How Profitable Podcasters Use Momentum to Podcast for Years

All right, welcome back to Profits Through Podcasting. I’m Joel here at East Coast Studio and today I want to talk about why momentum is a key factor when it comes to generating revenue and business leads from your podcast, and how to get momentum on your side by reducing friction in the podcasting process. This is going to increase the probability of you sticking with it for the long haul and then enjoying the fruits of the effort, which should be those leads and profits for your business. So, before looking at momentum, let’s look at the opposite. Okay, if you don’t get your podcast running smoothly, you are not committed to it. You do it for a few weeks and you give up, or you only put an episode out every now and then. That’s not what we want, but it happens to a lot of people and I don’t want to dwell on this for too long, but I do want to mention it briefly.

For contrast, some stats that I have seen online. I searched endlessly to find a source for these, but I could only find people rehashing the same stats. I never saw the first post where they ever appeared. I was curious if they were even real, but they say that only about 10% of podcasts that launch make it past episode number three. So that means 90% quit after three episodes. They put in all that effort to launch three episodes. Later they’re gone. For the ones that do hang in past that number, that three episode mark well, they are mostly gone by episode 20. So I don’t know the accuracy of these stats, but I do know there is a lot of pod fade. I see that myself, being in the business. I did also see some more recent stats that have all podcasts and existence. Only about 13% of them are active and that same report actually said that most people who start a podcast never put out more than one episode. Okay, so they. I was able to verify the source of that, so believe those and, side note, this is why East Coast Studio made the decision to no longer work with new podcasters doing launches, anything like that. Sometimes people doing launches couldn’t even make it through that actual process. They started launching and never even got it going. And you know, fair enough, some people, whatever they’ve got their own stuff going on. But if we want to get something done here and get results, you’ve got to be committed and understand the work ahead. So so we were going to talk about today and how to keep momentum on your side.

Now, I know every business has churn. Forming habits is difficult. It’s difficult for all people, all walks of life, all different areas of life. So podcasting, sure, it’s not going to be an exception. But if we look at podcasts from a marketing and business perspective where we want to start one and it’s just as important as social media marketing, delivering a good product or service in your business, networking with other people, maybe delivering good customer support it’s important.

It should not be just giving up, okay, and the decision should not be made lightly to spend all that effort starting a podcast and then just quit. Whether it’s a new Instagram account, a YouTube channel, an entire business, results don’t come overnight. They don’t come in one month, necessarily, or three months. You don’t start a business and then shut it down two weeks later because it’s not really doing anything. You make the decision to commit, you invest in the business and you hang in there to get it off the ground, okay. So same with podcasting. You need to give it a chance. So shortly we’re going to get into how to be successful with podcasting and keep it going and get momentum on your side, because that’s where the results are If you’re looking to generate business leads and profits with a podcast, you’ve got to keep it going. Otherwise, why even begin if you’re not going to stick in there long enough? Okay, but yes, I know that some kind of sometimes can be easier said than done, so we’re gonna get into some tips here in just a moment.

So what is the difference between a podcaster who gives up and Basically decides they don’t want the benefits that could come along with this and A person who starts a podcast and then they just go non-stop? Three or four years later, they haven’t missed a single week. They’ve seen massive growth. They just, they just kept doing it. Their business is flourishing from leads thanks to podcasting. What are the secrets of those people that stuck with it? Sure, maybe they have a persevering personality, they’ve got more willpower that’s possible.

But there are also some very Quantifiable things that we can outline here that anybody can do, and I’ve noticed amongst those who do stay with podcasting and then they end up with the results that we’re talking about. So the first one would be managing expectations and workload. Podcasters I’ve seen successful in the long term. They did not bite off more than they could chew. They understood the effort required that they’re. They understood the resources that they had available. They’re schedule and made space knowing that this was gonna be a thing.

Now, okay, if you aspire to do a couple of episodes a week, right out of the gate, I would suggest well, hey, let’s just start with one. Let’s just, you know, take it easy. You know, take it easy and see if we can get that up and running well and then increase it later. We want to make it manageable. We do not want it to be stressful. If it’s stressful, you’re gonna quit. Okay, and we’ll get to this more in a couple of minutes.

When it comes to systems and delegating, but this is the foundation here even with assistance, how much can you and your team reasonably handle, especially since you’re basically at the center? Right, you’ve got to do the recordings for your podcast, maybe some networking, maybe some connecting with guests. So even if you’ve got some help, it’s still gonna involve you, right? So we’ll talk more about that in a second. But basically, we want to ensure that you’ve got time in your schedule to do this consistently. It’s very important to understand that before beginning.

