What Payment Link Should I Use? Does it Matter?

Randall Black [00:00:00]:
Only Jim Collison from theaverageguy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Dave Jackson [00:00:04]:
Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Happy May be with you weekend in a Cinco de Mayo on Monday. Like, this is Wow. Party weekend. Here we go. Yeah. Big time.

Dave Jackson [00:00:16]:
I get the feeling a lot of people are gonna get hammered somehow in the next seventy two hours. Because I remember when I worked in Kent, they still do protests every year. And but the problem is it's, like, you know, 12 people, and they're all in their seventies garb. You know? I always love the fact that they're shouting some sort of slogan that you can't understand. It's, what do you call those things with the handle? Bullhorns. A bullhorn. Yeah. We don't do work.

Dave Jackson [00:00:46]:
No way, man. Everybody repeat after me. I was like, okay. This is great. But, yeah, I remember the guy had a big giant papier mache George Bush head on. So it was it was great fun. But, you know, it because when you do that, if you're shouting at an event, you might hurt your voice. And the way you can fix that, of course, is through a really nice coffee pour there as Jim does that.

Dave Jackson [00:01:13]:
And that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend, Mark, over at podcastbranding.co. Because, you know, they're gonna see you before they hear you, and I've used Mark multiple times to make artwork for me. And if you need a whole website, he'll do that too. In fact, if you need a PDF, yep, he'll do that. If you need an email, anything that's gonna be public facing, podcastbranding.co is the place you wanna go. Mark is like no other graphic artist you're gonna work with because number one, he's gonna sit down with you. Probably go listen to your podcast. He's gonna sit down with you and just you tell him about your show.

Dave Jackson [00:01:51]:
Let him do the marketing part. So many people go, oh, tell me what you want it to look like. No. That's Mark's job. He wants to know what your show is about, the vibe, all that stuff to make sure that everything is in alignment from your website to your artwork to your show. Everybody gets the same vibe. And he's also a podcaster, which is beautiful. He's an award winning graphic artist, but he's also a podcaster.

Dave Jackson [00:02:13]:
So you you don't have to go, oh, it's kinda like a radio show. So when you're ready, go over to podcastbranding.co telling Dave and Jim sent you.

Jim Collison [00:02:28]:
And, of course, a big thanks to our good friend, Dan Lefebvre, over there based on a true story, based on a truestorypodcast.com. This week, I've been waiting for this one, Die Hard. Is it a Christmas movie or is it not? They answer that question, but you'll have to listen to it based on a truestorypodcast.com. Bruce Willis, Die Hard. Best Christmas movie ever.

Dave Jackson [00:02:51]:
Yippee Ki Yay. Yeah. Exactly.

Jim Collison [00:02:53]:
Dan, thanks for your sponsorship.

Dave Jackson [00:02:56]:
I ended up, I think, buying that on Amazon because it wasn't streaming anywhere. So and I went last night and saw Thunderbolts. When you tune into a podcast, you're expecting something. And that movie because I went in, I'm like, hey. This is a superhero movie. I know exactly how it's gonna end already before I even go. And it was a superhero movie, and there was a big bad, you know, villain. And, oh my gosh, can they beat the villain? I'm not sure.

Dave Jackson [00:03:26]:
You'd have to go to see. I'm not gonna spoil it for you. But if you've seen a superhero movie, you probably know how it's going. And it was cute, shall we say. I do have one quick thing. We actually got somebody sent us a text message and asked a question. My buddy York over at welcome to Earth Stories sent us a quick question and because we're talking a couple weeks ago about, and I don't know where I put York's thing, but, anyway, welcome to Earth Stories. And we're talking about the dollar sign in Pocket Cast.

Dave Jackson [00:04:00]:
And he was like, hey. I put that in there. I'm not seeing it. And what you have to do in that case and this is the problem. Podcasters and and people like us that are avid podcast listeners, we never close that app. Like, whatever app you're using, it's always running in the background gathering more stuff. So you have to close the app, and you might maybe get prompted to upgrade. But once you restart that app, you'll see the little dollar sign.

Dave Jackson [00:04:25]:
I see Ralph has a question here. That is if you had like, if I wanted somebody to, you know, send a tip or whatever you wanna call it, What would be your preferred like, if I send you a PayPal link, is there a part of you that goes, PayPal? Or would it be better if it was, you know, some sort of credit? Like, Captivate has a cool thing that ties into just credit cards. Do you like, what's the most you know, then there's buy me a coffee. Do you have a is there a preference? Do we is this one of those things that we're all gonna, like, obsess over now and go, wait. I could get point 007% more if I use PayPal? Because it used to be PayPal. Everybody was like, ah, just send me a PayPal link. And now it's Venmo. You know? And there's only maybe, I guess, if you wanted to, you could make a page.

Dave Jackson [00:05:16]:
And the other thing I thought about this, we should make sure whatever page, whatever service we're using looks really good on mobile. Because if you think about it, that's gonna show up on your phone. It'll show up on their web version as well. But I was like, you wanna make sure whatever you're using looks good on a phone. Because first, I was like, oh, just use PayPal. Then I was like, you know what? Captivate has a built in, like, tip thingy, and I was like, okay. Buzzsprout, likewise, has a support the show link, which is what we have. Currently, the show's on Buzzsprout.

Dave Jackson [00:05:49]:
Do you think it matters?

Jim Collison [00:05:51]:
No. I think you should be available to take them all. If it Yeah. You should go with what people want to use if you can. Right? That's not in all cases. Right? I think if you could have them all available in some way, if somebody wants to donate to you and they wanna do it via PayPal, make sure you can do it that way if it's Venmo. I love Venmo. Like, we that's our family transactional system.

Jim Collison [00:06:15]:
Right? I mean, that's how we move money around to the kids and stuff like that, and they give it back. Not as much as we give them, but they do give it back sometimes. I had a situation, Dave, where somebody wanted me to do a is it Supercast? Do they is that another one that they have a payment have come a payment system?

Dave Jackson [00:06:31]:
And Yep.

Jim Collison [00:06:32]:
I I fought it because I was like, even though I said you should be everywhere, it was one person. And I was like, I don't wanna set up another thing I have to check just for one person. I probably made him mad and when I said that. But I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? For one or two people, I guess it depends.

Dave Jackson [00:06:53]:
Well, here's the thing. Because I have we were on we're on Patreon, and then I moved to Supercast because it's a much easier experience for the listener. And so right now, the last person that signed up is on Supercast, and the rest of everybody else is on Patreon. So I have to upload the file twice. Now it's not a big deal because I'm in Patreon, and I've got it open. I open up a new tab. I go to Supercast. I go new episode.

Dave Jackson [00:07:21]:
And while it's uploading, I go grab the show notes and paste it in there. So it's literally a minute, maybe two extra to make an episode in the second place, but it is another step. It's one of those things because I didn't wanna go through the fun of like, hey, everybody. You know, we're moving. I was like, no. Just leave them in Patreon. I'll just do this extra thing. And Randy says, do they take a less commission? I think they do ever so slightly.

Dave Jackson [00:07:47]:
Depends, of course, because it's a podcast question. I think, if I remember right, Patreon is 12% or 8%, and Supercast is real close to 8%. Now with Patreon, the more they take, the more they do. So you can sell merch, which in my opinion is not really something that works 99% of the time. So I'm not really that crazy about merch sales. I think it works

Jim Collison [00:08:13]:
based on your genre, to be honest. Yeah. There are some genres of folks. I think merch is one of those things so that gets super hot for a while, and then everybody that's gonna buy something. And then you gotta be changing that merch out pretty regularly. Right? You know? Or, you know, if your merch is consumable, you know, like, I know a guy, one of the YouTubers that I watch sells this fire starter stuff. You can put it in your campfire and start the fire with it. Well, that's consumable.

Jim Collison [00:08:42]:
And so he's known for that stuff, and Mike Morgan is his name. And he sells a lot of it. The fire starter that he sells while the label on the front is branded for the show, that's going to get consumed in some way and folks love it. He gets a lot of folks to purchase it. So if you're gonna do merch, I think you gotta have, if you're gonna do the traditional shirts and hoodies and whatever, I think you gotta be constantly turning those around, doing different things, giving new options type

Dave Jackson [00:09:15]:
deal. So This is congressional dish, and Jen operates on support. If you don't give her money, she goes away. And so she's got Patreon. She's got a credit card. She's got checks if you wanna do that. Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, Popmoney, you know, and then you can give her crypto if you want. Also, Ray, I just put a link in the show notes or in the show notes, in the chat for Ray was asking about I think I can do this.

