What We See Behind the Scenes as a Podcast Hosting Company – PCI 475

0:00 Welcome back to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry. And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, director of marketing. And I'm Dave Clements from the support and media team. Today, we are gonna pull back the curtain a little bit. Yeah. We're talking about what we see behind the scenes here at Blueberry's hosting company or any hosting company, I'm sure. We don't wanna call anyone out specifically, but we are here to share some patterns we've noticed after working with thousands of podcasters over the years. So don't panic. We're gonna touch on the good, the bad, the ugly, give you some insight. Yeah. When you work at a hosting company and support, you see a lot of trends.

0:44 You see what helps shows grow and what usually causes them to quit, podcasting. You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Mackenzie Bennett, and Dave Clements. We're bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting, all with the support of your team here at Blueberry. Welcome. Let's dive in. That first one, why shows stop publishing? Generally, I mean, you guys are support. You could correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I would say a lot of the time, it's not because of a tech issue. No. Not not really. I think tech issues are normal. The the more that we use technology, we understand that things are gonna, you know, maybe not work perfectly all the time, every time.

1:38 So, no, tech issues usually don't cause people to quit. You know, they may cause people to move around and find a different service. But, usually, we see people stop primarily because, in my opinion, they have unrealistic expectations that also cause, a lack of clear goals that causes burnout. And that's how I've always dealt with quitting any shows that I've quit is it's just kind of layers of all of these things. Plus, if you have a busy life, that's obviously gonna get in the way. So people who have, you know, busy families or just a lot going on tend to just burn out really fast with their podcasts.

2:21 Yeah. You know, and that happens, you know, when I first got into podcasting. Oh, I wanna start a podcast about this, and I wanna start a podcast about that, and I wanna start another podcast about this other thing. And, you know, before too long, you just got way too much going on. So, you know, doing multiple podcasts, if you're not you know, they all take time. So, you know, be careful with that. That'll definitely help with the the burnout. You know? Do do one. Get good at it. Decide, you know, if you wanna make another one or or stuff like that. But, you know, tech as you guys said, tech issues aren't generally the reason people quit. It's usually lack of time and and all of that.

3:06 Yeah. I think if you are that excited about podcasting and you're like, I'm gonna do a show about this. I wanna do a show about this. I wanna do a show about this. I don't necessarily trust you about all of those topics. You know? Not not so much trust. It's just, you know, are you gonna do a good job of Yeah. Of entertaining or or educating or whatever if you've got everything split into 20 different directions. Mhmm. Yeah. Like, I wanna hear you on your soapbox about something, but I don't wanna hear it about five different things probably. So I would keep that in mind. Yeah.

3:47 I I think the big thing that I see, even just talking to friends, because I I have friends that do podcasts. And while you want to do a lot of different things, even when you do have it focused, you kinda run into that unrealistic expectations because podcasts are way more mainstream than they were when our company started. I mean, when the three of us started doing work for Blueberry, podcasting was still pretty small. Yeah. But now, you know, you you've got shows that are making a bunch of money. They're highly produced, and we've talked about this on previous episodes. But those unrealistic expectations are gonna beat you up every single time.

4:31 And even looking through Reddit, which is something that we're doing more and more now, you see a lot of people that are like, well, how do I get successful and make this my living? And it's like, why are we starting with this question when you haven't recorded the first episode? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's one of those things. You know? I need to start a podcast. You know, I got laid off from my job, and I like, well, podcast isn't actually the fast way to make money. It might happen over time, but, you know, be realistic about it. The show stopped publishing, but it's generally not because of the podcast tech. I would say, if anything, shows are going on for longer because the tech has improved.

5:12 Yeah. The the tech is to the point now where, you know, you can make the tech disappear for the most part. I mean, yeah, you gotta know certain things to produce a good audio file or a good video, whatever. But, you know, as far as that goes but there are some common tech mistakes. So, you know, Dave and I can speak to this because we're on support all the time. Mhmm. But, you know, a lot of support questions come down to just the basics, you know, distribution timing. You know, I published an episode, and it's not on Apple yet. And you look at their feed, and they published twenty two minutes ago.

