From Doomscrolling To Downloads: What Social Feeds Really Do To Podcasts

Dave Jackson: 00:00
Ask the Podcast Coach for October 18th, 2025. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It's time for Ask the Podcast Coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from theschofodcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Cullison.

Jim Collison: 00:25
Jim, how's it going, buddy? Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. It's a crisp fall air. It's still hot outside. When is fall gonna get here?

Dave Jackson: 00:34
Oh, it's over here. It showed up yesterday for like a half a day and then went, I'll be right back. I forgot something. Yes, I'm with you on that.

Jim Collison: 00:41
It's October. We haven't even had frost. The mosquitoes are still out there.

Dave Jackson: 00:45
Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. Well, the the cool thing is if it does get chilly, because it did, it got we had a frost warning. It got down to like 36 in Ohio. The one thing that'll always warm you up is a nice hot cup of Java. And that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend Mark over at podcastbranding.co. Uh Mark is a great guy. He's working on something right now for me. Uh so not only am I a customer, I am a repeat customer because he's gonna sit down with you and he's got insane amounts of uh just experience working with multiple podcasters. And this could be your artwork, it could be your website, it could be a PDF that you're gonna, you know, a lead magnet, it could be a PowerPoint presence, anything that you're gonna put in front of your audience that you want to look good and you want to look professional, you go over and you say hi to my buddy Mark. Uh he does an amazing job. And what I love is he gave me three options, and I went out to the school of podcasting, and they said, Well, we kind of like the concept of number one, but we like the colors of number three. And so I'm gonna go to Mark and go, can we combine number one and three? And Mark will go, yes, and I will have it and I will be on my way. It's that simple. He he listens to what you want and then gives you what you need. It's really simple. And so when you're ready to look amazing, podcastbranding.co, tell him Dave and Jim sent you.

Jim Collison: 02:15
And of course, big thank you to our good friend Dan Lefebb over there, based on true story, based on true storypodcast.com. I mentioned it last week. Project Blue Book. If you were if you are our age, you remember those stories that that project from years ago when we were young, and then uh History Channel uh released a version of it in 2019. Dan's talking about it if you're interested in that at all. Available right now based on a true story podcast.com. And as always, Dan, thanks for your sponsorship.

Dave Jackson: 02:50
Beautiful. I just realized I had not turned on the call me feature, which I am glad I'm not recording on the Rodecaster, because if I was, I I couldn't change that. So you figure it, you figure it out. Yeah, too many buttons to push. But Jim, I have a question for you. So we'll do a survey of one. Have you have you ever seen a video on Facebook or let's say, you know, X or you know, some social? Somebody's made a clip of a video and you watch it. We I think we've all can say we've done that. That's awesome. But the question is, have you ever stopped right there and then went to watch the full-length video?

Jim Collison: 03:36
No. Yeah, me. No, actually, I never have. No, I've never clicked on anything to go through. Yeah, I don't, I don't do that. I know that's what they want. I know that's what they're looking for. I know it's what they're doing. And I know it happens. I know it happens. I just don't like I'm not when I'm death scrolling or when I'm you know doing that thing, I'm doing it for entertainment purposes. You know, I just want to go boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm not looking for things. I know it does happen, but that's just me.

Dave Jackson: 04:00
Well, what's funny is, and I all I know him as, which again is kind of key, he is bearded man with a coffee mug. And he's very he used to be a Navy SEAL, I believe, or whatever the other super macho army kill you with a pinky, you know, I can Delta Force, maybe Delta Force. Yeah, something like that. He's also served in some sort of political office, and he's super sarcastic. And so he's always like, you know, they're saying this, da-da-da-da-da, and then punchline and then sip of coffee cup. That's it. And I I love him because they're short, they're to the point, and they're usually funny, and they make me go, ah, I didn't, you know, and a lot of times I'm learning about news and seeing ridiculous people on the internet that he's making fun of. And then I found his long-form stuff, and I didn't like it because it wasn't as punchy, right? You had to wait a long time, and it was him kind of being more serious, and it was interesting that I couldn't do that. But Adam Curry was talking about this on his show, No Agenda. He also mentioned it on podcasting 2.0, and he was saying this is what we're doing now on Facebook. So this is about, I don't know, 40-second clip here. But I love the fact that he he's explaining that this, and I forget I should have written down the study that he's quoting, but I don't remember, but it was credible. But here's what we're doing on social media.

Adam Curry: 05:22
That is time spent checking in with friends and family. More than 80% of the time on Facebook and more than 90% of the time on Instagram is spent watching videos. So they literally say, today, this is the filing, only a fraction of time spent on meta services, 7% on Instagram and 17% on Facebook, involves consuming content from online friends. A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short form videos that are unconnected, i.e., not from a friend or followed account, and recommended by AI-powered algorithms, Meta developed as a direct competitive response to TikTok's rise, which stalls Meta's growth. And when I read that, I'm like, well, this explains why we're all becoming idiots. We're we're just sitting there doomed, we're not even using Facebook for Facebook anymore.

Dave Jackson: 06:12
So somewhere between seven and seventeen percent is actually being social on social media, and yet podcasters wonder, hey, when I post my show to social media, it doesn't seem to do anything. And so, I mean, I'm with you. I I watch videos on, you know, for me, Facebook, their little reel section always gets me. And I'm either watching people hang out with silverback gorillas, which is really dumb. So I'm always waiting that, oh, this is the time it's going to turn and snap this guy's neck like a twig. And of course, it never does. There's a lot of AI orcas killing their trainers for some reason. Facebook thinks I want that, and some like surfing dude turtle at Disneyland and the Transformer guy. Those are like those four, and I click on them every time, and but none of them are my niece or nephew, or you know, on occasion, you know, but most of them are people I don't know. And I was like, I think that's pretty accurate. I don't know about is that the kind of the same for you?

Jim Collison: 07:22
Yeah, well, you our curated lists are a little bit different. Nebraska football shows up in my right, uh, shows up NFL, you know, lists of things. What's gotten real popular in this in that area is the they take someone's life, like I saw Clint Eastwood the other day, and they show a picture of him, right? And then they AI him every five years going backwards to when to when he was young, right? And they you know, they play some touching music behind it or something like that. But it's this these kind of like these history moments of famous actors or actresses, and I'm seeing a ton of those come out, right? The other the other thing I'm seeing on YouTube a lot are put you to sleep videos. Didn't we we we used to have a podcast in this space, right? About that would it was just calming and put you to sleep. Sleep with me was the first one.

Dave Jackson: 08:14
Yeah. Drew, no, I forget the guy's name, but he was he had insane numbers because people are like, wait, he did a podcast for what? And now there are a ton of them.

Jim Collison: 08:23
Uh-huh. Yeah, there's a ton, they're all AI, right? They're a hundred percent AI. Art is AI, the scripts are AI, written by an AI voice. You know, are they good? Well, I don't know. I only get through about 15 minutes of them and I'm dead asleep. Right? Got head down on the desk and I'm out. But the the or seeing a lot of those too, that's kind of a new genre, a newer genre.

Dave Jackson: 08:46
Jason says, I get angry Karen's trying to stop people from fishing on my reel.

Jim Collison: 08:51
Yeah. Yeah, Karen's always entertaining. Then you have the uh the the Karen algorithm, if that's the case. You know, it curates a it curates it to you, it knows you fairly well, so it starts giving you videos it thinks you are most interested in.

Dave Jackson: 09:07
Yeah, Craig says I've always thought shorts and long form videos as being for two different audiences. Yeah, I think yeah, is I think trying to get somebody to watch a short to go to your long, I just to me, I I'm with Craig. That's two different audiences. I'd try it.

Jim Collison: 09:25
I mean, I'd put it out there and try it. It doesn't hurt to make sure the link and all that stuff works right, but uh I the the numbers don't show a lot of conversions. You need a lot of views to get conversions on the so I just found that interesting.

Dave Jackson: 09:41
He also said this because this was big news.

Adam Curry: 09:43
Spotify video podcasts will now be streaming on Netflix. Who wants that?

Dave Jackson: 09:50
Which I thought was pretty but who's that?

Jim Collison: 09:52
Adam Adam Who? I've never heard of him before.

Dave Jackson: 09:55
One Adam Curry, inventor of podcasting. Oh co-host of the No Agenda show. Yeah, what's interesting about that is it sounds like most of that's going to be Bill Simmons' stuff, because Bill Simmons is whatever he is at Spotify now. But the interesting thing is they're pulling their stuff off of YouTube. So here again, Spotify is dictating how you consume the content. And I'm here to tell you that usually does not go over well. You know, it's like I know with the uh NFL is making it harder and harder to consume or confusing. You know, it's like, oh, Thursday night it's on Amazon, Monday night it's on ESPN, Sundays it's on Fox. It's like, wait, where so it's kind of confusing that way. And then Rich says, yeah, YouTube Shorts can link to a long form version. I do that a lot. Is there any stats on how many people because that's what I would love to know, is you'd have to have a really good hook to get somebody to stop Doom scrolling, which I'm not saying it's impossible. I just think it's we're just we're on to the next video.