Dave Jackson [00:09:43]:
I hope. I'm hoping I'm not gonna show everybody my accounting, but he was asking I need a easy way to make invoices. And yes. Yay. Waveapps. Not waves. Wave apps Com. I've been using it for years if you wanna send out quick invoice.

Dave Jackson [00:09:58]:
You can also do that in PayPal. That's another one too. But yeah. So it's you know, it might be something that you test, but the I I kind of was leaning towards buy me a coffee, but I also went to my buy me a coffee because the fun thing about buy me a coffee is you can, like, hey. Buy me a coffee. They're $5. But you can also say, or a membership or a t shirt or the and I went, you know what? Let's just make this a place to buy me a coffee. Let's not go crazy.

Dave Jackson [00:10:26]:
So keep that in mind.

Jim Collison [00:10:27]:
Couple comments that Zelle and Venmo, US only. That is one thing to check-in this podcasting two point o space. We think about crypto, that would be a good solution that could help break down those currency barriers. Right? That's kinda what I mean, that for the longest time in early crypto, that was one of their main selling points was like, you can kinda skip the international currency issues and all the fees and things associated with doing it that way. When we think about solving a problem, there is when we think about currencies, that is a problem in a lot of ways. That's why some of these services are limited to specific countries.

Dave Jackson [00:11:11]:
Yeah. Speaking of, invoices now, it's fun just watching the chat room.

Jim Collison [00:11:16]:
They are. They they are busy

Randall Black [00:11:17]:
this morning.

Dave Jackson [00:11:18]:
They're going crazy. But Ralph asked, is anybody using ThriveCart? I use ThriveCart for yes. That thing that I do, podcast hot seat. In fact, looking back, I when I switched from Zendler to Heartbeat for my community and courses, I should have just implemented ThriveCart just because it has a built in affiliate program, it has better landing pages, and I forget what I paid for it. I think back in the day, I did some sort of lifetime deal on it, and it does everything that I wanted to do. So let's hop in on some questions here. They're piling up. Okay.

Dave Jackson [00:11:55]:
We'll start with we'll go last first, and then we'll pop these around because I just answered one for Ralph, and I'm gonna answer one from Todd. A question. How do you all handle the live meetups? Is there a protocol, or should I plan something to keep the convo going? A, promote it, and b, listen to whatever Jim says.

Jim Collison [00:12:15]:
Nicely done. This is a little counterintuitive, I think. Some people think, like, hey. If we just gather people together, you know, we'll do an evening happy hour, just chit chat. They're actually like listeners. They're actually looking for content. And so if you're gonna do a meetup, you gotta deliver something to get them to come there versus going somewhere else. It's still an entertainment type discussion, so to speak, as people are thinking about, do I go, do I go home and watch TV or watch whatever you watch these days? It's not even TV anymore, but do I go home and be entertained? Or do I go out? And in some cases, I mean, post pandemic, a lot of folks aren't going out.

Jim Collison [00:12:59]:
Like, they're not making those decisions to just go out. They're like, oh, it's gotta be kinda worth it. So the all that being said, you gotta have an agenda, and it needs to be solid. Like, you have to tell them exactly what they're coming for and what you're gonna do, how it's gonna work. Getting together just for a hey. Let's just get together and chitchat. That works like once, maybe twice. If you're gonna do long term meetups, they've gotta have a direction.

Jim Collison [00:13:24]:
They've gotta have an agenda. The it's the most important thing I learned. We've done hundreds of these things. And so you you gotta have a very solid agenda and make sure they understand. And then don't go too long. Like, set it for sixty minutes. If it goes longer, awesome. Stay later.

Jim Collison [00:13:42]:
If it doesn't, people need an out. Right? They wanna feel like, oh, yeah. I could do this for an hour. They too will make that decision while they're there. If you've set it for an hour and if in an hour, everybody's like, well, peace out. Well like, okay. That's maybe some feedback that it wasn't as engaging as it could have been. You know? So be very specific with them on what you're gonna do while they're there.

Dave Jackson [00:14:07]:
I know I do the podcasters hangout, and it dawned on me that April came and went, and I didn't hold one, and nobody asked for one. I have a Facebook group that I do not check enough. It takes time to keep a community going, and I was driving. It dawned on me because it was May, and I was like, oh, man. I didn't even think about the podcasters happy hour. And I was like, I should probably just wave the white flag at this point and go, you know what? It's not a priority, and it's looked like it for the past year. It's just been four or five people, which is fine. Nothing wrong with the four or five people.

Dave Jackson [00:14:46]:
But it was a lot of like, hey. It's gonna be like the hallway in at podcast movement. And it was fun. It wasn't like a waste of time. But for that to really get up to, like, around 10 people, just needed more time. I tried to bring in outside people, and that was always for me, it's always last minute stuff. And I just have too much stuff on my plate. And then I found out SendFox, if you don't send email to your list on a regular basis, they throttle you.

Dave Jackson [00:15:15]:
So now I'm, like, trying to tell people, hey. We're gonna do this thing. And it went out to, like, you know, 20% of my list. And I was like, what? And they're like, well, yeah. You haven't emailed these people in two months. And I was like, yeah. But it's my list.

Jim Collison [00:15:30]:
They can be very rewarding experiences.

Dave Jackson [00:15:33]:
Yeah. It's worth the time.

Jim Collison [00:15:35]:
Todd says that he's shy and introverted too. That doesn't matter whether you're an introvert or an extrovert on meetups. You can be introverted and still do meetups. Like, that's not a that shouldn't stop you. Just do it in your way. Do it the way that works best for you. It doesn't have to be shock and awe, flashbang, you know, type stuff. They're very rewarding when they work Yeah.

Randall Black [00:15:55]:
And when

Jim Collison [00:15:55]:
you've put the time. But it's a six to 10 times the meeting you know, so if the meeting's gonna be an hour, you're gonna spend six to ten hours planning it. Right? So just kinda know, you know, this isn't like, hey. Send an email out. Let's get together for an hour, and then they just show up. I mean, yeah, you get away with that once. Then folks will stop coming if they don't think there's an agenda.

Dave Jackson [00:16:18]:
Yeah. He said I posted in the group and asked, yeah. But if Dave's not in the group every day like he should be

Jim Collison [00:16:24]:
Yeah. You know?

Dave Jackson [00:16:24]:
That's I think I kinda thought and maybe they are, but I thought the group would help promote it more, maybe. I don't know. And it's but, again authored. But but here's the thing. Yeah. Promote what? A meh at best? You know? Like, it was cool because I got to hang out with Randy, and Kim Kraji would show up at k because it used to be the Akron podcasters group. And that was great when I lived in Cleveland. And it was just one of those things where it requires work, and I was not doing the work, you know, and it showed.

Dave Jackson [00:17:00]:
So that's the problem. Stephanie says, just shut the Facebook down. If people are mad, well, yep. I could do that. But it's always like, well, I might come back to it. Well, that's not really a good you know? Yeah. She says Jody says I have a social media marketing manager. It's because I'm always kinda looking for it, but I'm my problem is I'm always working on it the Sunday before the Monday.

Dave Jackson [00:17:23]:
Like, that's the problem. So if I hit any technical hurdles or anything like that, and then I remember once I just also learned never do anything on that Monday night. Because twice, I'll be like, oh, I'll run out. I'll do this. I'll be back in time for podcaster happy hour. And then I remember once I had to stop and get gas in my tire and somehow got stuck. There was a couple times where I hit things, and I was like, you know what? I should have never left the house. So that was kind of dumb looking back.

Dave Jackson [00:17:52]:
Meanwhile, back at the questions, Ralph says, I have a question for the crew since I do a daily show. I've been sending out a daily mail blog about the show. Thoughts on that? Should I not send one daily or keep it?

Jim Collison [00:18:05]:
It's a good one.

Dave Jackson [00:18:07]:
I would put it on the form. Click here to sign up for a daily reminder about the thing. And if they know it's daily, they can't say, man, you're emailing me too much. You know? That's how I let them choose. Depending on who you're using, forget there was one mail program that you could say, send a like, it would go back and, like, combine the week and do that. I know in PodPage, you can have it if you're on the elite plan, you can have it generate an email that will do a summary of, like, the last month, which wouldn't work if you're a daily show because that would be 30 summaries. But and when in doubt, ask your audience. You know? But I just know daily emails, I usually do not last long on that list unless everything is, like, amazing.

