Monetization With A Value: The Fuel To Your Podcast Vehicle With Adam A. Adams

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the binge factor.

I've got Adam Adams today talking about the Podcast on Podcasting. So essentially we're just going to be industry insiders kind of talking about how things are going, what's going well, what's not going well. So this is a great episode for you today. Get another perspective besides mine on what we think of podcasting. He Adam already has a loyal following in the podcasting space. He sold his first podcast to another company and then he launched Podcast on Podcasting, which has been ranked as a top show for podcasters. He's also the founder of Grow youw Show, where they help you get your message out to the world. They work to getting their clients top 1% on iTunes and top charts and getting more influence as podcasters. So we're going to have an interesting combination about a conversation and combination of our two perspectives on this. Because, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the charts and paid model, but there are cases where those paid models really work and Adam's been making them work for his clients in a very different way. And he's going to be really clear on the show today talking about which ones work, when you should do paid lead ads, when it makes sense and when it's aligned with your regular marketing as well. So that's a combination of things. It's a whole lot easier advertise your content as a part of your marketing program than it is to advertise and sell a program. So be thinking about that as you're listening to the advice that Adam has to bring. So Adam Adams, the Podcast on Podcasting.

Adam, so glad to be able to talk about podcasting today. Podcast on Podcasting it's not your first rodeo, though, not your first podcast. Tell us a little bit about the other ones that you have because you've done over 1200 episodes.

Yeah, the first one was a real estate show and it was. I think this could be really beneficial for the listener if I really think about them and them launching shows, because with the first one I made the podcast for a specific reason. But the interesting thing is that it was not actually intentional with every step of the way. After deciding this is what I want to achieve, I did not become intentional. And so obviously the listener should be intentional every step of the way. So, for example, I did want to grow my brand in real estate so that I could raise private capital. I did want to grow the brand. I did want to be able to speak on other people's stages. I did want to be invited on other people's podcasts. And all of those things did work. Except here's the thing. My goal was to attract high income earners, people that made a lot of money. Maybe a doctor, an engineer, something like that. And they really wanted to just passively invest so that my team could find the deal and take their money and go. So here's the mistake that I made with creative real estate. Creative real estate attracts somebody that doesn't have money. And the reason why it does is because you are thinking to yourself, man, okay, I want to be involved in real estate investing, but I don't have money. Oh, creative real estate, that speaks to me. This is gonna teach me how to buy even without money. But to think about maybe that engineer they're scrolling through trying to figure out how to invest. They will not click on creative real estate. They will not search for creative real estate. So after about 600 episodes, wow, you.

Really went all in, though. 600 is still a lot.

So I switched it and I changed it to the apartment investing show. And the apartment investing show, we got a little past a hundred, almost 200 episodes. And then in 2019, I decided that I wanted to help other podcasters. So I thought to myself, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes. I've helped a lot of people to get into the top 1% of all podcasters have helped people to grow their podcast audience really well. And so I thought to myself, I don't want to be doing real estate. Because truthfully, we were supposed to have a crash in 2017. And every year since, we're always like, it's probably going to be in the within the next two years. And I believed that in 2017. I believed it in 2019, but it was 19, July of 19. I remember very, very specifically. I was like, you know what? I'm out of this real estate game for now. And that was after putting 200 more episodes on my second podcast. I'm out of this real estate game because I don't want to be caught with my pants down, really. I don't want to be buying properties with other people's money if the market goes down, because then it would have been my fault. I could have done something to protect their money.

Well, and being out in front like that, being such an authority, with so many episodes between the two podcasts, that puts you at, I'm going to say, bigger respectability, risk, right?

Yeah, I think so. And you, you know, to me, it's definitely important to serve people at a high level, no matter what is that I'm doing. So I was in this mastermind group, and during the mastermind group, I told everybody that, hey, A, the truth is, I don't really want to be with these business partners anymore because they want me to work too hard, and I want them to work hard, and they're lazy, and I'm lazy. So we hate each other.

It's not a good mix.

Yeah, it wasn't that bad. But they definitely expect me to do more than I was willing to do, and I expected them to do more. I was like, no, I'm just the thought. I'm just the leader of this. I'm just the face of this. But they wanted me to do all these tasks that were not good for somebody who's dyslexic and add. So, A, I wanted to exit the partnership, and B, like, I really felt like a crash was coming. So I went to my mastermind group. And by the way, to the listener, no matter what your business, no matter what you do, you probably should be in some type of mastermind group of anything that you want to be solid at. And so I'm a member of this business, Mastermind. And I said to them, what do I do? Like, I want to be out of real estate because of this. I don't want to work with these partners anymore. What should be the thing? And everybody goes, you've helped me with my podcast. You've helped this person with their podcast. I'm crushing it because of you. The obvious thing for you to do is serve podcast hosts. So that's when I decided to launch a company. It's called Grow youw Show. Grow youw Show's the. The company. And then a little while later, in 20, I launched the podcast called the Podcast on Podcasting. And that was to grow the recognition for the company as well, to be able to get in front of more people. So that one, I think we're just a little over 400 episodes now. But when I say but, I just want the listener to know, I usually put out more episodes than most people.

