Podcircle Podcast

If you're doing your podcast all by yourself as a DIYer, it's gonna take a lot of time, expertise, research. There's a lot to know about podcast hosting, and there's just a lot of research that goes into creating a quality consistent show. And then if you're outsourcing, as we, 9 times out of 10, recommend that you do, your editing and clips and all of that good stuff is also a financial investment. And this is why it becomes unsustainable for 99% of people. So if your podcast isn't sustainable, unfortunately, it's not gonna last.

Yeah. And if less than 20% of podcasts make it to 10 episodes and beyond, you need to create a strategy to make it sustainable from a time and a financial perspective.

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topic. Why your podcast shouldn't be a hobby, at least not for long. I talk to tons of podcasters and wanna be podcasters on a regular basis who wanna start a podcast. And in our very first conversation, many of them talk about wanting to start a podcast as a side project or a hobby or a passion project, to which I almost always respond, that's great. Awesome.

But also producing a podcast is an expensive hobby, especially if you plan to do it all yourself. It's expensive on the time investment side of things, and it's expensive on the financial side of things if you aren't planning to do it yourself and hire out your editing and things like that. So either way, it's an expensive hobby. So today, I'm gonna address some of the most common questions that I hear. One is, can I podcast just as a hobby?

Or I feel weird about monetizing something that's just a passion project right now. Or maybe I just don't know how to monetize this, and maybe that's not even what they're thinking about. It's so amazing how many podcasters I I talked to where they haven't even considered, like, well, I have no idea how to monetize. Like, or can I sell ads? I'm like, yes, maybe, but you have to get to a certain level.

So these are just a lot of the initial conversations that I have with folks that I'm sharing with you here on the podcast. So the bottom line is if your show is just a hobby, it's just not sustainable. In very few cases, is it sustainable? And then if it's not sustainable, then it's not gonna last. And we're gonna talk about some statistics on that here in just a little bit.

But as a reminder, we post all of our episodes of the PodCircle podcast up on YouTube. So make sure to find us there, subscribe to the channel, and follow along with this episode. You can also catch up on all of our backlog of podcast episodes there as well. And if

you are listening to the podcast, we would really appreciate it if you take a few moments to leave us a 5 star rating and a quick review. Whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify, you can do it right from our show page. So let's get really basic. What do we mean by hobby? Hobby by definition is an activity done regularly in our leisure time for pleasure.

So as we walk through this conversation, I wanna first address the fact that we're not saying your podcast can't be enjoyable. In fact, we want to make sure that it is enjoyable for you Yeah. Because that's gonna lead and be a key component to it being sustainable as well. But what happens when your podcast is no longer enjoyable? What happens when you run out of or most likely stop prioritizing that leisure time to take care of your podcast?

What happens when you run out of ideas? A stat that we often share on this podcast is that fewer than 20% of podcasters get past 10 episodes. So that's just a weighty statistic when you think about it. And when you're doing it all, it doesn't feel sustainable. So for many of us, a hobby is optional.

Whether we're playing pickleball or we're really into crafts, it's extra. It's something that costs us money and rather than making us money. And for most of us, that's okay. Right? I'm never gonna be a pro pickleball player.

But when my life gets crazy, I put other things above pickleball. Yeah. Podcasting is an extremely expensive hobby, and we want to kind of expand your idea of what expensive means because it's not just in the way you're thinking.

Podcasting requires a lot of initial and ongoing investment. So just to get the the show up, it just requires a lot. And then to sustain it, you know, then you're especially if you release weekly podcasts, you're kind of in that, like, weekly hamster wheel type thing. So I used to be a music producer in Nashville, and oftentimes, I would produce what what me and my producer friends would call just vanity projects. And and that's usually, like, for someone who who just they just wanna do a a record as for fun.

It's kinda like a bucket list thing, but they don't really have huge aspirations of, like, being a touring artist and, you know, doing this as their main career and and going through that that really hard journey as an independent artist. So on the podcast side of things, if you also wanna do that, if you wanna start a a quote, unquote vanity podcast, which sounds worse than than how I mean it. I don't mean that it's just vain, but there's not like a an overarching goal or a a long term, you know, objective. If you wanna do that as a podcaster, more power to you, honestly. But that route is only honestly for the select few and usually only for those where where funding isn't an issue or if if you just have kind of unlimited time to invest into it.

It's a big financial and time investment to launch and sustain a quality podcast. So if you're doing your podcast all by yourself as a DIYer, it's gonna take a lot of time, expertise, research. There's a there's a lot, you know, to know about podcast hosting. And there's just there's just a lot of research, okay, that goes into creating a quality consistent show. And then if you're outsourcing as we 9 times out of 10 recommend that you do, you're editing and clips and all of that good stuff, it's also a financial investment.

And this is why it becomes unsustainable for 99% of people to sustain a hobby podcast for very long. So if your podcast isn't sustainable, unfortunately, it's not gonna last.

Yeah.

And returning to that idea of sustainability, if less than 20% of podcasts make it to 10 episodes and beyond, you need to create a strategy to make it sustainable from a time and a financial perspective. We find that most successful and happy podcasters who enjoy their show are those that have found a way to make it sustainable through efficiency and outsourcing. They let us do what we do best here at PodCircle so that they can get back to doing what they do best. Especially if you're a busy professional, you don't need to know how to edit audio, video, slice up Instagram reels, all of that. So it's just gonna take too much of your time.

I can promise you. So the moral of the story is that you probably can't afford to just be a hobbyist podcaster. You need to make a plan. You need to figure out a way to monetize it. And I don't just mean that by selling ads.