Dave Jackson [00:18:57]:
You know? We're like, oh, wait. I can't wait for the next one. So, yeah, Ray says, I'm tired just thinking about The Daily Show idea. But it's short, So it's not quite which I think would be the key to a daily show. A daily although Mark Ronick does I think it's daily morning podcast chat. It's an hour long live show that he does, and I'm like, that makes my brain hurt doing an hourly daily show. And then Ralph says, is anyone using ThriveCart or SamCart? I'm doing an online sales. I'm getting ready to launch some tiny offers and just wanna pick a platform.

Dave Jackson [00:19:35]:
I use Thrive Guard. Like I said, I bought it, I think, a lifetime deal. They also have a thing if you ever have courses that you can add to that, but if you want to see it in action, if you go to podcast hot seat slash store, that's a ThriveCart landing page. So that's always fun. I did see a fun thing in Reddit today that I was like, so it says let me show my screen. Here we go. Hi, all. We're five or six episodes in into our to date audio only podcast, Man versus Mind.

Dave Jackson [00:20:15]:
So, Jim, here's my question. If I said I'm doing a podcast called Man versus Mind, what do you think it's about?

Jim Collison [00:20:21]:
I have no idea.

Dave Jackson [00:20:22]:
That was me. I was like, that's not a good name, in in my opinion. My cohost and I are considering moving on to YouTube, but I'm conscious of the additional editing time and resources needed to do so. So he's conscious that, hey. There's gonna be more editing and stuff. We record in the same incredibly small room, but wanna have the ability to remote record, so I have a subscription to Riverside. Typically, it's really useful, except I found that there's not much freedom with the video editing function if I'm using a different audio source such as Audition, because it can't accurately track who's speaking. So I'm kinda confused there because he says using a different audio source, Audition.

Dave Jackson [00:21:03]:
And I'm like, but Audition is post.

Jim Collison [00:21:06]:
You can record with Audition. They might be recording locally.

Dave Jackson [00:21:09]:
Maybe that's what he means. He's recording locally into Audition and wants to use that. So multicam mode in Premiere Pro is an option to which I go, okay. As soon as I hear multicam, I'm like, if it just except it takes ages and means I'm using Premiere Pro to slice everything, audio included together, rather than doing it in the much more efficient audition workspace. But audition isn't video. For context, I'm using m one MBP MacBook Pro for editing. So it's not exactly old, which leads me to my point. So think about all the stuff he just talked about.

Dave Jackson [00:21:47]:
I wanna do a video show. I want it forty five to sixty minutes, and then he asked this, which leads me to my point. What software workflow has the community found to give an ideal audio and video solution that doesn't add a tooth clenching amount of extra work? And so I told him, I said, well, hey. First things first. You know, you don't have to be video if you don't want to. And I said, it kinda sounds like you're saying I wanna have a kid, but I don't really wanna you know, I don't have enough time to do the feeding and wiping and things like that. And he kinda got a little miffed at me. I don't think he appreciated my sarcasm or my analogy and said, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:22:29]:
I have two small children. I know how much time it takes. And I'm like, okay. I'm just letting you know. And so, you know, Chris says there's no need to also do audition while recording. Record to the multicam. Right? Edit it in your video program and then export the audio afterwards. There you go.

Dave Jackson [00:22:46]:
And if you need more answers about video, castahead.net. Yeah. Absolutely. I thought he kinda added some stuff in there too. He's making it a little too stuffed. And then Jeff says Descript is what works for me, plus it has multicam. And, yeah, that's what I told him. I said, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:23:02]:
Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. You might wanna try Descript because that's what I use. Now we just kinda do the talking head thing here on Saturday morning. But if I was doing Multicam, I would probably go with Descript. I've also started doing Descript on the web instead of their program because then I don't have to worry about it telling me two minutes into the project that, hey. There's a new version you should update. So I just to me, when I heard, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:23:26]:
I wanna add all because as soon as you say, oh, I'm gonna start doing this and your plate is full, the question then becomes, okay. What are you not doing anymore?

Jim Collison [00:23:37]:
Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:23:37]:
And for me, it's like one of the first things that went was watching live TV. Like, the other day, oh, this is fun. I talked about this a couple weeks ago that occasionally, when I wanna turn my brain off, I will watch Friends, the TV show. Right? It's fun. It's cute. Jennifer Aniston, you know, great. But when they go to commercial, it seems like they go, and they never come back. It was five minutes, and it was 16.

Dave Jackson [00:24:12]:
16 ads. Fifteen and thirty second. So that's why it feels like they're never come. But first of all, five minutes is a long time. And 16 ads where it's just like and it was, you know, dog food and some sort of pharmaceutical, and then it was Target, and then it was another pharmaceutical, and then it was another pharmaceutical, and then it was another pharmaceutical. And I was like, I thought RFK was gonna get pharmaceutical ads off TV.

Jim Collison [00:24:42]:
Maybe they're trying to get it in. They're trying to get all those ads in.

Dave Jackson [00:24:45]:
This in. Hey, everybody. Hurry up. Yes. Hurry up.

Randall Black [00:24:48]:
Get in bed.

Dave Jackson [00:24:49]:
But that was an interesting experiment. And then I went to I was watching Conan O'Brien needs a friend because he had Bill Hader, who I love. He's He's the guy that does a lot of really great imitations, and he was on Saturday Night Live. If you've never seen Barry on HBO, it's a great show. And I'm a big Bill Hader fan. And so I was watching because it was a clip, and I hate this, but it works. Bill Hader was on, and the only thing that was on YouTube from Conan were these clips. And so I was like, okay.

Dave Jackson [00:25:25]:
And the clip was eight minutes and twenty six seconds long. So it's basically one question from Conan to Bill, but it featured an ad. You wanna guess how long the ad was in an eight minute and twenty six second clip?

Jim Collison [00:25:42]:
Two minutes.

Dave Jackson [00:25:42]:
You're close. A minute and a half.

Jim Collison [00:25:45]:
K.

Dave Jackson [00:25:45]:
And that made the YouTube video 26% ads. And I put on Facebook, I vote we re we rebrand the show to Conan O'Brien needs some cash. I'm like, what the heck? You know? And so I I just I hate to wave the white flag and go, alright. They're just gonna ruin podcasting, but there's a part of me that just goes, they're just gonna ruin podcasting. They're gonna turn it into radio where it's 30% ads because if this is what's acceptable on YouTube, and that's what, you know, five I didn't watch the whole show. I need to sometime when I've got time watch the whole show on Friends and see just how much of it is advertising. Because I know they they do things where they overlap the outro of the previous episode. They put it in the bottom right hand corner, so all the credits are down there while they're showing the intro of the next one.

Dave Jackson [00:26:41]:
So they're actually overlapping the shows. That's how they get more ads in there, but it's just it's kinda crazy that way. So I just hope we don't turn podcasting into 30%. That's what radio currently is, 30% ads. Because somebody said it was weird that Dave Ramsey did a keynote. It was really good, and, he was talking about how people downloaded a billion downloads. He's on markets all across the planet. And, he said people download my podcast the first hour, and they think it's weird because it's thirty eight minutes long because the rest of it's ads.

Dave Jackson [00:27:16]:
And I was like, oh, jeez, Louise. So, yeah, Daniel was saying something about Riverside. I will say something. I got interviewed on a show, and I've been saying this for months, and I haven't done it yet. I need to go through Riverside University, and then we'll probably use it some week here. I wanna play with it. But I got done with an interview, and it was probably forty five minutes. And I get done, and Riverside is like, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:27:42]:
Thank you so much. You can use Riverside too. Oh, by the way, here's a clip of the interview you just made. You should share it. And I'm like, oh, let's see how good this is. And I click play, and it was a really good clip. It was the I don't know how it figured out, but it was, you know, a lot of times it starts too soon or it cuts it off before you make your point. This was, like, spot on, and I was like, that was pretty cool.

Dave Jackson [00:28:09]:
And it was like, you can share this now. Now I didn't, but I was just surprised. And it wasn't yes. They were pimping their stuff, but it wasn't like a giant, like, super intrusive. It was just like, hey. Did you have a good experience? If you want, here's what we do. And, oh, by the way, here's a clip. And blah blah blah.

Dave Jackson [00:28:31]:
And that's when I was like, alright. I gotta go play with Riverside. I've been saying that for months, but it's a case where, you know, I'm doing a live show. I don't wanna figure it out as I'm doing the live show even though that's technically what I end up. Because there there comes a time, even though I'll do a test show, that I do that. But what do you guys use at the gallop?

Jim Collison [00:28:49]:
StreamYard is our platform, and it works well. I had my first real fail in a long time this week on StreamYard. Not their

Dave Jackson [00:28:57]:
fault. Interesting.

