Rob Greenlee examines why podcasters chase money first and lose their audience. Monetization pathways like ads and Patreon can cause burnout and kill authenticity. Success comes from aligning your podcast with why you actually want to make it, not chasing revenue.
Chapters
Well, welcome to Podcast Tips, and my name is Rob Greenlee, and thank you so much for being here with me tonight. I appreciate you being here, uh, just after the, the new year was rung in, 2025. So I'm excited to keep this series going into 2025, and, and thank you so much for being here and Uh, the topic I'm going to dive in tonight, and you could probably see it from the metadata that I posted, uh, is this whole topic of making money in a podcast and how that's, uh, something that, uh, especially new podcasters, uh, need to be aware of to some degree, uh, from the good side as well as the, the downside. So I thought I would talk about this tonight, and I'm not sure that it gets talked about as much as it probably needs to. But I think it's something that's very important to every podcaster, every media creator, content creator, whatever you want to call it. And that's why it's important to talk about. So really at the core of what I'm going to talk about is the motivation behind podcasting and the realities, good or bad, of making money from doing that. And is it actually right to have that expectation? And I think that is an important component of this. You know, this focus on monetization as a primary goal has been something that I've been seeing in the podcasting medium for quite a few years now, and it's been growing in its momentum. And I think there's some There's definitely good sides to it. Monetization has always been a part of podcasting, more or less. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about the history of monetization with podcasting tonight, but it is a long and I'm gonna say kind of a rough road. Might be the easiest thing to say. Podcasting came from a reaction to over-commercialization of radio to some degree. So I, I think what we're seeing happening increasingly is that people see this as something that they wanna pursue as a career and as something that they would like to make a living from and be able to devote full-time energy to it and to see where that goes. And I think when you mush together this whole video conversation on top of this, YouTube and these platforms that are trying to do revenue share relationships, to some degree, that stuff didn't really exist in the past. So this whole opportunity of revenue share just wasn't something that was very popular out there. So, but as we've added technology layers to podcasting, it's becoming more and more possible to do that. And I think, you know, this shift towards revenue first is really what I wanna talk about tonight is, is that many new podcasters, many new creators getting into the medium have that as their kind of focus, right, at the beginning, right, of what they're coming into the medium to obtain. And I think that comes from a lot of things that are bumbling, or not bumbling, but bubbling under the surface that are creating that from the economic environment that we're in people's perception that there's a lot of money to be made in podcasting. Just, you know, case in point is $250 million deal with like a Joe Rogan or whatever, and people are seeing dollar signs in their eyes about the opportunity, right? And, you know, whether or not it's practical to have that ambition is probably part of what I'm talking about. Tonight, but it's also really to help, I think, you as a content creator kind of get grounded in the whys of why you're creating content really to begin with, and what, what is the appropriate expectation that you should have going into it, right? Is it, is it right for you to expect that you're going to make money right away? I mean, technically it's possible. And I'll just say that it's something that the technology and the medium has progressed to the point where yes, you can. You can actually launch with ads if you want to through programmatic advertising, and you can make it happen from day one, you know, with your trailer episode or your first full episode, you can have ad insertion points in your content and you can be driving ad campaigns into your program and you can start making money from day one. And I think that increasingly, if you have that goal of making revenue from it, I think there is a case to be made that you are setting yourself up to achieve that, right? So you have that potential because you've maybe thought about maybe areas in your content that maybe you would reserve or get in a habit of creating certain locations in your content that would accommodate a host read or a dynamically ad-inserted programmatic ad. And I think it's perfectly fine to set your, your show up to accommodate that. But I think where we get kind of lost in the weeds on this And this is kind of the reality check that I want to do on this is that not every podcaster has that opportunity, right? And not every podcaster has really direct monetization as a goal. So I think that there's monetization layers that take many, many levels here. There's monetization that comes from advertising, and then there's monetization that comes