5:53 And, you know, that's just not realistic. Podcasting is sort of backwards. It's distributed, syndicated. Mike likes to say it is a pull, not a push technology. So you publish, and then you have to wait for Apple and Spotify and all of those other platforms to pull that new information in. You don't just ping them and go, hey. We're ready. Here's the other thing. You know, we don't control Spotify. We don't control Apple. We don't Apple. We don't control Amazon Music or any of the other directories. You know, hosting controls the RSS feed. And if it goes into the RSS feed, and your RSS feed is correct, which it will be from us, we don't control what the directories do with it. You know? We can't help you format the show notes other than we send them the standard thing. And if they just choose to do something else with it, you know, it's up to those apps.

6:46 So what can they do behind the curtain at a podcast hosting provider? So these common tech mistakes Yeah. What could they maybe do to, to avoid those or make your lives easier with the support team? You You know, people are gonna have the questions. As I've said on other shows and other places, you know, the when podcasting first started, everybody was a geek. Listeners, the producers, the hosts, whatever, everything was geeky. And over time, it came up to average. So the average tech savviness of a podcaster was along the average of all people.

7:27 You know? So you had a little tech savviness, but not you know, you weren't too geeky. And now I honestly think that there's people that are below average, and that's not a bad thing. It just you know, there's people out there that don't like tech, and that's fine, and they can still podcast. But just know you have to learn a little bit, and we're happy to teach you, of course, how RSS distribution works and how these directories works, and they're they're all different. You know, I did my thing at Podfest about distribution, and, you know, it it changes. You know?

8:08 New rules, you know, in different different apps and directories have different standards. And, you know, just just make sure that, you know, if you have a question, please please contact your host or us here, Dave and I, at Blueberry, and we can we can help you get it all tweaked the way it needs to be, and then you should be good. Yeah. I think the other thing too is, just to kinda build off of what Mike was saying, a little bit of education in in how things work can actually go a really long way for your own patients.

8:51 We'll we'll talk to customers that get really frustrated because, well, I published fifteen minutes ago. I don't see it on whatever app I'm using. And so then there's a phone call or a ticket. And we totally understand that. We're you know, we see it all the time. But I think if if people could step back just a little bit and go, okay. I'm going to just give myself a block of time. Maybe it's two hours. And if it doesn't show up, then I reach out. There's a lot of times where especially if you're using PowerPress because, caching is a bad word Mhmm. For podcasters.

9:33 And, basically, that's just you know, files are being stored so that they can load your website a little faster. But the downside is that your feed isn't going to update as fast and show the new episode so that when Apple and Spotify go to pull it, they're not gonna see it right away. So it's one of those, like, slow down, maybe give it two hours. And then if you don't see it, contact us. Or even as simple as is my file online, You know, can I listen to that file in my browser? Because we have run into issues where files aren't, you know, publicly available.

10:15 And if you just go in and, you know, republish the post or set the file to online, then it's working, and there's no need for a support ticket. And, you know, that's again, that's technology being buggy sometimes, and you have that. And I think we're just kind of in this instant gratification era where it doesn't work now, so I panic and throw my phone out the window or call someone and or or whatever. So Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of basic knowledge and patience will take you so far in in creating your podcast. Yeah. Exactly. You know, a little education. What I used to like to say to people this is, you know, way back in the day. I know I'm an old fart.

11:03 But, you know, I used to say you're gonna pay either money, time, or education. You know, if you don't wanna learn how this all works, you're gonna spend a lot of time, you know, talking to people about it and get getting tech support. Or if you get a little education, that's gonna save you the time and the money. Yeah. Because you know? Yeah. And here's the other thing that I find that a lot of lot of, customers don't understand. Well, it's on Apple. It's on Spotify, but it's not a obscure directory that nobody uses. But that doesn't mean there's a problem with your feed. That doesn't mean there's a problem with your service at Blueberry or wherever you're you're hosting.

11:52 That's a problem with that place. If all the other places are working and that one's not, then they have a problem, generally. And, you know, if it's really that big a deal, contact them. But as I've I've said in in all my talks is really if you're in podcast index, Spotify, and Apple, you've covered 95%. Any of the other ones are yeah. They're kinda cool to be in, but don't lose any sleep over it. You know, it's not not a big deal. You know, a little little knowledge will prevent some stress there. That that absolutely leads us into the next thing we wanted to talk about was stats misconceptions, and that stress and, losing sleep. Yeah. Stats is definitely on that list.

12:46 People can get discouraged quite quickly and, you know, maybe maybe don't understand the the full spectrum of how podcast stats work. But, usually, we see them upset by, you know, some unrealistic ideal number in their head. Yeah. Yeah. That and, you know, another thing that was stats is people watch it so closely, and they obsess about it. And, you know, I had one guy. I think he had eight downloads on an episode, and six of them were from New York state.

