Terms

Before founding Big IP, a content studio that manages podcasts and YouTube channels such as The John Campea Show, Pop Apologists and Kempire, Scott Porch was an attorney and a journalist. "The most important thing I covered during my time as a full-time reporter was film and television. I was a writer stories for New York Times and Fast Company as well as Wired and Decider and some other media outlets," he starts.

One of the topics that he researched was the way in which podcasting and YouTube is transforming the culture around film and television. He wrote a piece on Game of Thrones recappers for the New York Times and spent more and more time around the subject and meeting with individuals in the field. He before deciding to produce shows with Starburns Audio in 2019. "I went out on my own, and I've grown from a handful of YouTube channels and podcasts, to 14," He adds.

Scott believes there are two factors that are what make podcasts successful that is the creativity component as well as the reach of your audience. "There's a relationship between those two elements," he says. "It's difficult to grow the popularity of a show that isn't good, but it's also difficult to get a good excellent podcast and sustain it over an extended period of time."

He believes that you need to be able to balance both of these components. "You need to create things that people will want to hear and you have to be able to go out and find that group of people to encourage them to listen in the first place." As Scott talked about with Brian Morrissey when he made a guest appearance for The Rebooting podcast, there are times when the podcast itself is the business and sometimes it's the marketing of the business.

Milestones

It's also dependent on the size of the host and this is becoming ever more crucial for launch. Popular podcasts such as The Movie Podcast and How Did This Get Made have existed for a long time, so the hosts are well-known because of their podcasts, however there is a lot of noise. "It's becoming difficult to cut past the clutter. A lot depends on who it is," says Scott. "If Taylor Swift started a podcast on the horizon, she may start monetizing it from day one. If I launched an audio show tomorrow, it would be a different conversation."

Monetizing depends on different thresholds of listening. "At 50,000 downloads an episode, there's a more extensive range of host-read advertising companies who are likely to want to make an obligation to the program where they'll make a certain amount of revenue. Even for shows that have thousands, 5,000 or 10,000 downloads in an episode, you can start making money incrementally through the programmatic and membership revenue" he explains.

Pop Apologists one of the shows Scott produces, is home to more than 2,000 paid subscribers between Patreon as well as iTunes Podcast subscriptions. They've been able to grow the number of subscribers by doing it for many years and have been consistently at doing one episode a week that's public and one episode a week that's exclusively for subscribers. Scott explains that, importantly the episodes are of the same quality. "If you enjoy one of the episodes and you like it, then you'll love the next one."

Joining a membership is easy.

Concerning membership in particular How do you get started? "A lot of shows on YouTube are aware of YouTube's membership program. It's a general awareness out there however in most circumstances, they've never taken that step due to it being a task that's on their agenda but didn't get to yet, or they're not aware of the best way to go about the task," Scott says.

The creator may be creating so many content they're not sure if have the time and resources to create more episodes for an expensive platform, or if they'll be able make enough profit, or if the premium platform will outweigh the free platform.

"A majority of this is uncertainty or simply an area that they've not yet reached and are in need of guidance" Scott says. "They need someone to say"There's money in the market in the event that you choose to pursue and pursue that'. If you're a creator in your company, you're wearing many hats, and you have lots to accomplish. There will be staff members and, or at the very least, equipment and support services that will assist you in building your company," he continues.

If so How do you select the tools and services that will help you run your company, especially in terms of membership? "A few things appear to be pretty consistent in the marketplace over the past few months," starts Scott. "Number one: those who listen to podcasts or who watch YouTube videos, develop an affinity with creators. It's common for people to offer creators by generating recurring income like $4 per month, or $6 per month, perhaps $10 or so a month. The reason consumers make this choice is not simply because they'd like something 'extra' from the creator but due to the desire to aid the creator as a career and not as just side hustle."