from using your podcast to build a community, to maybe offer support services around another product that you happen to have in your portfolio. It could be a company, it could be your own, you know, your own mastermind or your own course, or that's increasingly becoming popular to do out there too. So there's, there's abundance of ways that you can monetize your podcast. And I guess what I'm seeing with a lot of new people that are getting started with podcasting is they want to have some strategy in place when they start. And I'm not saying that that's a bad idea. I think it may be a good idea to go into it with a a, a thought around that. I mean, how that might happen, how you might want to do it, how it might be blended into your content to make sure that it, it works, right? I mean, I think that's the— that's, that's an important thing too. And then the other part of it is really training your audience to expect it. I think that there is a danger of starting up a show or a podcast and not having ads in it for an extended period of time or not having promotional things in it or calls to action. You know, an ad is really a call to an action by the part of an audience member to take an action, go to an advertiser, purchase something, right? That's the goal of what we're trying to do. So, you know, talking about advertising and talking about monetization is really a deeper conversation around calls to action in your program. Now, calls to action can take many forms, right? Calls to action can be, "I want you to go here and sign up for my newsletter." Calls to action can be, "Go to this sponsor that keeps this, keeps the lights on, keeps the streams flowing, helps pay for my time to commit to formatting a show, putting it together, distributing it. And I do think one of the reasons that we have this expectation is because of the escalating demands that are being put on content creators now. And this is a much deeper conversation, and I will definitely explore it, and I probably have to some degree on this series that I've done, is the increasing complexity of being a content creator and, and someone that wants to get into this full-time, really, it's at the end of the day, it's really a full-time commitment. So in the early days of podcasting, a lot of people did it as like a hobby. They did it on the side. They, they started one because they had a passion for a hobby that they were doing, and, or they, they thought maybe it could be supportive of some sort of business activity that they were doing where they could share their expertise. And I think those are all valid reasons. But the bigger picture of that is, is that the spectrum of this is pretty, pretty broad. And you also have to think about the context of expectations and how that sets you up for maybe disappointment. Is it sustainable? You know, at some point, podcasters It's always been very common. It isn't something that's just been happening the last few months where podcasters have run against a wall, right? They've run up against, you know, life, and they've, you know, they've had things come up to get in the way of them being able to get an episode out, and it drops to the wayside and it becomes, you know, welcome to pod fading, which became a popular term many, many years ago. So it isn't like this concept of starting a show, having all this gusto and energy to get it off the ground, and you're going to be the next Joe Rogan as the, as the thought, um, making that happen can sometimes take a lot longer than you might expect. And so that, that is, that is something I've experienced, and to some degree I still experience it. So it's, it's not You know, it gets back to the why. Why are you doing it, right? Think about that. Think about why you're wanting to be a content creator and think about what value you think that you can bring to the market and do your research and find out, you know, what other shows are out there, what other shows are you maybe competing against, right? What's your brand that you have in the market and how that maps to whatever content that you want to make. So then you add this layer of that on top of this whole thing of these rise or the rising of these big platforms, right? The YouTubes and Spotifys and Apple and these big platforms that have aggregated huge audiences. And to some degree that there was a lot of other players involved in podcasting and just a few years ago, like Facebook and Google from the standpoint of Google Search, and there were even Microsoft. I mean, I worked for Microsoft, I ran the Zoom podcasting platform for Microsoft for 7 years, and they got tired of it, and I started to work for Xbox, and Xbox never supported it. And so there's been this kind of churn around the support for podcasting because of some of these challenges, right? They were, it was difficult to monetize. These companies wanted to make a lot of money and with whatever that they're doing. And I think as you look at the marketplace today with what YouTube is doing and what Spotify is doing, you can kind of see why things are happening the way they are just from that lens alone, monetization, right? Both Spotify and YouTube are advertising-driven platforms, right? They have membership subscription processes. So you can