Why Podcasts Fade Away and How Coaching Can Help

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

Alright. Welcome to the Podcast review show. I'm Dave Jackson, and, normally, we're reviewing somebody's show, but, just reminding you, there is no line. There is no waiting. And instead, my buddy, Eric k Johnson from Podcast Talent Coach is gonna tell us what we're gonna do instead today. Eric, how's it going?

Erik K Johnson [00:00:18]:

Oh, it's going great, Dave. Always good to see you. Yeah. We are looking for great shows to review. We're all caught up with the, with the shows we had in the hopper. So we're looking for you. If you'd like us to review your show, we would love to have you on right here and talk about you right in front of you. And, to date, we haven't had anybody cry yet, so it's been good.

Erik K Johnson [00:00:37]:

Dave and I both listen to your show before we bring you on the show here. And then on the show, we go through your podcast to give you feedback on what we love about your show, the things that we really want you to do more of. And then some of those things we thought you could do a little bit better, maybe maybe fix in the mix, as we say, and just help you reach your goals with your podcast. That's what the podcast review show is all about. And if you'd like to be reviewed, you'd like to be here on the show with us, you can find all of that information over at podcastreviewshow.com and get signed up there. All the details are right there on how you can appear on the show. So tonight, we thought Dave and I would give you some some input on why most podcasts fade away and what coaching on the podcast review show can do for you to make sure you get over that infamous 7 episode hurdle where most podcasts fade away. And, Dave, I thought that 7 episode mark was fictitious.

Erik K Johnson [00:01:38]:

Like like, the thing that comes up at Podfest or or Podcast movement where it just the story grows and grows. Like, my fish was this big. You know? And it's like 7 episodes. But I was on a call with a client the other night, and I said, well, let's try and get her on other podcasts to be interviewed, you know, to grow her show. And so I said, here, let's go into let's go into Apple Podcasts and go into your niche, and let's find some shows to be interviewed on. So to be interviewed, the criteria are, 1, they have to actively be publishing episodes. 2, they actually interview people. And 3, they fit your niche.

Erik K Johnson [00:02:19]:

And so let's go look. And so I I swear, the first three episodes I pulled up had 7 episodes, and they hadn't published for months months, Some not since since 2019. Yeah. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Do you see a lot of that at Libsyn? Do you see a lot of that fading?

Dave Jackson [00:02:39]:

Yeah. I see that, and I just saw Todd Cochran at Podfest. And every now and then, I'll look at him and go, is it still 7? And he's like, yep. Still 7. Because that's the first time I heard that. I was at an Content, and he had mentioned from Blueberry that they see a lot of shows get Podcast. And what's weird is if you get past 10, you actually make it, like, a decent amount. You, like, you'll actually go for years.

Dave Jackson [00:03:01]:

It's something something happens, I think, after 7 that wait. I'm not on Jimmy Fallon yet? This this. But, yeah, I I see that a lot. And, you know, we're gonna talk about why why do people quit? How do they get burned out? And it's definitely a thing. That's not a myth. So I know sometimes, you know, things get repeated over and over. Ratings and re reviews helping you get found. No.

Dave Jackson [00:03:23]:

They don't. There it's social proof, but people have said that enough to everybody thinks it's true. But the 7 episode thing is actually absolutely legit.

Erik K Johnson [00:03:32]:

Well and I it's like that 7 year itch in marriage. And it's for some reason, you hit that particular mark, and bad things happen. And I don't know if if in podcasting, the honeymoon phase wears off. It wasn't as exciting as you thought it was gonna be. But I think when I look at it and I look at all of the Podcast that have given up, I think they give up on 3 primary reasons. There there are three reasons that make them stop publishing fresh episodes, and these are things we can help you with on the podcast review show if you're running into one of these three challenges. And I think the first challenge that that makes most podcasters give up is it's more work than they thought it was going to be. You know? Get in, look cute, do your thing.

Erik K Johnson [00:04:19]:

You know, a 30 minute podcast should only take me 30 minutes. Right? Well, you you need to record it. You need to edit it. You need to export it. You need to upload it. You need to market it and promote it. So there are there's more work to go into it, but it doesn't have to be all that all that difficult if you have a process. When you record your show every week, Dave, do you have, like, a checklist? I'm sure it's probably mental by now if you do because you've done it for so long.

