds long or 3 minutes long. That's the problem with creating for that. And, and you can't, you're boxed in. You can never make a hard pivot because you'll, you'll fail. The algorithm will drop you like a hot stone.

Do you think that that's gonna, uh, fade out and change? I mean, are we just in like a, like a weird era in the content business now? Or I think it's, do you think it's gonna double down, especially with AI?

I think it's gonna get worse well before it gets better because right now you're, the algorithm says, here's a bunch of creators that we think you're gonna like, even though it's a bunch of like dumb 27-year-old guys dropping balls off of a dam and seeing if they bounce, right?

Uh, that's especially on Shorts.

Yes.

And, and that's— and so Shorts, and then those do even better.

And then TikTok's like, screw long form, how about only short videos, but a lot of it with music?

And then AI's like, how about only short videos, except why do we need people to create them?

I'll just make fake women, scantily clad women that are of dubious—

like, they— the underage looking kind of. And that's gonna get— so you're gonna end up with idiocracy well before you're going to end up with any sort of backlash. The good thing is I feel like Gen Z, and I would love to see the data on this, I feel like Gen Z is getting really sick of that crap in larger and larger numbers.

So maybe Gen whatever generation comes after that, I forget what it's called, Gen Alpha or whatever, maybe they'll go, God, this is just brain dead.

We need something else. But I don't know, man.

I mean, there that it's, it sort of remains to be seen if you could sort of reprogram the human attention span to go, no, I'd rather hear an hour-long in-depth conversation about something so that I actually learn instead of watching girls jump roping on TikTok, if you know what I mean.

I think, Jordan, that's a good point, is that are we really dealing with a problem of attention spans? But I'm not, I'm not 100% convinced of that because, because I do think long-form content is getting audience. So you have this balance and everybody keeps talking about Shorts and long-form content. Vertical video versus horizontal video. I do know that YouTube makes more money off of long-form content, of course, because they can put more ads in, right? Yeah. So that's the other end of the spectrum, is that I just— I don't know how this is going to play out. You know, people's attention is mindless, really, on the short side. Yes. And there's much fewer opportunities to monetize over there. So it's true, less of incentive to create content for that, though most people are doing long-form content and then using AI tools to create their Shorts. Yeah, which is a whole other conversation, is that I'm hearing others talk about that people need to take Shorts a little bit more seriously than they are, not just pumping it into CapCut or these, these these, uh, shorts generation platforms because they don't do a very good job of that.

Yeah, they don't, they don't. I mean, look, your attention span can be reprogrammed, and when you watch something interesting that's long-term, you can do it. My son is only 6 years old. We watch a lot of videos at night, um, before we go to sleep, and I usually pick shorts because they're short. But one time he asked me, uh, if there were any people on Earth that we didn't know about because they lived in the forest or something, and I said, yeah, we have uncontacted tribes. And I searched for uncontacted tribes, and there was like a 45-minute documentary on YouTube. And I was like, oh gosh, I'm gonna play this. 5 minutes in, he's gonna be like, this is boring, what's next thing? And— or he's gonna fall asleep. 30 minutes in, 20 minutes in, he's like, okay, why don't they have guns?

You know, how do— what happens if other people go there? How come they don't have technology?

And I'm like, oh my God, he's actually paid attention to this entire thing. We watched that entire 45-minute documentary, and when it was over, he was like, he's like, is there more like this? Is there more about these guys and this stuff, uh, that live in the Stone Age? I want to learn more about this.

And I couldn't believe it.

A 6-year-old just watched a 45-minute documentary on uncontacted tribes, and he actually wanted to see more.

Because this— my son is the kind of kid who looks at Shorts and it's like, people building a Lego boat, flips the screen. People blowing things up, flips the screen. You know what I mean? This is— he was a TikTok, like, YouTube Shorts kid during breakfast, and then at night I basically had him watch something he was interested in.

He was not bored at all. It's, it's just we've trained ourselves to be this dumb, you know, flighty ADHD kind of like brains. Uh, no shame on people who actually have the real disorder. I just mean like people who can't focus on anything. But you can easily train yourself to just not do that by watching something interesting.

In fact, most people can. I don't think the same people— I, I would be very surprised is if somebody who uses a ton of YouTube Shorts and TikTok can't watch a movie anymore.

I really doubt that that's the case.

Yeah, I think they can still handle it.

They can still watch an hour of Game of Thrones or whatever their favorite show is.

They're not unable to do it. They've just trained their brain to mindlessly scroll while they're on the toilet.

Something you can undo.

Yeah, you know, and I think as we think about these topics— and Jordan, you're really causing me to to rethink some of these things around the distinction between audio podcasts and a YouTube video. It's not so much that it's a video, it's more to do— it's this algorithm that's trying to manipulate audiences and to also train the content creator to start to feel like that they have a J-O-B, right? Their job is to feed YouTube, right? Their job isn't to get fulfillment out of being a content creator. They're, they're pushing people to be almost like content robots, right? Exactly. Is generating content for the algorithm.

100%. The companies that create these things have no incentive to make sure that you are happy doing what you're doing.

You are completely—

I don't care.

You are completely expendable. I know people be like, no, no, they make money off your stuff. If you You stop creating for YouTube tomorrow, they could not care less.

There are millions of people to take your place.

They don't care. Podcasting is a little bit different, right? Because it's decentralized. Advertisers are buying your trust because they're paying top dollar for your endorsement.

And if people want to argue that your endorsement is equal to a YouTube ad, I would point you to the price CPM of an ad on YouTube versus the price of an endorsement from a top creator. Why does it cost American Express $50 CPM or more me to recommend an American Express card when they can buy an ad on YouTube for $3 CPM?

Why are they paying me to do that?

Well, I'll tell you, it's because my audience works, is converting, and is exactly the type of people they want to talk to. And my recommendation carries weight versus a prefab ad that goes out on a YouTube video that you're watching about cars.

So it's really a completely different animal. If your show goes away, yes, there are tons of other podcasts, But gosh, finding someone else who has the same demographic, who has the same amount of trust as a Jordan Harbinger or a Rob Greenlee or somebody else with a similar audience, there's not millions of those people.

There are, I don't know, a couple hundred at the same scale.

And then you have to start buying smaller shows, which is harder, and you're reaching the same people overlapping. It's not as good. There's just not that many. If you look at big YouTube creators, gosh, there are tens of thousands and they do all kinds of different things. Things, look at the top, I don't know, 1.1% or whatever of podcasting.

Gosh, it's just not that many people.

It's just— no, it's not. It's a much smaller medium, no question about it. You know, I think especially when you start talking about ones that are getting, you know, more than 50,000 downloads per episode, the number narrows very fast.

Yeah.

So what do you think, Jordan, is the biggest reason that causes a podcaster, once they've reached kind of like a plateau of sorts, right, that they've kind of stalled. You know, let's say that they reached, you know, maybe 1,000 downloads an episode, and but they can't seem to get it to, you know, 2,000 or something like that. What do you think, just based on your own path? Now, added, back when you started, it was a very different medium, right? Growing was, was much more organic. But I think if, if you contrast it with just audio, I think a lot of the principles of growth in audio are, are the same. I think it's when you throw into the mix the video component that it becomes much more complicated.

Agree 100%, man. Look, I've, I grew my show early on by asking bloggers to link to me and I would link to their blog on my podcast website. Website. People still did that back then.

But you know what, the basics of that have not changed that much.

One of the key things that I do that grows my show is I'll interview someone like, uh, Mariana Van Zeller, who does that show Trafficked on Nat Geo, right? It's a really cool TV show. I love it. She has a podcast. I interviewed her, and she was like, she was like, hey, you know a lot about podcasting, can I pick your brain? I was like, absolutely, you know, I'd be honored to help you. And she—

so one of the ideas we came up with is she was like, I'm having, you know, it's so much to create a show, and I'm I was like, hey, why don't you just run the interview I did with you in your show feed?

It'll get me more listeners because people will be like, wow, this guy didn't do a half-assed job. And I kind of enjoyed this interview with Mariana Van Zeller, who I'm a fan of because I subscribe to her show feed. And she gets a little bit of a break because she can take like the whole week off, you know, the show's done.

And so it's a win-win, right? It's a win-win.

Feed drop, is that what you're talking about? It's a feed drop.

Yeah, it's a feed drop, aka you link to me, I link to you. It's basically the same thing. Thing, but for podcasters, and it works really, really well.

And another thing I do is I've got ad inventory. Let's say I've got— I don't even know, let's say I have 40 slots a month. It's probably more than that, I actually have no clue, but let me just assume that. Let's say I have 50, maybe 40 of them are sold.