Jim Collison: 11:09
Rich, I think that's the intent, right? Short form leads to a long form. What are your conversion numbers? What kind of links do you get across that? I think that's industry-wide, I think that's pretty low. But again, it's like one of those things, you know, do you do it? Yeah, if you can, if you got the time, do it. Yeah, you know, it's sometimes it that's the small ball of you know podcasting. And that's a US reference to baseball, right? When they bunts and bass hits, we call small ball, right? And so you could you could stack up and have some wins with a whole bunch of small ball out there of doing of doing all those things. Just don't expect any one of them to be giant. You're gonna have some small numbers on it, but you never know. You never know what that'll lead to. I if you listen, if you like making shorts and you like posting them on YouTube, services that do it for you, even if it's not good, it's not you're not paying for it. Right.

Dave Jackson: 12:01
Yeah, you know, just time and if AI's slicing and dicing it for you. Todd the Gator says YouTube shorts brings peeps to my community for sure. So there you go. Dan Lefebb says, I've always considered short form to be more brand awareness. That's what I think it is overall, not necessarily direct one-to-one, short to long link. Yeah, I think I again from the great marketer that is one Taylor Swift, she used a short to promote something that was coming. So to me, it's a way to keep your brand in front of people, even if they don't click on it. Just like, hey, I'm not dead, you know, kind of thing.

Jim Collison: 12:37
So yeah, but she's not Taylor Swift and nobody gives, you know. Right, that's true. I'm not Taylor Swift, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jackson: 12:45
Yeah, but this is what I would love to know. Chris says, short video, does it have a good conversion rate overall?

Jim Collison: 12:51
And that's where over to the long form, over to the link form? No, I don't, I don't, those conversion rates are pretty small. It depends, depends on who you are and what you have in the way you make them, of course, right? But those are not those are not high converting, they are high views. So I do like with with Dan, I agree. Like you better get some visual branding in there, you know. Like you should flash a logo. I don't know, this would be a good one. Well, I'd love to have some visual marketing peeps. Say, you know, if you got 15 seconds, because you can you could go you can overdo it with your brand when you're trying to brand. Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, you can you can get that too much out there, and uh so you got to be careful, it's not overly branded, but uh it is an opportunity for brand awareness. You're gonna get you're gonna get pretty good views, right? Those on YouTube, they the views hit hard and heavy fast, like in the first 24 hours, and then they really they really trail off. If the algorithm, if you don't, if you're not getting the kind of engagement that the the algorithm wants you to get, it dumps you pretty fast. Yeah, you know, but pick it up on something.

Dave Jackson: 13:58
Dave Well, that's where yeah, Ralph says, I will say this. I had a short last week, hit 112,000 views, and the long got around 15k. Not sure if there was a connection. It it was how AI will never have a heart. And so from what I understand, when you release something on YouTube, it shows you to your subscribers first, and then it looks and see, does it resonate with the people that it's supposed to resonate? And if it does, then it will start to go outside of your subscribers and it sees how it plays with new people, and if they like it and they want it just keeps going out and out and out. But if you send it out and the people that are following you go, yeah, it's not good, it's that's where you said it's your 24 hours and like nope, didn't work. Give you know, so it's tricky. Daily sports history says short form to long form for me is like 0.05% conversion. So again, pretty tiny, but you know, it's when you're doing like Ralph, you know, 15K, whatever 0.05% is.

Jim Collison: 15:02
10%, which isn't which isn't too bad. The question would be what are those, what what did you get from those coming over? Right? If it was it how long was the how of those 15,000, how long did they sit on your website, you know, type deal.

Dave Jackson: 15:17
Yeah. Craig says YouTube doesn't publish a standard kind of metric that tracks short viewers to long form viewers. Yeah, and also keep in mind that the CEO of YouTube said that a view on a short is zero. Like if I went, that's a view on YouTube Shorts, which is a bummer. And then they came out like two weeks later and they said, We got 200 billion views of shorts. I'm like, because they're they're that long. I'm like, come on. Yeah, short cast the wide net, sort of non-targeted ads do, sort of like non-targeted ads do. You'll reach more people, but that that don't want it as as well. Yeah, yeah. And then Randy says the same thing. Zero seconds of viewing equals a view, which is so weird. How long was that view? Zero. And it's a view, yes.

Dave Jackson: 16:08
Like what?

Jim Collison: 16:10
Well, listen, there would have to be some time. Like zero view would be no click at all. Right. So it's got to be point zero. Point something. Yeah, it's a point something, it's not a second. You have to be something, yeah, you have to be the action.

Dave Jackson: 16:28
But uh Ralph from Grit and Growth Business, it grew my subscribers to 30,000. Not too shabby. I will take that. Yeah. Craig has gone to the ultimate source of all great information, ChatGPT. I had a report on teen behavior. 51% of teen boys and 43% of teen girls said they made a purchase after watching YouTube short ads. Oh, there you go. Well, and now and Chat GPT and Walmart just did a deal. And I'm like, think about that. Think of all the data that Walmart has, and you're gonna give it to open AI. I'm like, oh, but the thing I worry about that also Chat GPT is getting into more adult topics, so now you can have your your Chat GPT woman uh who knows, easy, we'll just leave it right there. We're a family show, babe. Yeah. But it's just one of those things where to me, I like I heard where the woman in the tube from Amazon was gonna maybe start suggesting things. Probably now when you ask her for her opinion and she says, Oh, I think you should go with the such and such weed whacker because such and such company paid me a ton of money, that's you know, not exact that's the yeah.

Jim Collison: 17:48
So when I hear these two thing in Amazon. Amazon does the exact same thing. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jackson: 17:52
Look, what do you know?

Jim Collison: 17:53
Amazon basics is sponsor posts. Listen, w we know those influencers in the beauty space, in the clothing space, in those spaces, the those click through and purchase rates are are through the roof. That's a different that's what when I was thinking of like a lot of the stuff we talk about or a lot of the podcasts we talk about, I guess I was thinking of those. The the there are the the the Gen Zers and the Millennials are buying off TikTok like crazy. I mean, if we're gonna talk about it, and they're like, Oh yeah, I was out on TikTok or whatever, and I got you know, I saw this this this dress or I saw these shoes, and you know, and I was like, really? But that's a little bit of a like that's a cultural difference too between you know us old guys and ladies and and maybe the next generation that's coming behind. That's not the way I buy. I mean, I look, I see, I research, I might even podcast about it before I buy it, and then I may not buy it. I may like nah. It's after all that work, I'm like, nah. Where the the trend is more like, oh, I'm gonna buy it and then I'll think about it. You know, I'll think about it after I get it. Or I'll buy it and just send it back. You know, if I don't like it, put it back in the box and away it goes. It's more like, you know, that's I think that's how people are window shopping now. It's just order stuff, and it's if it's not exactly what I want it to be, I'll just send it back.

Dave Jackson: 19:21
Well, that's what's really weird. I was very sad last night. I I got in my car and there's this little patch of black stuff, and I'm like, what is it? And I pick it up and I go, Oh, wait a minute. And I don't know about you, I never look at the back of my coat, but I I got out of the car, took off my coat. This is a leather jacket I've had since I was like 18. So it's going on 40 years plus, and it's just there's just the part that's just like starting to just you can see where it's ripped. And I was like, oh, how am I gonna look like Fonzie now if my leather and so I'm like, oh, I'll just go to the mall and go to the leather store that was there. And then it was like, no, that doesn't exist there. Oh, I'll go. Nope, that's not I'm like, I don't know where to buy leather besides a Harley Davidson shop, and I don't really want a Harley jacket. And so, yeah, so shopping's gonna be different and interesting, shall we say. I'm not sure how that's gonna work because that's what I wear in the fall. That's one of the things that's cool about fall. I'm like, oh, cool, I get to bust out my old leather jacket. And I I turn it and you can just see where it's just the one side. And it's just it's very politely my jacket just going, Dave, you're fat. You don't like, oh yeah, I just kind of split it there. I'm like, oh oops. Yeah. Ralph says, I will say it's all driving us to spend more money. Yep, that's the whole point of social media. It creates want and it creates comparison. Oh, yeah, a lot of comparison. And guess what? It works really well. Yeah, it's I've I've heard that when the TikTok shop came out, that it kind of ruined TikTok because everybody and their brother, instead of talking and doing dances and everything else they do on TikTok, was trying to get people to like buy my stuff. Like it was just another video of buy my stuff. And now that Walmart's over there, that'll be interesting to um to see how that goes. But that's the I just thought it was interesting that most of us aren't really being social on social media. We're just watching strangers' videos, going, well, that was weird. And now it's like, was that real? I saw one last night because there's a couple things that were worried. So you're it's a vertical video, a little baby is on the very top step and steps down to the next one, and you can see the parent is way off in the distance. And this little toddler starts coming down the stairs, and there's a cat halfway down. And so the cat kind of hits it, but the baby's got some momentum going, and the cat runs to the bottom of the steps and kind of just becomes a cushion for the baby as the mom is running because you hear this toddler coming down, and I was like, Oh, that was really interesting. And then I'm like, A, I think that's fake, because I'm sorry, if you're videotaping a baby and it starts to fall down the steps, wouldn't you put the phone down to grab the baby? And this person just caught the whole thing, and I was like, that's probably fake. Yeah, and so that's gonna be the new thing now is was that like I even saw one where a possum and it was really well done. A possum was up on a table with a bowl of Halloween candy, and it's kind of grainy, you know, door, you know, kind of camera look, you know, and all of a sudden they have a Halloween thing that goes and jumps up and it scares the possum away. And then I would never would have thought that's fake. And they were talking about this on the show. If you watch the time at the top where it's showing it, you know, that it's 10:30 and 18 seconds and 19 seconds and 20 seconds. The numbers at the top went really weird, really like backwards, and it was 91 o'clock for a second. They're like, this is fake. It was really well done. And I never would have even thought to think, oh, is this fake? But I think that's gonna be the uh no.