Yeah, you put out both interviews and topics and do more than one a week.

Yeah, exactly. So, like with the Creative Real Estate podcast that I ended up selling that podcast to another person that I thought would be a better match for it. For the Creative Real Estate podcast, there was a month where we just published every single day. We did like 30 episodes in 30 days. And additionally, we were usually doing three to six episodes a week. On the apartment investing show, I also published a lot and on the podcast, on podcasting, for the first little while, I did four episodes per week, and then I increased it because I could tell that my income was directly related to how many episodes a week that I did. So I went up to six. And we just got crazy busy. Like, we were making stupid money, like netting a hundred grand in a month. Like, it just got so busy that I started to work more hours because of it. So I went down to two a week. And then I've been doing. Then our income went down. By the way, our income literally went down during two a week.

That's right. That's what's going to happen.

Then we doubled it back to four. Two solos and two interviews, and I getting ready to boost it back up to six again. But I noticed that our income has. By adding two a week, our income is up six grand a month. So it's like every single episode, every single additional episode is netting me 1500 bucks by just doing that extra episode. So I definitely recommend doing more episodes than you are now. And really thinking of your podcast as a business. And so anyway, yeah, I'm on my third podcast and it's been a lot of fun, and we're at a little over 400 episodes so far.

Well, let's talk about that monetization model. What does that monetization look like? What do you consider to be the ways that you generate revenue with your podcast?

Really? If you listen to the podcast on podcasting, you'll hear eight different ways to monetize. So there's many different ways that you can do it. When people ask me, I'm only going to pick the top three ways or the most common three different ways. The first way is where you do what's called a CPM model. That's where you're going to get somebody to pay you based on how many thousands of listeners that you have. CPM is cost per meal. Or in Latin, that's cost per thousand. Really? So cost per thousand, and most people are going to pay something like 20 bucks per thousand downloads that you have. Now it goes as low as $5 per meal. And it goes as high as maybe like $30 per meal, but the average is right around that 20 buck.

Yeah. You do have to be careful. I want you listeners to understand that there's a lot of companies out there that will say it's 20 bucks, but they're splitting it with you. Sure. That that's your cut.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. So not only that, but this is the lowest way to get paid. So just for context, if your listener is an average podcaster, an average podcast host has less than 100 downloads per episode. A top 10% podcast, only 10% of podcasts have 300 or more. So if they're average and they're getting 20 CPM per episode, you're looking at a tenth of a thousand, which basically means that they get two bucks per episode. And so the CPM model is not a strong model.

It's not my favorite. Yeah.

Even if they had 3,000 people listening to every episode, which is a very strong podcast, that puts you in the top 1% of all podcasts, if they have 3,000, then you're only making 60 bucks per episode. So that's the lowest weight.

So I do also want to just. Yeah. Mention to you that there are other models out there. So some. Our system at Potati's, that the company that I founded is our system is based on monthly downloads, which can be a higher because it's across your entire show catalog, not just your episode numbers. So if you have a higher average across your entire catalog, there might be alternative solutions to raising that dollar amount. But only about 40% of your listens are on your current episodes, which is why the episode numbers are much lower. The per listens or downloads per episode is much lower. So thinking about that, if that's the model you want to go, you want to maximize your opportunity to do that, because it is. I mean, I personally wouldn't give my way my audience for 60 bucks.

Yeah, for me, I have 30,000 downloads in a month. And it sounds like a lot to most people, but if I go 30,000 and I multiply it by just 20, I'm basically going to go 30 times 20 bucks. That would only be $600 in a month for me if those were the numbers that we're using. And I don't want to get out of the bed for 600 bucks a month like that isn't.

I don't either.

That's going to do much for me. So on. The second way is a lot better, in just my opinion. The second way is when you reach out to them. So usually the CPM model, they're reaching out to you, or they're reaching out to a company and saying, go and find all the podcasts to do this low amount for me, because I don't care who it is. I don't care what the audience is. In many cases, I just want to get my name out. So just put it out on there.

Yeah. Sometimes in the industry, we call it programmatic advertising. You're in a big program with a bunch of other companies and you're all sharing it, and all they care about is your download numbers.

