In today’s episode, Joe sits down with Bradley Denham, founder and CEO of Record Edit Podcast – a turn-key podcast production service, from multimedia editing to multi-platform distribution.
Joe and Bradley talk about the behind-the-scenes of audio engineering, getting podcast sponsorships and higher audience engagement, quick tips on starting your own podcast, and finding balance in work and life.
Listen in to learn how business owners can start their own podcast!
What to Listen For:
- 00:00 Intro
- 02:00 Let’s welcome Bradly Denham of RecordEditPodcast.com
- 03:16 Audio engineering: listening to your own voice
- 05:12 How it all started
- 08:00 Treat each show with respect, be professional
- 08:57 The difference between an influencer show and a business show
- 15:05 How do shows get sponsorships?
- 18:43 How does podcast analytics work?
- 20:42 Number of downloads versus actual listeners
- 21:29 A different Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) approach
- 24:17 Why you need to connect with higher level execs to get better ROI
- 25:14 Multi-channel podcasts cater to different content medium preference
- 29:28 Short videos on social media has higher engagement
- 31:45 Adding SEO elements in podcast web pages
- 35:45 With $1000, what podcasting equipment to invest in?
- 42:19 From an individual contributor to growing a company
- 46:35 Seeking advice from people who has done it
- 48:45 Can you find balance between work and life?
- 53:41 Visit RecordEditPodcast.com and schedule a strategy session
Episode Resources
- Record Edit Podcast – Podcast Like the Pros
- Leave an iTunes review or binge watch past episodes
- Send questions to yo@wpmrr.com for the next Q&A pod
- Visit the WPMRR website
- Tweet WPMRR Summit
- Check out our YouTube channel!
Podcast Transcript
Joe Howard:
Yo, good WordPress people welcome back to the WPMRR WordPress Podcast. This week I was lucky enough to have Bradley Denham on the podcast. This is another podcast specific episode. So we’ve talked about podcasts a lot in the past. I’ve had Noah Labhart on from Code Story in episode 109. Breaking the fourth wall, how we run our podcast 105. A look into how we do podcasting things here at WPMRR, Christie and I. We’ve had Joe Casabona on, on episode 103. And he talked about a lot related to the podcasts that he runs. But this episode is a little bit different. So Bradley is actually the editor and audio engineer behind this podcast. So he is the reason that Christie and I sound so good every single week. He runs his own company called Record Edit Podcast.
Joe Howard:
So it was great talking with Bradley this week because it really did crash the fourth wall of podcasting. And he talked a lot about some of the big names of podcasts he’s a managed in the past, going out and setting up super expensive recording studios for folks, but then he gives a lot of great advice around, “Ah, you don’t need a really expensive setup.” His setup very similar to my setup actually only around $400 to put together. So listen, a little later in the episode to hear more about that. And then he actually turns the interview around on me a little bit. He’s starting his new business moving from being an employee to being a CEO. So he asked me a little bit about what that’s and for a little advice around growing his business. So a little bit about that as we close the episode. All right, that’s everything you need to know. Stay tuned for this week’s episode of the podcast. Enjoy.
Joe Howard:
All right. We are here this week on the WPMRR WordPress Podcast with Bradley Denham. I say Bradley’s name a bunch of times on the podcast so people may know who I’m talking about, but this is I think your first time on the podcast, Bradley. So why don’t you tell folks a little bit about what you do?
Bradley Denham:
First off, it’s good to reconnect Joe, because we haven’t talked in probably three to five months.
Joe Howard:
A lot of Slack messages, a lot of emails, but yeah.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah, so this is going to be good to just catch up. But yeah, a quick second on me. I’m Bradley Denham, the founder of recordeditpodcast.com, a TurnKey Podcast production service. Much WP Buffs, we’re in the productized service space and business’s growing slow and steady.
