Boom. What's going on, everybody? It's your boy, Preston, here. It's your trustworthy online marketing guy. Today, I want to talk about something really interesting, and that is podcasts. Love them or hate them, a shitload of people are listening to podcasts. The podcast audience is 57 million Americans in total. Podcasting, it's here. It's a thing, and it's going to be a thing. The question is … and one of you guys asked me here on YouTube … is, “Should I start a podcast? Is it still worth it?” My answer is, “Yes,” but there's a big but coming, and I'll tell you what it is in this NEW video.
Okay. In order for me to really explain if you should start a podcast … because you've probably listened to some really great podcasts and wondered, “Hey. I could do that too.” Let me tell you a quick story about me and my podcast that you've probably never heard of, because it kind of crashed and burned. It's okay. I'm man enough to admit this. It started off strong.
Here's the thing. Any good podcast … and you know this if you listen to podcasts … is not just a single guy or gal sitting there on the mic, talking into the mic, “Hey. Here's what I'm doing. Blah, blah, blah.” It can work, but the percentage of podcasts that do that that actually work are very, very low. It's a low percentage. There's a few of them, somebody just talking like a monologue. My podcast, I started it. I was gung-ho. I realized that a podcast … Here's the thing. A podcast is really only a RSS feed that gets picked up by iTunes and these other feeds, depending on where you want to have it hosted.
I don't want to get too technical here, but I basically had podcast hosting through … I think it was Libsyn or Podbean, one of those. I had podcast hosting, and I got it, and I'm like, “All right. Who am I going to have on my podcast? Because I don't want to have it just me talking,” so I went out there and I got people to be on my podcast, and I had multiple guests.
Here's how it works. What you would do is you would contact multiple people that you'd want to be on your podcast, and you would say, “Hey. I'd love to have you on my podcast. Here's what it is. Here's what it's about. I think you'd be a great guest because of A, B, C.” Then they'd respond back and you go through. I had some really interesting guests, and I'd like to thank all of them, but here's the thing, is the amount of effort that it takes to plan, set up, and then actually execute on creating your own podcast. Is it worth the ROI?
Because here's the thing, here's the thing, and I'll just tell you this. Anybody who does a podcast … Let me ask you. What's the whole point of a podcast? If you've got a business … I'm assuming you have a business. If you've got a business, why would you want a podcast? What's the whole point of podcasting? I'll tell you. Here it is. You want to make some of these. The whole point of podcasting is to make some money.
Now, a lot of these guys, how they do it is they have sponsors. They have people. “This podcast is brought to you by … ” I'm not going to say any advertiser names here, because I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I don't want to get in trouble. You've heard these. “This podcast is sponsored by ‘insert advertiser here.'” They get people on there. It's hard to monetize a podcast, but at the end of the day, it's to make money. It's to drive people into your funnel, or it's just awareness, getting your name out there. If I have a podcast interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, you'd go, “My gosh, who the hell is this guy? Who the hell is this Preston guy?” The whole point of a podcast … You've got to figure out what the point is for your business.
My other note here, if my podcast … I didn't really have the resources to put into this, because let me just tell you, I realized that to do a podcast, what you really need is you need to allocate planning resources. You need to plan who you're going to have on your show, when you're going to have them on. Then you need to actually get the time set up. Then you need to show up. You need to record it. Then you need to actually post it all.
In all of that posting, what you need to do is you have to optimize the podcast or nobody will find it. You need to put up show notes. You can pay people to do all these, but at the end of the day, podcasting, it takes resources to actually do it right. Not to mention equipment. There's a lot more to it. That's all I'm saying. People who are successful podcasters, they've put a lot of time, energy, and resources into it. If your business isn't really there yet, I don't think it really makes sense for you to start a podcast, and if you're truly not an expert, if you're still blogging and trying to figure all this stuff out, it doesn't make sense for you to start a podcast because what is the point of it?
There's so many other good podcasts out there that you starting a podcast … Who's going to listen to it if they're already listening to three other industry experts? Unless you've got a really different idea or a different topic or a different niche, then all the other podcasts out there … I don't think it makes too much sense, but podcasting is great. It works. It definitely works. People are listening to podcasts. If you have a podcast, I don't think you should jump out there and just try to create a podcast just for the money. Okay?
What you should do is if your business is there, if you've exhausted all the other avenues and you think it's time for you to do podcasting, then hey, you should definitely jump in. I'll put a few links to some other resources on here, but don't get caught into the trap of listening to some other podcasters like Pat Flynn or John Lee Dumas and thinking you're going to start a podcast and hit that level, because that is a super small percentage of podcasters. You know how many podcasts are out there and fail, and nobody listens to them? Don't forget, there's a cost to doing a podcast: podcast hosting, equipment, et cetera, everything I listed off.
Podcasting, is it dead or not? No, it's not dead, but it takes a lot of time, energy, effort, resources to really get it going and get it to that level to where you've got other people, you've got people who want to be on your show, and you've got awareness of your podcast. That's it for this episode. Podcasting, it's still alive and kicking. Until next time, I'm Preston. This is Preston's Corner, and I'm out.