see a common model here. And I talked about in last week's episode about Spotify, right? And Spotify is trying to become like YouTube. And while that's okay, you contrast that with what we've seen and What is the reality with Apple? Apple has been predominantly the largest distributor or distribution, not distributor, but consumption platform for podcasts for just about the whole life of podcasting. My whole experience over 20 years has really revolved around what Apple has done and what Apple's influence is. And so that's been, but you know what? When you really back up and you look at it, Apple doesn't have an advertising strategy. So they just don't have one that, that they actually started to head down that path many years ago and it failed miserably. They just didn't have the heart in it. They didn't have the team to develop it. So I believe that's why we're seeing kind of the, the Spotify and the YouTube kind of separate from the pack here. As far as in the perception of the medium, in perception of the advertising industry around priorities. And Apple is kind of losing some steam and some momentum in the market because they are not focused on what everybody else is focused on, which is monetization. Now, granted, they do have a little bit of an effort in monetization with their premium direct upload platform that they have. So you could upload your podcast to Apple and have it be monetized through their premium offering that they have. And that is a little bit of a glimpse. But if you really look at the kind of the cutting edge of where the market is right now, it's around advertising, right? Everybody's thinking about, well, how do we cater to better advertising? How do we grow the advertising models? How do we get better metrics? There's all this YouTube metrics envy that's going on in the medium today. And so I think that those are really, really important things to talk about and why we're seeing what happened in the market happen today. And you're also seeing other platforms like, you know, they've been around a long time too, Patreon, and there's always been premium podcasting platforms out there that have been doing a lot of stuff with, um, with podcast content, and it involves video too. And so I think we are seeing kind of this, um, mashing up going on as we move into the new year. And I'm going to be doing an episode of the New Media Show, um, right after this, um, on all the same channels here with Todd Cochran from, from Blueberry. And we're We're gonna talk about this topic tonight and he's not gonna be happy about it, but we're gonna be talking about is video actually going to kill the audio podcast star? That topic has come up in the industry right now. I don't think it's gonna happen, but we're gonna talk about why people are thinking like that right now. And I think that there's some interesting takeaways from that. So let's get back to the core of the topic tonight. And, you know, is there risk for you to have a money-first, uh, thought process around podcasting? And I do think that there, there is some risk there. Um, there's maybe a little bit of, uh, you know, burnout potential there. When you start putting monetization first, it puts you in a different type of relationship with your show. It, it turns into more of an obligation than a, than a hobby or a passion or, uh, or something that you really like to do. It turns it into a business. So, and many people are okay with that. Um, the, the— you just have to realize that, that if you sign a— let's say you get into a host read contract, uh, once you've achieved, you know, 20,000 downloads per episode and you're able to go out and get ad deals and things like that, and they send you advertising campaigns that you have to commit to, you know, 2 months of ads for a particular campaign, you know, like one, you know, one ad in every episode over 8 weeks or something like that, or 12 weeks or something like that. What you've done is you've signed a contract that says you're going to have 12 weeks of episodes that are going to have their ad in there. And you're going to get paid for that. So it's just like having an employment contract, right? So you have to think about it like that. And are you willing to give up that kind of creative, more organic kind of passion relationship with your podcast to switch out for making it a commercial venture and making contracted commitments to actually putting out content? So because you can't technically take a week off. So let's say something happens and, you know, you get hurt, then, then you're going to get in this situation with the advertiser where you're going to have to do make goods, or you're going to have to make up for that. So there's a, there's a risk-reward going on here with this topic here. And, and then the, the other one is the potential of loss of authenticity, right? So you have this risk of of your content becoming— if there's too much ads or if they're the wrong kind of ads or they're just not presented in a good way that comes across as genuine and real and authentic and justified and driving value, which is a complex psychological environment to be in with your audience. You know, an ad can create an atmosphere where you have this perception that you're not creating an