Joe Howard:
Yes. That’s the way to do it. We’ve been going slow and steady for about five years. So I’m a big fan of that. Yeah. Bradley is for folks who don’t know or who have not maybe listened to the podcast before, you know what I’m saying? Bradley, make sure you edit this out. Bradley, thanks for all the great work you do with the podcast. Bradley’s the reason why this podcast comes out every week and the reason it sounds so professionally done. I remember when we started working together, Bradley, I was a little nervous to do a podcast because I always remember growing up, hearing my voice on a message machine and being, “Oh.”
Joe Howard:
It was cringey for me. I hated hearing my own voice. And then the first episode I was working with you on, you sent it back, “Oh, here’s the first draft or whatever. What do you think?” I remember I was, “Oh my…” I actually enjoyed listening to my voice. Trying not to sound narcissistic, but I was, “Oh, I actually sounds pretty good. Oh, this is what audio engineering is.” This is what takes it from just your voice in a message machine to really high quality audio. So, thanks for the 120-ish episodes of WPMRR Podcast.
Bradley Denham:
Love it. That’s funny because a lot of people still struggle with hearing their voice even after the post-production is done. And honestly, that is one of the biggest hurdles in podcasting is up here, up in your brain. Because it really is any content creation, especially when you’re putting a face or voice to it, begins and ends with your mindset. Not only around who the content’s for, who you’re targeting, but the stories you tell yourself up here. It’s good to hear that you have a positive relationship with that voice because instantly that’s going to give you way more confidence to connect with your audience.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. That’s interesting that you say that because I feel very similarly about starting a business or like starting anything because I think most things you start and try for the first time, you’re probably going to suck at it at first. It’s probably not going to be great. And you have to be okay, suck in for a little while until you become descent at it and then eventually become good at it. Not because maybe you’re just naturally an amazing podcaster or naturally amazing starting a business, but you just recorded 50 episodes and then you just grow and become better at it. It’s the same with WP Buffs. I know when we started out, I was like, “What am I doing?” And now only most of the time I say, “What am I doing?”
Joe Howard:
Well, I know a little bit more than I did five years ago, but I totally agree with that. You’ve been doing podcasting stuff for a long time and now you’re running your own business, but I want to give folks even more about your background because you didn’t always run your own business. You’ve done other stuff in the podcasting world as well. Worked for some pretty big podcasts and pretty big brands in the podcasting space really and just like the world. So I’d love you to tell folks a little bit more about your whole story about what you did before starting Record Edit.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah, right on. I have to be careful what I say because of contracts and stuff.
Joe Howard:
Sure.
Bradley Denham:
In the past I ignored that.
Joe Howard:
Bradley may have signed some NDAs stumping. So he has to be a little careful about some of the names, but maybe. Whatever you’re comfortable with.
Bradley Denham:
I’ll throw them out there. We’ll redact them. We’ll just cut them out. But yeah. So make it a little more mysterious. Yeah, so the past two and a half years, I’ve been in the podcast world going on four years now. Past two and a half, I worked for a top podcast network. Specifically, fortunately the audience isn’t going to hear this, but between us, (beep). They went from a small little production house like I am currently to a also redacted (beep). Lots of growth, tons of growth. We went from a small four person team when I joined to over 20 person legit company.
Bradley Denham:
Ton of fun, learned a lot worked with some huge shows like (beep) and a small hand in a lot more. Because at a certain point I was helping not really remote studios, but the big thing in LA and the West is this idea of a business out of your mansion. So I would be on location, just setting up people’s podcast studios, maybe be there for the first episode or two. And then that would get handed off to someone else to run. But yeah, throughout the whole experience I’ve probably produced, I would say 3,000 episodes, done probably half a billion views and downloads collectively and I’ve seen the silliest mistakes and done the craziest live event kind of thing.
Bradley Denham:
There was one episode of (beep) that we did live and we had (beep) we set up a little stage and did all kinds of cool DJ lights and stuff and streamed the whole thing live. And that was insane.
Joe Howard:
Wow. Cool.
Bradley Denham:
So from the guy that can’t figure out his microphone to this entire live produced event. I’ve seen it all.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. That’s such a different level of like you’ve been across the gambit of different areas of podcasting. The basic to like wow crazy. Really good event production. You’ve worked at and done some big shows, right? So you’ve worked in, I don’t know if I call it high pressure situation, but a bigger show is always a little bit more pressure to make sure everything’s really perfect. And then there’s like this show, which is most everything goes right and then but something small goes wrong. It’s like, “Whatever, it’s just WPMRR Podcast. It’s okay.”