Okay, so what do I do with those other 10?

Most podcasts, they would run some like really low CPM programmatic ad in there, or they might leave it blank.

Yeah, what I do is I, so, oh, let me reach out to my buddy Rich Roll or another podcaster, and I'm like, hey man, what if I give you like 300,000 impressions this month?

I got 300,000 impressions just kind of laying around, it's unsold. You give me 300,000 impressions, might use a platform like Swap.fm or just do it manually, and it's like, great, doesn't cost me anything, doesn't cost them anything, right?

They have unsold inventory too.

Has always worked, right?

Yeah.

And so then they're doing a read for me, It's—

they're recommending a friend's show and I'm recommending, recommending a friend's show. It's like there's no skin off my nose, and the more the merrier. But I think a lot of times podcasters, one, they don't set this up, they don't execute on it, they're too lazy about it, or worse, they think, uh-oh, if I send people to their show, those people might leave my show and stick with that other person.

That is not something you should really be thinking about. If somebody leaves your show for another show, it's because that was a better fit. But bear in mind, they're going to have the same concern, right?

People might leave their show to come to your show.

That's actually just a good exchange of audience. Somebody who like really wants to hear more about spirituality and athletics, I don't mind if they stop listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show and start listening to Rich Roll because it's a better fit for them. And somebody who's like more into science and more into extreme stuff, or like watch the occasional interview with undercover cop or criminal, but they might leave Rich Roll and come listen to me. More than likely they're just going to keep listening to both of us and then go, gosh, now I have another show I feel like I have to listen to. This is terrible but amazing at the same time. It's the best kind of problem to have. Right? So that's what really happens. And I find when I exchange feed drops, I'll get like a few thousand more listeners, I'll give them a few thousand more listeners, and it's win-win. And you don't burn out your audience by making good recommendations.

Nobody's ever written to me and gone, you know, I'm so sick of you recommending good movies, good podcasts, good TV shows, good products to buy. Shame on you.

It's terrible.

You know, at best they write in and go, oh my gosh, I hate you because I bought a mattress and this thing is amazing and you were not kidding, it's the best night of sleep I've ever had and I love that it heats up.

And I'm like, I told you, you know, you just, you just have to be careful about what you endorse. Don't endorse crap. Don't endorse crappy shows. Don't endorse crappy products.

Your audience will trust you, and you will grow that way if you do those swaps and you do those ad swaps. It's such a—

and feed drops.

It's really a great way to grow your show. It doesn't cost you anything. And if everybody did that, your shows would all be growing. No one's going to find you on a recommendation engine because they don't kind of really exist. And what are you going to do, buy $4 million worth of ads to grow your hobby podcast? I mean, if you can do that, cool, go for it, man. I'll help. I'll sell you consulting if you've got that much money to burn, right?

But if you don't, then this is the way to do it, man.

Keep, keep showing up every day, create stuff that's good, retain your audience, and then get new audience by, you know, feed drops and ad swaps. That's really what people should be doing. And if you do that for years on end, you're gonna have a great show that's growing all the time.

So it sounds like that, that's the attitude attitude that you have about the promotion of your podcast, but do you think that there's been a change in the industry of these larger creators, maybe even larger than your show, but maybe smaller than your show, kind of shifting to kind of like a safety, anti-competitive type of a mode? I've kind of, I've been wondering about that. So if you talk about the upper tier of creators now, Do they generally have your, your kind of ethic and, and approach here?

Or so far I think so. I mean, I don't talk to Joe Rogan about doing show swaps, you know, or anything like that, but sure. But like when I go on swap.fm, which I don't think is available to the public yet but will be really soon, it's got a bunch of networks on there.

When I go on there, I'll request swaps from shows that I used to request and they would be like, do you want to buy ads? We're not going to give you an ad. Now I request a swap Hey, can we swap with a show on there? And they'll reply within 24 hours and they're like, yeah, let's do it.

'Cause they know that it actually works now. So I think a lot of networks have gotten into the game and they understand like, oh, we kind of need to do this.