honest conversation with them. You're not being a straightforward broker with your audience. And, you know, do you come across as, you know, compromised or as a hypocrite somehow? Or there's just a lot of complex emotions that go into the money-first approach, right? And And this also, you know, can get back to you're so focused on the sponsor and the advertiser and whatever is that you kind of maybe get a little distracted from storytelling, the community, and the passion niche interest that exists around your show. And that revenue and that focus on catering to the advertiser, you lose sight of what you're trying to build. So let's just kind of, kind of move on from that and just say, is, is it realistic for you to consider making money from your podcast? And I think it's, that's a very complex conversation in and of itself, right? Is it, you know, there's so many variables with it. It's, do you have the right format? Do you have the right show? What's the reach of the show? What's your ability to deliver on the content? Is it realistic that you're going to grow a big enough audience to make as much money as you might need or want? And what are your goals for that? And at some point, you're gonna have to gauge that. So let's say you get, you know, 5 episodes in, 20 episodes in, 30 episodes into your series, and you're slogging along at, you know, modest growth. You're picking up a few new listeners every week, and you're gonna face this question at some point is, can I keep doing this? And that's where I get back to this setting your expectations. And is it realistic for your show concept and your show? And sometimes it's— podcasters are a little too close to their show and their content and feeling like it's more compelling than it really is. And especially now, you can see that contrast with what's going on at YouTube. And that's why I've been diving into this area too of getting more engaged with video, engaging what's going on over at YouTube. YouTube and audio podcasting are kind of— the more I do it, the more I realize that they're kind of unique to each other. It's not the same, and not every piece of content is the same across podcasting, audio podcasting, and YouTube. And I think that the marketing of it is really where the line is drawn, but it's also the content too. Like, I try and do this as an audio and video program, and I find it difficult to kind of walk that, that line myself to make the video experience compelling for the YouTube world, which tends to really live off of pre-recorded content. It's, you know, YouTube isn't really what I— I guess I'm increasingly feeling this, that it's increasingly not as effective, as a live platform as it is a, um, like record, edit, post-produce, add a lot of candy to your, your videos, a term I like to use, and upload it to YouTube. Because I find it when I pre-record my shows and I apply some editing, some post-production, some more sizzle to them, that I get more results than I get from the, the live stuff. Because a lot of the the video production tools like I'm using StreamYard, typically it's not as easy to, to throw things up on the screen really that are similar to what a lot of creators are doing on YouTube. So what you get at the end is not as engaging to some degree. I mean, it's, it may be great for building community, but it's, it's, it's not always great for Building Sizzle. And it looks like I've been getting a lot of comments as I've been diving into this comment, and I appreciate you all commenting in here. And I'll, I'll kind of click through and put some on the— Matt, uh, Happy New Year to you too. Thank you so much. Matt Madero is in here, and Dave Canyon is also in here too. Uh, good evening, Rob. Happy New Year. I hope all is well. Well, thank you, Dave, and I hope all is well with you too. And, and Reena also writes, uh, hey Rob, and, uh, she also writes, Reena, good luck with Spotify. Um, I think she's maybe pulling my leg a little bit, I'm not quite sure. So, so Reena, kind of clarify that. Was that a little bit of a dig, or what was that, you know, a true, true observation? And then, uh, Reena Friedman Watts also writes, do you ever communicate with Spotify and Apple, or, or Apple? Well, let me say on that, I, I do know the people at Apple very well. Um, I do not know, but I used to work very closely with Spotify. Um, there has been a little bit of a separation between myself and Spotify over the last few years. And I think it's also maybe has something to do with that I've been a little critical of them, so maybe they don't like what I have to say about them sometimes. So, so I would like to get kind of, you know, back in communication with them and have a better dialogue. I, I know my co-host Todd Cochran had a recent conversation with Spotify, uh, and I know he's pretty outspoken about them as well. And, and so Maybe they're open to that and I'm open to it too. I mean, I, I appreciate what they're doing. I mean, they've actually invested a lot in podcasting and, and they have made significant inroads. There's no question about it, you know, and I can fully respect that given I ran a platform at Microsoft that was, you know, trying to do the same thing that they're doing, but definitely from a different philosophy than