Jim Collison: 23:10
Well, you know, the the the premise of the matrix, right? The 1999 reads, right? The matrix. The premise of the matrix is if you're in a dream you could never wake up from, would that not your reality? Right? If you can't wake up from it, that's your it's your reality. But in sometimes I wonder, you know, if when we live in a world where everything is fake, does that heighten or diminish the truth? You know, do we could if we if we live in a world where we never know, like how does that change us in in our thinking and what we do and uh responding to things and what's the value of that? I mean, I just I'm not saying we'll ever live in a world that'll be a hundred percent fake, but it is a little matrix-ish in some regards when you kind of think if your whole reality is fake, then that fake reality is real. Right? I mean, it's if that's all you know, it's all you have access to, you know, that then then that reality, if you if it's a dream you can't wake up from. Sorry to get all ex existential, there we go, existential on a Saturday morning at 10 o'clock. But it just it's just it it's one of those things I think we're gonna, I mean, with the technology getting so much better, I I don't think it's an issue of differentiating fake from real, but I don't I don't know what it is. I mean, if you can't tell, does the fake become real?

Dave Jackson: 24:38
You know, it's just perception is reality, right?

Jim Collison: 24:42
So for sure, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Dave Jackson: 24:45
Well, it always makes without turning this into a sermon, though, it does add a whole new thing, just as a as a hey, this is a book and this is what it says in the book kind of thing. When Jesus was getting his whole court thing, and he says, like, what's your deal, Jesus? And he said, I came to testify to the truth. And I was like, Oh, that brings on a whole new kind of thing now. And I'm like, Yeah, but what if there is no truth?

Jim Collison: 25:10
Oh, that's well, that's a whole I mean if it's all if everything's fake, fake, yeah. If it's all fake, you know, so it listen, we and we we were I'm sure we have people listening on the road screaming at us for Jim, but Jim, don't you understand there is truth? I'm not saying there isn't truth. I'm just I'm doing a thought exercise as if we take this fakeness to the nth degree, and if I live in a world where everything is fake, the fakeness becomes the the reality. The reality, yeah. That's anyway, yeah. Yeah. There you go. Soak on that one for a while.

Dave Jackson: 25:45
Yeah, Craig has a fun tip. He says you could cut up the jacket and put on leather patches on the elbows of the tweed sports jacket. Hence, from the Fonz, the teacher. That's when I tuned out. When Fonzi became a teacher, I was like, okay, I can stomach. Yeah, I it was after the shark. I was like, but I can't do that. Jim, how would you order a whopper at Burger King?

Jim Collison: 26:10
Oh, like as far as as far as sides and stuff. I just say give me a whopper. There you go.

Dave Jackson: 26:16
Wow. Now, did you feel scared with that question? No. Yeah, me neither. But yeah, this was here's this is and I I'm not making fun of this person. Okay, yeah, maybe I am. It's just one of those things where we're overthinking things. And he says, I'm gonna try and focus on trailer swapping to see if I can grow this silly podcast audience, but I've got a question about how to do that. I get that I've I've to reach out to podcasts by either emailing them or DMing them or whatever, but how can I go asking any podcast about swapping trailers when my podcast numbers are pitiful, like 30 downloads a week? Nobody's interested in those numbers. So won't the natural response be to bleep off? Or how else do you go about asking? Well, you don't lead with that. Hi, I'm a podcast with a really small audience, and I know you don't want to, you know, promo swap with me, but do you want to promo swap with me? No, just just say, hey, I do a similar show like yours. We both talk about, you know, whatever. Would you be interested in swapping either 30 or 60 second promos or a a shout out? And then ask, see if they even care how many numbers you have. They may not. I mean, back in the early days, nobody asked what your numbers were. It was just like, oh yeah, you are a good fit, you know, because in the end, you're not going to get a ton of people from that. It is a great strategy, but you know, all good strategies, unfortunately, in podcasting, lead to, well, there's another five people, you know, but it's those five people that tell another three people who then tell another one person, you know, that whole nine yards. But I just thought it was interesting that I guess it's the imposter syndrome sneaking in there, like, oh, I've only got 30 downloads. Not don't look at the download numbers. Look at do our odd how much of that audience are we sharing? So if I had another podcast about podcasting that said, hey, do you want to do a promo swap? That's what I'm looking for. Or, you know, things like that. Jim, do you have do you know of other shows around home gadget stuff?

Jim Collison: 28:29
Oh, sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, listen, it comes down if you're gonna do sales, which is a podcaster, you're in sales, right? If you're gonna do sales, you've gotta you gotta get no's before you get yeses. And you never know. Like I was just talking to somebody the other day. I had Jamie Simonoff from Ring on my show right after he was on Shark Tank, which I didn't know, by the way. I I learned he had just been on Shark Tank from this talk about not doing your homework. I had he could on the show, he told me, you know he told me the story. So I was learning as we were going along. At the time, you know, Ring was not that big, but they were, you know, they've become the juggernaut of video, you know, purchased by Amazon. Jamie was a super good guy. I was lucky I got him, but I had to ask. You know, it was one of those kinds of things, like you never know. We had the guy Zapier is a service where you know, Zapier, you can schedule like if this then that kind of things. And and their CEO, Mark, I had him on the show. Zapier was just coming out, and they were just, you know, they four guys from from Columbia University or University of Missouri at Columbia. And uh great interview, and he was very, very kind to me. I reached out to him about six years or seven years after that. Like, hey, Mark, could we come back? You know, can we have you back? Crickets. Like, I couldn't get anything, right? So, you know, you it's the it doesn't always it's not always and and there's plenty of stories of folks who are asking, you know, big name deals or sponsorship deals. Like to get, you know, reaching out to vendors and saying, you know, hey, I do this. Would you be interested in partnering with me on this? I can guarantee you a hundred percent of the time they'll say no if you don't ask for sure. Right. That's the only guarantee in that. The the the but if you you so you gotta ask, you gotta get out there and and actually make the ask. And who cares? Listen, no, I shouldn't say that who cares. It hurts to be rejected. It hurts. Gotta get through it. Do what it takes. Figure out your system of rewards so you don't feel so bad when you get rejected. You know, and sometimes when when I have to do sales, I say, okay, when I get 10 no's, I'm gonna reward myself with this thing, whatever it is, to to to trick me into, you know, like nos are good now. Yeah. I'm gonna collect, I'm gonna collect a nose.

Dave Jackson: 30:50
So I've got an interview in the can that I'll be releasing in a couple weeks, and this woman was on and she was talking about how she had gone through, she said at least 200 no's trying to get some stuff. And she's like, and she goes, and about halfway through that, she goes, I it dawned on me that wow, I've been told no a hundred times, and yet I'm still breathing, and yet I'm still here. She's like, so when somebody gave me another no, it was just like, okay, throw it on the pile over there, let's keep going, because I know somebody's gonna say yes. And so it's always it's hard, it's not easy. And then, but she was like, it just you just kind of go, all right, there's another one. And she goes, but it also gave me courage to keep asking because the worst thing they could do is say no. And so it's always tricky with that. Ralph is when I go ahead, go ahead. Well, Ralph say when I you go, I'll wait. Ralph has is summing up that guy's pitch. Hi, I'm a podcaster who sucks, and I would really like to siphon some of your audience so I can steal them from my miserable show, which nobody's listening to. Please, please, please. Yeah, that's not a good pitch. I don't think that's how I would lead off with that. And then Chrissy says, Does your podcast bring value to their audience? That's really what you're looking for. You know, so anyway, what were you going to say, Mr. James?

Jim Collison: 32:06
Because he's asking doesn't mean his podcast sucks, by the way. I mean, right. He's got 30. It's, you know, we we we say all the time, hey, 30's a classroom, right? You say that all the time. Overfull. Yeah. You know, maybe he's just getting started, or or maybe he's he's, you know, you know, maybe things are just getting going for him. So I don't I don't know if I'd lead with that, but I totally forgot what I was gonna do.

