Podcasting Tips From Top Speakers At Podcast Movement

This year's Podcast Movement in Dallas featured a fresh format with silent disco-style headphones and a dramatic shift in podcasting trends. Jordan tracked down some of the top speakers at Podcast Movement to give their podcasting advice and big takeaways from their session.

• Dave Jackson revealed Marc Maron made $215,000 monthly from subscribers paying for his back catalog
• James Cridland shared that Goalhanger generates one-third of their revenue from audience memberships
• Alex Sanfilippo emphasized proactively connecting with listeners through personal conversations
• Courtney Elmer identified podcast SEO as "lowest hanging fruit" for show discovery
• Daniel J Lewis encouraged podcasters to use publishing platforms that support Podcasting 2.0 features
• Tom Rossi highlighted the importance of comparing engagement metrics (90% podcast consumption vs 5% YouTube)
• Krystal Proffitt shared her PREPM method (Plan-Record-Edit-Publish-Market) to create content without burnout

Don't forget, next week we're discussing how to cut down on editing time, so if you have any tips or questions about that, be sure to tap the text show link to send it in.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Movement Dallas
• 1:23 Monetization Trends and Listener Support
• 6:30 Talking Directly To Your Listeners
• 10:32 Podcast SEO: Untapped Growth Opportunity
• 12:42 Podcasting 2.0 and Statistics Insights
• 15:15 The PREPM Content System

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

This week, Kevin, Alban and I were at Podcast Movement in Dallas, texas. If you weren't able to attend Podcast Movement this year, let me tell you it was quite different from previous years. All the session stages and tracks were in the expo hall in an open space format and the attendees all wore headphones with different colored LED lights for each stage. Basically, if you've ever seen a silent disco, it was that, but for podcasters. And, to be honest, I wasn't sure how it would work with an open concept silent disco conference. But I loved it. The cool thing was you could see what the most popular talks were by glancing around the room and we were able to listen to talks from the Buzzsprout booth just by tuning in on the wireless headphones. It was pretty nice. Actually, we saw some Buzzcast listeners at the conference, but if you weren't one of them, I tracked down some of my favorite speakers to ask them if our Buzzcast listeners had a seat in your session. What do you think would have been the biggest takeaway for them? And before we start, I'd like to note that most of these conversations were recorded using an ATR2100X plugged into my laptop or my iPhone's voice memo app, often in the expo hall or outside a party. So big shout out to Magic Mastering for making this episode sound incredible, despite recording in noisy environments with equipment that I, honestly, have never used before.

Jordan: 1:23

A big topic at Podcast Movement was podcast monetization, but there was a noticeable shift in favorite monetization methods of top podcasters. While the industry tends to focus on programmatic advertising, there's a new front runner in sustainable income for podcasters, big and small. I had a session on choosing the right monetization strategy for your podcast. You know, like if you should go with sponsorships, subscriptions or support, and to me, listener support tips and donations was the best choice, regardless of experience or even audience size, and thankfully other experts backed me up on this. On Tuesday morning, dave Jackson from School of Podcasting, who you might remember from last week's episode, took the stage with a session titled so Many Ways to Monetize which One's Best for you. In it he talked about income streams for your podcast that goes beyond running ads. So I caught up with him in the expo hall and he felt there was a really compelling bit of information in the session that everyone should hear.

Dave: 2:22

Probably the slide that I added that I had totally forgotten about is one way you can monetize your show is to sell your back catalog, and I asked Rob from Libsyn I go, what were the peak number of subscribers when Mark Maron was on their host and he was charging $5 a month and he had 43,000 subscribers at $5 a month, which, if you want to do the math, is $215,000 a month, and that is passive income because he I believe Mark had it to where the last 50 episodes were free and everything else was you had to pay for it, and when you would go to click on it, it would say you need to pay for this.

Dave: 3:01

And, of course, one of the easiest ways to do that is via Buzzsprout, and so that might be something, especially if you're like well, I have a lot of you know episodes and I don't know what to do with these and you want to make money.