Especially after they realized, remember when Apple sort of was like, hey, we're not gonna let people auto download your show for 5 years now. What if they stopped listening? I think when people saw their numbers get cut and they saw more competition coming into the space, now a lot of networks are starting to realize like, oh, we kind of need to do this if we're gonna survive. So I actually find, I'm sure some top creators are like, I don't wanna share any, you know, blah, blah, blah. But those are much fewer and far between. I think most of them, they join a network and the network decides for them if they're gonna be doing a swap or not. They don't even, the creator doesn't even necessarily come into play. I don't think I've gotten very many rejections on swaps. I'm trying to think the last time somebody said that they wouldn't do it 'cause they didn't like that idea. And I literally can't even think of the last time that that happened.

Yeah, so what do you think about, you know, these, these creators out there that have plateaued and they, they start getting kind of desperate about growing again, right? And I think, you know, I know a couple of shows that are, that are pretty good-sized shows that have seen a decline in audience here over the last, um, 2 months or something like that. 2 months? Oh wow. Well, I mean, just kind of like it's not not really growing. And it's hard to know if it's the individual show or if it's—

I mean, it's the holiday, it was the holidays.

I don't know. First, first rule, never look at your December and January stats and make any—

try to make anything— read those tea leaves. That's impossible. Um, the other thing is that, that's like those people who look at their downloads every week and they're like, oh my God, look at all those people that didn't download. And you're like, yeah, uh, Fourth of July weekend, people were drunk, they weren't downloading your podcast, dude.

You know, like, oh, uh, yeah, Thanksgiving, your traffic went down.

Uh, too early to panic there, buddy.

Way too early, right?

And you see other things like kids go back to school, and I see like this weird dive, and then like over the next month it sort of climbs back up.

And I'm like, oh yeah, those are parents that are tearing their hair out because they have back to school and they haven't been going to the gym and they haven't been downloading the show because they don't—

they're trying to catch up on sleep, you know.

Their kids are back in school.

So like all these little tea leaf things, it's really Really, you shouldn't try and read those things.

If your show has stopped growing, do the ad swaps and do the feed drops if you want to.

Use introcast.io or something like that if you wanna do a little bit of sharing, but don't panic if your show hasn't grown in the last 90 days, whatever. And it doesn't matter what 90 days those even are.

Look at your show over a span of years and months and months at least, and years or quarters at the very shortest period of time.

Don't look at the last week and decide that the game is up.

Is I think for people who do a show and it's not their living, which is 99.99% of podcasters probably, don't think about monetizing it. I don't understand this with pod—

I love Legos. I build them all the time with my son, and I even build sets alone because I just found the hobby so relaxing. Um, and I loved it as a kid, and I sort of got back into it when I had kids. But again, I'll buy a set that's just not for my son, it's for me, and I'll build that thing like a weekend if if he's, you know, at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and it's so relaxing. I'll read an audiobook at the same time or watch movies all day doing it.

It's amazing.

I don't go, all right, if I build this Death Star, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna monetize this. I gotta figure out how to monetize my Lego creation.

No. I know people that collect trains. You know what they don't think? When am I gonna monetize this hobby?

Nobody buys a bunch of stamps and goes, I am going to monetize this stamp collection, right?

You know, the top 2 questions that I get asked from people that wanna start a podcast now was, how do I make money doing it? Yeah, you don't. It's the worst way. How do I grow audience? Those are the two, and they— yeah, they happen in that order too. Yes.

Yeah, of course. But it's like, it's ridiculous. You— if you start working out and you're like, I love CrossFit, you're not thinking, how do I monetize this? Podcasting is somehow weirdly one of these hobbies that people go, oh man, this is so fun, how do I get rich doing it? The answer is you probably don't. Think about this like the movie business or the TV business. This. You started a podcast, that's great. You're acting in your community theater, that's great.

That's different from dropping everything in your career, moving to Los Angeles to try to get discovered, and auditioning for commercials and movie roles.

That's what people are doing when they start podcasting and think, well, how am I going to monetize this? You have a better chance of becoming a television or movie star than you do creating a hit podcast that actually pays your bills.

You literally have a better chance in Hollywood.

Think about it.

Why do you think that, that is, Jordan? I mean, what's the core reason for that? Is it, is it individual talent, or is it just, uh, topics just have a variety of appeal?

Yeah, I mean, there's just a, an, a huge number of actors that can go in television commercials, uh, in movies and productions, and there's just a very finite number of people that are going to get paid to talk about Apple Vision Pro and the iPhone.

It's just there's a couple of big tech shows. There's Linus Tech Tips and, you know, Leo Laporte and whoever else. And like, then there's everybody else, and they're all keeping— they're all working a day job, and there's a reason for that.