Dave Jackson: 32:29
All right. So while you're thinking, uh Jody wants to know, is the coffee good this morning? Oh, it's delicious.

Jim Collison: 32:35
Sorry, did I make too much coffee noise when I just blew it again? No. Okay, good. Always good. Was I smacking my lips? Sometimes I do that when I am smacking my lips.

Dave Jackson: 32:45
I have I forgot to refill my water. I have like three sips left. And I'm like some. I'm like, do I do I leave? I'm like, Jim, do nerd out on something while I go get I I think I'll be okay. But we did have to do it. We saw I saw this, and there were a couple things I thought was interesting about this out at Reddit. Because I the guy's asking, what are the best places to post for podcasts? But the saying was my family and I are trying to start our own podcast, leaving Spotify aside. Good on you, my friend. What are the best practices or what are the best podcast websites to post our work and get paid for it? Open to suggestions. You'll be greatly, your help would be greatly appreciated. So there are two things that jumped out of me, and get paid for it is usually not like on one hand, if you want to get paid, you'd need to know that up front. Just don't expect to get paid at the very beginning unless you're on one of those places that like you can make money from day one and then you get 0.003 cents a download. But the other thing that jumped out of here is he said, My family and I are trying to start a podcast. Jim, did you ever do board night or game night when you were growing up? Well, I hate games, but yes. Because we had Parchee, we had Rummy, we had the game of life, and then I hated this game because I could not sit still that long. Monopoly. And probably probably, yeah, Risk, uh, Battleship, all sorts of stuff that we would play as a family if you could. And so I remember those, and I was like, wow, if you start a podcast with your family, so when I hear that, I'm picturing this is this is a guy named Nathan. So I'm like, okay, I'm picturing him as the dad, and he's got you know a nine-year-old Susie, and then you know, Jimmy's the you know, seven-year-old. And doing a family podcast to me would really it's like Bitcoin. It's gonna like do it now, invest now, and in about 20 years, it's gonna be priceless. Because when they're off to college, you could hit play on that time when you guys did the you know, chasing rainbows with puppies and butterflies podcast, or whatever it is, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I I think he's missing the point there. Because to me, I I I remember there was a guy, can't remember the name of the show, but this is around 2009-ish. And it was a guy and his two daughters, and they would do a podcast when it was his weekend, and they ended up outranking like Disney and Nickelodeon, and it was just this dad and his two daughters, and I forget what it was, and they outranked these huge kids' networks because it was super authentic and cute and fun and that whole nine yards. So, yeah, you know, now when he grew a big audience, then he could monetize. But I just when I heard I kind of got was like sad trombone when I saw and get paid for it.

Jim Collison: 35:49
I was like, oh, dude, you're you're missing the the true magic there of yeah, I don't think it listen, I don't think it hurts if you're gonna do this for money. I don't think it hurts, it'd be like, I'm gonna start a hot dog stand and it's gonna be free. Like nobody does that, right? You you you you know, you you you need to have you know food truck mentality of like, yeah, we're gonna go out, we're gonna crush this thing. We're gonna, you know, but like a food truck, you've got to know, like, okay, where's your audience? Well, you know, food trucks have gotten super popular. And yeah, the I see them all the time on Facebook, like, hey, I'm at this intersection today. Like, we have some local right, you know. This is this is my this is a good example for podcasters, right? When you think about a food truck in his advertising, he's not gonna want to be on YouTube or or in general Facebook because he's the audience is too wide. He needs to find the local, you know, the local groups, the local networks, and then pitch to them and then build that brand in the local area. And then you gotta get people who say, Oh, when when they're you know, when somebody asks, like, hey, you know, I'm looking for a good food truck place tonight. Oh, you gotta see, you know, Mike's, I'll say Jim's food truck. It's he's always parked over here. That's the word of mouth that you're looking for. I think in our podcasting sometimes we forget to really niche down when we get started and say, How do I find because you'll find your most engaged listeners first. It's usually the way it works, right? You just you get your most engaged right off the bat because they're attracted to the niche that you that you have. And so you gotta, you know, you gotta hyper drill down into some of those things to make sure you're sure you're um you know, I've I've said this a thousand times, but I'll say it one more time. I think most, I think a lot of podcasters make the mistake of not taking care of the early audience that they have, and that like thinking, I oh, I took to go big, I gotta be busy doing things. And yes, you do, but you also need to be busy about the the the small audience that you have to make sure they feel very, very welcome. They're gonna be your base going forward. So make sure you're taking care of them as well. And all the podcasts I've ever done, I've always had a really good relationship with the core, you know, the core audience, so to speak. And I still, even today, you know, we've got we've got some pretty good numbers in our podcast. And I get a listener who will ask me a question and I say, Do you have time for a Zoom call? Like, let's let's just get on the phone and hammer this thing out instead of you know back and forth on the socials or whatever, right? Uh I still think it's really, really important to make the one-on-one contact. And Dave, those those calls are priceless. One, you get to hear from your audience, you get to hear what they're really thinking. Two, they think they hit the lottery. Like that jackpot. They're like, what? Um get to talk to this person that I listen to all the time. So make sure you're you're doing you're going the extra mile on the the core audience, the ones that are really engaged. Give them time, you know? Make make the time so that they you can connect with them individually. Really listen to them because they're they're the most important part.

Dave Jackson: 38:57
Yeah, I uh we do that now at Podpage, where if somebody's stuck, I'm like, here, let's just schedule a live support call. And first they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, no, click that link and pick a date that works and I'll meet you on Zoom. And they're like, Okay. Because they're kind of like, wait, what? And so then I'll show up and they're like, Oh, so it's it's you. And I go, Yeah, that was, you know, when it said Dave Jackson at the bottom there, that's that's me. And they're like, Yeah, but you're Dave Jackson. And I go, Yeah. I'm like, so what are we working on? And they're just like, and they get done and they're just they lose their minds because A, we got them fixed, and then B, you know, it's like, oh, well, you're like a real person. And I love I love fixing them because that's me, that's what I like to do, but I'm with you. I love the conversation afterwards. Well, I'm like, well, tell me a little bit about your show. What are you doing? Anything else, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And it's I just did a thing. In fact, I've got like a page and a half of notes from I I was like, well, I always tell my audience to, you know, go ask your audience what they want. So I did a thing, I called it Dave's Kitchen. And the idea was instead of making it, you know, can I take your order and I'm listening, which is kind of what I was doing, but I also wanted to make it even more like, hey, why don't you come into the kitchen and we'll make your favorite dish together? And it was interesting because they, you know, I got a lot of great suggestions, but there were times when people would suggest something that I tried 10 years ago. And so my knee-jerk reaction was like, Oh, we tried that, it didn't work. And I was like, wait, hold on. Easy, easy. Maybe I should try that again. Maybe it was timing. Maybe Adam Curry talks about it all the time, how he he's always 10 years ahead of the idea. He's like, he'll come out with the idea and he goes, and it just doesn't work. And then 10 years later, people go like, oh, we're gonna try this new thing. He's like, Yeah, I I did that 10 years ago, it didn't work. And then it'll go gangbusters. So there are times when your idea is not a bad idea. The reason it didn't work was timing. And so I got a lot of really just and like Gordon gave me one that here's why I I love getting constructive feedback. You can fix it. Like Gordon mentioned on this show that Gordon Firemark. See, I I I think we all just assume there's only one Gordon, you know what I mean?

Jim Collison: 41:29
Besides Flash, you know, the internet's lawyer, the podcasting lawyer.

Dave Jackson: 41:33
Yeah. And he said, when I go back to watch the video, it'd be great if the video had chapters. Well, the chapters in the audio. I'm assuming everybody's watching this on audio because more people consume this on audio than they do on video. But I was like, oh, that's easy to fix. I'll just take the chapters from in this case, Buzz Sprout, and put them into YouTube and make sure they, you know, line up and stuff. But stuff like that is like, oh, I I can do that. So yeah, Dan has a great point. Great idea, bad timing. Microsoft to Zoom is the best at that.

JIm Collison: 42:08
Yeah.

Jim Collison: 42:08
Microsoft, yeah, everything at Microsoft is too early. You know?

Dave Jackson: 42:13
Or too late. I think they came out after the iPod, didn't they?

Jim Collison: 42:20
So Microsoft's somewhat famous for stealing other people's ideas. I mean, well, but the tablet, they had the tablet long before anybody else. Oh, that's true. Yeah, it was terrible because it was based on Windows. And then then, you know, of course, Apple was coming at it from the phone perspective, so they just took a very light phone OS and moved that onto a tablet, right? Basically, yeah. But yeah, well, this is, I mean, this is another part of success that we often forget about, right? We say sometimes you need a little bit of luck, you need a lot of hard work, and then sometimes it's just timing, right? You can have the best thing in the world, and the world wasn't ready for it, you know, and that's sad. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I you know, you never know, because you know, you can't you can't you can't see that kind of history, but sometimes you were a little too early or a little too late on the thing, you know. You never know. You gotta try. You'll never know. You can't calculate it, you gotta give it a try and see how they're learn to fail, you know.