Second thing I see common amongst podcasters who are able to hang in there, podcasts for the long term and generate profits and leads for their business. They plan well, they ingrain the habit and it’s just part of their life. Now the podcast is not something that can just be tossed aside. When things get too busy, kind of like we mentioned in the last point, they carve out time and they get it done. Some people allocate a day or two a month and they’ll do a whole months worth of content all at once. Others prefer a weekly schedule, but they stay ahead by a couple of weeks and then just record a new one every week.

Whatever works for you, that’s fine. There’s no right way to do it. But this is crucial because if things start to get chaotic and all of a sudden you’re a bit behind schedule, now you’ve got a rush to do an episode and what felt like fun before, well, now it feels more like a chore. It’s just another item on the to-do list. It’s not enjoyable. You’re feeling stressed. Maybe you don’t have time to do a good job. You’re asking for trouble. If you end up like this, if you find every week You’re you’re just getting your episode in last minute, you’re asking your editor to rush it. That isn’t good. We want to destroy as much resistance as possible and make it easy for you to do this for a long time horizon. And so that leads into the next one People who succeed at keeping their podcast going for the long haul so they can reap the rewards.

They put systems in place and they delegate Yep. Simply recording an episode maybe only takes an hour or so, but still there are a whole bunch of tasks that need to be done before that episode is ready for publishing. Of course, it’s got to be edited, needs to have show notes made, it’s got to be uploaded, some social media assets created and posted. This stuff is crucial. But if you were trying to do it alone, that’s just compounding this problem of not having enough time. It’s adding a lot of friction to the process. So you can build systems and automate things, all kinds of stuff. An example would be guest outreach. Or let’s say you have a VA, you can have them download the files when you’re done recording and sending them to the editing team. We want to make it all as simple as possible and to consume a little of your time as possible. Right, we want you to be able to sit, hit, record, get that recording done, move on to what’s next. It should feel very easy. We do not want any friction causing you to feel negatively Towards the podcast and then just letting it fall by the wayside.

And the final point that I want to touch on here how profitable podcasters use momentum to podcast for years. This has to do with numbers and stats and audience growth. Yes, it is very rewarding to see audience growth over time and, of course, along with that, your business revenues. It’s not always possible to track this with perfection. Knowing if a customer actually came from your podcast and remember the podcast is part of your overall marketing strategy. So maybe you met somebody at a conference, then they got you on Instagram and ended up checking out a couple of episodes of your podcast and then finally joined into your Facebook page and then they made a purchase with you. It’s hard to 100% connect the podcast to the sale, but you know we have all these touch points where they’re interacting with you and learning to trust you, getting to know you. So the podcast is part of that, okay, so don’t feel that you need to see a direct correlation between the podcast and sales. It’s going to help if you do it correctly.

Seeing numbers can be rewarding, but don’t obsess over it when you look at, say, your podcast audience numbers, it’s going to take time to really see something substantial. And I don’t know. I would love to know the reasons behind these people that start the podcast and three episodes later they’re done. I don’t know what they were expecting. I don’t know if it was too hard for them to create the episodes or they really thought after a few uploads that they were going to be famous, or they’re going to see a ton of leads from the business. I’m saying a minimum of a year.

When you start podcasting, you need to do it for at least that long two years maybe even. And there’s very little point in starting a podcast where you hope to achieve profits and leads for your business. If you’re just going to give up after a few weeks or a month, don’t bother. Take my advice Don’t even start. Okay, it’s going to take time, so don’t get too obsessed and hung up over the numbers and saying, geez, it seems like the growth here is really slow. That’s going to be everywhere. That’s going to be what the business as a whole on Instagram account, a YouTube. You’re not just going to post a video and have a thousand views on it tomorrow, okay. So I think that this is just part of the process. Hang in there, go back and listen to the tips that I gave in this episode in terms of setting up your podcast systems and your schedule, and make it easy, make it something that you can easily do for the longterm, and I strongly believe that you’ll be rewarded from doing that.

Join us again next time on Profits Through Podcasting, for more tips on how to turn your podcast into a lead and revenue generation machine for your business. And if you’re ready to let a team of professionals handle your entire podcast production workflow so you can focus on the most important tasks in your business, visit Eastcoastudiocom. Slash apply.