I had back then. But the medium has changed a lot. So, so, and it looks like Dave Canyon writes, it's a little odd that Apple didn't capitalize on their perceived edge in the industry. Well, Dave, I think they, they actually did, but their, their edge never really played into their strengths. So that edge that you're, you're referring to is something that's evolved kind of slowly in the medium over many years, and this, this is this monetization stuff and the advertising stuff. And they did play around with it quite a bit, um, probably 6, 7, 8 years ago or so. They tried to get into advertising and build a team that, that supported advertising, but then at the time they weren't thinking about podcasting. Um, and so it was really just, you know, podcasting to Apple like it was for me when I was at Microsoft. Was basically just a free content to add to a device platform that would engage with users of that platform. And that's, that's where they derive the value. I mean, I tried to change that when I was working at Microsoft to, to get us more involved in monetization approaches in the medium as an important thing, but they never saw it scaling to enough to make it worth it back, back in those early years. And I think a lot of big media companies and a lot of the big radio networks in the early days of this medium didn't see it as a big opportunity either, because they didn't feel like the audiences were big enough. They didn't see it as an opportunity. And I, you know, my own experience is I just hung with it as the industry grew, and I kept able to find full-time work in the industry, and it just kept moving forward. So, so that's, that's why I'm where I'm at today. Um, and it looks like, um, uh, Reena also writes, uh, did I have a nice holiday? Yeah, I had a nice holiday. It was kind of, kind of quiet, and it was, um, but it was good. And I'm, I'm glad that It's over and we're moving into the new year, and, and, um, we'll see what this new year brings. I'm a little concerned about it, to be honest. I'm not sure what's in store for us, but that's a complicated topic I, I didn't prepare to talk about tonight. So, and then, um, Reena Freed Watts also writes, uh, she thinks that video is necessary. Yeah, I think that's increasingly becoming clear, is that we as podcasters and content creators need to think about video and see how that plays into our strategy and see where it fits. Some shows it's not gonna fit, you know, and that's okay. But I am concerned about the tension that exists between video and audio right now. And what that's going to lead to down the line. So, so I think it's a, it's a very good question and one that Todd and I are going to talk about at 8 PM Eastern, uh, right after this show. So I'm going to try and make this show a little bit shorter so I can have time to join Todd on, on his live stream for the New Media Show at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific. So So it'll be great to have, have that conversation. So Rena, if you want to tune into that one, I'm sure you'll have an entertaining experience listening to Todd talk about video again, which I think it's a sore subject for him. But let me talk a little bit about, and then I can get back to talking about your comments a little bit more because there's a bunch of them coming in, and I appreciate that a lot. Is there a risk of dependence on these platforms? And I think if you contrast this conversation around monetization with a kind of like a central kind of own your own platform strategy, right? I think there's a risk to the industry, right? Because increasingly these platforms want you to have a direct relationship with them. And they want you to upload to them. They want you to publish your content directly to them. And, you know, if you look at YouTube and Spotify, that's the common theme there. I mean, they want you to upload directly. Now, granted, both of them are taking RSS feeds in to get content into their platform, but they increasingly want to convert that into direct upload and account formation processes inside of their platform. And so that's the direction that we're heading towards. You know, Apple's played around at the edges of this for a long time with their, their Podcast Connect platform that they have. And that has— they, they played around with that with ways to publish a premium podcast, but also to be able to manage the RSS feeds that are in their platform. So these platforms have always lived at the edge. Now, granted, we talk a lot about how podcasting is considered to be an open medium because it uses an open standard called RSS. And, but my contention on this for many years is that, you know, podcasting is not really an open medium. It's actually the content is delivered in an open format, but it's the consumption happens on proprietary platforms, you know, walled garden platforms. For most of the existence of podcasts. So, you know, I think we've had this kind of rosy, rose-colored glasses view of this medium and what it really is. And I think this whole, the origins of being out of RSS gives us this perception that this is an open medium. Well, it is if you remove those big proprietary platforms. You know, if you look at it Like my co-host Todd Cochran looks at it, if you have