13:26 And he was like, wow. That that's gotta be a bot or something in New York, or this just doesn't seem right. You know? And it's like, well, you're getting way ahead of yourself. You're just starting here. Mhmm. You know. And the other thing is, you know, people will freak out when they get a bump in their stats. You know? I I think I get just as many complaints about low stats as I do high stats. Oh, is this real? I got, you know, 2,000 downloads, and I normally get 500. And, well, yeah, somebody shared it or something. I don't know. You know? I'm looking at it. There there is ways to look at it to see if it is bot activity, but we filter that stuff out pretty well.

14:11 Mhmm. You know? Yeah. I I think if people would again, like, I think patience is key, because I don't want us to just come off sounding like we're just growing beer all the time. But I think there's a lot of people don't always know how to use the tools that they're given. I mean, even me. Like, I've been doing support for six, seven years now, and I've been podcasting for twice that long. And I still have problems understanding some of my stats. Like, where in the world did this bump or this dip come from? And especially, like, the bumps. You know? Where where I'm used to seeing a couple 100 downloads for a certain show that I'm doing, and then all of a sudden, it it goes really high. And to a degree, you can you can try and narrow that down. Like, if they're coming from a country that you have never ever seen in your stats dashboard before, okay. Well, then that is a reason to get in touch with us. But sometimes, like Mike said, maybe you were shared somewhere. I know we had a somebody wrote an article about the show I was doing, had no idea, and they contacted us, like, a week later. And they're like, just so you know, we did write a an article about you, and we're like, oh, that's where those extra, like, 400 downloads for, you know, a handful of episodes came from.

15:37 And it was great, but we just didn't know it. And so there's a little bit of a panic. But you can figure that stuff out whether you look for it or, you know, sometimes people will reach out to you and tell you, hey. Yeah. You know, we're talking about you. That that's why I don't panic about your stats. Yeah. And I've had a, speaking of spikes, that I've been able to tell them why, is I had a a person that had 200 and something episodes, and they were all available in their feed. And they got, like their their normal downloads were, like, 50 or something. I forget exactly what it was, but it was pretty low. And they were okay with that.

16:20 But on one day, they got 300 and something episodes or downloads. And they're like, why is this big spike on this one day? Well, somebody discovered your show and downloaded the whole thing. It happens sometimes. You know? They'll Yep. You'll you'll get a super fan, and they're, oh, I'm gonna download all of these. And they downloaded 200 and whatever episodes Mhmm. That day plus the normal downloads, and it made this really neat spike in the in the stats. And and I said, well, just go to the episode section, and you can see, you know, this week, you got one download on every one of your episodes, even the ones from four years ago.

17:00 Yeah. You know? And and so that kind of stuff happens. The the the key with stats is we can tell you what happened. We might not be able to tell you why. Yeah. You know? No. You kinda just have to let go some stuff. Yeah. And you might be able to figure it out. You know? Again, you know, it's it's not a complete mystery, but, you know, stats can only do so much. You know, we can tell you what what happened. Maybe not why, but we can, you know, usually tell you what and when. So Yeah. And I I mean, we've we've all been doing this long enough.

17:41 I don't think that I would panic too much at a a rise or a dip in your statistics unless all of a sudden it just plummets, and it's like, well, I was getting 50 downloads, and now I'm getting two, and it's consistent over the course of, like, two weeks or something like that. Yeah. Then maybe you panic. Yeah. But Or or if you get zero, you know, then that might be a surprise. Look into something. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. If it's a drastic dip, you definitely wanna check into that. But, you know, more more times than not, you're going to see kind of a gradual rise or a plateau. I don't think people's shows fall off until they just stop producing content. Yeah.

18:26 And, you know, what what'll happen is you might saturate your market. I mean, if you're doing a show that is super niche, you might have already reached anybody that might wanna listen to it, and it may not grow, you know, without some sort of change in in your focus. But then you might lose some of the ones you had. So, you know, just do your show. We'll tell you what happened. Yeah. We've been doing stats a very, very long time. That's one of the first things we've ever done as a company that, you know, when this started in 2005 is stats. So Mhmm. You can believe the information that we are giving out.