Yeah, I had a client that worked with me for a long time, and he was doing the CPM model. And the first ad that showed up on his podcast was before they did dynamic ad insertion. So basically it would happen before any part of the podcast was like the very, very beginning thing. And the two problems with his is. Is what we'll call it three problems. He had three ads. That's the first problem. That's a lot of, like, selling before you ever get value. The second problem is that the first of the three ads was one minute long, which is actually a very, very long time. And in Spanish, it was in a different language than his actual listener. So there's that. And then the third problem is that these are just random things that don't really help his listener. They don't really benefit his avatar. So anyway, that's a model that a lot of people know. I just think that it's. You don't make as much as you can with these other two models. So the second is when you reach out to the person. So what you'll do is you'll think of, like, who do I know that I believe in that I trust that serves my listener and can help them and not take away from me. So, like, for example, let's go back to real estate. Unless you say, I've got the creative real estate podcast or the apartment investing show, either one. I could reach out to a lender. I could reach out to a hard money lender, a fix and flip lender. I could reach out to a lender for commercial real estate to help people buy apartments. And they have a very big budget. So I might reach out to a flip company. And that's actually the first ad that I got was with a fix and flip lender, a hard money lender. And I just said, hey, can you. And by the way, I got this sponsor of the show before I ever had a download. You cannot do that with the CPM model. But when I'm reaching out to them, they fit my audience. And I say to the fix and flip lender, I say, hey man, I've used you several times. I believe in you. I think that you guys can lend money quickly. I believe that you, that it's really easy to work with you. And I know that you can work in all 50 states. And my podcast is going to be in all 50 states. When I say gonna be, it's because I got my sponsor before I ever launched a show. And so he said, yeah, we're gonna sponsor you. So I was able to make $300 per episode. And with my 30,000 downloads that I get now, that's already half of what I could have gotten with a regular CPM model at 20 bucks, right? So I'm thinking I just reach out to him. I have no listeners at all and he works with me. So I have this client, his name's Alex. Alex and I sat down on two different calls. On the first call, we worked on number two as well. We said, hey, who do you know Alex, that works with you, that you believe in, that you trust? He came up with two different companies and then we created a package, a two page marketing package to specific to how to get a sponsor for his thing. So then on the second call, he and I just rehearse and practice. How do you reach out to somebody to get them to sponsor your podcast? So we made a pitch for one of the companies and it went something like this. Hey man, I've got a podcast. I have never thought about monetizing it before and it's because I didn't want to let my listener down. But I feel like your product is one that I use, one that I believe in, and it's the type of product that I want my listener to be able to have. So if it's a lender, my listener needs a lender or else they're not going to be able to buy these properties. And if they don't buy these properties, then they're, it's going to make it look like I'm not successful at helping them. They need a good lender on their side. So would you partner with me? And then you say something like this, if you can't partner with me, it's no problem. I can call another lender, but I'd rather give you the opportunity first. So he did this pitch and with the first person, he called them one time and they said yes. And they started paying him five grand a month already way higher than the 600 that I could make with 30,000 downloads a month. He was already making five grand a month. And that was for a 12 month contract. I teach people make sure that the minimum you do is six months. We got a lot of people out there that are trying to get a sponsor per episode and then it's so much work and effort just to get one sponsor. And you're always seeming to work too hard.

Yeah, I recommend the same thing. I recommend this idea of doing like a time period because it does take longer and there's a growth factor to your show as well. Right. So you're amping up the marketing. There's credibility that's going on. It needs to take its time to be able to be effective for them. And so that's important. But the second way you could do it is do a series. So you can do like a 25 episode series.

Yeah, it's great.

You know you can drop in a series. So I did that. We sold hewlett packard a 25 episode series in 2020 and we sold it on a pod faded show, no less when we were done doing, which we had been talking about before on a show on 3D printing. So perfect audience for them. And we dropped it on that. And that one was easy. I can command six figures for that easily without blinking.

Amazing.

So that's way you can think about this in a different way. What Adam is saying to you is here is that stop thinking about this from a non math standpoint. Right. Like let's do the math and think this all the way through. But let's do this from a value standpoint. Where can they get the value as the sponsor if it's not six months, then where else could they get the value? If they did a series of it so you could drop that series so that they could say that they were sponsored on these episodes for that were all tied into a topic that interested them. There's a lot of ways to slice this that can make create that mutual value.