your RSS feed off of WordPress or you have it off of some platform that you control, then those RSS feeds can be made available publicly, but they can still be available, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're being consumed or potentially consumed by the largest number of listeners out there because these big platforms have scooped up all the listeners and they control access. And one of the mantras of podcasting has always been, you know, syndicate everywhere, right? That was the whole point of RSS, was to publish once and have it go to 100 different listening apps. And that also involved video in the early days of podcasting. And so that is a little bit of what is going on here, and making money dovetails to this increasingly. Because these platforms are moving towards a revenue share, right, off of advertising. Now, there is a contrary view on this that maybe that revenue share needs to come from just the fact that you're sharing it with them. Um, that's a much deeper conversation, but like, I did a distribution deal with Microsoft in the early days before podcasting, and I got paid 25 cents per download transfer into their platform. So there is this other part of this which isn't so much advertising focused. I mean, because we're talking about actually making money, so making money can extend beyond just, you know, advertising. So there's other forms of monetization that happen inside of this, this medium. The other thing that's happening too is we can become increasingly dependent on the metrics that's coming out of these proprietary platforms. Platforms. Like, you know, I know podcasting is tremendously envious of the level of detail in the analytics and the metrics that it's coming out of YouTube right now. I mean, I'm a deep user of YouTube and I'm constantly amazed at the level of data that they're capturing about you, the the listener or viewer of this content. And it's not always getting like deep personal information. It's like your consumption behavior. What are you doing? How long are you watching this? And I look at that for this show. I, you know, it's like some episodes I make or some content that I publish to YouTube gets 5 minutes average viewing time. Other content gets 30 seconds. So it's like, you know, it's a spectrum, but being able to know that. Now granted, you've been able to see some of this metrics in like the Google Podcasts, the Apple Podcasts and stuff, and even Blueberry has a certain amount of tracking of how far people progress through the progressive download in their platform as they consume content. So, so there's, there's the metrics and just the duplication of workflows is the other part of it too, is that if you're having to publish to each one of these platforms separately, you have to go to YouTube, publish there, you have to go to Spotify, you have to publish there, and then you have to go to, at some point, maybe go to Apple and publish directly to there. And maybe all the other platforms do that too currently right now, like X and LinkedIn and, Facebook and all these are direct relationship content uploading platforms. Now granted, I'm streaming live to a lot of these platforms and that's actually, maybe that's going to be the hack to, to a, a world that maybe has less emphasis on syndication through RSS and that, that'll be the most efficient way to get your content syndicated across all these platforms because they support live. And so that's the, that's the tension that I feel in the medium right now. So, so let's kind of move down and talk about a few, few more elements of this too around monetization. And I wanted to talk about what the market is right now for podcasts too. So as you think about trying to monetize, you also think about, you know, how much competition do I have? How many, how much content's out there that I'm competing with? And my contention is the podcasting market is maybe perceived as saturated with too many content creators, but there's evidence that that may not be the case. It may be that the audiences are gravitating towards large shows increasingly. And so I think I read somewhere here over the last, maybe the last year or so that said 100 of the top podcasts out there are garnering half of all listeners to podcasting. So what that tells me is that the real problem with podcasting is that the consumption side is not as diverse as maybe it was in the early years of podcasting, is that audiences, as they move from mainstream media over to podcasting, their consumption habits or the amount of content that they're willing to consume has dwindled, right? It's gotten smaller. There's the average, probably viewer of mainstream media doesn't watch that many channels, right? So when they move over to podcasting, then they tend to have that same kind of thought process that they're only gonna gravitate towards, you know, maybe a handful of different shows that maybe they consume. And they're increasingly becoming the really big shows, the ones that have millions of downloads. And that's the shift that's happening. So as you're trying to play inside of that other 50%, if you're not in the top 100 or the top 200 podcasts in the world, then you're in the, the rest bucket, right? And so what's the opportunity to capture