And it's not because they're not talented, it's because there's just not that much room in the space. There is a ton of dudes like me interviewing random people, uh, on a podcast and making money doing it.

Very few of us are making a living, and the only reason I'm able to do it is because I started 19 years ago. If I started right now, I don't think anybody would be like, a white middle-aged man with a podcast? How do I—

what—

how do I sign up for that? I gotta follow that guy. No one is doing that. Nobody. I just happen to have started so early that I have this massive mountain of listeners that have like put their trust in me for a long time. Yeah. And that's— thank God for that. Otherwise I would be in—

I'd be looking up an impossible climb.

Um, so I just sort of got lucky. So assume right now that you are not like the Jay-Z of podcasts. Investing and that you are never going to monetize it and life's going to be a lot easier on you. And frankly, turning something you love into a job is a bad idea for most people with most things.

Um, I know, like, again, I know a lot of creators that turn to YouTube and now they hate what they do. That's too bad.

They used to— it sounds like the same thing, right? I mean, you know, what, what's happening at YouTube is reflective of the reality of the world now.

It is. Rob, I know we're at the end of the time and I'm running right up against my next thing, but I want to thank you for having me on the show.

Been really fun. All right, Jordan. Well, thank you for being here with me, and I appreciate it. I know you got to run off to your next thing, so—

Yeah, I wish I could stay longer, but parenting duty calls.

Somebody's got to pick up my kids from school.

Unfortunately, that person is me.

