Podmastery: podcasting insights and advice for indie creators

A podcast with a thousand listeners makes about a hundred and forty-four dollars a month.
I checked that properly.
So then I say the second thing, which is the bit that makes people go quiet. You don't want a hundred and forty-four dollars a month. You want one thousand four hundred and forty-four. And the way you get there is by not doing ads.
In this episode:
— Why the hundred and forty-four dollar figure is right, and why that's the problem
— The only lever CPM gives you, and where it leads
— The arithmetic that made me laugh
— What renting your mid-roll actually costs you
— My affiliate disclosure, said out loud, because this episode demands it
— One thing to do this week that takes sixty seconds of 'tape'
Tools I use and get paid to mention.
I record on Boomcaster, edit in Descript most weeks, and Captivate hosts this show.
Affiliate links below — I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I'm telling you because the whole episode is about people who don't.
— Boomcaster: https://www.boomcaster.com/?ref=AzyWVAUu8UgsoCAZT (free trial + 50% off first three months)
— Descript: https://descript.cello.so/Kct9xUy3ilR (50% off first two months)
— Captivate: https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=nealveglio
The Podmastery Community is open soon.
Come and join us: https://podmastery.co/podcasting-community
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Podmastery: Podcasting Insights is my podcast for people who've actually had a go at this and are a bit sick of being told they're doing it wrong by people who've never properly done it at all. I'm Neal Veglio, the Podmaster.

About four years ago, a very popular remote recording platform offered me money to talk about them on this show. I'd been using it that week. It had also, that week, lost one of my recordings. Not glitched. Lost.
I said no. And I want to be clear that this wasn't a moral decision, because it wasn't. It was arithmetic.
This episode is about the thing you're holding and consistently failing to price. Because the belief is that sponsorship is a reward for volume — hit some magic download number and you're finally allowed. So you wait. And when someone eventually offers you something, you say yes very fast, because you've been told this is the gate opening.
Here's the problem with that. Only 7% of podcasts reach 5,000 downloads an episode. Two per cent reach 20,000. The benchmark show you've been measuring yourself against is a rounding error. You've been waiting for permission from a category that's almost entirely empty.
Meanwhile the advertising industry — not me, them — describes mid-tier and niche shows as underpriced. They're on record. And when you look at what they actually pay, business and B2B shows pull $40 to $80 CPM while the big broad comedy and lifestyle shows pull $15 to $35. Narrow is worth more per listener than popular.
So the question stops being will anyone ever pay me? and becomes what's the cheapest I'd take for it? Most podcasters have never answered that. Which is exactly how you end up saying yes to something you've never used.
There's an uncomfortable bit in here about what actually happens when you do. It isn't unsubscribes. Nobody storms off. It's quieter and considerably worse than that.
In this episode:
— Why the download benchmark you're chasing barely exists
— The word the ad industry uses for shows your size, and why it should annoy you
— Why a $50 CPM show can be a better buy than a $15 one
— What it actually costs you when you endorse something you haven't tested
— My entire sponsorship policy, which is one sentence long and slightly embarrassing
— One thing to write down today, on the back of a receipt

Tools mentioned in this episode. I record on Boomcaster, I edit in Descript most weeks, and Captivate hosts this show. I have affiliate links for all three, which means I earn a commission if you sign up through them at no extra cost to you. I'm telling you that because the whole episode is about people who don't. If I stopped using any of them, I'd stop talking about them.
— Boomcaster: https://www.boomcaster.com/?ref=AzyWVAUu8UgsoCAZT (Free trial, plus 50% off your first three months)
— Descript: https://descript.cello.so/Kct9xUy3ilR (50% off first two months)
— Captivate: https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=nealveglio

Want in on the Podmastery Community? We're opening the doors to the public soon. To join the founding members, go to https://podmastery.co/podcasting-community
Stuck on something specific? Come and get your next podcasting challenge solved one-to-one with me at https://podmastery.co
Podmastery: Podcasting Insights is my podcast for people who've actually had a go at this and are a bit sick of being told they're doing it wrong by people who've never properly done it at all. I'm Neal Veglio, the Podmaster.