Dave: 3:13

You know it's one of those things where, if people want it, you know they can always pay for it once, binge your whole back catalog and turn it off, but most people won't do that. So you know that was when I was like oh yeah, we never talk about, we always talk about ads and selling this and courses and blah, blah, blah, or because most of the time you don't make money from the actual podcast, but he had evergreen content. So it's like oh wait, I want to hear the the Robin Williams interview and I want to hear like the early days when he started that show he was kind of almost doing like steps through therapy and he's he's having these really awkward conversations with people that he kind of had a beef with and he kind of used his podcast to to, like you know, iron out the wrinkles. So his early episodes were not that the latest episodes weren't great, but there's only ones, especially like what the heck am I listening to?

Jordan: 4:10

So that was one that I was like all right, that's. That's a kind of a new it's not a new strategy, but I think it's one that a lot of people forgot about. So that was one slide that got added to the presentation Later that day during the keynote talk. The rest is podcasting. James Cridland from Pod News interviewed Jack Davenport of Goalhanger and if you need further convincing that you should be monetizing your podcast with listener subscriptions, here's what James had to say when we sat down in the phone charging booth outside Podcaster Stage 2.

James: 4:29

Goldhanger is one of the largest independent podcast companies in the world I said largest outside of the US and Jack, who I was interviewing, said well, I think you might find that we're the largest in the world and so, okay, well, that's good, but they make loads of really big shows, and he was talking about where he gets his money from, and part of that is from the audience. So he uses a membership plan asking people to give you money every month, and that is a third of the money that that company makes. So it's a lot of money, and so one of the things that I sort of left with was just asking your audience for money going to. You know, whether you use the Buzzsprout tool for your measurement or whatever it is, just asking your audience for money is a great thing. Don't be embarrassed about doing that.

Jordan: 5:20

He also added a funny anecdote about connecting with listeners.

James: 5:23

The other thing that he told this wonderful story right at the end about something that he was quite proud of he has a website for his podcasts obviously because he's quite a large company and that website has an email address on it of how to get in touch. And he looked at the incoming email and there was an email from a disneycom email address and he looked at it and he went what? It's the CEO of Disney, bob Iger, who is a real fan of one of his shows, and literally just sent it in and said you know, I'm a real fan of the Rest Is History. I'd love to meet. The rest is history. You know people. How can you make that happen? The CEO of Disney and that's moving on to other things you know as well. So I think the learning that I got from that is make sure your podcast has a website, make sure it has your contact details on that website and the third most important thing is make sure you check your email.

Jordan: 6:27

Another popular theme at this year's podcast movement was podcast growth. A lot of the growth strategies typically talked about at conferences has something to do with promo swaps, feed drops or running ads for your podcast, but this year, marketing experts had other opinions about what can move the needle when it comes to growing your show. Wednesday morning, alex Sanfilippo, the founder of Podmatch, gave a talk on five things that only top-rated podcasters do. There was one point in his session that had everyone talking, because it's something we all can do.

Alex: 6:59

I found that top-rated podcasters are really good about formulating community among their listeners but also talking to their listeners. So not just having a community for them, but actually being in that community and actually talking to their listeners. And I'm seeing more and more that top rate podcasters they have that connection because I think that's where fans come from, and so every podcast is like okay, great, alex, that sounds like what a top rate podcaster does, because I already have a ton of fans. I'm like no, I think they got the fans because they started proactively doing this. And so what I want to leave with everybody here is that you have to be proactive about this, and everyone's question is the same thing Okay, alex, how do I meet my listeners? It's always the question I get. First and foremost, find where they're engaging with your content. Sometimes that's easy. It might be comments on some of these player apps now, it might be social media comments. It might be they message you. It could be you see them sharing it, talking about it in forums like Reddit, anything like that. Where is it coming up? Anywhere you see somebody engaging with your podcast in any extent, reach out to them as the host directly and don't let it be like hello, so-and-so, I'm the host of this podcast, thank you so much for listening. Like, not like that, but say, hey, I noticed that you shared this episode, thank you so much. Would you have me have five minutes where we could just get like oh yeah, absolutely. I'd love the chance to meet the host of this show. And so when you get on that call which I do encourage people to make it, make it a call it can be a little uncomfortable at first, but the reality is this person already likes you. They've enjoyed something. You've added value to their life. They're happy to talk to you.