Okay, take care. Okay, Jordan, thank you. Bye, everyone. Bye. So, uh, Jordan had to take off, but I have a couple more things that I would like to cover on the show, and I, I want to take your questions. There's a couple of them in here that I wanted to talk about too. But the big thing that I wanted to talk about here is that there is kind of a, a list of strategies that you can take. And I know I was going to cover that, and I think we covered some of that with, with Jordan, but, but there's other ones out there I've been doing a little research on too and trying to get a picture of what the landscape looks like right now in 2026 and where we're going and what's working and what's not. And really, it's just because I have this top 8 list doesn't mean that all these are going to work for you. And I think that's the key way to look at this. You know, it's probably a list that you need to consider with what you're doing with a podcast and opt in or not. You know, like Jordan shared this kind of like feed drop kind of concept where you're sharing promotions or even full episodes with other comparable shows that want to work with you. And I think it does get back to having relationships with other creators in the podcasting space, which Jordan comes out of an era where where podcasting was very strong on the community side and people worked together. You know, he did start very early, which means that his approach to podcasting may not be reflective of how all creators approach the medium. So I'm going to go through this top 10 list of sorts, and here I'll pull it up on the screen here so you can see it with me, and I can, I can run through this really quick. And let me pull it up. Looks like I'm already screen sharing, so I can probably share this tab right now and bring it up to the stage. So I have this list here of ranked strategies. And the first one on the list is taking advantage of short-form video clips is one of the approaches. We didn't really specifically talk about that on the show with Jordan, but I do think it's a valid thing to think about as a way to possibly do some cross-promotion into other platforms. And I think that's the key way of thinking about this is creating clips, which I've heard some discussion lately about this topic that was really more to do with making sure that those clips are good, right? So you have this issue that people are cranking out these short-form clips via like CapCut and these, these shorts AI platforms, and they don't necessarily do a good job with them. So, you know, and I'm increasingly thinking, you know, I see that even with the platforms that I use is that it doesn't always do a great job with that. So, but it is a way to reach a different audience, right? And hopefully convert them to consume your long-form content. But there's also a lot of research out there that's saying that short-form consumers, right? The people that are watching a lot of short-form vertical videos are not necessarily always long-form viewers or listeners. So, So there isn't always a one-to-one correlation between growing your shorts and growing your long-form content. In some ways, you're building two separate audiences. And that's kind of the kind of bigger picture of how you, you really need to start looking at this, this content creator kind of ecosystem is, is that all of these platforms are really creating opportunities to find different audiences and creating one piece of content that then can be created into or generated or however you want to create these things that can be utilized in these different platforms and realizing that they're different mediums, right? It's just like the conversation that Jordan and I had around the difference between doing an audio podcast podcast and doing a YouTube full episode, right? The expectations of the algorithm on YouTube are different than audio podcasting. So, you know, I've been trying to play around with this concept of trying to make my format work well as a YouTube video, which would be very kind of focused on a particular topic, right? Which is what I did with this episode tonight with Jordan. But then you could also see in the conversation, I could be as structured as I want to, but conversations from a podcaster perspective tend to be different. You know, if you're pre-recording a video for YouTube, you can use a script, you can use an outline, and you can be precise. You can use a certain kind of B-roll video clip, and then you can be very specific on the top 8 topics, right? And I'm, I'm doing that to some degree right now on the screen, and that is kind of a YouTube thing, right, where you bring up on the, on the screen this, this kind of list that you go through, like the top 5 list of things that you have to do to do such and such a thing. Thing, right? And it becomes kind of like a how-to-do-it type of a video format, which is a little bit different than podcasting. Podcasting is a conversation. So, me having a conversation with Jordan, talking about these 8 things specifically, really kind of conflicts with the format of an audio podcast. So, you know, I can try and do I'm, I'm, I'm staying on the show for a few extra minutes here to run through this outline, which would have been helpful at the beginning of the show if I was playing into the algorithm and what YouTube is specifically looking for. So, and then guest social amplification. So if you have guests on and you can get your, your guests to promote your show to their audience, And I do think that one of the big things that you have to think about with guests is that when you do an episode with them, it needs to be something different than what they normally do, right? It needs to be a value-added element that is not always available from that person. Just like with Jordan tonight, he does a very different kind of a show than I do here. I like to have Jordan on to talk about about what he's seeing in the podcasting space from a pro creator, one that's achieved, you know, a massive amount of success and trying to get his thoughts on what he's seeing working and not working. And then number 4 on the list is niche community value-first posting, which takes a particular group that you have around your show and really kind adding value to that community in any kind of a posting that you're doing. So you're going after a niche, right? And you're focusing on being a solution to that niche or that genre. And that's really key, I think, to grow and to make your show more relevant to your audience. But it also requires that you know who your community is and you know what they want. And that's where this feedback process comes in of people wanting to share what is interest to them. And then you create content that supports that interest. And sometimes it's hard to know what those particular interests are, right? And Kevin, I appreciate the comment, good discussion, And thank you so much. And I try and do kind of different kind of content here too, that helps people have an understanding, but trying to walk this line between what YouTube wants and what the audio podcast space wants too. And number 5 on my list is email and WhatsApp owned audience. So that's an interesting twist, trying to create a WhatsApp group that maybe supports your podcast or create a newsletter getting your audience to give you their email address so you can stay in regular contact with them, uh, around topics that are coming up. That's, that's something that I really have never done with any of my podcasting, and I, I really should do that. I just haven't, and I'm not sure why I haven't. Just, I guess, because I've been trying to play in so many different sandboxes with podcasting for so many years that I just haven't gone down that path, even though a lot of people say that creating your own newsletter around your topic genre is a very powerful thing to do. And so the next one, number 6 on the list, is AI clip volume and testing. So when you say AI clips, so you're creating shorter segments of your show based on carving them up. I know if you look at the Descript tool, they, they can create a different version of your show that's maybe shorter, more concise, that you can also post and promote that maybe drives an audience that maybe isn't into, you know, hour-long or hour-and-a-half-long content that you can post online to try and drive a tighter set of value on the content side that can hook people to want to engage with you. So, so that's— and then testing those to figure out what that formula looks like. And that's something that I played around with a little bit in the past, and, and it works to some degree. I mean, it's almost like creating a different version of your content, which I have done with my radio show. I created a— well, my radio show was a 60-minute show, and then I created a different version of that show. This was all manual back in those days, but for public radio that was only a half hour. So I would cut out sections of the audio that I felt were, were not as relevant, right, or not as interesting. So if I could stitch together or edit down an episode down to 30 minutes, then maybe it would appeal to a different audience. And maybe expand the audience. And then number 7 is structured cross-promos. And that was really the topic that Jordan talked about, about these, these promo swaps and feed drops and things like that. So you have, you know, you're working with other shows that are kind of compatible with you and you can drive, you know, exposure to their audience and then you can you can give that creator exposure to your show in exchange, right? And oftentimes those need to be like, like impressions. So really to make that be fair and worth it for both parties to participate, the, the two shows involved need to be of similar size is the best way to go about that. So it's a fair exchange, right? If you have one show that's that's got a million downloads per episode swapping with a show that only has 100,000, that's not necessarily what I would call a fair exchange of impressions, right? So, so that's the other structural problem. So if you're wanting to— so let's say, and it's hard to know this too, I think it's oftentimes a guess and by golly kind of a thing where you think this other show that maybe you have a friendship with or you would like to work with, you think has a certain amount of success or download scale, and that's comparable to you, then reaching out to them. If they say yes or they say no, they may ask you what your download numbers are, and you need to probably share what your numbers are, and that may be the criteria that either allows the deal to happen or not, but it also depends on what the charity of each party is around trying to maybe help another show, right? So if you have a relationship with another content creator, and this gets back to building connections in the industry and, and building community and how important that is, could benefit you with your podcast. And then number 8 here is Spotify Video and kind of trying to work with your, your canvas of your show, which I'm not sure what that— I'm not sure what I was meaning by that, but, but Spotify Video could be a way to grow your show, not unlike what YouTube can do for your show too, is it? But it does reach, I think, a slightly different audience, though there's increasing amount of overlap between people that are listening to a podcast and watching that same show on YouTube.