Bradley Denham:
Well that’s not the case. I try to treat every show with the same respect because working with those big guys, they really taught me a lot about professionalism. The word I always use is high stakes. Because at the end of the day, they’re people too, and they’re just running a business we are and they just want the best. And you just have to be very careful. You need to be present in the moment and really do your very best. And we always would do is postmortems. It’s always, “Okay, the thing is done. Now let’s break down everything we could have done better.” And then reiterate on the next one and just keep building, keep building, keep building.
Joe Howard:
Yup. I think that’s very smart. It’s a same with the business you’re growing. You’re going to see the same success if you have that same mentality because it’s really the same thing. It’s like try something, measure it. How did it work? How can we improve it? What can we double down on? It’s really similar. I’d be interested to hear from you about someone who’s worked on some smaller shows, but also some really big shows, what you feel like. I feel you have a nice unique perspective on this. What do you feel is the difference between a show that hangs out? Does decently well, and maybe draws an audience, a small audience. What’s different between a show that and a really big show, maybe a top 500 in the world, podcasts audience. Do you feel there’s a difference between those two podcasts and what the really top, top big audience podcasts do in terms of trying to grow listenership and stuff like that?
Bradley Denham:
Fundamentally, no. It’s just as you grow, you get increased access to higher and higher profile people. The biggest thing though, when people ask me questions this, I to break it down as there’s two types of shows. And at the end of the day, it really depends on your goals. Because basically the biggest podcasters are influencers, whether they had pre-existing audiences or whether they built it through the podcast. They are now their brand. And you have to know that going into this, that it’s like, “What are you trying to do?” If you’re trying to have a podcast, that’s too vague because there’s so many different genres and types of podcasts. I like to break it down simply as there’s two types of shows, really.
Bradley Denham:
There’s the influencer show, which is basically the model of, “Hey, I’ve got a big following. A percentage of my millions of followers is going to convert. We need minimum 30,000 listens per episode to monetize with ads.” So if you’re a big influencer like the other guys I mentioned, then you’re easily cranking a quarter million downloads an episode, in ad dollars that’s nearly 10 grand an episode. But that’s an influencer show. The second type of show is more common, but also a lot of people make mistakes on this. And that’s what I call a business show kind of but not in the sense of like, “Hey, we talk about business things.” But like a marketing tool.
Bradley Denham:
Because, yes, you’re creating content, but more importantly, you’re creating connections. Not getting too deep on my back story, I was a kid from small town, Indiana cutting firewood and the winters. I had no connections to anybody, anything. I had nothing. But through this industry, even though for the longest time, my role has been in the background, it gave me an excuse to reach out and connect with anyone. Because at a certain point I realized that I can bring something valuable to the table that a lot of people are missing out on. And that’s the end. That’s always the end, right? It’s, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. Here’s something you could do to improve and maybe it’ll have XYZ result. Are you down to try it?”
Bradley Denham:
It’s like, you do that enough, you’re going to get a handful of people that say yes, and it’s just the network effect. You get one person that gets another person that gets another person. Next thing you know, you know all of these people. So, that’s where the business show comes in. Because, like even with WP Buffs and WPMRR, I’ve talked to you about this, Joe. It’s like what if we break down? Who’s your most profitable customer at WP Buffs? I would assume it’s agencies or some sort of umbrella account. Then it’s like, “I don’t know your industry well enough.” But then it’s like, “What if you target these people that would net you a dozen to 20 new accounts tomorrow?” You bring them on the podcast, you talk to them about their business, put the spotlight on them. Give them a great experience. Genuinely make a personal connection and then follow up when the episode comes out and be, “Hey, we do these things. I think I can help you. Would you be down to try it?”