Dave Jackson: 43:19
Yeah, I I see that on Reddit a lot where people are going, do you think this will work? Like, I'm gonna do a show and they'll have all their you know, I's dotted and T. This is my target audience, this is how I'm gonna measure success, I'm gonna do this, and here's my schedule. And I've already like they've done everything. And it's not a paint by number set. It's not just, oh, just do this and that. I mean, it's funny because if you read the book Storyworthy that's sitting behind me, it's like, oh, I I just need to start as close to the transformation in the story, then I'm gonna add some stakes, and then I'm gonna add this in the story, and then make sure there's a twist. And you like it's it sounds simple, but then when you go to do it, I remember I used to watch Mike Russell would do these live webinars where he was just making Adobe Audition, just dance. And you're like, Mike, why are you doing this? Like, you're teaching me how to do stuff that I would pay you for. And then even with him doing it in video where you could slow it down and watch exactly where he clicked, it was just like, no, I I'm I'm missing that thing called experience that's in his head. And he knows when to choose this tool and when to do this and when to do that. And so it's it's always fun when you I'm I've lost my point at this point when we're talking about the fact that Well, no, an idea. And so sometimes you think the idea is, you know, it was a great timing for him at that point because we're all learning Adobe Audition, but also the fact that you you think sometimes you've you've got all the right things in place. Yeah. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute, I I don't have the skills to do that, even though you just showed me how to do it. So it's always tricky. Here's another fun one. In fact, Todd the Gator is getting ready to go through this. What's the best way to move a podcast? So we decided it might be time to move our podcast to a different service. The one we are using is just not super supportive from a tech analytics or promotion standpoint. Promotion standpoint is your job for the record when it comes to, you know, whoever it is, captivate, buzz sprout, transistor, libson, blueberry. They're not really there to promote. They syndicate your show to all the different places, but that's that's your job. The issue is how best to do it. I know we can migrate our RSS feed, but is that the best way? No, it's the only way. Or would we better off just deleting the whole thing? No, do not do that, and then reposting our episodes on a new service. No, who wants to do that? We have all the masters and the edits, so all it would cost me is uploading time. We've got 70 episodes. Yeah, don't you don't have to do that. And the 21 2100-ish downloads we currently show from those episodes. Well, those stats, even though you can with some services, they'll put in the total for the episode, but not how many you had per day. So you you kind of lose some of that data, most of it really. I guess my question is, does anyone have any options on which these options may be best? We really don't plan to make any money off of it or even get a ton of downloads. We just want to share our show with more people. So, with that, if the goal is I want to move from one media host to another that promotes me more, don't move because they they don't really promote you. They syndicate you to Apple and Google and any other place you want to add because they've given you a feed. I mean, even Spotify, the walled garden that it is, you can take their feed once you find it and put it into Apple and you know, iHeart and all those other places. You know, that's the promotion. But the the thing I always say is A, go take your first feed, go to castfeedvalidator.com. I believe it's either it's either.com or.org. Make sure it's valid, make sure all your episodes are in your old feed, and then just import it into the new one. And that's it. And then go to the first one once you've verified that everything's in the new one, you can click play on the first one and the last one, and they both work. So you kind of assume that everything in between is working, and then you just redirect the old feed to the new feed. But if the goal is switching gears, switching hosts will get me more downloads. The only reason that would be the case is even though we have the IAB kind of standard, the way people implement it, there's a five to maybe even 10% variance on that. So you might get more, you might get less downloads. I always say it's like taking a Corvette and going to Texas and putting it on a runway that's flat. That thing goes, you know, 180 miles an hour. Great. Okay, take that same Corvette, go to Maine, put it on a runway that's flat, and let it go. Things are gonna go 180 miles an hour. The the car is your show, the runway is the media host. It doesn't matter which runway it's on, it's it's gonna go as fast as the car. And so your downloads are my my old equation used to be downloads equals value times promotion, smart promotion, really. And that kind of is a it's a little harsh in the immortal words of Bill Murray. It's a little harsh. But and and maybe, you know, divided by luck, maybe I don't know in that. But you just gotta be careful when you're you're changing feeds. I would just say never multitask when you do that. Because when I worked at Libson, I had some guy that that redirected his feed into the the nothingness. And so his it was just like putting your audience into a off of a cliff. So that's always fun. Let's see what the chat room is up to here. Yeah, there you go. Rich Graham, Windows Phone. Wow. Yeah.

Jim Collison: 49:09
That one was late and mismanaged. And it was it was a lesson in what not to do. You know, when you have when you have a lot of money and you can do anything, there's a lesson in what not to do to spend seven billion dollars on a on a phone business, which by the way, had been worth $150 billion. So, you know, you think, man, seven billion is a lot to pay, right, for a phone company when they bought Nokia. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Two years or three years before that, Nokia had been worth $150 billion. So, you know, you kind of go, whoa, that was those are some tough times. But, you know, it's listen, that's a good lesson and catch up, right? I mean, Microsoft was left out, they were trying to compete in the phone market, they had made the wrong decisions. They had, you know, Steven Sinowski had come along with Windows 8, which we all now know is a disaster, but he was trying to move Windows to touch because everything was moving to touch. The the there was a phone, I was an MVP during this time, and the phone, the phone division was a com was comp creating something completely different that looked like Windows, but it wasn't Windows, right? Right. And it it was a mess. And at one point, such and Adela just said, enough, we're writing this thing down. And they took a billion dollar write down or whatever on on the phone division. But you know, it is it is a lesson in chasing things sometimes, you know. Yeah, you missed it. Do you chase it? Maybe there's there's there's examples of where second and third people to market end up with the market dominance, right? They're not the first. We always say, Oh, the first is best, right? If you're the first, you're guaranteed locked. No, no, plenty of firsts out there where the second and thirds have passed them up. You know, so in your podcast, if you see a format you like and you want to do a podcast along that, you know, say you want to be the next Joe Rogan, do you recreate the Joe Rogan podcast? I would say no, but right there might be someone out there who can do it better than Joe. Well, there are you don't know until you try.

Dave Jackson: 51:11
Yeah, there were MP3 players before the iPod. You know, Steve was the guy that said, let's take the iPod, take these media players and put a phone with it.

Jim Collison: 51:20
And that's when that was a great example. He had this iPhone thing planned out. This wasn't like uh, oh my gosh, we have this amazing thing with an iPod that we should turn into a phone. Guys, that's not how it worked. Like he had this thing planned out. The iPod was the first gen of those things to get those devices out there. They didn't have all the things in place. Remember, phone technology was making its way. I mean, it was changing rapidly in those years, and uh, industry wasn't ready to build an iPhone yet. I mean, it just wasn't there, all the stuff wasn't there, and most consumers wanted a physical keyboard. And Steve was like, Yep, no keyboard. We're not gonna do and people were like, What? Like, yeah, how how can we we're gonna type on screen? We wouldn't think twice about that now, right? But it was, you know, he had that, he had that phone plan for the very beginning. I mean, the the touch, the the you know, the the the eye the the uh what are the music what do we call those music players? The iPods, right? Yeah, we're called iPods. Yeah, we're thinking or podcast comes from. So it it was, yeah, he had that he had that plan in mind all the time.

Dave Jackson: 52:29
Yeah, the chat room is asking, because we're talking about, you know, when you switch from one media host to the next, like what about your stats? And yeah, Jody asked, You can, I know captivate, and so does Buzz Sprout, have a way to put in the total. So if I have five episodes and I'm moving to a new, I can say, oh, episode five had you know 38 downloads, episode four had 27 downloads, etc. But I can't go in and see but how many downloads did I have on day two of episode five? They're just bringing over the totals. That's it. And I every time I've ever had to do that, I need because I'm getting, I still have my old, like the school of podcasting is still on libsen, even though it's on captivate, because it didn't feel like moving 800 episodes when I'm into WordPress. That's where PodPage really comes, makes it easy. You update your feed and it brings in all the new players, but I was using WordPress for that. And so I still have my I just went down to the $5 plan on Libsyn and kind of went from this point forward, uh, it'll be captivate. And I'm actually paying someone to go back and just copy and paste the code in. And once those are all done, I'll turn off libson. But when I before I do that, I will go in, I'll have to upgrade to my to the $20 plan so I can download my stats, and then I'll go to Danny at Captivate and go, can you make those numbers go into here kind of thing? But Randy Black brought up that, hey, you could use OP3. And so Ralph said, Well, what's an OP3? And OP3 is, and here's the good news, Libson, and I kind of poke fun now because Libson is a little slow on making new features, and I love I love the team over there. Rob and Elsie and everybody, Chris and support, Todd, etc. But they're a little slow. And so this is OP3, and here's the good news. Libson has now approved OP3, and that's the good news. The bad news is it's not working right. So uh you go over to op3.dev and it says, hey, put this as a prepend. Some people call them prefix. And so in Libson, if I go over and I sign in and I say, hey, I want to put this on building a better Dave so that the world can see that I get a whopping, if I'm lucky, 60 downloads an episode. So you go to settings, that's a little gear in the upper right-hand corner. I'll try to do this quick for all of our people that are listening in audio because I realize this is boring as watching salt dry. You go to advanced tools and then URL prefixes, and in theory, now this didn't work on Friday, I can paste this in here and in the prefix and come down and click on save and survey says it's thinking about it. It's still thinking about it. It worked! Yay! There you go. And now I can see in theory what it does if I go to oh man, where would this be? It's been a while. If I go to the Libson website, can I get a link? Yes. Of this. Oh, they don't have a download button here. But anyway, when I click play on this show, this is the latest episode, waterboarding for fruit, which I it just dawned on me that how many weird things happen around Halloween, one of which is you know, bobbing for apples. And I was like, it's it's just waterboarding for fruit. No one, and I don't think the kids came up with that idea. What do you guys want to do?