YouTube.

You're starting to see it in the numbers. More people are using their televisions, which means that potentially what you have— this, the scenario is, is that people can listen in the car or off of their mobile device to the audio, and then when they get home, they can finish in a video form on their big screen TV on a, on a YouTube experience. And so that may be kind of this hybrid grand where, you know, you see like a, like a Joe Rogan's a good example of how this works, where he's got a huge audio podcast, but he also has a huge YouTube fan base too. So, so that's, that's where the opportunity of this blending between these two very different platforms and distribution opportunities and oftentimes different different audiences too that you may be able to reach. So increasingly people are thinking about YouTube, if they're an audio podcaster, as a way to reach new audience with their shows. And I think to some degree that makes sense, right? If they start watching you on YouTube and they get in their car and they like your show, then maybe they're more likely to find you in Apple Podcasts and listen in CarPlay or something like that in their car while they're So, you know, I think that there is some logic to that. So, so I wanted to run through this, that this list and share it with you, and hopefully it was helpful for you tonight. And, you know, I certainly appreciate you being here, and I thank Jordan for joining me tonight on the show. And I'll get this out as an audio and video podcast in the next day. And so if you wanted to check it out in Apple Podcasts or on, on YouTube, you can do that as well. It's also, um, my, my video feed to Facebook, I, I think, errored out, so it's not going to be on, on Facebook on a live stream right now, um, but it will be on X and LinkedIn and YouTube. So So I'll say good night and thank you so much for all the comments in here. I, I appreciate it, and, and I hope you'll come back and join me next, uh, Wednesday at 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, for another episode of the, of the New Media Show. So I've got some terrific guests that are coming up and, and great conversations, and we can keep this conversation going between you and me and the, the new form of the New Media Show. So if you were a fan of the show in the past, it's, it's quite different now. I am playing around with some potential ideas for this show that could be more conversational to, to what, what the past of this show was. I've been thinking about a panel show of sorts where I can bring in like 4 regular people onto the show to talk about about the news of the week when it comes to new media, video, and podcasting, and try and tap into a group of people that kind of spans the spectrum of this medium. Though I've been enjoying having guests on so I can talk in very specific areas that are important to people right now. And Barbara, I certainly appreciate you spending time And everybody else that's with me here tonight, I appreciate you being here and following the, the, the New Media Show. And if you wanted to reach out to me, um, here's my contact information. It's just rob.greenlee@gmail.com, and I'm also on X @RobGreenlee. And if you wanted to go, uh, check out all the past episodes, you can go to newmediashow.com to get all of the audio and video that's, that's available for this show going back. Um, I think this is going to be 649, uh, episodes. This is the, the 649th episode. I just pushed out an episode from Podfest that I recorded for The New Media Show live on stage, uh,, and, and I talked to three terrific, uh, people up on stage— James Cridland, uh, Rox Codes, and, um, and who was— oh, who was the other person that I had on there? I'm drawing a blank on it right now. I guess, um, a person that, that was an expert on, on video. And so that's what the topic of the, of the session was, was video and how that's impacting podcasting. So go check that out if you have an interest in learning a little bit more on the complexity of how video is impacting the podcasting space. So thank you very much, and I hope you have a wonderful evening. And looks like we got one more comment in, and oh, it's Barbara again. Thank you so much, Barbara. And I hope you have a wonderful evening. Thank you very much.

Good night.