The other pattern Scott has seen is that users tend to be platform-specific. "When the Pop Apologists started speaking about Apple Podcasts subscriptions, they were already doing very great on Patreon. One of the worries they had regarding Apple Podcasts is that it would cannibalize Patreon and that they might have to cut off the service in the event of a huge loss of Patreon to Apple However, that's not exactly what transpired. What happened is Patreon has continued to increase in size and Apple Podcasts has grown every month since we launched."

Scott has seen this for many other shows, and has heard about this issue from others. "If people are subscribed to Apple Podcasts, they might listen to six, four, 10 podcasts, but that is where they're going to stream these podcasts. They're not on Patreon or YouTube. If you place the content in front of people via Apple then they'll be able to subscribe to it."

A direct connection to your target audience

Scott believes that it is essential that creators have an intimate relationship with consumers with a podcast, and has cited a startup called Luminary as an example of caution. "It was an approach similar to Netflix in which they licensed different creators to do series. The user would sign up to the platform and pay."

Scott says that Luminary did not work because consumers don't want that intermediary. "Consumers need to be aware that they're supporting the show directly and that their $7 a month, or the $50 they pay annually goes directly to the creator, not Luminary or Netflix or anyone else. This direct relationship is important for the creators as well. It made good consumer and economic sense to start Pop Apologists for Apple Podcasts in order to target that particular audience, but Scott and his team don't know who those listeners are. "We don't know the email addresses of those subscribers. We're not able to host a forum on Zoom once a month with them. We can't let them know the time we're scheduled to appear present on another podcast or the date we'll be doing a live show. We don't have any specific information on these people," he explains.

Scott thinks that if you are looking to make money, you should choose an option where you will establish a direct connection with. "If your business is growing slowly, you might want to start Apple Podcasts subscriptions or Spotify subscriptions - but I'd prefer to have that person's direct information instead of having them kind out there," Scott adds.

Concentrate on the coming future

For budding podcasters, Scott offers advice about the future of your show: "Don't get insular with your audience. Your show should be designed for the next 1,000 subscribers and not just the first 1,000. Every day, someone is listening to your show who don't already understand what format your show follows."

Scott advises you to concentrate on the beginning thirty seconds in your show. He asks: "Are you introducing yourself to a first time listener? Are you indicating 'This is the popular table but you're not getting our humor; you may like to try listening to something else as the group is already in place'.

He realizes it's easy to make a mistake due to the personal relationship between the consumer and seller "You would like the club to exist. You just don't want it to become a club that has no doors, where this number of people you have is all you're ever gonna have," he explains. "You've need to find the equilibrium between offering your viewers what they're looking for yet not being too exclusive that a new person listens to it and says, 'They've already got their own thing. I don't want to be involved.' If every single episode can't function as the first episode and you're saying to that new listener the show is not for them."

Scott gets podcast suggestions frequently and can identify them in just 10 seconds. "Give me 10 seconds of telling me who you are and the podcast you're about, and then tell me what you'll be talking about in the coming days. In the absence of that, I'm not in this group. I've already missed it and there's too much history and 'in' vocabulary. This can be fatal podcasts."

It's the same for pre-roll ads. "Some shows I work with have pre-roll ads which we all earn profit from them," says Scott. "If they didn't do it the show would earn less money. However, who would want the first thing that they listen to the first time they watch your show be an advertisement for Volkswagen? I would like the first thing viewers hear be the host's voice."

In the end, Scott offers a tip on resilience for new podcasters. "You'll discover that many podcasters make five episodes. They're not seeing the growth and so leave. If you're really keen to use this for business development purposes or just as a way of expressing your creative side it's going to be necessary be more patient than you think until you feel like it's succeeding.

The good thing: "You're gonna get a much better at it in the initial 25,35 episodes. There will be feedback. The only way to get feedback is because you enjoy it and know it's going to become an incrementally successful. There are lots of shows that expand from 300th to 400th episodes. Are you truly committed? It's unlikely that you'll get 25000 downloads straight out of the gate unless you're famous.

Which show want to watch? What episode do you see more lengthy playthroughs of? If it's something you really desire to accomplish, you're going to have to have to be patient to find a way to do it in a unique manner."