Hi Reader, At the end of last year, Spotify announced their new monetization options for podcasters, Spotify Partner Program. Now, while at first this might appear great news – after all, it might seem tempting to be making money on arguably the largest podcast platform in the world – chances are, for the average podcaster, that’s not going to happen because of their eligibility limitations for the partner program. For example, you need: to be hosted with Spotify for Creators have 10,000...
27 days ago • 1 min read
Take a look online, whether on X, Facebook groups, Reddit, etc, and you’ll frequently come across questions about starting a podcast. From there, many answers share equipment to buy, hosts to use, etc. All well, all good. But what you don’t often see is what you shouldn’t do, and why, based on personal experience and lessons learned. So, while this is in no way an exhaustive list of do’s and don’ts – after all, it’s all subjective to individual needs – here are three lessons I wish I’d known...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hi there, Oftentimes, when we look at our podcast(s) and whether it's performing as well as we wanted or hoped, we tend to look at the same things. downloads listeners reviews And, sure, while those numbers can and do tell a story they can also give us a false perception of what's actually stunting our growth, because they're primarily internal data points. A great example of this, and a story I've shared elsewhere in the past, is gaming giant Nintendo. The Nintendo guide to sight In the...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi there, When I was still on Twitter, I ran a poll that asked what would be the one big thing that stops you listening to your favourite podcast. The choices were Adding ads, change of format, change of frequency, or “other”. The results are below As you can see, it was pretty even between adding ads, and changing up the format. But out of 81 votes, almost 25% said “other”, and those votes primarily shared something all podcasters need to learn and/or remember to do – and that’s give your...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi there, There's a famous quote by Henry Ford around the idea of asking his customers what they wanted. The reply was, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." (Sidenote: there's a lot of debate as to whether Ford actually said this or not, but let's go with it for now.) The premise is, if you ask your customers what they want they'll tell you what they think they want, as opposed to what they actually need. It's classic Marketing 101 - when you give...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Hi there, One of my favourite podcasters, and someone I look up to when it comes to growing a successful podcast, is Mark Asquith, co-founder of hosting platform Captivate (where I'm Head of Podcaster Support & Experience). Now, there are many reasons for my admiration of Mark, but the main one is his steadfastness when it comes to really caring about helping indie podcasters succeed, whatever that looks like for them. One of his biggest pieces of advice that's helped me is around...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hi there, So, the first part of the holidays are over, and now it's just the run-in to the new year. Do you have any exciting plans for the next few days, or - like me - is it more about a quiet evening at home, maybe watching a movie and enjoying your favourite tipple? Whatever you have planned, this is a great time of year to take stock of what's worked for your podcast in 2024, and see how you can improve on that in the next 12 months, as well as maybe revamping or jettisoning what hasn't....
3 months ago • 3 min read