19:09 Yeah. So Dave and I recently did an episode all about monetization, But, you know, some people don't exactly understand that, it's more than just ads. There's other ways of monetizing your show. Yeah. For sure. There's a different way that you can do it. You can do different types of ads. You can do affiliate program stuff. You can do selling your own courses. There's a variety of things that you can do, but we don't want you to undervalue maybe your niche audience of whatever show it is that you have. There's this story that we've told at the company that it's you know, we had a neurosurgeon that had a show that was a very small audience, in the grand scheme of things, but they were making bank off of this because they were the only show talking about this specific topic. And the people that were listening were other neurosurgeons.

20:07 And so they had amazing advertisements just because of that. Mhmm. Yeah. I think that's that's that, yeah, it plays into stats a little bit, but going, oh, my audience isn't big enough or whatever. No. No. You could you can literally provide good enough content to that niche audience that you can start selling to them at or, you know and that's that's if you're running a business. Even if you're not running a business and you're just doing it for fun, you can have a Patreon that you have just diehard fans that are like, yes. I'm more than happy to give you some of my money. There is another word I wanted to use. But, you know, the the whole value for value thing. You know? Time, talent, or treasure. You know? You get a lot of participation or you get maybe a little money. You get, you know, maybe somebody will do some artwork for you. You know, there's all kinds of ways people can contribute to your show. Money's being one of them.

21:06 Yeah. Yeah. So build the audience and build it to where they are just as dedicated to you as you are to them, and it becomes a reciprocal thing. And, you know, monetization will grow from that naturally. Yeah. That and also, you know, the forcing things on your beloved audience, especially if they are small and loyal, treat them with respect with any type of monetization that you are doing. You know, they are listening because they obviously, in some way, value the content that you were putting out. So You mean a GEICO ad doesn't fit every show? You know, maybe someone thinks that it does. Maybe the CEO of GEICO thinks that is the case. Everybody else does not.

21:48 Right. You know? And, you know, that's that's the thing too. You know, make sure if you take advertising that you broker that it's something that you believe in because you're you've got that relationship with your audience. And if you're selling them snake oil, that's not gonna go over well. Yeah. They'll remember that. If you feel any type of embarrassed, not about advertising in general, because, like, that might just feel like an imposter syndrome type thing. You know, it's okay to monetize your own content. That is just how things work nowadays. But if you are in any shape or form embarrassed by the specific advertiser and feel like, oh, this this is making me a little bit uncomfortable, that's when you don't do it.

22:36 Right. If you are not, like, happily bragging about this sponsor that you have, then don't sign with them. That would be my biggest thing. Yeah. And what's cool about that sometimes depending on what it is you're advertising, you might get a sample for free. Yeah. Exactly. You know, it's if it feels gross on the inside, it will come off as gross on the outside. Yeah. You know, I know I I watch a lot of YouTube and said that 100 times. A lot of the YouTubers will have factor or one of those meal delivery things. Oh, yeah. Of course, I'll send them a case of the stuff, and they get to eat it on camera, whatever.

23:16 You know, make sure it's something that you believe in, though, because people can smell BS from a mile away. And, you know, like, you know, if Microsoft came to me and said, hey. I want you to to, talk about Windows, operating system. Well, first off, I don't use Windows. Not that I don't hate Windows. I just don't use it. And it would be very fakey to my audience if I'm bragging up Windows when I'm sitting here in front of a Mac. And have been for many, many, many years. Exactly. You know? So, you know, there is there is that kind of thing. So just make sure it aligns with, a, your audience, and, b, you.

24:00 Yeah. Yep. Both are important. Yeah. So there's some growth myths out there. And I don't know the motivation of it, but there's a lot of pressure for podcasters to add video or oops. Start with video. And it's not always a great idea. You know? Audio is much easier to to do than video. And there's nothing wrong with video. Don't get me wrong. We're we're all for it. But if you don't wanna do video, don't do video. Same thing with, you know, you gotta be on every single platform.

24:41 Well, yeah. No. I mean, the three I mentioned, yes. The rest of them might as well. You know? But you don't absolutely, positively have to be on Amazon or your show's gonna fail. Mhmm. Or you're not gonna grow because you're not on Amazon. Well, Amazon, on average, doesn't get very high listenership of podcasts. I mean, there are some that do pretty well there. Believe me. But, it's it's not gonna make or break your show. Right. You know? And then my my favorite one, the shiny object or use every new tool. You know? That used to be the big thing. You know? What microphone do you use? That that was a huge topic of of conversation.

