870 – Reject this advice at your peril: Tom talks Why Podcasts Fail

Episode 870 – Why Podcasts Fail
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 870 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about why podcasts fail. I got a bunch of tips. If you're going to do a podcast, it may fail on you in the beginning because you're not doing certain things right or you have certain expectations that are incorrect. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So hope you didn't miss episode 869. That was more of a motivational thing. Not my normal thing, but, kind of a stories of how you can do way, better and bigger things than you ever dreamed you could. Hope you didn't miss picking up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:10] All right, let's go. Let's get into a bunch of reasons that podcasts fail. Well, one of the things is that people want to be Joe Rogan. They want to have a wide, uh, just talk about all kinds of different topics. Well, the thing is, is Joe Rogan was a television star for a long time. I already had name recognition and was celebrity and and gets all kinds of extra promotion with the UFC, the fighting commentaries he's done and, you know, so that's a whole different animal. I mean, you can't just jump and do that. It's like speakers saying, oh, I want to be Tony Robbins. Whoa. You know, that's good luck to you. See. So you got to pick a niche.

[00:01:53] And the more narrow the niche, the better. And you don't have to have enormous numbers of views to make a lot of money with this. Uh, you see, so, uh, don't go wide, go narrow. If you want success with your podcast, then there's these two. Next things are related marketing too soon and not marketing enough. Okay. See, before you have a lot of content, if you push your your podcast on everybody and then they listen to it and maybe they like the first episode, maybe that's you only have two episodes and and so that it's not enough value to make them want to refer it to others and to stick with you and listen to you because they figure, well, I've already listened to everything say I had 50 episodes in the can before I released this podcast so that I could concentrate on marketing by doing a podcast tour where I was on other people's podcasts. All right. But I had 50 episodes built up. So when I sent somebody to this podcast, they say, wow, not, oh my God. I listened to two episodes and there's none, there's no more, right? So that's marketing too soon, pushing too hard, too soon. Then once you get enough good quality content up there, not marketing enough is a problem. So that means where have you distributed? At every place that's possible. Have you, um, kept an eye on new places that are distributing podcasts? So I mean, two views here, two listens there.

[00:03:33] It all adds up over time. Uh, so, so you've got to market it. And, uh, every once in a while, I'll send it to my email list. I'll say must listen podcasts, and I'll pick some of the best ones and send them out to people. See. So you got to keep marketing it after the fact, but don't market it too soon. All right? Next mistake is people have this, this crazy idea that they're going to monetize their podcast right off the bat. Well, the idea is real if you do it my way. But if you just decide, oh, I'm going to get sponsors, well, unless again, you're a celebrity, have a really big following already, nobody's going to sponsor you. And then also the hard core reality is, is that you make these are just rough figures. You make between 12 and $18 per 1000 downloads per episode. Well, it's hard to get a thousand downloads in any episode, especially when you're first starting. And so even if you got a sponsor, you're going to make 12 bucks, all right. But you won't get one because nobody's going to go after a new to sponsor, a new podcast with their budget wasted on somebody that's untested. See, so that's crazy to look for sponsorship. Unless you already are a celebrity in your niche or you already have a big following, then you might get get some. But the smarter way is to do what I've been teaching like, you know. Be your own sponsor market, your own consulting, your speeches, your products and services and all that.

[00:05:15] Okay. So, uh, marketing or trying to monetize too soon with the standardized ways that most everybody do is just a recipe for failure. All right. Another thing is just talking to hear yourself talk. You got to bring quality. You got to think the listener has a gazillion choices of who to listen to. Uh, so you have to create quality content, get your ego out of it. And, and, uh, you know, make it quality over quantity. You know, you have to think in terms of the listener. Why would they what are they going to get out of you talking if you just want to, you know, show how smart you are and everything and, and concentrate on yourself. Uh, well, it's nothing in it for them. See. So make sure it's quality over quantity. And don't worry about being too fancy with a super studio in the beginning and all that, it's it's way more important that the quality of the content is better, more than you looking perfect. And having a fancy studio that you probably don't even know how to operate. Then here's a mistake I made in the beginning. Very. And of course there was a little bit different atmosphere five, five years ago or so when I started, but my intros were too long, so it was 4 minutes to 5 minutes before we would get to the guest, because I would tell them all about my school.

[00:06:49] I'd promote products and services, I'd give away, uh, some stuff, you know, my automation e-book and tell them about the topic upcoming and, you know, but I never got to the content for 4 or 5 minutes. So you you notice now usually within a minute I'm there already, you know, tell them about what this episode is about, what the last episode was about. Hey, grab the free e-book and let's roll. All right, so I have changed my tune over the years to make shorter intros, get to the stuff because people have short attention spans, and if you don't get to the stuff, they're going to go on to the next podcast. All right. Now, another thing, the host, if you're interviewing people, they don't do their homework. They they get on the podcast and it's like, well, hey, so what have you been up to? And they don't know a thing about the guest. You know, when I get a guest, which I haven't had as many lately. I. I research them like crazy. I find out things that hardly anybody knows about them. I, you know, look at their website, their social media. I find, uh, tweets and, and Instagram posts that they make, and I bring them up during the thing. I mean, I had the guy from entrepreneur magazine, a big, pretty big shot in the in the entrepreneurial field. He couldn't believe it. She's the one. You're the probably the best host I've ever had because you knew stuff and you, you.

[00:08:16] It wasn't just the same dog and pony show. So that can really make you a great podcast. Do your homework. Um, let's see now, also, you got to be careful of where you, you distribute and, and where you put your efforts with your podcast. For instance, you know, you could, you know, Facebook is fine for what it is, but, you know, if if you put your, your all your efforts into Facebook, well, Facebook, you know, after a couple seconds counts that as a view and when people may have backed out after five seconds and and so you think you're getting all this attraction and doing a great job with retention. Retention is important that people listen to the whole thing or watch the whole thing if it's video, because that sends a message to the platforms, it's really good if somebody's watched it the whole time. But if Facebook says, you know, oh, it was a view with only three seconds, then you don't even know if people were listening through the whole thing. See? So, um, and also if they try to find it again, it's harder to find on places like Facebook and TikTok and, and Instagram. So it's good to have distribution on all those places, but you want them to be able to find things. So, uh, having it available on your own website is very important. And also YouTube so that, you know, because it's going to be there forever. And people are used to longer form content on YouTube or Facebook.

[00:09:53] They don't have time to watch long stuff and so forth. So, so if you fix up those things, you're probably going to have a more successful podcast. And, and I and I heard some statistics, I'm not sure where they came from. But like, you know, almost, you know, 90% of podcasts don't make it three episodes. And that's probably because of the things I just talked to you about here. So. So if you're going to do a podcast, uh, fix it up, do it right. Don't kill yourself on being fancy. Concentrate on the audience. Don't go for sponsors. Have your own if you want to make money sooner than later. I made money on the first episode and yeah, I'm kind of known, but I had my own ebooks for sale. See? So you can you can have ebooks, consulting, coaching, uh, speeches or whatever you got to sell. You be the sponsor and you'll have much chance. Because when money comes in from your podcast, you're much more likely to stick with it. Say they have a thing called Pod Fade where you just get sick of doing podcasts because it's a lot of work to do it and do it right. But if no money is coming in and there's no chance of money coming in for six months or a year, uh, people just give up on them. See? So be your own sponsor. All right. There's some tips to help you with podcasts, and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.