Jim Collison [00:28:58]:
Not their fault. But it was Can you

Dave Jackson [00:28:59]:
hear me, Jim?

Jim Collison [00:29:00]:
I can. Yeah. Can you hear me?

Dave Jackson [00:29:02]:
Wow. I lost your audio. And what's weird not. Is when you talk, you're blinking, but the Roadcaster went weird. Keep talking.

Jim Collison [00:29:09]:
I'm chat room, are you guys seeing the same thing out there? Is it on Dave's head? What are you guys seeing? It'll take a second for the audio to get there. Alright. So I'll talk about the fail while Dave's trying to get that figured out. So I had an interview guest out of Sydney, Australia, and she was using a PC. And in preshow, it seemed just fine. She was a little jittery. That shoulda tipped me off or the video would jitter for just a second, so it'd be good for a while and then the video would go. And it should that shoulda tipped me off.

Jim Collison [00:29:42]:
And so as soon as I hit play or as soon as I hit go live if you're a StreamYard user, you know, and then we have recordings local recordings enabled. She was that it and as we you couldn't see it. And we did a thirty minute preshow. Just I that's just what I do just to make sure all those things are working well. But, I am back, by the way. Oh, okay. Can you hear me okay?

Dave Jackson [00:30:17]:
I can hear you. What it was, I had to jiggle the cord in the back of the Roadcaster.

Jim Collison [00:30:23]:
That's always the cord that you gotta jiggle.

Dave Jackson [00:30:25]:
All of a sudden, you just went boop. And I'm looking up, and I'm seeing your stuff making noise. So, yeah, I was and I didn't do a thing. That was the fun thing. I wasn't like I touched something. I was just sitting here, and all of a sudden, you just went poof. And you were gone. I could see your lights were blinking, and I'm like, good.

Dave Jackson [00:30:41]:
I can't wait to hear what Jim said later when I edit this, but I'm like, I couldn't hear a thing.

Jim Collison [00:30:45]:
Very well. The video is out of sync a little bit too. I'll have to see how that goes. Let me finish that. Yeah. Let me finish that story. So soon as we clicked go live, her video just went to crap. I mean, it just absolutely started locking up, freezing up, and our audio issues problems.

Jim Collison [00:31:01]:
We tried resetting the connection, and we tried I had her actually we stopped, had her leave, and come back. And I didn't even think it was the, you know, it was the automatic upload that StreamYard is doing behind the scenes that was causing the problem. And so I it wasn't until post, we quit. But actually, we got thirty minutes into the show when we quit. And so I'm not gonna read the chat. Sorry. And then, so we've, yeah, we just bailed on the thing. Wasn't until after the show that I was like, Oh, yeah.

Jim Collison [00:31:29]:
Because the typically the uploads on StreamYard are pretty quick. By the time you're done, most people, 90 to 95% of the video is there. It just takes an extra five or six minutes for the rest of it to load, whatever. Her video was only 50% uploaded. I'm like, oh, yeah. We had the equipment was not ready for it. So I'm gonna I told her next time, you know, we need she was using her son's laptop. I don't know why that was, like that should have been a clue as well.

Jim Collison [00:31:57]:
But that was a fail that I wasn't I hadn't thought about in a long time, and I need to add it to my checklist of, yeah, probably needs to be a pretty modern piece of equipment for us anyways. If you're gonna be both recording on it and uploading at the same time, I don't know if you can get away with something old. You know, because people own laptops that are eight, nine, ten years old, whatever. They just keep using them. They just keep working, whatever in some cases. And you're like, yeah. It'll do a spreadsheet. And you're like, yeah.

Jim Collison [00:32:27]:
It probably won't stream. You know? I always say, are you on a PC or a Mac? And if they say PC, I probably should ask the question. Do you know how old it is? You can't know that until you actually start, you know, until you click live. With StreamYard, I guess you could do a separate call. You could do a separate test call, where you do some, you hit the recording button and give that a try. That seems too much checking for me to do all those things. But, yeah, it's gonna require some additional checking. No.

Jim Collison [00:32:58]:
I want video streaming. That's the whole purpose.

Dave Jackson [00:33:00]:
The fun thing is, I don't know how long he's been sitting there, but Randy Black was in the as I'm back here struggling and everything like that, people are telling us our audio is still cutting in and out. But we will bring mister Black to the stage. Of course, we will. As soon as I do oh, that's what I need this. Auntie. Yes. Time for more coffee, Jim. And I will drag Randy over here.

Jim Collison [00:33:27]:
It's almost like it's a live show where we ask guests to come in, Dave.

Dave Jackson [00:33:30]:
It is. You know, you think I'd be good to go. Oh, here we go. Add. I'm like, I know it's here. Add to camera. Add camera. There we go.

Dave Jackson [00:33:38]:
Into guest two. Nope. If I click here, assign to place order. Yes. He is guest number two. Double click to pick a camera source. Okay. I'm asked to start video or not.

Dave Jackson [00:33:51]:
Randy, I think we should hear you now if you talk.

Randall Black [00:33:55]:
Maybe? Can you hear me?

Dave Jackson [00:33:57]:
I can hear you. Here we go. Beautiful. There he is.

Randall Black [00:33:59]:
Oh, there I am. A remote recording. An awesome tool that I discovered and is affordable, it's a little more affordable than Riverside and some of the others, is EnnuiCaster, e n n u I c a s t r, or you can also get there by just going to ecaster.com. It's really affordable. There are monthly subscriptions if you wanna pay for a month. I have unlimited recording. It's $10 a month for high quality. So that's, like, a hundred and 20 8 k, audio recording.

Randall Black [00:34:29]:
It records in Opus easily to format that or convert that over to m p three. You can also do lossless. Recording will get you up to $15 a month, and you can record video included with that. It includes it for no extra charge. If you just record remotely every once in a while, the standard quality is a dollar an hour. The lossless is $2 an hour. So it's pretty affordable.

Dave Jackson [00:34:53]:
You said was E Caster what?

Randall Black [00:34:55]:
E Caster, e c a s t r.

Dave Jackson [00:34:57]:
T r because the e was too expensive. Got it.

Randall Black [00:35:02]:
Exactly. Like we're Yeah. So it's pretty pretty good, and it's all completely open source. You can actually go to GitHub and clone his repositories and post it online and run it yourself. If you know how to get the back end going, he doesn't give a lot of info on that. But it's really solid. It also will do multi it's all multitrack always. So you're always on separate tracks.

Randall Black [00:35:23]:
When you download, you have the option to have echo cancellation on. You have the option for noise reduction. You have the option for audio for the normalization of the audio as well. And it will download multiple files for you in that. So, like, I did a recording two weeks ago on a Saturday with an artist for the music show, and when I downloaded the folder from him, the zip file, I had multiple files that had all the different formats with the echo cancellation, noise reduction, normalization, all that in there. It's like three gigs in size, and that was all WAV. So it's all lossless audio.

Dave Jackson [00:35:57]:
Nice. The thing I'm laughing at

Randall Black [00:35:59]:
is the guy who wrote

Dave Jackson [00:36:01]:
this yes. We're Weasel. I'm like.

Randall Black [00:36:03]:
Yeah. Oh, and his FAQ is hilarious. Like, his FAQ when he talks about what's gonna stop me from going in your repositories and posting this myself and setting up a competing service? And he goes, nothing. But that's kind of a dick move. Yeah. So he's really and he's really funny. And and like I said, it's affordable. The minimum charge just because of the fees and stuff, if you went through PayPal and everything is $2.

Randall Black [00:36:24]:
But if you record something, it's not long enough to meet that $2 minimum. Whatever extra is there, you get credited on. So you have extra funds sitting there waiting to be used. Interesting. And it sounds great. If you like, the audio I've gotten from it, I've had to do minimal processing anything to it, other than, like, I run the whole show through Auphonic. So Auphonic does a little bit of stuff. Right.

Randall Black [00:36:51]:
But when I look at the output from Auphonic, it hasn't touched those files very much at all. So it's pretty good, and it's pretty affordable.

Dave Jackson [00:36:57]:
Yeah. And as we have demonstrated today, always have a second thing recording, which I did until I had to turn it off to start dying to know. But, anyway and hence, why there's a picture of some sort of rodent on the front page. It's a weasel. Because I'm like, why is there an otter looking at the window? And I'm like, oh, it's not an otter. It's a weasel.

Randall Black [00:37:19]:
Well, it's a mascot for another product he had created and put out. So he's just kinda using the same thing with the same software name company name.