Alex: 8:27

I ask four questions. Number one is how'd you find out about the show? And the reason that's important to me is like what if I find out that Jordan, they're all finding my show through you now and maybe I don't know you, I'm like, okay, who's this Jordan person? I need to meet Jordan, cause, clearly my listeners like Jordan. So who is this? Right? So that's like one way you want to find out where are they all coming from? The second them what they enjoy about the show. This can really help you understand the elements of your show, like the it factor quote, unquote, right Like it's what makes your show unique? Because it makes it special, and you might not realize it because you're not one of your listeners, right? And I tell you, oh, I love it when you do this.

Alex: 8:59

If you're only doing that 30% of the time, like me, at one point you want that to become 100% of the thing. You want to ask it in a really specific way, though, because if you just say, hey, what can I do better, how can I improve, you're not going to get a real answer. I always called. There's a friend of mine who wrote a book called the Mom Test, and so I'll give you a real example of this. If I ask my mom so, alex, the rain, what do you think, mom? My mom would say Alex, you're a genius, you're brilliant, baby, you're going to do so good, do it today.

Alex: 9:34

If I go to my mom and say, hey, mom, what would you think of an idea? If someone said they want to make an umbrella that doesn't block out the sun and rain, what would you think of that? She'd say our listeners asking them hey, what can we do better about the show? You can't say those words.

Alex: 9:48

What you want to say is what can we do better together for future listeners, and so you position a way where you now allow them to break your heart more or less right, without making it feel like they're doing that, because if they like your show, they're not going to give you an honest answer. You want to bring them into, say, hey, listening to your podcast, and you talk to 10 different people and they all say they're struggling with the same thing. Maybe that's an episode, maybe that's a community that you can build around it, maybe that's something you can help solve together. Like what does that look like? I think that's what really opens up our creativity as podcasters. So that's the main point I want to leave everybody with. I think that was a big takeaway. Even during the live session, I got a lot of conversation and feedback about that, specifically afterwards.

Jordan: 10:32

Another often untapped growth opportunity was uncovered at Courtney Elmer's masterclass on podcast SEO to rank at the top of Apple and Spotify search. It was one of the busiest talks I witnessed at the conference, so, seeing the attendees spilling into the expo hall walkway as they listened to her session, I knew I had to find out what she had to say about the importance of podcast SEO.

Courtney: 11:01

First and foremost, that podcast SEO is one of the lowest hanging fruit opportunities that we have right now as podcasters to get our shows seen. It is a strategy that's been around for a while, but until about a year ago we didn't have a way to track to see if it was working, to measure its impact on our show's visibility. But now that we have tools available to us that can actually show us how listeners are searching inside of Apple and Spotify and how you can get your podcast discovered when you know what your listener is searching for, it's essentially just like laying out a map for Apple and Spotify and saying like, hey, it's essentially just like laying out a map for Apple and Spotify and saying like, hey, we want you to connect these type of listeners with my show and when you know how to do that, it's going to put you in the 1% of podcasters right now, because 99% of people are not doing this. But that's going to change. It's going to change and I imagine that over the next year we will see a lot more people talking about podcast SEO. We will see it as an emerging new trend or strategy that people are putting out as far as organic marketing goes for their shows.

Courtney: 11:56

A lot of people know about podcast guesting. We've been doing that for years. People know about sharing on social media or whatever it might be putting short form clips and all these things repurposing your stuff into a blog. But podcast SEO even though it's been around for a while, it's new enough now, with the tools and things that we have available to see how it's working, to say, okay, this is something that I can actually utilize to get traction. And you don't have to have a tech background. You don't have to know anything about SEO, you just have to understand what are my listeners searching for, what are those keywords and how can I match my show with those listeners and communicate that to Apple and Spotify.

Jordan: 12:32

We also got some great practical advice this year, from tools and resources you should be taking advantage of to tips that will prevent you from pod fade and podcast burnout. On Wednesday, daniel J Lewis of the Audacity to Podcast and Podgagement stepped onto the industry expert stage to talk about what you need to know about podcasting 2.0. In it, he spoke on the revolutionary development happening in the podcasting ecosystem thanks to Podcasting 2.0, from monetization, distribution and engagement, among many other evolutions in the podcasting industry. I talked with him outside Patreon's off-the-air party later that night and when I asked him what he'd like you to take away from a session, he said so full disclosure here for you listening.