We're gonna talk about a couple of ways to monetize here. We have we've recorded a whole podcast on it. So my advice is to get clear on your podcast goals and to find a way to monetize from the very beginning. In episode 5 of the PodCircle podcast, we outlined 5 ways to monetize your podcast, but the one that we think is the most important and undervalued is just to bet on yourself, and monetize yourself and market yourself. And when you use your podcast to provide value to your target market by demonstrating the value of your product or service, then your podcast becomes sustainable and energizing.

You're gonna keep showing up for it because it's moving the needle for your business or your nonprofit or whatever that is, kind of those goals. Again, starting with the end in mind, what are those goals of the podcast? You're moving the needle there. So why we do something matters. Passion is important, but it's only one part of the puzzle.

As I think about this conversation as I was hearing you talk, I know that you have led a lot of people through those initial stages to say, okay, I wanna start a podcast. Here's what it is. And you start to just ask them, like, are there ways you could monetize and you take them down the road a little bit. So if you've got an idea, and you're not sure what to do next, but you know, you want to do it and you want to take it from you wanna launch with a goal and intention and strategy from the front end, reach out to us. We would absolutely love at Podcircle to help you figure out that strategy and feel sure of what the end goal is so that it can be sustainable, because I honestly believe most ideas can be monetized.

And most ideas can be done in an effective and sustainable way. So that's just my encouragement. For our final point, I wanna get ahead of one of the largest barriers that you and I see, to having a successful and sustainable podcast. It's when someone's allergic to the idea of selling. So if that's you today, if you're say if you've been listening to this podcast and you kind of get, like, crawling in your skin, you don't wanna sell, you don't wanna ask, whether that be selling yourself, your business, or even a sponsored product or service, monetizing only feels gross if you're not providing value.

And that's what I want you to hear today. I would honestly tell you the only time you need to feel afraid to sell is if you're not providing more value than you are asking in return. You have expertise. You are consistently showing up for your audience when you put out a show on a regular basis, and you're providing free valuable resources that meet your target market where they are. They're listening to your podcast for a reason.

This is one of my absolute favorite stories that demonstrates this idea. So one of my favorite stories is about a blogger turned author who started a pretty well known podcast before releasing her first book. So for 2 years while she wrote her book, she showed up every week for her audience. She provided valuable insights, advice, and resources. She answered their biggest felt needs.

So when it was time to sell her book, she got kinda nervous about asking them to buy, so she didn't really. She kinda mentioned it. She talked about the book process, but she just kinda didn't, like, ask explicitly. So when her book launched, it didn't hit the New York Times bestseller in the 1st week or the 2nd week or the 3rd week after release. And from a publishing standpoint, if you don't hit it that 1st week, you're not gonna hit it.

So until she took to her podcast and shared how she had been nervous to ask them to buy her book explicitly, She shared that she'd long had a dream of becoming a New York Times bestselling author, and she was afraid that she'd missed her chance on this book because in the publishing industry, you kind of pad those numbers by getting preorders. And so she said this to her audience. And because she had been serving them, not asking them for a very long time, they showed up. And on week 7, she hit the New York Times best selling list. It's an unheard of feat.

And then it continued to stay at the top of the chart for the next year, all because she continued to provide value again and again and wasn't seeing the ROI audit until she asked. And when she was asked, they were like, we are ready to support you. We just didn't necessarily know how. So I just wanna leave you with that of when you're providing value, asking doesn't feel gross. Selling isn't hard to do.

It's actually easy to sell to someone who knows, likes and trusts you. I think there's a lot of people in this space who are doing this really well and providing a ton of value, and then being really clear about how you can engage with them. So the last thing is your podcast is bigger than you. I feel like I'm giving you a little bit of a pep talk. On the front end, Kyle was really shot straight with you.

He gave you some truth, and now I'm gonna lift you up with some encouragement. Your podcast is bigger than you. Podcasting can be a hobby. The practice of recording, editing, publishing, it has its challenges, but it can be fulfilling and it can be actually fun. We want you to create a show that's fun.

But a podcast is meant for an audience. Otherwise, you'd simply record your episodes and keep them there for your own enjoyment and go back and listen to them occasionally. But distributing your work consistently and working on improving and growing and getting better and finding more ways to connect with your audience. It requires a certain amount of responsibility to outside forces. So as we said at the beginning, if your show is bigger than you, if you have that audience in mind, if you can get clear about your goals, your show is not just a hobby.

If it is just a hobby, it won't be sustainable. And if it's not sustainable, it's not gonna last. You either optimize your time, monetize, or do both. So the great thing is that we can help you. At PodCircle, we offer premium podcast services for busy professionals like you.

We can assist you in every stage of your podcast from ideation, launching, episode prep, preproduction recording, audio, and video editing, copywriting, and even asset creation, so you don't have to think about any of it. Our team will do what we do best so you can get back to doing what you do best. You can schedule a free consultation call and click the link in the show notes or email kyle@podcircle.com. We would love to help you take your idea and get it out into the world in a sustainable way.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Podcircle podcast. If you're ready to launch a podcast, let us go to work for you here at PodCircle. All these things that Mickenzie just mentioned are things that we do every day for our clients. Make sure that you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, or you can find our full video podcast episodes up on YouTube. And if you're watching us on YouTube, drop us a comment below.

Let us know what you think and answer the question, can a successful podcast just be a hobby? Maybe that is you. Maybe you would consider yourself a hobbyist podcast that has 30, 40, 50, or a 100 episodes. That's a huge accomplishment if that's you. Let us know what that journey's been like for you.

And as always, drop us any questions that we can answer in a future episode, and we'll see you next week.