Dave Jackson [00:37:26]:
So the question is, like, obviously, right now, working great, but his brand is, I'm a dude in the basement that wrote software, and there's nothing wrong with the dude in the basement. Yeah. But you've got the interview of a lifetime coming up. Are you gonna trust the dude in the basement? That's the tricky part. That's It

Randall Black [00:37:46]:
hasn't failed me yet.

Dave Jackson [00:37:47]:
Yeah. I'm gonna say it's like, well, if it has it

Randall Black [00:37:49]:
ain't broke. But I will say this. I am currently beta testing something for Rode that I cannot disclose. Oh, neat. But it's gonna make the RodeCaster awesome.

Dave Jackson [00:38:00]:
Okay. Because I thought it wasn't bad as we speak.

Randall Black [00:38:02]:
This is gonna make a game changer with the Rodecaster. I mean, it's already great. Yeah. But what I'm testing with them, it's gonna make it that much better.

Dave Jackson [00:38:10]:
Interesting. Very cool. I'm under NDA, so

Randall Black [00:38:12]:
I can't disclose details.

Dave Jackson [00:38:13]:
Right. Alright. Well, Randy, where can we find your stuff?

Randall Black [00:38:17]:
The easiest thing, head to RandallBlack.com. From there, there's links out to some podcasts. There's a bunch of blog posts and stuff I've done there. My favorite blog post I have up is that because I'm not old, but I'm a curmudgeon is that a YouTube show without an RSS feed is not a podcast.

Dave Jackson [00:38:33]:
There we go. Excellent. Alright, my friend. Thank you so much.

Randall Black [00:38:37]:
Have a good day, guys.

Dave Jackson [00:38:38]:
We'll see you.

Jim Collison [00:38:39]:
Take care.

Dave Jackson [00:38:40]:
Fun toys. Speaking of fun toys, let me do this. I haven't plugged it in yet, but I got the new Zoom PodTrak p two. And to give you an idea, like, this is my iPhone 16. Right? And so it's, you know, the size of a phone. This thing is, like, about it's really tiny. And the other thing is Chris Stone from cast ahead dot net did a great review of these, and he posted it in it's probably on his YouTube channel. But, man, this like, I know the p four is plasticky.

Dave Jackson [00:39:16]:
They're both, like, they scream, don't drop me. Like, whatever you don't drop this thing. And I want to play with it because Chris had no. I wouldn't call it an old phone, but he had a, like, a iPhone 14. And the phone part where you plug it in here, and then it's easy just to do a, you know, dudududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududud point is I plug a USB in mic here, and I plug a USB mic in here. And then if I want to, I can plug in the phone, and it's got some built in compress. But it was $99. And I was like, you know what? I'll test it for $99, and then I'll give it away or something like that.

Dave Jackson [00:39:58]:
Sell it to somebody for 20.

Jim Collison [00:40:00]:
Well, you bought it. Right?

Dave Jackson [00:40:01]:
I bought it. Yeah. No. I bought it.

Jim Collison [00:40:03]:
You can sell that. If you bought it, you can sell it. You don't have to give it away. I mean, you could. It'd make a nice giveaway.

Dave Jackson [00:40:08]:
Yeah. You know? So get some If

Jim Collison [00:40:10]:
you like this if you like this video, you know, we'll Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:40:14]:
But, yeah, I got the box, and I was like, wait. That's it? Like, wait. Where's the rest of it? And I was like, well, that's you know, again, if the idea is I wanna do recordings on the road and it's small, throw some batteries in this thing and you're good to go. And, you know, what's

Jim Collison [00:40:27]:
the audio out on that, Dave? Is it

Dave Jackson [00:40:29]:
The audio out on this is you have it's kinda weird. You have two you have two headphone outs, so which is hard to tell because it's black here, but you've only got one knob. So if you happen to be you know, if I'm one of the people, I'm gonna crank that up because I'm half deaf, and then you're gonna be like, it's too loud. I'm like, if it's too loud, you're too old, man. And, yeah, so it's not independent volume knobs for that. But,

Jim Collison [00:40:54]:
Does it have a they're saying out in chat that there were whatever you jiggle

Dave Jackson [00:40:57]:
need to jiggle the cord again? Alright.

Jim Collison [00:40:59]:
Maybe jiggle it jiggle it again. Let's see if we can get some I got one more comment on that thing before we you can cut all this part out.

Dave Jackson [00:41:06]:
It's no. And, of course, I'm not recording this. Oh, here. Let's record this now. Yeah. But I did jiggle the cord.

Jim Collison [00:41:13]:
Yeah. You're fine to me. Now I wonder that, like so that's weird. You're fine to me. Wow. Let's see. Are we still cutting in and out

Dave Jackson [00:41:21]:
from both of you guys? Yeah. Which is weird.

Jim Collison [00:41:24]:
It's gotta be audio is fine on my end. Okay. Does it have a does it have a headphone amplifier in it? I mean, do you have a a monitor, and can you monitor it, and is it because my biggest complaint about USB audio straight is the whatever they do on the mic, like, the ATR 2,100. Right? The the friendly most friendly mic for everything. I'm using one right here. USB sound back, terrible. It's awful. It's muted.

Jim Collison [00:41:50]:
It's not great. So I would never use USB audio because I want full audio sound coming back into my ears. And you always have to run that through a headphone amplifier, if you're gonna do it that way. If that's built in, awesome. Then I could use a USB mic and get an amplified sound back of the full fidelity of what I'm listening to in the mics. Because that's the worst thing is if you're getting sub quality audio back in your ears, you have no idea what you're sounding like to anybody else. So I think it's gotta be you have to be hearing. This is and this is my one complaint about no.

Jim Collison [00:42:28]:
It's not really a complaint. The one drawback, like, if you get your mic set to the wrong device and no one tells you, I'm hearing, you know, I'm hearing me without it going to you yet. Right? I hear you pre me going to you. But if I have the I can't hear if the mic is set wrong on the computer. Right? And so that's my one. I did this the other day where I was on a call and like, couldn't you hear? My audio was terrible because I was on the camera mic. Like, oh, yeah. No.

Jim Collison [00:43:00]:
We couldn't. I'm like, what is wrong with your ears?

Dave Jackson [00:43:04]:
You have a couple different buttons here. You have a mute button for each mic. You have a tone button, which is a bass boost, you know, bass and treble boost if I remember. Then you've got an AI noise reduction, which when I listen to Chris's video, you could kinda hear just the room noise, like, maybe an air conditioner or something like that would be taken out. You can do that. I was not overly impressed with all of the effects that they added to. Like, it was okay, but it wasn't like, oh, man. I'll always have that button on.

Dave Jackson [00:43:36]:
And so you've got your headphone out. You've got a thing at the top for in theory, you can plug your phone in, and they will now I don't know how you control the volume of the guy that you've connected to on the phone. Because here, you've got two big buttons on the front, one for your mic and one for the mic over here, but there's no volume control for the phone. I guess that would be your phone.

Jim Collison [00:44:01]:
Like, if you

Dave Jackson [00:44:02]:
yeah. The volume on your phone when I think about it. But I was like, look. So I'm just I will report back next week to see if I can get it to work with a phone. But and there's a conversation going on in the chat room about Jody says, for all that is holy, wear headphones, earbuds, whatever, and turn echo cancellation off, you'll get much better audio quality. Yeah. So, like, there for a second, when I was jiggling the cord on this, Jim started to come out of the speaker on my Mac Mini, And I was like, oh, this is gonna suck because now Jim who like, my Mac Mini is directly in front of me, which is about a foot from my microphone. So I was like, if I gotta use that, Jim's gonna be like, I'm hearing an echo.

Dave Jackson [00:44:47]:
And I was like, so I don't know. I guess, Jim, we have to go back to our sign language classes to just, you know, we'll start playing more charades, something.

Jim Collison [00:44:55]:
Bay baseball signs?

Dave Jackson [00:44:59]:
And so, yeah, that's the echo cancellation, what it's doing is it's listening for Jim's voice coming out of my Mac Mini so it will then erase it. But the problem with most cancellation tools is as it's erasing the person who came to an interview with no headphones, it's going to erase part of something that it's not. It's going to kinda dumb it down. It'll be as simple as this. Hey. This is with it with that. Sounds great. And then all of a sudden, it just kind of tapers off.

Dave Jackson [00:45:30]:
It's gonna affect the sound, and you want the sound unaffected. That's where I think it was, Randy might have been saying something about how you keep stuff turned off, get the raw audio, and then you fix it later. Maybe when we're talking about Riverside. So, yeah, he says it's she says, oh, it totally does, but at the expense of the audio quality. Yeah. It does clean things up, but it also takes that stuff it's not supposed to. It's a little it's a little aggressive. It's a little harsh.