audience and be able to move up to that top 200 list? That's what everybody wants, right? But the truth of the matter is, is that in podcasting, there's only like 300,000 to 400,000 shows out there that are actually publishing a new episode every week or every month. So, you contrast that to multi-tens of millions of YouTube channels and multi-millions of blogs or websites Right. And, and, you know, it's hard to make the case that podcasting is saturated. Now, granted, there's like 4 million podcasts that have ever been made, made, and those tend to be in the podcast index and 2.5 million or 3 million or whatever are in Apple Podcasts. But most of them are just not active shows. So your pool of competition is pretty small. So if you can find a niche And if you can stand out in that niche, then you can start growing audience and getting into opportunities to actually have monetization. So, and, and so I think what we have to start thinking about is, well, what is, what is success in podcasting? Is it monetization or is it other things? Is it building community? Is it building connections with other people? Is it building your brand? Is it as an equal reason for creating content? But that's probably going to mean that you're going to have to make money in other ways. You're going to have to make money from a job, or you're going to have to make money from doing— starting a new company that maybe isn't directly monetization from your podcast, but it supports other economic activities that you're doing. And you're gonna have to probably identify, you know, revenue streams, multiple revenue streams that come in from other areas other than just monetizing your podcast. So that's the, that's at the core, that's really the challenge that we all have. And so as we kind of move towards the end of the show, because I've got to be out of here to be able to get on the New Media Show in about 20 minutes or so. So I'm going to try and kind of wrap this up a little bit. You know, I really think as we move into 2025, remember that podcasting is more than monetization. Right? It's, it's about building a brand. It's about building relationships. It's about sharing stories. And it's, um, and hopefully you're helping others and you're, you're embracing others through what you're doing with your show. And that's, that's what I hope that I'm doing here with this show, is that I'm, I'm trying to give people, maybe broaden their perspective, because it's so easy to get kind of sucked up into this 'Gotta make money, gotta make money with my podcast, and if I don't, if, you know, 3 weeks in or 4 weeks in I'm not making money yet, then I quit.' And I think that's a challenge for podcasting. You know, as I look at podcasting as a medium that I have spent most of my working career working in, I kind of hate to see that happen. I kind of hate to see podcasting become kind of so engulfed in the needs of the advertiser that we lose sight of the opportunity and the uniqueness of podcasting. As more and more people in the industry embrace every element that surrounds supporting an advertising strategy, I think there's danger areas there. And things that maybe are not exactly aligned with what we want. So I'm going to try and go through the last few comments in here and see if we can talk about a few before I have to wrap up here in a few minutes. So Dave Canyon writes, I've been making almost $11 every 2 to 3 months on Spreaker. Without even trying hard, doing 2.5-hour shows a week. It always amazes me that that money comes into my PayPal account. Well, you know, I think, Dave, I think maybe you have the proper expectations here. So, you know, I don't think— and that's why you're continuing to do what you're doing, is because you didn't set yourself up to be disappointed. And, you know, granted, one could look at that and say, well, you know, that's not good enough to pay my rent or my car payment or something like that. But guess what? It's probably enough to pay for your Spreaker hosting account. So, you know, if you're doing this as a passion and the show is growing a little bit, then, you know, you're reaching some level of goals here, and that's a good thing. And how do you feel about the show itself? So I think those are ways to think about this. It's a part of your life. I mean, I've talked to so many podcasters, I've worked with so many podcasters that podcasting changes their life, you know, it improves their life, it makes them have other types of skills, it kind of takes you into a different kind of realm of awareness of the world and what you're contributing to other people. So, Dave also writes, so I love the idea of doing video. It's kind of my 2025 project. Okay, well, Dave, I hope you have fun doing it. I think that's the key thing to think about and take the show that you're doing on the audio side and see how you can synergize it. With the video side. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to create the same show that you do in audio in video. I think you could conceivably create a strategy that has, you know, keep doing your audio show and then just start doing some other types of content that may be around your topic of your podcast, but to be kind of used like whether it's Shorts or maybe you do segments on YouTube and that, that support some of the topics that you're doing. So you can take a creative approach here and, and go after it. So, uh, and then Dave Canyon writes, uh, Arena Watts, uh, yeah, I don't do anything special to make that money. That being said, I probably should do more half-hour shows and, and see what happens. So yeah, I mean, I think it may be interesting to, to think about creating shorter shows, kind of like what I'm doing tonight to some degree, uh, is creating a, a shorter episode. And, and so let me hop out of here. And looks like Dave, uh, writes, writes a comment back. Correct. I never think about monetizing, it just happens, and that's how I've made it. To over 330 episodes. Well, Dave, congratulations. That's a, that's an achievement right there. Getting to 330 episodes is, is really no, uh, no kind of thing to be ashamed of or, or anything. You've, you've done a lot. Um, you know, I've, I've been doing multiple hundreds of episodes of some of the shows that I've done too, and it definitely takes, uh, effort And so, and then Dave Kennedy also writes, uh, when you say speak with Spotify, is there a specific person or is it a team that, that you'd be speaking to? Well, it's, it's usually a combination of the two. It's usually, you know, I have like one primary contact, and then, because this is the case with Apple, uh, one primary contact, but then I know other members of the team. I may not talk to all the other members, but I, I would probably talk to a primary person. So that would be what I would do in that, that particular situation. You know, back when I was working with Google too, I knew the primary contact, couple of the primary contacts, but I also knew all the other team members too because I had done direct meetings with them. So, but I'm not really involved with Spotify at that, that, that level now. So it looks like Pete, Pete, thank you for the comment. Pete Georgie George says, hi Rob. And Pete writes, after what has happened with Honey, we'll need to take control back to our content on our platform. So, okay, so you're gonna pull it back and take it, more, more control off your website. Is that the idea behind it? Um, and then also Pete writes, I think the live stream will be the hack, but, uh, you will have to be smart how you do it. Um, and no lead-in, just straight into the show. Yeah, um, I've been increasingly moving that direction too, Pete, that there's you know, get, get right into the content right away. So, and it looks like, uh, looks like Dave wrote, uh, you mentioned once on a panel at New York City that even though it seems like there are a few hundred thousand podcasts, there's a lesser amount of active shows. Yeah, and that's been moving moving along and it's not really growing much, um, around the, the amount of active shows. It's kind of either been in a decline or kind of, kind of flatline. And then Dave also writes, I knew from day one over 7 years ago that I wasn't gonna make money from the podcast, um, and yeah, and I enjoy it enough to do it just for fun and building community. So Dave, I think you've got the right motivation going on here, uh, there's no question about that. And then it looks like we have one other comment. Glitch Film writes, all true, podcasting has been a good business for me and I've been, uh, I've seen even greater rewards in the, the relationships that I've made with it. And, and it is great to have a creative outlet. And I think those are great motivations. I think all of you are— can, can really be proud of that. I think that you've, you've taken this out of the realm of commercialism and you've made more of it. And I think that's, that's probably, probably the right way to think about it. And I think that will eliminate the, the disappointment layer, um, quite a bit here. So, well, I think I'm going to have to call it night here. Um, I didn't make it through my whole outline here, um, but, uh, but that's okay. I can kind of fill in for it in the future. I can take parts of this and talk about in a future episode. Um, so, so thank you so much for watching this. And if you want to go over to newmediashow.com and watch the episode with Todd Cochran and I, um, that would be starting in about 10 minutes. We're going to talk about a whole different topic of, is audio— is now, is video killing the audio star? Is the, is the theme of that. And I think he's going to want to talk about a bunch of other topics too. But thank you so much for being with me here tonight, and I, I appreciate all your comments on this topic, and, and I appreciate it so much. And I appreciate all of you for being here, and I hope you have a wonderful next couple of weeks in the new year. And I hope that, you know, you do some goal setting and you try and figure out what your, what your new year looks like. And, and I hope you achieve all your, all your goals. So thank you so much and have a wonderful evening. And check us out over on the, on the new media shows. I hop over there and try and get that set up and get that going. So thank you. Good night.
More from Rob
Future-proofing with Delphi AI/Human clones: your podcast as a personal LLM | New Media Show
How sports reveal what AI spectacle gets wrong #Technology #Sports #Commentary