Dave Jackson: 56:02
I did not follow you. That was great.

Dave Jackson: 56:04
And they all and they all said, Hey, why do you adults try to drown us? And and you know, what's the reward? You'll get an apple, not like a candy bar. No, no, it's you know, bobbing for yeah. I I just there's a whole and why is everything slutty? You know what I mean? When did that happen? Like it now it's you know, it used to be she's a nurse and he's a doctor, and now it's slutty nurse and slutty librarian and slutty Donald Duck. I'm like, what? When did when did that happen? But in theory, give that 24 hours and you'll be able to go to op3.dev and see that Dave gets what am I getting on this? This is the show I do for me because it's weird and it's just weird thoughts in my head. The last episode, Old Habits Die Hard, which was about me getting trolled, got 70 downloads. Now, what's weird is that this show is very, very old. And if I click on my the total here, I can see that I want to ride my bicycle from November 2019, has almost a thousand downloads. It's been a long time since I pooped my pants. There's a great title. 937 downloads from also November. Maybe something happened in November 2019 that I got a bunch of downloads. But that's a show I do just to be weird and share ideas and you know, and also keep my sanity when I was in a very, very bad uh marriage. But in somewhere on this site, if we go back to op3.dev, and anybody else, as soon as I say op3, like your it's your knee-jerk reaction to to say, yeah, you know me. Somewhere in here example public stats page. Well, this is fun. If I go here, it's an example, it's thinking about it. This is the kind of stats you can get. Now, for the record, this is really not a whole lot different than almost all media hosts. Again, not throwing shade, but lips and you got to pay twenty dollars a month to get this. But it shows you downloads in 30 days, downloads in September, unique downloads, and then it shows you your episodes, like how fast. Like I this is straight out of captivate that I've seen. Why is it saying my page is unresponsive? Well, I will wait. And then it shows me my episodes. What I oh here, let's do this. I forget my own address, future of podcasting.net. And if I go to resources in theory, yeah, look at stats for the future of podcasting. So it's thinking about it. So we get we got it, we haven't put out an episode in about six weeks, but you can get actual and again, these are the stats you can also get out of Captivate and Buzz Sprout, and you know. So here we are getting around 245 downloads an episode. I can see our Apple Podcasts. I can see we get a few people from Atar, Prudish, and oh, these are Asian regions, heck, hence why there are a bunch of companies I can't pronounce. So it's it's just another thing to obsess over. You can download your stats, which is nice. This is another thing we should talk about, even though there's nothing to talk about. In September, many of us are seeing a rise in well, web-based listening. Because you can see here that in September, Chrome was basically tied for Apple Podcasts, and that just doesn't happen. If I go to if I go back to August, wow, August, TrueFans. Of course, this is a show about the future of podcasting. So there's a lot of podcasting 2.0 talk. But if you want more stats, now it's Free, but John Spurlock is a dude. He's an actual person, and he's paying for this technology. So I give John 10 bucks a month just to like, here's, you know, I don't want you to have to take food off the table because I want free stats. So do consider that if you're going to use those. So that's what OP3 is. It's I to me, I'm not saying it doesn't. The nice thing about it is it makes your stats public. The nice thing about it is when John runs stats, the more people that have their stats in there, we can say the average podcaster is getting you know X amount of downloads. So, you know, Todd the Gator said, I always enjoy building a better Dave. Building a better Dave has the smallest audience of any show I have, and yet it's also the most vocal. Like if I don't put out an episode for like a couple months, I will have people like, Where's the next one? What's going on? And I'm like, okay. Yeah, they are your stats are 100% open and anybody can see them. So if you want to share your stats with your sponsors and you don't want to give them a login, although in Captivate you could do that in BuzzSprout and things like that. But if you don't want them in there, so there you go. So it's that's what OP3 is. And that's I think the idea was just to have a free way to get stats. So if you want them, you can do them. And they're fun-filled and exciting. And you know who else is fun-filled and exciting? Our awesome supporters. That's right. You can be an awesome supporter. And I did get, and it's, you know, this happens, and so I never want, again, I never want people taking food off the table. But because of the government shutdown, we had somebody say, Yeah, we kind of are we're not getting paid right now, so we're we're gonna cancel our our you know support. And I'm like, dude, you know, family first always. But these are some of the awesome people that are supporting us, like Chris over at castahead.net and the Flame Alive Pod and Horse Radio Network and Indie Drop In and all sorts of fun people. You can go over to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome and see those. And thanks to everyone who is doing that. And we're also brought to you by the school of podcasting.com, where you get course courses, coaching, and community all in one place, and you can use the coupon code COAC and start your, you know, your first month over there. And if on day 28 you're like, yeah, I don't think this is for me, you can cancel and I'll give you your money back. And then if you already have a show and you need some feedback, well, then go over to podcasthotseat.com. There is now a private version. So if you don't want, you know, if you're basically just looking for consulting, that's a way to do that. And that comes with the free month of the School of Podcasting. And if you go over to Asthepodcastcoach.com, well, you're looking at pod page. And if you want a tripod page, go over to tripodpage.com. If you want to learn pod page, go to learnpodpage.com. And if you need more Jim Cullison, and hey, who doesn't need more Jim Cullison? Go over to theaveregeguy.tv and check out his show, Home Gadget Geeks. And now it's time for the wheel o names. So who will it be? Will it be Chris at castahead.net? John Munz will be Ralph over at the Financially Confident Christian. We're gonna spin the wheel. And we're gonna spin the wheel, honest we are. And it is Max over at Aviation News Talk. If you're a pilot or you just dig planes, check out all the news about aviation. Max has some really great videos on his Facebook page where he'll be up in a plane just taking video from the cockpit. So, Max, thank you so much for being an awesome supporter. I deeply appreciate it. And I can't find the button. There we go. So also I want to give a shout out to uh to Ralph. He's in the chat room. Ralph, obviously, if you need an accountant, Ralph is the guy. AskRalph.com is where you can find all his stuff. He helped me out yesterday and uh was super helpful. And we had a good time, but nonetheless, it was like it was supposed to be a five-minute call to answer one little itty-bitty accounting question, and then we went down a rabbit hole and it was like, oh, holy cow. So thank you so much for that. Ralph, go over to askral.com and if I can get my mouse to work, honest, I'll go to the last slide. There we go. Does this show save you time, save you money, maybe save you a headache, maybe keep you educated? Do we make you laugh, cry, think, groan, maybe even have some fun here? Well, then you can go over to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome and be an awesome supporter today. So fun film. So thanks to everybody who's doing that. Let me scroll over here to here's a fun question. I can't remember, we kind of answer this every now and then. It's one of those questions. And that is how important are aesthetics to you when it comes to creating a full listener experience? So they're kind of asking, does artwork matter? Beyond great audio, how much do things like podcast cover art, video visuals, equipment design, equipment design? Okay, and constant brand style factor into your show. I'm exploring this in my next podcast series and would love to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment or DM me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think it for me, because I look at a lot of websites working at Podpage, and it's interesting because everybody has the same box of crayons, right? They have the exact same tool. And I'm amazed at like call me weird, but dark purple text on a dark red background, to me is not a great brand. It just it's hard to read, it hurts my eyes. You know, now if that's something that ties in with your product, uh okay. But you know, I've just seen a lot of people make bad color choices. And to me, it starts with your artwork. Like when Mark finishes my artwork for my new little project that's coming up, whatever colors on the artwork is going to be the color of the website. That's why I'm kind of thinking kind of a couple steps ahead, because I just want everything to look like it was planned, I guess, in a way, as opposed to I don't know. I don't know. Jim, what do you think? I know I just got these, although this is in the box, but this is the Rode Wireless Micro, which by the way is kind of cute. It's it's it's little, it's a little wireless thingy. And when you basically, you know, you got a try got two transmitters that have a magnet on the back and a clip, and so you could just you know put these here and it'd be good. And then the thing I love is it has in this case USB-C. The thing I hate is that's not long enough to fit in my phone without pulling it out of the case, which is why I bought these, which is a little USB extender, and it works great. I got like four of these for like nine bucks, and I was like, ooh, that's a little too cheap. But if I hold this up, it's just that's all it is. It's a little USB extender. So, and when you plug it in, it works great. But I was amazed at the box. I thought, oh, here it is. The box just had this whole thing where everything fit in, and as you opened it up, and then this opened up, and this was here, and this was in a box. And here's your little Did a unicorn jump out of there? A unicorn jumped out and danced, yeah. Pixie dust all over the place.