Dave Jackson [00:45:54]:
So you gotta keep that going. So it's one of those things you only have to worry about if you're doing an interview show. That's the advantage of doing a solo show. You know? You are in control of your audio, and I will say this. I still wear headphones, though, because I did when you work for a company called PodPage, you better have headphones on because when you go, hey. Welcome to the PodPage. You're like, if you don't have headphones on and you don't realize you're popping your mic, you're like, ah, crap. I gotta record this again.

Dave Jackson [00:46:22]:
So keep that in mind. But, you know who doesn't need to worry about popping their p's? Awesome supporters because they're smart, and they support a show like us. You can be an awesome supporter by going to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome. And the show is brought to you by The School of Podcasting. We've got courses. We've got unlimited coaching. I love it. I have someone who lives in Thailand, and I have an app that I use.

Dave Jackson [00:46:52]:
She sent me a thing this morning, and it was the introduction of her show or description that she was going to put in Apple Podcast. In it, she was already pimping her stuff and had a link to her website. I go, Apple, a, doesn't really like it when the first thing you do when you get to their app is send them away, and, b, I haven't hit play yet, and you're already sending me stuff. And I was like, let's back off a little bit on the marketing until we get somebody to hit play, then you hit them with your stuff. So unlimited coaching and an unbelievable community. So check it out. Schoolofpodcasting.com. Use the coupon code coach.

Dave Jackson [00:47:28]:
We're running on PodPage. Hey. Do you wanna try PodPage? It's easy. Go to try PodPage.com. And if I can get my mouse to work, we're also using Ecamm to stream live today. You can find that at askthepodcastcoach.com/ecamm. And, of course, you can see all these in the show notes, by the way, including the one and only Jim Collison from theaverageguy.tv. If you wanna go check out HomeGadgetGeeks, he's right over there.

Dave Jackson [00:47:55]:
And it is time to find our supporter of the week because I did this earlier, and there it is. I'm like, where is it? It ran away. Who will it be? Will it be Chris from castahead.net? Will it be Glenn the Geek from Horse Radio Network? Or there she is, the one and only Jody Kringle from the audio branding show. Well, I'm gonna click spin, and we will find out. The answer is it might just be. It is the one and only Jodi Crangle, the audio branding show.

Jim Collison [00:48:28]:
Boom.

Dave Jackson [00:48:28]:
See? She's like Beetlejuice. You say your name enough, she will come up on the wheel. That's it. Yes. The hidden gem of marketing, the audio branding show. Jody, thank you so much for being an awesome supporter. We deeply appreciate that. And if you want to be an awesome supporter, again, you can go over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome because you might be sitting there thinking, hey, did this show save you some time? Did it save you money? Did it save you some headaches? Did it keep you educated? Did it, I don't know, entertain you maybe? Well, then go over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome.

Dave Jackson [00:49:09]:
And you ever have one of those days, Jim, just technology wise? Because as I'm doing this,

Jim Collison [00:49:14]:
Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:49:14]:
I shut off, like, everything. I swear. And I'm like, I just heard somebody ping me on Facebook. Why? Because they have Facebook open on the other computer. And I'm like, everybody should know. I'm in the show right now. Why are you talking to me on Facebook? But that's always the joys of live. You think you got everything, you know, all your t's dotted and your i's crossed and all that fun stuff.

Dave Jackson [00:49:37]:
So here's an email I got from Shreya Sharma. And it's interesting, and it's only because I've heard about this woman before. It's a show called Proxy. I'm not throwing shade. But let's just use this show. If I said, hey. Do you want a feed drop with this show? Not everybody's gonna go, yeah. My audience isn't into, like, podcasting.

Dave Jackson [00:50:02]:
Like, they like to listen to podcasts, but they don't really care how to make one. You know? And so this person who used to be on a big network, she was on NPR, and she got let go of NPR. And I remember because she did an episode. I felt bad because she was crying. Her title is she's an emotional investigative journalist. I'm like, well, that's different. And it shows because when she got let go from NPR, she was very sad and cried a lot on her show, and I felt bad. But what was interesting is she got to be an independent podcaster.

Randall Black [00:50:37]:
And so in this interview, she says, in your time of being an independent creator, especially after having worked with a bigger network for so long, what was the most challenging shift? And she said, besides not having money, I'd say having to learn how to do a bunch of jobs that used to be filled by NPR colleagues, suddenly, I became a podcast marketer, a publicist, a newsletter writer, a social media producer, a manager, a fundraiser, on and on. And what is a pixel? Can someone tell me what a pixel is? And now that she's part of Radiotopia, you know, she's got her team back. Later, she came down, and she has all these great guests. And she was kind of complaining, but she would like to see fee drops come back into play because she deals a lot with with mental health and all. And I was like, okay. So why aren't people willing to put a like, why wouldn't you do a fee drop with this person? Well, Jim, what are the things you never talk about on a podcast that we're not gonna talk about? Maybe this is why people aren't wanting to do a fee drop with this person. So what are the fun things you never talk about?

Jim Collison [00:51:46]:
Well, politics and religion are the first two that come up. Right?

Dave Jackson [00:51:50]:
And then the one that makes everybody crazy, dealing with naughty bits. Right. So any kind of sexual stuff. Oh. Yeah. That can Yeah. So I'm like, okay. So in the interview here, it's like, I really like this one episode she did, and I looked at it, and the title was bisexual wife guy.

Dave Jackson [00:52:10]:
Now this could be just about a guy. Don't know. But just the fact that it has the word bisexual, I was like, oh, in my book, that's typically one of those things that can trigger people. I just thought it was kind of odd in a way that she was wondering why people may not want to. Because to me, that's the things that might trigger people into I don't want that on my show. I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm just saying just like religion and politics, when you start talking sexuality, some people will go crazy. The other thing I thought was interesting is she said, did you invest any money on marketing your podcast, and how did it turn out? How much do you think this person who used to work on for NPR invested into her podcast? Because I found this I was like, dang.

Dave Jackson [00:53:02]:
It's dang money, Jim. What would you say dang money is?

Jim Collison [00:53:06]:
A couple thousand bucks, maybe.

Dave Jackson [00:53:07]:
Yeah. She said, so far, I've spent $1,500 on newsletter ads. Too early to tell if they're working and $250 on Instagram ads. Pretty sure they did very little. Then there's $3,000 I spent on this layoff music video, which I don't know what that is. Failed miserably as a publicity stunt, the Layoff trilogy, but succeeded as a grief ritual. It was you know, it's a big deal when you get laid off from NPR. And, so we just I just thought, you know, when I was looking, I'm like, well, why, you know, if she's you know, I'm thinking she used to be on NPR, so her show probably isn't bad, but it's probably NPR style.

Dave Jackson [00:53:44]:
And I'm like, well, why wouldn't people wanna share this when that was the episode they put? I was like, again, not saying it's bad, not saying it's wrong, just saying that's a triggering when you start talking sexuality, some people get really triggered, and maybe that could be part of it. So Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:54:00]:
Keep Lots of good I mean, there's lots of reasons. Like, you know, it doesn't even have to be the topic. Right. I mean, so

Dave Jackson [00:54:08]:
Yeah. Keep that in mind. Let's go down to oh, here's something that, you know, good content if you want people to share your content, it has to be good. This is an example where I listen to David Hooper's big podcast. In fact, thank you, Dave. I need to shout him out on the school of podcasting because he spent about three minutes saying Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. And so I went to if you ever listen to Dave's show, he does something really like, it's beat into you, but it works.

Dave Jackson [00:54:47]:
And that is he'll talk about something because he's really just recapping his newsletter. And so he said, hey. I got a thing of a hundred prompts for creators. And so I I was like, okay. I went over. I checked it out, and it was pretty funny because one of them was write a you basically said write a funny post. Write a oh, here. Let's just see what it is.

Dave Jackson [00:55:13]:
But it was number one, if you go to this post, and I'll put a link in the show notes, but it is how to, you know, basically AI prompts for like, there's a hundred of these. So kiss your Saturday afternoon goodbye. But there was one on here that said write a funny post. Like, you could say write a type of post. So I put funny threads post, and it about podcasting. So it's write a blank post, write a blank, what type of post. So I put funny post for threads and was about podcasting and was surprised that what it spit out was not side splitting funny, but entertaining nonetheless. It was starting a podcast is 10% recording and 90% yelling, why is my mic not working, which is kind of like today's show today.