Erik K Johnson [00:04:47]:

But do you have a process that you go through every week to make sure that you're checking every box?

Dave Jackson [00:04:51]:

Yeah. What I do is I first of all, I have to write a blog post because if I don't not so much that I'm gonna read it, but I have to figure out what am I really trying to make sure that when this person hits stop on the episode or it goes to the next episode, like, what do I want them to learn? So that just helps me get focused. So I do that, then I open up in my case, I use Hindenburg. I kinda go through, and I just picture this person sitting across the desk from me. So I'm I'm talking to them. But then when it's done, then it's uploaded to Libsyn, and then it's while it's uploading, I'm doing my artwork in Canva. So, yeah, it's all mental, but it's, you know, upload Canva, show notes. And the other thing that's in there too before I actually uploaded to the Libsyn, I listened to the finished episode.

Dave Jackson [00:05:35]:

Every time I don't do that, I'm like, oh, I just did it. I don't need to listen to this again is when I wake up the next day and somebody goes, you know, you have 20 seconds of nothing in the middle of your show. I'm like, darn you mute button. So yeah. So it's that's basically it. Record it, edit it, show notes, artwork, publish, and

Erik K Johnson [00:05:54]:

then crazy because that's almost identical to my process because I write a blog post first to frame what the episode's going to be about. And then I open Hindenburg and record the episode, then I edit it. I don't listen to the whole thing, but I do scan the entire thing to look for gaps. Story when I make a mistake and I have to start over, I leave about a 10 second gap so it's visually present right there in the waveform, and I can find it. So I add my open. I add my close. I scan it, make sure there aren't any mistakes that I need to go edit out. I I check the end.

Erik K Johnson [00:06:33]:

So when I put my outro on the end of it and I see that it's 32 minutes, when I export it as an MP 3, I look at the file in the file finder to make sure it's 32 minutes, that it's not 36 minutes, and I have 4 minutes of dead air somewhere. So I do that, and then I create the Canva artwork. Then I upload it to Libsyn, add the show notes. As I do that, I put the same thing on my blog. Yeah. And then I'm good to go. And then I and then I share it on Facebook. Yeah.

Erik K Johnson [00:07:03]:

So once I get the process down, it doesn't take me very long. Like, I can I can sit down and knock out a half hour episode soup to nuts in about 2 hours? Yeah. And like the full thing.

Dave Jackson [00:07:14]:

The thing I've noticed, especially a lot of times, I'll be recording mine on Sunday. And if football is on you know, it's one of those things, like, if I have 8 hours in the day and I'm kinda working on a Podcast, it'll take me 8 hours to do that podcast.

Erik K Johnson [00:07:28]:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dave Jackson [00:07:29]:

And so I know the last episode I just put on the calendar, 2 hours, you know, like, 2 and a half, something like that. And, you know, turn off Netflix, turn off everything, just put your head down and do it. And, yeah, you can pan you can, pound it out.

Erik K Johnson [00:07:42]:

Yeah. A lot of people sit down to do their Podcast, and they go, alright. What am I gonna talk about this week? And that's what takes a long time. Because by the time you figure out what you're going to talk about and you framework it out and then you get to recording it, now you're exhausted. And now you don't even wanna have to do all the publishing and and posting on your blog and posting on social media and all of that. It's just then it becomes work. So what I like to do is sit down, and I like to outline maybe a dozen topics that I might address over the next 3 months that I can hit. So when it comes time to do this week's show, I just look at the topics and go, that one looks fun this week.

Erik K Johnson [00:08:21]:

That's what I'm gonna talk about. So I don't have to sit there and exert all the energy to create the show. So that's the first issue is that Podcast fade away because people realize it's more work than they thought it was going to be. It doesn't have to be. Just create your process. The second reason podcasts fade away is because it doesn't grow as fast as they thought it would, like you were saying earlier. Like, flip the switch, and all of a sudden, I'm on Jimmy Fallon. Right? That it if you build it, they will come only happens in the movies.

Erik K Johnson [00:08:51]:

Right? So I know that Rob Walsh does the state of podcasting every month and kinda gives the numbers. What is that latest mean in terms of downloads? Do you know the rough number?

Dave Jackson [00:09:03]:

The I know the rough number for the average is around, I wanna say, 1200, and I wanna say the median is around 1.50. I I Got it. That's plus or minus 10%. It was something in that region.

Erik K Johnson [00:09:16]:

Month to month too. So the median is the middle. If you stack them up, largest to smallest, the one right in the middle, that's the median. Yeah. So that's about a 150. And he does some funky stuff to it. He takes off, like, the the ones that don't have 0 or 3 or fewer downloads or something. And then the ones that are skyrocketed, he takes those off to kinda fix it.

Erik K Johnson [00:09:37]:

And then the average is you add them all up and you divide by the number.

Dave Jackson [00:09:40]:

Yeah.

Erik K Johnson [00:09:40]:

So difference between the average and the median there. But the median, if you're if you have over a 150 downloads an episode, you're better than half the podcasts that are out there, which is phenomenal.

Dave Jackson [00:09:51]:

Yeah.

Erik K Johnson [00:09:51]:

And I But the podcast isn't going to grow by itself. You actually have to do a little work.

Dave Jackson [00:09:56]:

Yeah. You have to promote it. And I interviewed a guy that got 18,000,000 downloads last year. And what he did was before he even launched, he got some people and said, hey, I made this podcast kind of for you. I need you to listen to this episode. And then he asked them, did you listen to the whole thing? If you didn't listen to the whole thing, where did you stop and why? But the big question he asked was, on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to share this with a friend? And he was looking for nines and tens. 7 and eights were like, and if anything below a 7, he was like, I gotta go back to the the drawing board because he realized that I think it's Jacobs Media had a report. 70% of podcasts are discovered via word-of-mouth.

Dave Jackson [00:10:41]:

And so his his marketing strategy was in towards the end of the show, he would slowly, kinda concisely, and confidently ask his audience to share it with a friend. And that's not the 10,000 download. But he said, in theory, he'd already proven that they liked the show, And so he would just say, hey. You know, if you know somebody who who would be interested in whatever they were talking about, you know, could you share this with a friend? It's gonna make you look cool, and it's gonna help me grow my audience. So it's a win win. And, you know, when I asked him once, I said, okay. But what else did you do? And he goes, oh, that's it. And I was like, what? So but, yeah, it's and there's all the easy things to do, like, in easy in quotation marks there, but, you know, social media, posting on threads and x and Insta and all the other different places you can do that with.

Dave Jackson [00:11:28]:

That's you you can't just put it out there. My little bumper sticker is downloads are equal to value in the episode multiplied by smart promotion. And if there's no promotion Yeah. You know, any 0 in that that little equation is gonna just make it not work.

Erik K Johnson [00:11:43]:

So Well, when I when I talk with clients, they say, well, my podcast isn't growing. I say, okay. Tell me what you do when you release a new episode. They go, well, I, email my list, and I post it on social media. And I said, well, that's great and all, but those people already know you. Right. Like, if though if they were gonna come and listen to your show, they would already be here. Now I want you to keep doing that to remind those people to come back and listen again, but you need to have the other side of the equation, and that's let's go find people who aren't familiar with you yet and invite them to the show.

Erik K Johnson [00:12:15]:

How are you getting in front of those people? Because to grow your audience, there's two sides of the equation. You need to get in front of new listeners, and you need to keep your current listeners coming back episode after episode. So if you're not doing both of those things, your audience isn't going to grow. And if you're struggling with that, that's what we can help you with here on the podcast review show. We can talk about what you're doing when you release episodes and help you come up with better ideas to grow your show. That's part of the podcast review. It's not just you say too much. We're gonna give you great ideas to help you help you create an effective podcast and and help you grow.

Erik K Johnson [00:12:56]:

Yeah. So the 3rd oh, go ahead.

Dave Jackson [00:12:57]:

What just

Erik K Johnson [00:12:58]:

You have one more thing?

Dave Jackson [00:12:58]:

Just one quick tip. When you say episode 17 is out, that does not make people wanna click on it. You know? Yes. But I I love your point. I always say you're trying to get in front of people who don't know your show but should, so your followers know that show. So give think of a a tweet or whatever you do on threads as you're giving your followers marketing material to give to their followers so that they can start following you. So it's tricky.

Erik K Johnson [00:13:24]:

When you say, don't call your episode episode 17 because nobody's searching for episode

Dave Jackson [00:13:29]:

17. That's it. Nobody's googling that. It's not in Google Trends. Yeah.

Erik K Johnson [00:13:33]:

Yeah. No. Not happening. Yeah. Not happening. So the third reason podcasts fade away, we call it pod fading after that 7th episode, is because it doesn't generate revenue. It doesn't make money as fast as they thought it would, which is which happens to all of us. You know, I I heard Russell Brunson tell the story of Marketing in Your Car, which was the original name of his Podcast.

Erik K Johnson [00:13:57]:

And he said he didn't know how to check his stats for the 1st year he did his show, and it was probably good because had he had he known how to check his stats, he probably would have quit. Because the the audience doesn't grow immediately, and it doesn't start making money immediately. You need to build the audience first in order to leverage the audience and leverage that attention to make money. Whether that's making money with ads and sponsors, or making money with affiliate commissions, or making money selling your own thing, you need the audience.

Dave Jackson [00:14:29]:

Yeah. And that's the part that everybody wants to skip. It's, like, a lot of times because I always say it's plan, launch, grow, and then monetize. And a lot of times, we skip the planning. We just go right to launch, and then we wanna skip grow and go to monetize. I'm like, that is just not gonna work. You're trying to monetize dust. And so it's tricky.

Dave Jackson [00:14:48]:

Plus, if you if you just kinda focus on that audience, and I know Tom Webster talks about mastering your craft, just trying to get good at, you know, telling your stories and making your point and being organized. That's what's gonna grow your audience over time. So focus on that because what happens or what leads to burnout is you're trying to learn that. You're trying to get comfortable behind the microphone, and then you look up and you're like, well, I'm on episode 3, and I've only got 2 clicks to my book. Nobody's even clicking on the thing. It well, yeah. You you you don't have a big enough audience set. And that kinda can, you know, hit you where it counts, and it kinda it's a little depressing.

Dave Jackson [00:15:23]:

If you ever look at YouTube numbers, oh, man, that is soul crushing. Or if you go into Apple Podcasts, you can see how far people listen. Sometimes I go, hey, be careful what you ask for. Because you go in, and that can kind of take some of the gas out of your tank. So just focus on growing that audience, getting feedback, making it better. And that does kind of take the pressure off. And I think that's that sometimes I think that contributes to people wanting to quit because the goal is, okay, I wanna make money. No.

Dave Jackson [00:15:51]:

The the first goal was I need to grow my audience. And by kind of skipping that step, I think we can get a little discouraged.

Erik K Johnson [00:15:59]:

Well and you'll be happy that you only have 5 listeners when you start out because 2 years down the road, you're gonna be so much better than you are today. And you're gonna, oh, thank god I didn't have hundreds of listeners. They would have never come back. And so and the other thing, a lot of people ask me, how many listeners do I need before I monetize my show? And the infamous answer is it depends. Be it depends on the relationship you have with the audience. If you use your podcast to develop powerful relationships with your audience, you can monetize a 100 people. Because if those 100 people want everything you do, then you're golden. But if you have an audience of 1500 and they just have a cursory interest in what you're doing, you're not gonna be able to make any money.

Erik K Johnson [00:16:49]:

So it's not the quantity of the audience. It's the quality of the audience. And it all depends on your niche. If you're not in one of the big three, if you're not in health, wealth, and and relationships, you're probably not gonna have, 100 and thousands of listeners listening to your show. If you're in underwater scuba diving, you're gonna have a small niche. But guess what? They're gonna love everything you do.

Dave Jackson [00:17:15]:

As opposed to the above water scuba diving? That's that's the niche, my friend.

Erik K Johnson [00:17:20]:

Scoo it's called sand scuba diving. You do it on land. For those of us afraid of water

Dave Jackson [00:17:26]:

That's it.

Erik K Johnson [00:17:27]:

Keep your mouth shut while you're trying to you can't breathe in through your mouth when you're sand scuba diving.

Dave Jackson [00:17:32]:

It's just not gonna work. Yeah. And and, also, in some cases, like, we all most of us wanna monetize our show, but you also have to then in concerning downloads, like I don't know about you, Eric, but I think everybody in January decides they wanna start a Podcast. So I get a lot more traffic to my website. And in February, much like gym memberships, my numbers take a little dip, but or my downloads take a little dip, but my membership actually goes up a little bit. And so sometimes we really get focused on downloads, and it's like, well, wait. How are you judging your success? I know one person that does a show, and her whole goal is to just educate everyone. She's really it's just a passion project as she just wants to make sure everybody knows what's going on in Congress.

Dave Jackson [00:18:16]:

And so, you know, it's not always about monetization, but you do need to know why am I doing this because to kinda go back to that first point, if you don't get any of your why after 4 years, yeah, you're gonna just go, okay. Well, enough of that. I'm gonna pick up pickleball now or something.

Erik K Johnson [00:18:31]:

Yeah. When you launch your podcast, you have to have a purpose. You have to have a solid foundation. It's easy to launch a podcast. You know, record your show, export it as an MP 3, upload it to Libsyn, connect it to all the platforms. There, you got yourself a podcast. But to get over that 7 episode hurdle, you need the foundation that comes before that. And that's your purpose, what you're going to talk about, why you want to talk about it.

Erik K Johnson [00:18:57]:

It's your passion. You can talk about it for hours on end. And then what that's going to look like. Are you gonna do a solo show or an interview style show or maybe a combination, maybe a magazine style show? So until you figure all of that out and you have a real purpose to create the show, it's gonna be very challenging for you to do it on a consistent basis. So find something that you love and talk about that. But building that audience and and monetizing that audience, that's something that we can help walk you through as well here on the Podcast review show and just help you build a solid podcast that helps you reach your goals, whatever those goals may be.

Dave Jackson [00:19:36]:

Yeah. Because I in addition to listening to your show, we also go over your website. And we found many of times where, like, do you know you have a bunch of dead links? I'll give you an example of myself. I had about two and a half months ago, one of my clients said, hey, Dave. Do you know you have a typo in your podcast? And I went, well, which one? I have a bunch of podcasts. And she said, oh, the School of Podcasting. And I was like, no. There's no way.

Dave Jackson [00:19:59]:

And sure enough, I went and it said School of Podcasting, plan, launch, grow, monetize your show, and I dropped an e. So I I I can raise my hand and go, this is why you need somebody with fresh eyes to come and look at your content because there are just times when you just don't know that you missed something or maybe that's not as professional sounding as you thought it was or, you know, all the those things. You need a a set of fresh eyes, and the beautiful thing about the podcast review show is you get 4. So there are times I remember once we did a thing about trains, and I didn't know a thing about toy trains, and and Eric was all over it.

Erik K Johnson [00:20:37]:

So I loved that episode. That was a blast.

Dave Jackson [00:20:39]:

So I was like, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Eric's like, no. This is great stuff. And I'm like, okay. Excellent. So you

Erik K Johnson [00:20:45]:

We're talking n scale and HO and Lynel, and Dave's like, I don't know what any of that means.

Dave Jackson [00:20:50]:

Yeah. I was like, so so if you're ready, if you're like, hey, I'm I'm getting we have some people that will have us listen to an episode before they even launch. We have other people that have been doing it for years. And they're like, yeah, you're right. I'm stalled. I need some input. Whatever you need, you can have us check out your audio, check out your content, check out your website. It's all there at podcast review show dotcom, and, we hope to be working with you soon.

Dave Jackson [00:21:16]:

Eric, what's coming up on the Podcast talent coach, or do we wanna do that? Do we wanna because I just had a nice call to action. In my head, I'm like, I should just stop it and go

Erik K Johnson [00:21:26]:

Yeah. Let's just let's just hit them. Hey. Yeah. Sign up over there. Look forward to having you here on the show.

Dave Jackson [00:21:31]:

There you go. I will just use what you just said.

Erik K Johnson [00:21:34]:

You want me to say that?

Dave Jackson [00:21:35]:

Yeah. Go ahead and say that again.

Erik K Johnson [00:21:36]:

And then we can just edit that in.

Dave Jackson [00:21:37]:

Yeah.

Erik K Johnson [00:21:39]:

So get signed up over there. It's podcast review show dot com, and we look forward to having you on the show.

Dave Jackson [00:21:45]:

We look forward to working with you. Take care, everybody.