JIm Collison: 01:07:39
Right?

Dave Jackson: 01:07:39
Like, oh, that that even smells, and it smelled exactly smelled like roses, yeah. Yeah, so and it it's got little furry things to put on the the mics, and but it was all about the presentations, your first impression, right? So, why do people do that? And it's because it's like, ooh, uh, ooh, look, it's a little black furry thing to stick on the microphone. So I uh to me, it just it's your first impression, and if you can do something with it, why not? I don't know.

Jim Collison: 01:08:09
What do you think, Jim? Yeah, I think it's way more important than we think. I you know, I I'd like to think that people don't judge a book by its cover, but everybody does, you know, and you you just yeah, this is uh, you know, in the in the in the alcohol industry, it's crazy how the art is everything. I mean, they're we're just thinking about whiskey. We're all basically drinking the same liquid, it's made similar. I mean, there's some differences and stuff like that, but man, the or or wine, the cover art on wine bottles is amazing. Yeah, and you know, you're out there picking wines, and you know, I can I can I can look at a wine that's got a boring label, and then I'm drawn to the freak show label that's you know, uh an amazing work of art. And we are we are influenced by those things, and I I think you know, in the early days of podcasting, we'd make our own cover art in Canva. Well, well, Canva wasn't even around, right? Paint, maybe, right? And it was just garbage, you know, it's just terrible. And and I think I think it really matters. I think the way things appear and the way things say look, I'd like to think that's not true. I would like to think our content is what's true. Yeah, but they don't go through the door if it's not if it doesn't look good in some cases. So you just have to, you know, the way around that, of course, is word of mouth. Nobody looks the album. If you've got a recommendation from somebody, they're not gonna go, oh, I'm not gonna listen to this because the album art looks terrible. You know, they'll look at it for a second and go, oh, okay, that's it's unusual. But Joe, you know, Joe coming off the street, your album art matters. It does, unfortunately.

Dave Jackson: 01:09:51
I I'm in the middle of this book. I interviewed this guy for Podpage. It's called The Visual Marketer, and it's by a guy named Jim McLeod, the marketer's crash course for creating memorable and effective visuals. And it's already changed some of the way I design stuff just because the way people read. You know, it's like, oh, there's a reason why the logo is usually in the upper left-hand corner or the bottom right, depending on which one is more important and all sorts of stuff. But it's also it's really there's a lot of this that I was like, wow, this is almost a book on podcasting, because it's like, know who your audience is. Because like they wear, I think it's white in China for funerals. Like it's it's a that color's all around death. And for weddings, they wear red, you know, where like we're like, well, that's you know, whatever. So it's you know, knowing who your audience is is key to that. So it's a really good book. At least I'm six chapters into it, and that's something that I just have on my calendar now. From some nights, it's just like from you know, eight to nine, read. And it's usually just a I'm just I just want a chapter, nothing too crazy. And what's funny is it's a little bit like exercise. Once I get on a treadmill, I don't have a problem. It's just I've built in my head that the treadmill is going to be harder than I think it is. And same thing, once I start reading, I actually like what I'm reading, and I've I'll read a couple chapters. So yeah, Uncle Marv says, You down with OP3? Yeah, you know me. So I still want to play that song. Let's see here. What else is the chat room saying? We have uh visuals matter a whole lot more, says Dan Lefebvre for that first click. Yep, especially since people are used to you to yeah, YouTube thumbnails. If your thumbnail is awful, they won't even click you. Chris from Castahead.net, cover art is a little more important than it used to be. I agree with that. Just not nearly as important as what you're saying and your audience ability. Yeah, it's all about getting the click. For video, it's even more important because thumbnails are huge for YouTube views. Yeah, that's the way, you know, that's the game you're playing over there. And really, as much as I kind of go like, well, if you're gonna go to YouTube, you better learn the algorithm. Well, if you're gonna have a website, you gotta learn a little bit about SEO. You know, it's really not a whole lot different. Let's see, Randy says, if I register for the warranty for those and you get the camera receiver for free, just pay $7.90. I did not know that. Huh. That's cool. Because these, the the wireless micros, like I literally just plugged it in and it just worked right to my phone. But I think I can there's a thing you can do to make I think the transmitter connect via Bluetooth versus whatever that other thing is. He said you also plugged the road wireless micro receivers into a USB on the RodeCaster 2 or duo and use them as additional microphones. That was kind of the plan. Well, I just saw they were on sale. I bought a lot of stuff on sale, some of it good and some of it not good at all. Dan says one of my good friends has been a branding designer for decades. Looks matter a lot when building trust. Yeah, that's true. A well-designed look builds more trust than something haphazardly thrown together. Yeah, and it's and it's weird because all it typically is, like for the school of podcasting, it's what I just call blue-green. It's this weird, I don't know what the actual color would be. And then there's this yellow, and then like if I need a third color, gray. Ask the podcast coach, it's blue and red. Uh actually red, white, and blue if we look at it that way. And I just pulled that off the logo that Mark made for me. I'm like, okay, so if I need an accent color, it's red. Most of the stuff is blue, you know. Yeah. Craig says, wait, that's the only one floss, one-tooth strategy. Once you start, you don't stop. It's too funny. Ralph has a question. Has anyone tried thumbnails with subliminal content? Ooh, does that even exist? Oh, I'm sure it does. I mean, you if you look at, I remember, man, many moons ago, if you look at liquor ads in magazines, if you looked in the ice cubes, there were always some sort of, you know, boobs or something that like, oh, I didn't even see that. But it was all these weird things in the background that were in theory subliminal, but I don't know. Craig says, I bought the Osmo mini mics. I love them. It's great audio for a tiny mic. Yep. There's a book called Evil by Design that talks about how designers specifically try to use their own seven deadly sins to get people to buy. That's fun.

Jim Collison: 01:14:37
I love when people it's always been that way, though. It's always been that way. That's nothing new. We've always sold things with I mean, it's it's an attractive we're we're naturally kind of built that way. And so you see these things and you're like, oh yeah, of course I want to buy one of those things. It's gonna, it's gonna, it's associates that feeling that you have when you see the ad and then with the product. And then of course, like, who doesn't want to buy the product when you feel good about it, right?

Dave Jackson: 01:15:03
Or whatever it's I mean, whatever. My favorite is when they read the the side effects of drugs. Pay attention to the video that's being shown where they talk about, you know, may cause a third nipple, explosive diarrhea, potentially death. You will, you know, your lungs will collapse and fly away. It's just meanwhile, they're out in a bathtub in the backyard and the sun is coming up and they're dancing, and the children and the deaf is like, you know, I mean it's like and I love the fact now because the government's trying to make them say all the side effects. So now you'll have like a 10-second ad and 20 seconds of may cause this, may that, and that, and this and that. So yeah. OP3.dev, Brad, is the we just talked about that and did a quick demo, but uh so watch the replay. And then it's just another for the records, do you need OP3? No, only if you want your stats. Here's the advantage of using OP3. A, if you ever plan on maybe changing media hosts, so maybe you're like, well, we'll start on Red Circle and maybe later we'll move to Captivator, Buzzsprout, or Transistor, or whoever. Well, if you're using OP3, you can use any media host and always make sure that you can put in this prefix, then you don't lose your stats because they're in the cloud. Where when you move from one media host to the other, you can kind of move your stats, but kind of not really. That's I guess one of the big advantages, and the fact that you're they're public. Yeah. So, yes, Ralph says the old drug commercials will make you feel good. And and Uncle Marsh says, and the tub is always empty. Yeah, they're just sitting in an empty tub in the backyard, smiling and holding hands with someone they've been married to because they're high school sweethearts.

Jim Collison: 01:16:45
And yeah, uh, you don't make advertising's not real. You know, you can't again a world where everything is fake.

Dave Jackson: 01:16:54
Chris says, let's all create stereogram thumbnails. Remember those? Stare at them long enough, and the words click me will appear. Yeah, I remember those. Uh Randy says, I've requested Libsden to support OP3 for over a year because I was looking to move a show there. Glad they finally listened to my request. Yeah, I was happy to see because when I went to do it yesterday, John Sprilock, who's the guy behind OP3.dev, said, Hey Dave, do you know anybody with a show on libs? And I go, I got one there. And so we tried, and at first it didn't work. And then I was working with Rob Walsh, and uh he sent it over to the lead, whatever you call it, the not program director. Anyway, the the guy that steers the Libson technology, Max. So here's a fun one too as we start to uh we were we're rounding third and heading home already almost. Just to just to remind people, this is from No Relation, Jay Jackson. He's added back to some Facebook group. He said, just had Meta taken down all of my accounts and no option to appeal or recover anything. Does anyone have a meta contact? Cheesecakes on me, if anyone can assist.