So with Alex, he called the second person and he needed three follow up calls. But after the third follow up call he got another four grand and for six months. So he was making a little over $9,000 for six months and then still making 5,000 for the rest of the year. And then here comes the best way to monetize because I don't even use number two anymore. Now I figure only three. That's where I want to be. So that comes with your listener, your podcaster who's listening. If they have their own product or service. If they got a business, they're a coach, they're a mentor, they're a consultant, they're an attorney, they are a business owner. They sell a product, a service, an online program, whatever. Then you can use option number three, and that's the one that I use. So option number three is where you sell your own product or service. So I don't have anyone else sponsoring my podcast. I don't have anyone else. But my company is able to attribute more than $35,000 per month to. Oh, by the way. Per month. Right. So Alex was making nine grand a month, and then I told him about how I was making 35,000amonth through my podcast by selling my own products and service. And Alex stopped sponsoring, and now he makes 45,000amonth. He makes a half a million a year through his podcast. He changed his route from number two to number three. So on my podcast, all I do is I have about 3,000 downloads per episode, and we end up talking to the listener about how I can help them. We might put out an episode where we talk about all of the problems that can go on and how to fix it. And then I might just mention, not in a salesy way, but just like, hey, if you're looking for somebody to do this for you, just let me know. And my team has been doing that for other podcasters for this many years. And so we put a link down into the show notes, they go and click it. And it's not huge. Tracy. We get, like, one ish client per month. But our contracts, when we work with people, some of them are smaller and some of them are bigger, but it averages out to about 30 grand, 35,000 that we're making from each time that somebody decides to work with our team, because we can work for them for a year. And so that really helps the company to be able to make money.

And that's my favorite model. That is the model. My entire. Yeah, I mean, everything is built off of. It's 98% of our clients do that model. It's built for it. Some of it is guest model, not the listener model. Right. That's. You're monetizing off the guest versus monetizing off the listener, but it's still the same model of selling your own stuff.

And I'll say briefly that I do both.

I do both as well.

So I run the show. It's called the Podcast on Podcasting. And so I have guests and the guest what might find out, how they could work with me, but also the listener can find out how they can work with us as well. So some of the times that one person is somebody that I interviewed, and then maybe they had me on their show or something. But yet the CPM model is the easiest way. It's like you almost do no work and you can get something, but sometimes you're leaving a lot of money on the table. The middle way is fairly good. You gotta do a little bit of work, you gotta be a little creative. You gotta have some persuasion. Maybe play back what we recorded for you and just use that. And then the third way is just where you allow yourself to help your listener and. Or like Tracy said, you're a guest. And I believe that most people should be able to make at least eight grand a month. If you're selling your own product or service. At least eight grand a month. And I wouldn't be surprised if you made a hundred grand a month.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's the best way to go about it as well. But you also have to do make sure that your audience is really dialed in, your content is really dialed in. You're being really focused about all of that. And that's where the podcast on podcasting has done so well. You're very focused on that. And one of the things that I think that your company and your podcast does so well is talk about marketing, especially some things that podcasters don't do really well, which is pay for marketing. Right. They don't hire enough consultants on it. They think they can. They think the podcasting is it. And you and I both know that's not the case, that we do need to pay to play in some cases, and we do need to participate in the marketing process. We have to actually promote our show and do some things. But I want to dial in because you're particularly an expert in that sort of paid marketing side of things. What are some paid audience growth strategies that are working today?

Yeah, I'll give maybe three that are come off the top of my head. So my company does paid ads for people, and these are three of the big ones that we utilize. One of them is Facebook ads. I want the listener to understand that you could be terrible at Facebook ads and they're never going to work. Or you could work with somebody who knows how to do it, and then they will work, and then you'll actually be putting less money out than you would if you did it on your own. But then you can actually make money. You want somebody to be able to split test the ads, put a good ad. Put out two, three, four different ads at a time. Test them out with smaller amounts of money. Crush or squash or kill the one or two or three that are not performing and putting more money to the ones that are performing. And to keep playing with that, it can be a lot of work, and you have to have some skill. So if your listener is already really, really, really good at Facebook ads, that can be a benefit for them. So we utilize Facebook ads, Google Ads, and YouTube ads. All three work really well for us. But we get the best bang for the buck on the Facebook ads. We've really got those dialed in. That can be good or it could be horrible. It just depends on what your experience is. The second way that I will mention to the listener that does work is where you pay to get your advertisement on other people's podcasts within your genre. So this is a paid way. You could also trade. You could also say, hey, you do it for me, I'll do it for you. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

But that's like the sponsorship model. It's a lot of work to go find all the shows and pitch everybody, convince everybody to do it, coordinate it.

Right.

It's a lot of work.

