Podcasting Q&A
On Podcasting Q&A, you'll hear the best tips and strategies to launch, grow, and monetize your podcast. Whether it's getting more podcast listeners, promoting your podcast on social media, or how to produce high-quality episodes in your editing software, Podcasting Q&A has everything you need to succeed. New episodes come out every Monday.
Podcasting Q&A
What are good stats for a new podcast?
Letty from My Sweet Business with Letty Alvarez asks, "What kind of download stats can you expect with a new podcast?"
TL;DR
Launching a new podcast is a lot of work and is something you should celebrate! It’s only natural to want as many people as possible to listen to it, but where should you place your expectations?
In this episode, we’ll walk through 3 questions that will help you determine what your benchmark for success should be.
1. Do you have an existing audience?
If you’re starting from scratch, you should expect fewer downloads than someone who has 100,000 followers on Instagram.
It’s okay if you’re just getting started, just set your expectations accordingly.
2. How popular is your podcast subject?
The reality is, some podcast topics have larger built-in audiences than others. As an example, True Crime podcasts are currently more popular than Home Gardening podcasts and will naturally have a larger audience.
We would never recommend you start a podcast just to become popular, just recognize that the potential size of your audience is partially determined by how many people are interested in your subject matter.
3. How good is your first impression?
If you have a poor first impression, that will negatively impact your download numbers no matter how good your podcast is. You'll want to make sure you have hi-quality artwork (use a service like 99designs or Upwork to work with graphic designers), practice good mic technique for crisp audio, and use catchy episode titles to grab someone's attention.
If you make a good first impression, and then back that up with great content, your podcast will grow.
What's the average number of downloads?
The average Buzzsprout podcaster gets around 50 downloads per episode. This is a great target for when you're first getting started!
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In today's episode, you'll learn what kind of downloads that you can expect with a new podcast. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where you learn the best tips and strategies to launch, grow and monetize your show. This week's question comes from Letty.
Letty :Hello Buzzsprout team. My name is Letty and my podcast is called My Sweet Business with Letty Alvarez. I'm new to podcasting. And I'm wondering, what should be considered good stats for a new podcast? Thanks in advance for your answer, bye.
Gilon :Thanks for your question, Letty. Congratulations on launching your podcast. launching a new podcast is a lot of work. You record you edit you plan, you do all of those things. And naturally, you want as many people as possible to listen, but where should you place your expectations? In this episode, we'll ask three questions to help determine what your benchmark for success should be. Question number one, do you already have an existing audience? Chances are if you're just starting out in podcasting, you're going to build your audience from scratch. So it's not fair to compare your building audience to someone who already has 100,000 or so followers on Instagram, the numbers are just going to be different. For example, if Oprah starts a podcast, the millions of people that love Oprah are gonna go listen to and download her podcasts, as opposed to someone who's just starting out and is building that following in that audience. It's okay that you're building every podcaster starts out building, you just want to adjust and set your expectations accordingly. Question number two, how popular is your podcast subject? The reality is some podcast topics just come with a larger built in audience and others True Crime podcasts super popular and happening right now. Home gardening, and maybe less so. We're not suggesting that you pick up a podcast topic simply off of popularity. That's not what we're saying at all. If you're passionate about homeschooling or dyeing hair, ridiculous colors, you should podcast about that. You just want to be mindful that your subject matter may determine your audience size, but that's completely okay. Question number three. How good is your first impression? We've all heard it said you don't judge a book by its cover, which we all know is false. We definitely judge books by their cover, and podcasts are no different. A first impression with podcasts usually comes by way of cover art, audio quality, as well as catchy episode titles. So cover arts. If you're not a graphic designer, you're going to want to outsource this most likely, you can use a website like Upwork or 99 designs that uses actual graphic designers to create stunning, amazing cover art for podcasters. With audio, you definitely want to practice your mic techniques, you want to make sure that your volume levels are level. If you've got people walking around and talking in the background of your dog barking, you're going to want to eliminate those things so that you have crisp, clean sound. And then lastly, catchy titles. You don't want to use clickbait here because that definitely does not work with podcast episodes. But you do want to create something that's interesting something that's an accurate representation of what people are going to get when they click on this episode title and listen. It's just got to be Interesting, it's got to be accurate, but you can definitely do it. After hearing all that, you may still be wondering, what's the hard number I should be shooting for? We can tell you the average Buzzsprout podcast gets about 50 downloads per episode. And that's actually very significant. So just focus on clearing that hurdle first, and setting yourself apart and the top half of all podcasters and continue to serve your audience and your podcast will grow. Thanks for sending us your question, buddy. If you have a question that you would like us to answer in a future episode of the show, just head over to speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes and leave us a brief audio message Make sure to subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel or to the Podcasting Q&A podcast in your favorite app to get new episodes in your feed every week. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting