Streamlined Podcaster: Save Time Podcasting with Systems and Automation
You're a solo podcaster who loves your podcast, but it's so time consuming...and you don't have the budget to hire a team. So what do you do?The whole process of producing a good show seems overwhelming: the ideas, research, recording, editing, publishing, and promoting. It's all too much. That's why you need good podcast systems — to keep everything organized so you can save time podcasting, without sacrificing quality.Your host, Joe Casabona, has been podcasting for over 15 years, and has run half a dozen of his own podcasts over the years — sometimes as many as 4 at a time. He u...
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Why How I Built It Worked [Day 14 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>For a long time I couldn't work out why How I Built It took off, and a few people insisted I was just riding NPR's coattails. The download graph said otherwise — coattails give you spikes that fall back, and what I had was slow, sustained growth. My best answer is three things: I was genuinely curious and asked good questions, I was stubborn about audio quality at a time when most shows weren't, and I actually acted on criticism. When a listener said she wouldn't listen without transcripts, I added them and paid to have the roughly fifty-episode back ca...
How I Got My First Sponsors [Day 13 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>My first sponsor landed before episode one even dropped. Someone emailed asking to trade backlinks, I told them I don't do that but I did have a podcast coming — a hundred dollars for a show mention and a spot in the notes. That link from July 2016 still resolves, which makes it possibly the best ROI in podcast sponsorship history. LearnDash came next, then a much bigger deal with Pantheon, and the pitch that worked was simple: brands were paying tens of thousands to sponsor a weekend conference, so six months of a show with links that never expire was an...
How I Chose My Guests [Day 12 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>My early guest list came straight out of my own orbit — Jason Coleman first, then Rebecca Gill, Brian Krogsgard, Corey Miller, Carrie Dils — and my first big guest, Chris Coyier, said yes far earlier than I had any right to expect. Someone eventually pointed out that my roster skewed heavily male, and while I hadn't done it on purpose, I hadn't been mindful about it either; I've kept it close to an even split ever since. The other thing I decided early and still hold to: a guest owes you their time and nothing else. No required social shares, no p...
Is Video a Dumpster Fire for Podcasting?
<p>Eric Nuzum wrote a piece arguing that podcasting's pivot to video is going to end in a charred mess of garbage fire wreckage, and I think he's mostly right — though not for the reason most people assume. This is a reaction to that article and a follow-up to last week's "is video worth it" question: video isn't a magic wand, and adding it to solve your download problem instead of your audience's problem is exactly the rushed, mistargeted move he's warning about. I get into video's three jobs, why 90% of podcast consumption is still audio, and why serving your au...
The Tools I Launched With in 2016 [Day 11 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>The 2016 stack, as best I remember it: Skype for the call with video on so I could read body language, Ecamm Call Recorder capturing the Skype audio, and QuickTime recording my side locally — with a guest notes page asking every guest to do the same. I edited in Audacity, later GarageBand, and my first mic was the Blue Yeti, which sounds bad mostly because people talk into the top of it instead of the front. I was going to host the files on my own site until my friend Jackie Delia talked me out of it, which is how I...
The Five Questions Behind How I Built It [Day 10 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>How I Built It was a short interview show — 30 minutes at most — built on the same five questions every time, ending with "do you have any trade secrets for us?" The predictability is what made it work for the first hundred-plus episodes, the way a procedural show gives you a format you can settle into. The question that mattered most was the one about failure, because in 2016 everyone was talking about their wins and almost nobody was talking about what went wrong. I'll admit past me used "I like to be surprised along with my guests" as an excuse to s...
Log Your Ideas [Day 9 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>I bought the domain howibuilt.it on my honeymoon in Italy, purely because every site I saw there had a .it address and I wanted one. The idea arrived a few weeks later: I was relaunching my online courses, having great conversations with people about how they'd built their businesses, and realized I should be recording them. How I Built It launched in July 2016 — less sloppy, better researched, and aimed squarely at independent developers who wanted to start a business, which is to say, at me. People say good ideas come back to you. I don't believe that. Write th...
Learn From Others [Day 8 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>Going on ShopTalk Show with Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert around 2013 changed how I made podcasts. They had a guest notes page explaining how to get the best possible recording, and they had guests record their side locally so the finished episode sounded like everyone was in the same room — years before Riverside, Zencastr, or SquadCast existed. That one appearance is a large part of why my next show sounded good enough to take off. Spend time in the space, take the good lessons, and apply them.</p> <p>Resources & Links</p> ShopTalk Show — shoptalkshow.com Riverside (affiliate link) — joec.p...
Serve an Audience [Day 7 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>The TIL Podcast failed because I wasn't serving anybody. The technical barriers are gone — you can record from your phone, and RSS.com has a free hosting tier (disclosure: I'm their evangelist, and the link below is an affiliate link) — which means serving a specific audience is now the whole job. Write a mission statement, pick someone real and specific, and talk to them. You don't need millions of downloads; you need people you serve well enough that they come back and bring others.</p> <p>Resources & Links</p> Join my newsletter for solo business owners: streamlined.fm/join Podc...
Don't Be Afraid to Experiment [Day 6 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
<p>After ending the TIL Podcast, I rebooted it as an interview show — I'd talk to friends about their professional lives, starting with Dr. Dan Ostermeier and my brother, who worked at Disney World. It lasted two episodes, because I had no mission for it beyond wanting to make podcasting work. This was before Serial and Lore pulled podcasting into the mainstream, and I still had no reason for the show to exist. Two failed experiments with the same show taught me more than a cautious success would have.</p> <p>Resources & Links</p> Ecamm (affiliate link) — joec.pro/ecamm Join...