Dave Jackson [00:56:10]:
Now you think about it. Other stages of podcasting include 1% actually editing, 2% convincing guests your show exists, 7% pretending to understand RSS feeds, 80% overthinking your intro music, and a % checking downloads every five minutes like it's the stock market. Podcasting, it's like therapy, but with worst audio quality. And so it's it's there. It's from Descript is the post. But my point is David Hooper from bigpodcast.com talked about something, and he does this all the time, newsletter.bigpodcast.com. And then he'll do another story. He goes, it's all available, newsletter.bigpodcast.com.

Dave Jackson [00:56:49]:
And then he'll do another story. Okay. And, again, you can find it newsletter.bigpodcast.com. And then he started, thankfully, saying this was, I think, episode or issue two twenty eight. And so it's interesting things, but because so he told me about it. I trust Dave. He said it was interesting. I looked at it.

Dave Jackson [00:57:08]:
It was interesting. So number one, Dave gets a check mark in the, okay. This guy's credible. And then number two, once I started playing with this and did a couple things, I was like, I think my audience might like this. And so I shared it now with you guys, and I shared it in the school of podcasting. So if you want people to share your show, then, you know, you have to have things that are interesting. Just to me, I was like, oh, look. This is word-of-mouth in action, you know, basically, because I thought it was interesting.

Dave Jackson [00:57:42]:
Danny Brown says, I'd say SEO is adapting and podcast apps findability is a little different from search optimization. It makes titles and show notes more relevant to the episode topic, and don't try to be cute and smart with your title or copy. Yeah. AI is definitely interesting. That was the one thing they said. Anytime the prompt or somebody tells you start with, you know, have AI write this, the last step has to be, and then you read it because I don't know that I would put anything out that AI wrote. So I read it. I was like, okay.

Dave Jackson [00:58:15]:
That was cute. I don't know if it was side splitting funny, but it was, you know, not horrendous. I don't know. Jimmy, look like you're playing with things over there. Reading them.

Jim Collison [00:58:23]:
Research. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:58:25]:
Yeah. So I just thought it was interesting that I was like, well, there's something that I shared. Why did I share this? Well, because it was in who said it was interesting? So it just kind of reverse engineering getting people to share your stuff. It has to be whatever I think it was might have been Paul McCartney that said if you want your content to be remarkable, you have to have things that people remark about it. You know what I mean? It's like Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:58:53]:
It's kinda

Dave Jackson [00:58:53]:
it's, you know, you have to make it different and make it stand out and, that's a little luck sometimes. Yeah. And a little luck. That is very true. Yeah. Daniel, I it's always weird when I look at the chat room and you jump into the middle of a conversation.

Jim Collison [00:59:09]:
Stephanie asked a good question. Go up. I wanna I've been doing a little bit of work behind the scenes on that one. So she says Jim says SEO is going away or diminished. Maybe not completely going away, but diminished. So what's your current process for creating searchable episode titles? Also, is our tools to evaluate whether your episode titles are effective. And the generative AI tools are coming. You can kind of do search today, or you can do some things using, like, ChatGPT to help you with your titles.

Dave Jackson [00:59:41]:
Right? So you can go out to ChatGPT and ask it some questions like, What are the best podcasts about? And then you put your topic in. Right? Or, Is there a podcast episode that explains then what you're talking about on your show? Right? And see what it brings back. Like, this is one of those where, like, we couldn't see with SEO the results behind the scenes that Google was favoring, which, by the way, they just got nailed as a monopoly. So I have to figure out where that goes. Although maybe too late, all that stuff that they got blamed for may go away here in the next couple of years, and it may not matter. So you can use AI to check your titles that way. You want to make sure you've got plain language clarity in your title. This is one of those areas where, for SEO, in the early days, we folks just did keyword stuffing.

Jim Collison [01:00:30]:
Right? They just jam as many keywords in there. Google eventually figured that out and kind of wrote that equation out. And now that doesn't work anymore. But does the title say what the episode is actually about? If I'm talking about a product like, last week, we talked about the new this new EV electric vehicle called Slate. Nobody's ever heard of that before. I wanna make sure I get the word slate in my title. But if I just put it in the title, that's not good enough. Like, I'm I'm gonna need some descriptors of because that slate, that word could also be a roofing tile.

Jim Collison [01:01:06]:
Right? Generative AI is much more interested in the answer than it is the question, so to speak, or the keywords that's in there. So it gave some examples for me, like in the CliftonStrengths space, a good title might be using CliftonStrengths to lead remote teams effectively. Right? Or how AI is reshaping podcast editing in 2025. Those were two suggestions it gave me as opposed to, Dave, episode one forty two, leveling up again. Right? This goes back to your podcast title that you were talking about, the name of your podcast. The mind versus what was it? Mind versus matter or mind versus man versus man, whatever. Yeah. That doesn't say anything.

Jim Collison [01:01:49]:
Right? Or the magic of strengths with Mike. Like, okay. That the the again, too generic. It wants you to be it really wants you to be more specific. And then you can just kind of ask it. I am thinking of using this title. What do you think? Right?

Dave Jackson [01:02:07]:
Right.

Jim Collison [01:02:08]:
And get some feedback from it. The other the last thing I would say is then search for the whatever title you're gonna do, go out and search on that. If your podcast is not being found in generative or in AI based on your topics or titles or whatever, you got some work to do. Now you have to be careful with this Because if you've been tuning the AI in the background, some of these AI services now are allowing you to put your own things about you in there. So it kind of knows you, and it kind of knows how to search for you, and it's learning some things about you. This is where I we don't really truly have an AI incognito mode yet. You might need to log out of your AI service and do it with a none, you know, with an an account that doesn't know you or come in blind, so to speak. So

Dave Jackson [01:02:57]:
Have you done the weird thing in Chat GPT where you ask it, What do you remember about me? That's kinda spooky.

Jim Collison [01:03:03]:
Well, Chat GPT has you can load a whole bunch of stuff in there now. I was using this is crazy Facebook I hadn't used Facebook's AI yet. And so if you're on facebook.com, you can go over left hand column, go to their AI. You can tell it, like, you can do some things and then just tell it, Remember this. And listen, these things are going so fast, it's hard to keep up with them all. So I'm sure maybe Perplexity is doing that. Maybe Gemini is doing that. And they're changing all the time.

Jim Collison [01:03:30]:
But yeah, you can, I mean, you just tell it, Hey, remember that? Some of them in the early days of ChatGPT, you'd say, Remember that, and it would only remember it for a session. But then they added the ability to say, Remember that, and it writes it to a file, where now it remembers it full time. So there's some things you can which I find very helpful for AI. But in the interim, get comfortable with whatever service that you want to use. I'm not recommending any one of them. In fact, try them all. And make sure you're asking it questions about your topic and your episode. Does it know you? Once it does know you, by the way, and it remembers those things, it that may influence some of the answers it has.

Jim Collison [01:04:06]:
And it may bring your podcast back because it's trying to impress you. So just be careful with that as well. It's a really good question.

Dave Jackson [01:04:13]:
Chris is on fire here. Let me he said for my show titles, he created a persona in Magi. I'll have a link to that in the show notes because I believe they have an affiliate program, which researches viral content trends then uses Claw to generate 10 different titles appropriate for platforms. I need that I need to learn Magi, but the problem is Magi is a bunch of AI tools. You pay one fee, and you get chap GPT and all this other fun stuff. And I have yet to see if there's a and and I don't know how he would do it. Like, here's how you use Magi when it's really 10 different things. This is by adding the basic what is my audience going to resonate with and what is this show about mentality to everything is key.

Dave Jackson [01:04:57]:
AI likes to get cute. Don't get cute. Tell your audience what they get when they hit play. Yeah. I always say the title of your episode is a promise. There's nothing I hate more. Yahoo does this all the time. And don't ask me why I'm on Yahoo.

Dave Jackson [01:05:11]:
I don't know. But I will go there and it'd be like, click here to see, you know, somebody get eaten by a shark. And you go there, there's no video. You said see, not read about. The other thing I noticed just going to my website at Akronpodcast.com, everyone that was AI ends in an exclamation point. Who got put on leave? The shocking Akron Superintendent drama unfolds, exclamation. Design Akron's future. Join us for a creative chat.

Dave Jackson [01:05:41]:
You know, where mine where I just said Akron Superintendent drama. Two we paid this guy $200,000 to go away. That's when you know you are really quite the pain of the butt. When we will pay you to leave, that's always kinda good. Jody says, I use chat g p t. Tell me do some beginning research about potential guests before our pre chat so I know what to ask. That's a good use. Again, I like it for brainstorming.