I was on YouTube the other night. Not for a good reason.
Twenty minutes later I'm looking at one of the big ones — two lads in a studio worth more than my house, four cameras, somebody just out of shot whose entire job that day was deciding where the lamps went. Two point three million views. Up about a day and a half.
And I'm sat on the edge of the bed with my shoes still on thinking: how the hell am I supposed to compete with that.
I think that every few weeks. I'd love to tell you I don't.
This episode is about that moment, because I've decided it isn't what we all think it is.
Everyone will tell you comparison is the thief of joy, which is a lovely thing to put on a tile in a nice font and about as much use as a chocolate mixing desk. So instead, let's look at what you were actually doing.
A download is a file moving from one computer to another. It doesn't mean anybody listened. A YouTube view is a video starting to play — a completely different event. Chart positions aren't a measure of size at all; they're a measure of momentum. And Spotify and Apple count things differently and won't tell you exactly how.
So when you put your number next to theirs, you aren't making an unfair comparison. You aren't making a comparison at all.
Which raises the more uncomfortable question of what you were really asking. Because nobody has ever done competitive analysis at half eleven at night with their shoes on.
And then there's the number you had in your head when you started. You've almost certainly passed it. You almost certainly didn't notice.
One thing to go and do at the end, and it takes about a minute.
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I typed my own podcasting agency's brand name into Google. Spelled wrong, completely on purpose, because transcription services keep hearing "Podknows" and writing "Podnose."

Something was living there. A whole podcast network. Twenty-odd shows. Says it's been going since 2013.

I was already writing the angry LinkedIn post.

And then I did the thing I keep telling everybody else to do. And for a good few minutes back there, I was the villain in this story.

Which is where the actually useful bit starts.

Because the mistake I made wasn't the accusation. That was just ego pain.

The mistake was made years earlier, and I suspect you have made exactly the same one without ever finding out.

In this episode: why nobody discovers a podcast the way we imagine they do, what actually happens when a bloke at a barbecue in Fareham recommends your show out loud, and the reason you will never, ever see this problem in your analytics.

And then one thing to go and do about it, which takes ninety seconds and costs nothing.
Chapters

01:02 Obviously I checked the name

02:42 I was the villain in this story

03:36 Your brand has two names

04:31 How people actually hear about podcasts

05:23 The listener you'll never know you lost

07:26 What do you do about it?

08:17 Why a trademark won't save you from this

08:57 Podmastery Community Member trailer
The bloke I accused of nothing:

Podnose, an independent UK entertainment podcast network founded in 2013 by George Grimwood. A couple of the shows are genuinely good but the majority of them seem to no longer be publishing. podnose.com
Podmastery goodies you can grab:

Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
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Alex Cooper's company Unwell took its first outside investment, from Patrick Whitesell's WTSL, at a $500 million valuation. Every podcast expert on LinkedIn immediately pointed out that this is more than iHeartMedia. I went to check that, because I don't repeat numbers I haven't checked, and I got several different answers from several perfectly respectable financial sources on the same day. Turns out iHeart has multiple classes of share and the best part of $6 billion of debt strapped to its back, so depending which bit you measure you can have whichever number you fancy. It's less a valuation and more a horoscope.

But here's what survives all of that, and it's the bit nobody's saying.

The story doing the rounds is "creator wins, platforms lose."

That's rubbish.

I'll explain why.
In this episode:

— What a humming shed in a field had to do with your career for 100 years

— Why "it's worth more than iHeart" is a number nobody quoting it has checked

— Barstool, Spotify, SiriusXM: three tenancies, one landlord

— The bit where I admit I didn't clock any of this for years

— Why you've been feeling rubbish about yourself on the wrong scoreboard

— One number to look at instead, today

Note:

Unwell has been the subject of reporting this year, including a Vanity Fair investigation, alleging a difficult workplace culture. Cooper disputes it. Nothing in this episode is a comment on that either way — the point here is structural, about who owns what, and it would hold regardless of who the owner turned out to be.

This is Podmastery: Podcasting Opinions — the spinoff from Podcasting Insights. Insights is where I think properly about something. Opinions is where something's happened in the industry and I've got a view.
Podmastery goodies you can grab:

Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co


💬 Work with me one-to-one — https://podmastery.co

I'm Neal Veglio, the Podmaster — podcast producer and consultant, 25+ years in radio and audio, founder of Podknows Podcasting.