25:25 And, you know, I I'm on a $400 microphone. Mackenzie's on a $300 microphone. Dave might be on a $50 microphone. I have been before. I'm not now, but I have been. Well, what I'm saying is is, you know, spending, you know, $400 more for your microphone than the one you were using, as long as it's decent, isn't going to gain you a whole lot other than, yeah, I got this fancy microphone. You know, I'm kind of a gear head, so I have fancy microphones because I I just you know, I like that stuff. But Yeah. It doesn't make me sound $400 better. No. No. No. That's actually funny. We we went to a music store this weekend, and my youngest was like, holy cow. There are microphones that expensive, dad.

26:15 And I was like, yes. You don't need them. Typical iceberg. I I got started on super cheap microphones. But, like, you know, just talking about using every tool, like, it's not just, like, the actual physical gear. I see a lot of people going, oh, yeah. Like, oh, well, I have to use, you know, this editor and use this AI tool and, like, you know, 500 different things to craft a single episode. And it's like, no. You're just gonna bog yourself down. Like, sure. Play with things. Does it help you? But, you know, at the end of the day, don't don't try everything because at some point, you're you're gonna burn yourself out, and you're gonna just stop doing it because you don't really have a pattern. So so that that's a big one for me because I am the shiny object. Oh, this is cool. This is new. Let me play with that.

27:09 Yeah. Yeah. And I just, like I mean, we've been talking about, you know, video stuff for the company, and I've been going through and looking at different tools. And I'm like, at some point, I just kinda have to stop and go, okay. Which one do we want to use? Let's see how it works. And if we get good results, we'll keep that one. If we get okay and we could do better, well, then we'll try something else and move on. So Well, we don't have to to use everything. We we did that a lot with this show, you know, our recording platform because, you know, we're all remote. Oh, yeah. That was back and forth so much for a while there. Yeah. And then we finally decided, well, you know what?

27:52 Good enough is good enough. We already use Zoom for everything. Why not use Zoom? I mean, it's got recording capability and, you know, with Kate's help, it's decent. And that's really all you're going for. You don't have to go completely crazy. And, yeah, again, convenience sometimes. You know, like, Descript is very convenient for people to edit episodes on because they can go in there and, you know, just cut words out, and it does a decentest decentest is that a right word? That's not a word. It's not. It's an okay. It's an okay edit. You know? But if you really wanna get in there and, you know, get in the weeds, you do something like audition or Hindenburg or whatever, and you could really get in the weeds and edit. But you don't have to.

28:42 Just use the tool that's gonna make you, like, consistent. You know? Yes. That's the I think, that's what you should focus on. If you're like, I know this. I don't want I don't have the time or mental energy right now to figure out a whole new program, then don't get a whole new program unless something is, like, completely broken and is, like, bringing you down. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah. You know, the and and the tools that are that are out there, you know, yes, there's better tools, coming out all the time. Do you need them? Probably not. We wanna play with them? Sure. Go for it. But, again, you're not going to grow your audience or anything like that just because you switched to a different tool. You might save yourself some time, you you know. But but remember, every tool out there, no matter whether it's hardware, software, whatever, there's a learning curve.

29:44 Mhmm. So it goes back to that education thing. You know? Learn about it. You know? I got a Roadcaster here, and it took me a really long time to get the get the idea how it all worked. And but I put in the time to do it. So now I understand how the thing works, and I haven't had any Roadcaster failures lately. Knock on wood. And and mostly with Switchology on my part. Essentially, what we're saying is don't necessarily change things up because you feel the pressure to do something for that growth. There's a time and a place, and usually, you'll figure it out yourself as opposed to just watching everyone else.

30:24 So I guess the the the big picture here is, you know, most podcaster challenges come down to just, you know, unrealistic expectations, over complications, compare yourself to others. That's usually not a great thing. Yeah. The, the solutions, some patience, the consistency, and I think mental clarity. If you recognized yourself in any of these things, you are not alone as a podcaster. Remember, you are never actually alone as a podcaster. No. Yeah. We we have all, at some point in doing this, hit every single one of these phases. We've all got caught up in it. So, yeah, don't don't panic.

31:08 Yep. And, you know, just focus on the fundamentals and build something sustainable. That's the best way to go. Alright. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to Podcast Insider. We'll see you next week. Thanks Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime, for more information, to subscribe, share, or follow, check out the show notes at podcastinsider.com. To check out our latest suite of services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's Blueberry without the e's.