It can. So for us, here's the secret sauce. You want them to do at least six episodes or 13 episodes, which basically means I'm going to do it for a month and a half or I'm going to do it for three months. And you're going to do it on one episode a month. Sorry, one episode a week for six weeks or for 13 weeks. It takes six to 13 times to be in front of somebody before they start to trust you. When you get like an advertisement in the mail or you see an ad for the first time, you're probably not going to buy it. By the time you see it the 6th, 12th, or 13th time, you're probably going to say, you know what? I should call them. And that's what they've proven within marketing. So if you are putting your show on somebody else's show in your genre, you could just pay them, hey, I want you to throw it up once a week for six weeks or once a week for three months, and that's the result. And then you just work out the payment. Or you can do a trade and it's not so hard. But here's the coolest thing. When you're on other people's shows, either organically being a guest or when you're on other people's show, because you've paid for them to display your ad and talk about your podcast. Every single person who listens to their show listens to podcasts. And if you're going to the right genre, all of the people who are interested in that person's show should also be interested in your show. So if you have a podcast on real estate, you go on somebody else's podcast for real estate. Basically, you pay them to do an ad six times or 13 times, every single listener. It's really, really easy for them to go and listen to you because they already listen to podcasts, they're already on the platform as they're listening to it, and they're interested in that genre, they're more likely to jump over. The third way that I'll mention for paid ads is the hardest way, but it's crazy effective. And when I say crazy effective, it's because it hits algorithms. And there's five things that are the most important for the algorithm. And so I'll just mention the five things that are important for the algorithm first, and those are you need people to follow your show. Number one, follow. Number two, you need some downloads. Number three, listens. That means they actually push play. They don't just download a bunch of episodes, they actually push play on them. They play all the way through. The fourth thing is that they rate and review your show, give you social proofing. And the fifth thing is that that person, that listener, that rating reviewer, that player, they keep coming back. The fifth thing is that they keep coming back. So again, it's follow your show, download your show, listen to your show, rate and review your show, and keep coming back to your show.

They binge on it.

Yes, they binge. Exactly. And when they do all five of those, it triggers algorithms within the podcast playing platform, which is huge because it grows the audience. When you trigger algorithms, they say, wow, I trust this person. They will keep people on my platform. They make money when people stay on their platform. I trust this person. So I'm going to push them in front of more people because they're hitting all five of these things. If you only do Facebook ads, it is not guaranteed that they're going to do all five. Even when you do ads on other people show in your genre, it's not guaranteed that they do all five. So the private message campaign solves that. So the private message campaign is where for us, we reached out to people on three different platforms. So we'll go to Facebook, we'll go to meetup.com and we'll go to LinkedIn on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Meetup. The cool thing is you can really narrow down and filter to the right person so you figure out who's your perfect listener. Let's just say for this podcast, it's somebody who has a podcast and they want somebody to binge their podcast. So for you, you reach out to that person where they are, maybe it's on a podcast group, and then you say, hey, I saw your comment about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How long have you been podcasting? You might start like that. So here's. So that. Let me just back up a little. There's three platforms, Facebook Meetup and Facebook Meetup and LinkedIn. And now there's five ways, five things that you need to do when doing private message. Because this is so critical if you don't want to be flagged as spam and have nobody doing anything. So the first one is, if have you ever gotten like a message where it's super duper long, like really, really long. It just has every single piece of information. They're. They're just telling you everything, giving you links and everything. That huge length turns people off. They're like, ah, this person is just trying to sell things. So that's the first thing. We keep it short and sweet. The second thing is, you know how when you go there, they give like their signature. So it's their name, their email, their phone number, their website and all that kind of stuff. Get rid of that. So never share a link or any information without them asking or at least without permission. So I wouldn't share the link to. If I was marketing for you, Tracy, I wouldn't share the link to your podcast until they asked for it. Until they said, yeah, you got the link. Then I'll say, here's the link. Let me know what you think about the episode. So the second thing is never share a link without permission. The third thing that you always want to do if you're doing this private message is you want to ask instead of tell. We've learned over a long period of time that when you ask questions, you'll get people hooked in. Now they're hooked to the content, now they're hooked to you. When they're the ones answering the question, they feel like they're a lot more in control. When you just tell them stuff, basically it just goes past them quickly. They just forget about it. They were like, oh, this person's just spamming me. But when you ask questions and you're engaging, you're more likely to get a response. So ask, don't tell.

So the only exception I found to that, and maybe, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but the exception that we found to this is we run a live every single week, and we run it in LinkedIn. And so if I share the LinkedIn event live, it's not penalized in the DM system. And I find it actually works really well. That's the only link that I ever share in any dm, and that is that we're running an event this week. It's free. It's right here on LinkedIn. You don't have to leave anywhere, go anywhere, just, you know, check it out if you're interested in seeing what that's about. And I find we get a lot more traffic because we do share that. But I think LinkedIn is accepting that as a promoting within the platform so they don't downgrade it.

I would say you're probably right about LinkedIn not doing that. And I would also say that the person on the other end might receive your information slightly better if you said, hey, we got this event. Let me know if you want the link. And then they say, yeah, I'd love the link. It takes more time and effort. But this is why my team does private messages for other people, is because it's hard for you to do it right. It's. It takes a lot of time and effort. It is.

It's hard. It's a lot of work.

So you ask, hey, do you want me to send it? And they say, yes, Then you sent. They say, here's the link you asked for. Let me know when you signed up. That can be pretty effective. It just takes more time.

Yeah. So we just do it a little bit differently because we already asked a couple questions prior to that. It's like, oh, hey, here's an example. And so we treat it like an example rather than a, like, oh, invitation to come to it. So it's like, hey, we do run these things all the time. And this is like some of the topic areas we find really difficult. And this week it's about, like, this week we're talking about over guesting. Like, can you guess too much on a podcast? Like, this is. This is this week's topic. And so it's always interesting, especially if they've asked, hey, is there anything, you know, is guesting is an area of interest for me? Oh, well, here's a good example. So that's really. I love that idea that you're really asking questions. You're not pushing sales, they're not Long, Which I find podcasters don't have the attention span for stuff to be really long anyway. Nobody wants to read anything anymore and ask, don't tell. I just think that that's so important in what you're talking about here and getting permission.

Yeah. And if you're doing all of this, you'll basically, you'll connect with them, and then later on you'll say, do you have a podcast that you listen to that could add value? Like this? When they give you the podcast, then you actually consume the content. You give them feedback. You say, thank you for sharing that with me. These are the takeaways that I got from what you shared. I loved it. And then later you say, hey, I've got a podcast. Or if it's us, hey, I found a podcast. We work as a third party. I found a podcast that also adds a lot of value. Would you like me to send you the link? They say, yes. We say, here's the link. Then we ask, let me know what you think about it. Remember that. Write that part down. Let me know what you think about it. Because that gives them more accountability that they actually should listen and not just, like, pass it by. Whenever they finally do come back to you, this is how we trigger those five algorithms. Follow, download, listen, rate, and review. And come back when they say, I loved it. Thank you for sharing it with me. And this is what I got. Then we say, that was great. Tracy would probably be happy if all you did is copied and paste what you told me and leave it as a review, a written review of her podcast, since you already listened to it. Right. And then we get, like, 33% of people to actually rate and review the show. And then every couple of weeks, when Tracy drops another episode that is fire, then we reach back out to them and say, did you hear that last episode on the Binge Factor? You've got to check it out. May I send you the link? And they're like, sure, man. Then we send the link and we say, here it is. Let me know what you think about it, just like we did before. So that's how to utilize the private message to get people where you're got. And if I could just say one analogy that I think is critically important for anybody listening who's a podcaster and thinking about growing their podcast. Your podcast is your vehicle. Your show is the vehicle that can get you to your destination. The destination is. Should be success in your business. The destination should be you making an impact in the world and making an income for you. And your family income and impact. Success should be the destination. There is something you need if you want to take your vehicle to a destination. You need gas, you need fuel in your tank. If you don't put fuel in the tank, you're going nowhere. And you mentioned this earlier, a lot of people start podcasts and they think that they don't need to advertise, and then they go nowhere because they thought that this was like a free way for them to advertise.

They thought Spotify and Apple was going to give them the fuel.

Yeah, it's like, hey, Apple's going to be like, oh, goody. Adam Adams just started a podcast. I can't believe this. There's already just 5 million podcasts. So we've got to make sure Adam gets in front of millions of people tomorrow. If you build it, it doesn't just automatically come. If you've got a vehicle, a podcast, or a car, you put in the fuel. That's the marketing. That's the advertising dollars. That's the hard work on the dms. That's paying a company to do the direct messages. That's a paying a company to do the Facebook ads. That's you doing the Facebook ads. That's you promoting your podcast, telling everybody about it. That's the fuel. And then the destination, that's your success. That's where you're going. You're going to get nowhere if you don't add fuel to the fires, add fuel to the tank. So just think about, like, if 97%. This is actually a real statistic. It's not one of the ones that is made up. 97% of successful businesses use paid advertising. If you are a podcaster and you're thinking about your podcast as a business, you should be part of the 97% that uses paid advertising. When you're getting in front of the right people, they can now hire you. And now you can make 30,000amonth, 45,000amonth, or whatever it is.