Daniel: 13:16

Jordan does not know what my answer is going to be. I'm not being paid to give this answer, but the biggest thing I told the podcasters to do, and so this is the takeaway check with your publishing tool to make sure they support Podcasting 2.0. If they don't switch and Buzzsprout supports so many of the Podcasting 2.0 tags you guys have been supporting that from the beginning. So I was able to say Buzzsprout one of the exhibitors here supports a lot of these tags, so you would be great going to Buzzsprout. I did also mention some others, but that's the big thing. Is that, of all of these things it really comes down to? Does your publishing tool support it? If so, take advantage of it and if not, ask them why don't you support it? If so, take advantage of it, and if not, ask them. Why don't you support this? Yeah, ask kindly, but take advantage of the features, and if you don't have those features, switch.

Jordan: 14:05

Tom Rossi, the co-founder of Buzzsprout and honorary co-host of this podcast, got on Podcaster Stage 2 Wednesday afternoon to unpack how to turn overwhelming podcast statistics into actionable insights. It was a 30-minute talk packed with great tips, but Tom had an important takeaway when comparing video to audio statistics.

Tom: 14:24

One of the points that I made was about the engagement Looking at your engagement statistics that you get from Spotify and from Apple. The talk was about statistics, and one of the statistics that we looked at was those engagement metrics that you can get by logging into your Apple and Spotify. And one of the points that I was really trying to drive because I think it contrasts so much with a lot of what people are talking about right now related to video is comparing that engagement to the engagement you're getting on YouTube. Right, a lot of times people are comparing, well, how many views are you getting in YouTube to how many downloads you're getting in your podcast, but they're not looking at the fact that they might only be getting, you know, 5% consumption on YouTube, but they're getting 90% consumption on Apple, and I feel like I hope that that really resonated with people, that it stuck with them.

Jordan: 15:12

And finally, crystal Prophet of Prophet Media had a super relatable session on Wednesday. As she stood in the center stage of the expo hall, she shared how she manages to stay consistent with her podcast while keeping up with her business, family and life's to-dos. Crystal is, as I mentioned, a very busy lady, so I reached out after the conference to ask for a key takeaway from her session If I were to give you one key takeaway from my talk.

Krystal: 15:39

It would be the one content system. It's actually the only content system that you would need, and I broke down my five-step PREPM method. That's P-R-E-P-M and that stands for plan, record, edit, publish and market. I know right, like it's not rocket science. However, it is the content system that I've used to create over 1500 podcast episodes since 2018. And the reason why this talk was so important was I got on stage and I told the audience these are things that you're already doing, but what you may not realize is that each step of the prep process or, for you, creating a piece of content, has a specific type of creative energy.

Krystal: 16:33

So, when you're planning, you're in like a great headspace to think about ideas or think about what you want to talk about, who you want to interview, what are some of those outlines that you want to create. And then, when you're recording, you're obviously sitting down at your chair to record your podcast episode or do an interview. And then, when you're editing, you're in a totally different mindset because you're listening for mistakes or how you can make your content that much better. And then, whenever you are publishing, you're looking at okay, when is this episode going to air. What kind of SEO do I want to do? Which platforms do I want to put this on? And then marketing is the one that people often, so often, tell me I don't have time for marketing and that's usually because they haven't left space to sit down and create Canva graphics or create those video clips that they can share on social media.

Krystal: 17:33

So when you think about the different stages of the prep and process, just know that setting aside some time in your week just to record a podcast isn't enough anymore. You need to have some space for planning. You need to have some space for recording, editing, publishing and marketing, publishing and marketing. So, whenever you look at your week this is my challenge that I gave to the audience is, if you want to implement this, you have to look at how can you give yourself some time back, if you will, to allow for some breathing room to do all of these things in stages and not just sit down at your computer and plan and record and edit and publish and market all in one fell swoop, because that's exhausting and it is the thing that I have seen lead to so much creator burnout over the years.

Krystal: 18:28

So those are my tips. I hope that you go and create some space in your calendar to plan, record, edit, publish and market your content next week and look at how you can continue to create without burnout. And I'll leave you with this, because I always tell everyone this Keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.

Jordan: 18:52

Thanks to all the experts that took time out of their busy schedules to share their tips and advice with our listeners, and I hope this inspires you to attend a podcast conference soon, because I would love to see you there. Don't forget, next week we're discussing how to cut down on editing time, so if you have any tips or questions about that, be sure to tap the text show link in the show notes to send it in. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.