Dave Jackson [01:06:03]:
What he does is he'll have ChatGPT write something. He will then go in and rewrite the beginning and then rewrite the end and keep the stuff in the middle, obviously reading it to make sure it's not accidentally asking to massage your grandmother or something that you're like, wait. No. I didn't say that. But that's what he does. And I was like, that's really interesting. As a musician, as a lead guitar player, if you nail the opening lick of a solo, So if you're playing comfortably numb and you do that, right, you get that link. And then at the end where he goes, you do that in the middle, comfortably numb may not be a great example because that's all you can almost sing that thing.

Dave Jackson [01:06:44]:
But if if you're doing crazy train, right, but at the beginning and at the end, you do the, you know, nobody's gonna pay attention to the middle. And I thought that's an interesting strategy for AI. He's like, yeah. Write the beginning, write the ending, and then make sure the middle doesn't say something that is horribly wrong and get you in trouble. It's like that's I

Jim Collison [01:07:05]:
just that's one of my goals. But I went to chat g p t, and I said I just made a podcast app and put the link in. And I said, and I titled it, the title of it's Ed Sullivan, Ed was on my podcast last week, with a look at the slate and ED Insights charging accessories and innovation. And I said, what would have been a better title for it? And it came back. This is interesting. This is maybe why I should do more of this. It says, thanks for sharing your episode. Your current title, what I just told you, is informative for an existing audience, but not highly optimized for generative search or broader discoverability.

Jim Collison [01:07:40]:
Here's why. The main topic slate isn't immediately clear to those outside your audience. Slate could mean tablet, a brand, or a lineup of products. Two, EV insights is strong, but vague. Insights about what? Charging trends, product reviews, future technology? Three, it buries the keyword that generative AI would latch on to EV charging, accessories, and EV innovations. Four, it leads with the guest's name instead of the subject matter. In generative search, users rarely search by guest name unless they're well known. And then five, the episode number, because I put the episode number at the very end, should not be in the title unless you're using as a unique reference, which can go in the subtitle or metadata instead.

Jim Collison [01:08:26]:
I disagree with that, but that's just my own titling from that standpoint. So it gave me some suggestions. Right? EV charging innovation, must have accessories, and the slate EV overview with Ed Sullivan. A nice mix up or change there. Option two, what's new with EV charging and accessories? Ed Sullivan breaks down the slate EV ecosystem. Again, a good title for that. I probably should go back and update that title a little bit now that I've got some recommendations from the system that I'm wanting it to use. Right? It's giving me some really some pretty good advice here on, hey.

Jim Collison [01:09:00]:
You might wanna think about these things. So there's a good example, I think, back to Stephanie's question about what should I use. Well, you can use generative or you can use AI to ask it those questions and give you some hints and some clues. And I made some pretty good recommendations.

Dave Jackson [01:09:16]:
That's what we need to What was your starting prompt with that?

Jim Collison [01:09:20]:
The starting prompt was I just made a podcast at, and then I put the link in to where I posted it at so it could see it could see it. And then I said, and I I titled it, and I gave it the title. Right. And then I said, what would have been a better title for it? Right? I mean, pretty simple. What would have been a better title for it? And then you can go in there and start dialoguing with it. Now changing titles. Like Yeah. I've put that thing everywhere.

Jim Collison [01:09:49]:
Do I, you know Oh, man. Like like, that's a whole another there's a whole another Ask the Podcast Coach segment on changing titles once it's been published. Right? But I could have asked that question. I wouldn't have had the link yet, but I could have asked that question earlier before. And then and maybe I will. Maybe I'll just save this prompt. In you know, here's what I'm thinking about. I do use Otter, and I ask Otter, give me actually, give me five titles.

Jim Collison [01:10:17]:
And this title that I'm currently using was from Otter. Alright. One of the things about AI is it won't tell you that it's right. I mean, that it's every time you put a prompt in, it's gonna try and come up with a better prompt instead of just saying, you know what? That's a really good title. Like, so I could probably take one of those titles, put it back in, and say, is this a good title? And it probably would have a a critique of that as well. So you gotta be careful as well.

Dave Jackson [01:10:45]:
Daniel says what's especially cool with Magi is being able to switch large language models. So you could start with perplexity deep research and then switch to Claude three point seven.

Jim Collison [01:10:55]:
LM studio too, you could do that as well. You could switch. Yeah. And that you can host that locally. So you're not even going you know, you're you're doing that behind the scenes. Those searches are not going out to the AIs themselves.

Dave Jackson [01:11:07]:
Yeah. I'm not sure where this came from. I remember that. Yeah. I still never understand. I'm well, you know me. I'm I this is one I'm opinionated on. I'm like, don't put episode numbers in your title because nobody cares.

Dave Jackson [01:11:20]:
And people are always like, yeah. But it's easier to find it. So if I say, hey. Go back and listen to episode 27 of Ask the Podcast Coach. If it's in the title, it'll show up. And I'm like, or if you say in today's episode, go listen to episode 27, put a link to episode 27. Why are you making your audience go find it? Just you go get the link and put it in your show notes.

Jim Collison [01:11:40]:
So Yeah. Here's my pushback on that, Dave. I'm a let's argue because that's as good. That's good content. I guess that's how you do. I was doing I had Erin on two weeks ago, Erin Lawrence on my show, and she shared her YouTube channel to my audience through Restream. And so I got some folks who've never been to the show before. And when I at the bottom of my background, I put the show number.

Jim Collison [01:12:02]:
We used to do that here, I think, maybe, or Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, but I put the show number six. This way is six forty four. And one of the listeners goes, so you've done 643 episodes? Nice. Like and it was a little bit of, like, a little bit of social proof that, like, I've been around a while, friends. Like, the chances are this isn't my seventh podcast. Right? So that can be I think it can be a little bit of social proof in the moment for someone to to know what episode you're on.

Jim Collison [01:12:33]:
So I might disagree with you a little bit on that of not I I put it at the very end. I don't know. Those that's just those are just my thoughts.

Dave Jackson [01:12:42]:
Danny Brown says if we get sucked into worrying about generative AI title preferences, we could lose what makes our show resonate with our listeners. Yeah. For sure. Jody had a great point. Where's the intersection between what you feel and, like, represents you well and what your audience likes? That's the tricky part. It really is. And that just comes from as much as I say don't go look at your stats, there are times when it's good to go look at your stats and see what's working and what's not. Daniel says, oh, my opinion on episode numbers might be changing.

Dave Jackson [01:13:13]:
I think it's best to let them stay inside the podcast app, so stay tuned. I know he keeps threatening that the Audacity to podcast is heading back, so we shall see. Maybe that'll be it. The future of episode numbers.

Jim Collison [01:13:27]:
By the way, Daniel, generative AI would prefer that title be having the Audacity to podcast.

Dave Jackson [01:13:33]:
That's right.

Jim Collison [01:13:33]:
Because it it wants those actionable item words in there. So you might wanna, you know, maybe as you come back, rethink that having the audacity because I remember a whole episode he did of why it wasn't Audacity the tool to podcast, which a lot of people thought, but it was right. So so there you go. Having the Audacity to podcast. I like

Dave Jackson [01:13:54]:
I put an exclamation point at the end of that.

Jim Collison [01:13:56]:
For sure.

Dave Jackson [01:13:57]:
Definitely gotta have that.

Jim Collison [01:13:58]:
Definitely a rocking show.

Dave Jackson [01:14:00]:
Jim, what's coming up on a home gadget geeks?

Jim Collison [01:14:03]:
I mentioned it earlier. Ed Sullivan joins me. He had bought a new e v, a new Cadillac Lyric c. And this was the episode where he talked about all the accessories that he had to buy to make it work for him. So if you're into, this is a truly car gadget geek show and you wanna see what he's doing when you're thinking about replacing his vehicle, we talk about it for an hour. And Ed Sullivan is just a delightful guy on my show, so you have to listen to it. Available now, homegadgetgeeks.com.

Dave Jackson [01:14:31]:
If today's show sounded weird, it dawned on me that I can't use the sound from Ecamm because Ecamm couldn't hear Jim for the middle of the show. So I will be waiting for it and getting it from YouTube today. So that'll be great fun. On the school of podcasting, I've got an interesting episode. It's just Dave, like, here's what it is. I saw a tool, and tool is the right word there, that I'm not making this up. It said you can make a podcast without you. Like and you'll make $890,000 a year.

Dave Jackson [01:15:04]:
And I went, okay. We're gonna do an episode on how to spot a podcast scam. And we'll see you next week with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.