Absolutely. I'm so glad you said that, because that was one of the statistics that I pulled off of one of the episodes I was listening to when I was binging on your show. And that 97% that you're competing against is so critically important for you to understand. You have to pay just to compete. And that's not something that most podcasters come into this with the recognition that they're going to need. And then they quit because they weren't competing at the level they thought they would. They didn't give it enough time. Either. So if you're not gonna pay, you gotta give it the time, which is what you did in your first show. You really gave it the time that it needed in number of episodes. You really outperformed almost everybody else. So I did some stats recently for someone, and anyone who has achieved over 800 episodes or more in podcasts in general is among the 1% of the 1%. So at 1200, you are way exceeding your average podcaster in every which way. You are the lead of the elite. Which reminds me to come back to my real question. At the end of the day, you're building value for your business, for your marketing method, for the audience that you've created, this community that you've built, and you did that with your first two podcasts, and you created it to the point at which you got to sell it as an asset, and you kind of buried that right there. So I wanted to come back to it. You sold your podcast. There are very few like Tom and I have done this model, we call it the reverse merger, where somebody should buy your podcast and then reverse merge their podcast into it. It's a great jumpstart for a show. You start with the right audience. It's fantastically easier than building a podcast from scratch. And not enough people take advantage of that model because they don't want to pay for a show. But you created the value. How did you value that when you went to go sell that?

Well, first and foremost, I undervalued it.

And you undervalued it.

If I did it over, I would have sold it for a lot more. So taking you back to that mastermind, I asked everybody, okay, well, if I'm moving into podcasting, what should I do with this podcast that I've had all this time? And, like, I don't want to just crush it. It feels like my baby. We were 600 episodes in. It felt like my baby. I spent a lot of time with it and effort, and I had a lot of listeners that were very loyal and would let me know if there was, like, a blank episode or whatever which has happened. They'll be like, hey, just want you to know, I get, like, tons of calls if I have a bad episode, like, one missing things, Everybody's like, hey, you need to do this. So that ended up happening, and everybody was asking me, well, how many people listen? And it was like, 6,000 people. So I was like, I told them it's like this. And they're like, so you're in front of 6,000 people, you know, three or four times a week. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, bro, we speak on stages. It's so hard to even get a hundred people in the room. And when we do, it costs us, like, 100 grand to get 100 people in a room. And when we do that, we can sell, like, 33% of the room. This is just the way that these guys think. We sell, like, 33% of the room, and we end up making a million bucks. And then they go, if you have 6,000 active listeners, it's going to be really, really, really easy for me if I take over that podcast, to be able to make millions and millions of dollars. I do have one client. His name's Marco. Marco makes a little over 300,000amonth with his podcast. We launched it from scratch four or five years ago. And after he launched it from scratch, within about six months, he started making big money. And within a year and a half, he started making $4 million a year. A million a quarter, really. And so Marco's making all this money from his podcast. These guys do exactly what Marco is doing. They speak on stage. They know persuasion. They know how to serve somebody. They know how to give a good value. And so these guys were like, I'll give you 50 for it. 50,000. And the next guy's like, I'll give you 54,000. And the other guy goes, I'll give you 56,000.

We got a little bidding war going.

Yeah. So I'm sitting just in a room of successful entrepreneurs, and they just start bidding this up. And I ended up selling it for less because I sold it to somebody. I'm just a weirdo. I care more about my listener, I guess, than I do about money. So for me, I wanted to sell it to somebody who I felt really had my same value system. All of those other guys, they had great values. It's not about me.

It wasn't quite the match.

I wanted somebody who had the same type of values that I did, because I think that they would speak to the listener from a place of value and focus on that more than they would about selling. And I knew he didn't have anything to sell, but anyway, I sold it to him for a little less than those three. But as I looked back on it, I believe that for 6,000 people, downloading every episode and doing that multiple times a week, I probably should have gotten about a quarter million dollars out of just the podcast, honestly.

Well, and I think that too often people don't, like, we've had Companies that bought a business and then just stopped the podcast and. But they didn't realize they tanked their website, they tanked their market. They tanked so much by just not understanding that what they bought was of value. And I thought, I find that so interesting nowadays. And of course, you should make sure that you get the value out of it. And if you. They're not going to continue, they're going to buy your company, but they're not going to continue the podcast. You ought to have a right to continue it if you would want. If you want, so you can make some more money off of it. I do agree. I'm so glad you did sell it, though, and that your audience had a place to go, because I think that's sometimes the worst part when we stop doing a business. Like, it was really hard for us to give up our 3D print podcast. It was really hard to keep it going because it wasn't our core business anymore. But we didn't have anyone else to sell it to because no one else was in the right space. So we just have kept it running in a pod fade situation and occasionally drop an episode or do a little special series or something like that. And it still works. We still have 10,000 listeners a month. We used to have a hundred thousand when we were actively doing it, but 10,000 in a pod fade, it's pretty darn good. When there's nothing else out there, why should you keep running it?