Jim Collison: 01:17:60
So you think anybody actually works there? This isn't the bank. Yeah, you're not calling these guys.

Dave Jackson: 01:18:06
Well, when I got kicked out of my group, I had somebody, because I I finally went, I'd gone through all their help and all their stuff, and I finally just on my show said, Does anybody know anybody who knows somebody that maybe can help me on Meta? And somebody's cousins, sisters, brothers, you know, through marriage, knew somebody. And I said, Yeah, here's my log, you know, here's the email I use. And I don't know, probably a week later I was back in, but that was, you know, one of those where you're like, oh, geez. So here is another fun one. We're talking about this kind of earlier. Laura says, I put out my first podcast. So, first things first, kudos, because a lot of people don't make it. They think about I knew people had been thinking about launching a podcast for years, and you did. So kudos for that. Now I asked a question, what is my URL for my podcast? I didn't know the answer. Well, this is a brand new podcaster, so we get that. Google says it sounds like if they want the URL, must go through Apple or Spotify. Those are only two platforms I'm on. How do I share my podcast without the Buzz Sprout link? I'm transitioning from YouTube to podcasting. So this is new to me. And this is where for me, Jim, where do you buy your domains at? Hover. Hover? Hover. I use Namecheap or Cooler websites depending on what mood I'm in. Cooler websites is just my GoDaddy reseller, and they're about the same. So, but that's where a domain really comes in handy because you can basically, number one, you always want to say that. I it always drives me kind of crazy when people go, Oh, you can find it on my website. And I'm like, and that website is, but they just assume that you know, because I've been doing this show for you know 48 episodes, and I've said it, well, no, no, I'm a brand new listener, so and definitely have that in the in the show notes as well. So get a domain, and then on your domain, you can do something where you have a page for everyone. You put it in the the hands of the audience. So in my case, that's usually slash follow, and this is one for the school of podcasting. This is on pod page. So I've I've added Apple, Pocket Cast, Overcast, Spotify, and Podcast Attic. That gets me about 90%, if not more, of the audience. And so they can click anywhere there, but then I get to say the name of my, you know, my URL, direct them. It's easy to remember. It reinforces my brand, and it makes it easy for the audience to do that. And that takes literally full, well, in Podpage, maybe two minutes. If I was doing it on WordPress, maybe five, because I'd have to go find some buttons. So it's uh super easy to uh to do that. So it's it's one of those things because a lot of people don't realize that, especially if you're sharing an Apple link, which a lot of Americans do, because we love our Apple, but in Europe it's the it's all Android. And Chris says, wait, Dave, no iHeartRadio? Yeah, I know they're number one in podcasting.

Jim Collison: 01:21:18
They're the best.

Dave Jackson: 01:21:19
Yeah, there's also no Amazon link on there. I think I listened to Libson, and I you can go over if you go to let me go back to my screen here. If you go to buzzsprout.com slash stats, I wish Libson would do this, and Blueberry, many other media host, but you can see the their total monthly downloads, and you can see here Apple's at 35%, Spotify is at 30, web browser, meaning Chrome, Firefox, whoever, the Buzzsprout embedded player, which to me again would be a web browser, and then Castbox, which I don't know anybody that uses that. Apple iTunes, still in there for those old schoolers on a PC, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Podcast Addict, Amazon Music. And at this point, we're under 1%. iHeartRadio, 0.5%, Amazon Echo. I've about I'm about done with her. She's she's just everything I go to do, because I used to be able to go into the kitchen and ask the woman in the tube from Amazon to play PocketCast, and she's like, I'm I'm me. Do you have the new version of it? I do have the new version. So she's really fun and perky. I can't do that anymore. You know, is basically I forget what the actual message is. But so yeah, so there's, you know, you can see where if you've got Apple and Spotify, you've got sixty percent ish, you know, sixty-five. Then you throw an overcast, there's another one point two, throw in pocket cast, there's another one point one. And podcast attic is pretty popular. It's almost one percent. It's always a bummer. This is the one Amazon Music. Like, come on, kids. Yeah, it's a big company. When they came on board, I was like, yeah. And they just and the reason for that, when you go to Amazon Music, I believe it's music.amazon.com, they try very hard to get you to subscribe. And I'm like, I just want to listen to my podcast. And so that's always kind of a pain in the rear end when you're like, I just came over to listen to the new episode.

Jim Collison: 01:23:20
You know, we joke about iHeartRadio, right? Being number one in podcasting. But yeah, whenever someone says iHeartRadio, what do we say? Number one in podcasting. Is that not the greatest brand? Like that's pretty good brand. They're top of mind, we're all saying the same things. Now, you know, you you you may not be the best or have the best opinion of that or whatever. It's gotten it, it's gotten people's attention.

JIm Collison: 01:23:45
Right?

Dave Jackson: 01:23:46
Well, it got our attention because we all we all know it's a blatant lie.

Jim Collison: 01:23:50
Well, yeah, but that's so is most of marketing.

Dave Jackson: 01:23:54
That is true. Safe and effective. Yes, that's true. Yeah, uh, Randy says, if you're on WordPress, you can use Daniel J. Lewis has a great plug-in called uh subscribe, social subscribe and follow, I think is the full name of that. But uh good stuff for that as well. So we're gonna wrap it up two minutes early. I could sit here and ramble, and I'm like, you know what? We're we're kind of out of content. Yeah. So, Jim, what is coming up on home gadget geeks? Are we still because I know you're you're still kind of nursing some still nursing the neck.

Jim Collison: 01:24:26
We'll get it figured out. But I did it, I got it done Thursday night solo show, uh solar panel update. And I asked the question what good is a local AI LLM any? So if you're interested in either of those topics, you can check it out. It's available right now, home gadget geeks.com.

Dave Jackson: 01:24:47
Yeah, um, I see here Chris is saying the same thing. My guess is about the lack of Amazon is Audible, which doesn't just have audiobooks, it has exclusive podcasts. Yeah, that's true. They're kind of pushing Audible a little more. On the school of podcasting, I got three ideas. I haven't figured out which one. One came from this list, which was maybe I should share all my tips that I know about doing a live show. So I might do that. If I don't do that, I've got that interview, and I still have one in the can about marketing lessons from one uh woman named Taylor Swift, because I read a book about her and was like, oh, like even if you don't like her music, you have to respect just how she like persevered, you know, when she was just this little kid. And they're like, oh, just sit in the corner and be cute. And she's like, No, no, I got an idea. We should do this, guys. So Dan says this was a great episode. So there you go. Thank you, Mr. Lefebvre. Thanks to him over at again based on a truesttorypodcast.com. Thanks to Mark over at podcastbranding.co. Thanks to everyone who is listening, and uh, we will be here next week. Uh, preferably, it would be nice if it was still I'll take this weather all fall myself.

Jim Collison: 01:25:58
It's it's actually great. It's great weather. Yeah, I'm not complaining.

Dave Jackson: 01:26:02
Check out Jim over at home gadget geeks.com. Check out me at school of podcasting.com. We will see you next week with another fun-filled episode of Ask the Podcast Coach. So, Jim, what is coming up on uh home gadget gigs? Are we still because I know you're you're still kind of nursing some still nursing the neck, and we'll get it figured out.

Jim Collison: 01:26:54
But I did it, I got it done Thursday night solo show, uh solar panel update. And I asked the question what good is a local AI LLM anything? So if you're interested in either of those topics, you can check it out. It's available right now, home gadget geeks.com.

Dave Jackson: 01:27:14
Yeah, um, I see here Chris is saying the same thing. My guess is about the lack of Amazon is Audible, which doesn't just have audiobooks, it has exclusive podcasts. Yeah, that's true. They're kind of pushing Audible a little more. On the school of podcasting, I got three ideas. I haven't figured out which one. One came from this list, which was maybe I should share all my tips that I know about doing a live show. So I might do that. If I don't do that, I've got that interview, and I still have one in the can about marketing lessons from one uh woman named Taylor Swift, because I read a book about her and was like, oh, like even if you don't like her music, you have to respect just how she like persevered, you know, when she was just this little kid. And they're like, oh, just sit in the corner and be cute. And she's like, No, no, I got an idea. We should do this, guys. So Dan says this was a great episode. So there you go. Thank you, Mr. Lefebvre. Thanks to him over at again based on a true storypodcast.com. Thanks to Mark over at podcastbranding.co. Thanks to everyone who is listening, and uh, we will be here next week. Uh, preferably, it would be nice if it was still I'll take this weather all fall myself.

Jim Collison: 01:28:25
Like it's it's actually great. It's great weather. Yeah, I'm not complaining.

Dave Jackson: 01:28:29
Check out Jim over at homegadgetge.com. Check out me at school of podcasting.com. We will see you next week with another fun-filled episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.