Yeah, you're right. A hundred percent. I love that.

Yeah. So, Adam Adams, what's next for you? We got a new year coming up as we're recording this, and this is actually going to air in the new year. What's coming up for you this year?

Yeah, good question. We're focused in Grow youw Show to Serve podcast hosts. Still want to do that? Want to do it at a high level. We have had to raise some prices, so that happened. I think it's both partly inflation because we've had huge inflation lately. And so things are just more expensive and some of the strategies just cost more. They just take longer. Like, for example, some of the private messages. I still think they're extremely effective. However, a number of people that get private messages, even though we do try to keep it short and sweet, ask questions and don't send links without permission, and everything else. Less. Fewer people are opening those. Like in. When email first came out, everybody opened 100% of emails, and now a lot of people miss emails. When text message blasts started coming out, a hundred percent of people were opening text, and now people are slowly not answering the phone or their text. And the same thing will happen with anything that's out there. So over the past four or five years that we've been doing that strategy, it just gets a little harder and harder, but we're probably going to keep focusing on it. For me, personally, I'll say the thing that I'm kind of excited about is in a few years, I'll be retiring to a Spanish speaking country. So that would be kind of the next thing.

So the Spanish ads on the very front of that show be so bad for you in the future?

In the future, yeah. I'm getting much better. I can understand almost half of what's on a Spanish ad, but in the future, I'll definitely have a good handle.

Well, wouldn't be the binge factor if I didn't give you a slight psychoanalysis of your show and what makes people want to binge on your show. And here's what it is, Adam. You don't miss the core topic to talk about, Whether you're doing your own show or you're doing the interview. You head into that narrow, important topic that that person's expert in. It's too often that we get guests on our show or we meander in our topics and try to hit all these different things, but you focus really narrowly and you keep them focused on what they're really best at. That makes for a really great show. And it makes me want to go and binge because I didn't get so much generalization from each guest along the way. I got to go all through your whole entire catalog to be able to get to all those specialty areas and all those special topics I want to consume. That's your binge factor.

Ah, thank you. Muchos gracias.

Yes, you're welcome. Well, I'm so glad we met up because your team was chatting with me, which is such a good way to do that. So, so glad that we met up. So glad I got to listen to the podcast on podcasting. Thank you, Adam Adams, for creating such a great impact into the podcasting ecosystem. So I think we had an interesting conversation around the podcasting industry, and I've also been on Adam's show, so since we've recorded this, so we'll have to do a little swap back and forth and connect to the episode where I was on his show and now he's on mine. Right. So that you can see all of that. It's interesting to be thinking about how someone formed and sold a show and now what they think they need to put value in in order to help you grow your show. And I think that it's really interesting that Adam's perspective is all on the paid lead and ads side of things. There's a lot of cases where I think this works and there's a lot of cases where I think that it doesn't work. And being really clear about your objectives for it, what it's going to do for you, is this aligned with your business because it's not going to be a direct monetary correlation. I pay X, I pay a dollar for an ad, and I'm going to get a dollar twenty in listeners buying something from me.

Right.

It doesn't work like that in quite the same way.

It's.

It doesn't mean that your listeners aren't going to buy your stuff and you're not going to make enough money to make back your money. I do think you can do that, but it's got to be a little clearer and more aligned with everything than it is just advertising and promoting your show. So be really careful in thinking about if you were going to do a paid model, how can you make it pay out more for your business and your show at the same time? That's when we can really maximize ourselves and what we do. So, Adam Adams, the Podcast on Podcasting. Go check it out for another perspective on the industry. I think you're going to find some really interesting things and interesting perspectives over there and see how they compare with some of the things I've been saying. So please reach out to me and let me know what you found really useful on Adam's show and what kinds of things you might like us to address in the future. Because we also have our sister show feed you'd brand, which is our advice show for podcasters. And we have shows about monetization and advertisement and other things like that. But we really talk about it in a much different way than Adam does on his show. So keep that in mind. There's always different viewpoints and different perspectives in the podcasting industry, and that's why we are always trying to bring you more interesting guests here on the Binge Factor, trying to bring you more perspectives into ways to create success as a podcaster so that you can tap into the Binge factor for your show.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.