Bradley Denham:
And that’s the business show. And I personally like number two more than number one because the influencer show really, it’s such a small percentage of people that don’t already have pre-existing audiences that see success. So if we’re talking statistically, you’re spinning your wheels in the mud. Definitely go after it, but don’t hedge all your bets on that one thing.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. I think that probably definitely in the WordPress space, there may be a few people who can do more influencer like shows and there are some shows out there. I think about Matt Report, it’s an influencer show because Matt is like a personality in the WordPress space, but it’s also a business show. It’s a mix between the two, I guess I’d say. I don’t know, Matt, let me know what you think about that. I don’t know, but I think a lot of people have the opportunity to do a more business-related show. I really the idea of strategy around what the best content you can create is and what the best kind of guests you can have on in order to further your actual business goals. Because I think I definitely thought about podcasts.
Joe Howard:
I was just like, “what do I want to talk about?” I still do that. I’m like, “What do I want to talk about without really thinking about the business stuff.” Because to me that’s part of the reason of doing a podcast so I can have fun and talk about what I want to, of course, and everyone should do that. But when you’re thinking about having some sort of ROI, there’s definitely strategy you can put into place for what content will have the best return for you. What kind of guests can you have on that you can follow up with to do more? I’ve had experiences where I had Allie who’s now on our team. I had Allie Nimmons on the podcast. I can’t remember what episode that was. And then I hired her six months later or something. I don’t know if that directly led to it, but it was one of those stepping stones in hiring a new, great community manager on our team.
Bradley Denham:
I love it.
Joe Howard:
So that had a great positive influence. And so that’s an interesting way that this podcast has helped my business grow. Even if it wasn’t a new customer, it was a new person on the team who can help have a big impact for us. I’ve had people on the podcast too. I’ve done masterminds with Brad Touesnard who now runs this company called Delicious Brains.
Joe Howard:
Him and I talk pretty regularly about, “What’s going on with your business? Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more about that challenge. Oh, have you tried X, Y or Z?” That’s been really helpful for me. And he was one of my first episodes. I think he was one of the first 10 episodes I had on the podcast. So even early people where you don’t have a big audience, having the right guests can help you make the right connections and build your network. So I totally dig that.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. I love to see that. That’s great to hear.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. Awesome, man. I want to dig a little bit more into what you said about how big your show has to be to do sponsorship. Start I guess, thinking about sponsorships. Because I know a lot of people, I think for most people in the WordPress space, that business model show is going to be more helpful to you. How do you make return on investment in terms of driving customers, in terms of driving traffic to your site, in terms of maybe making higher some of the stuff I’ve talked about.
Joe Howard:
But I think a lot of people are also thinking about that sponsorship model. That’s probably the most traditional way to monetize a podcast is having sponsor roles. You mentioned 30,000 downloads an episode as that number that you probably want to hit in order to probably be attractive to potential sponsors. Tell me a little bit more about that because there are definitely people in the WordPress space who run WordPress specific podcasts and do sponsorships. And that is an avenue for folks. So yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that. How could I do more sponsorship stuff if I wanted to on the podcast?
Bradley Denham:
There’s a couple of caveats to that. First and foremost, I come from the Hollywood podcasts scene where it is more general audiences. So 30,000 kids that buy T-shirts is going to be a lot different than 30,000, WordPress professionals that buy expensive plugins. So firstly, that number is semi arbitrary. You definitely do need an audience to pull from, but it’s going to vary by industry. I’m not sure what it is for WordPress, but for more general shows, it is around 30 to 50,000 downloads per episode. Because just think of how ads work. It’s basically a company pays X thousands of dollars, gets their thing in front of so many eyeballs, ears, whatever. And only a small percent actually convert. So you need a large pool of people to pull from for a lot of podcasts.
Bradley Denham:
Like once they hear someone say, “Oh, you need 10,000 downloads, 30,000 downloads, 100,000 downloads, a lot of people just shut down. But that’s where I say, “First and foremost, it should be a tool to promote your own business.” Because even when you do have ads, here’s the problem with ads it’s feast or famine. You might get a big campaign and once that campaign’s done, things might be dark for awhile. So you might have a burst of 50 grand, but then nothing for the next couple of months. But that’s where the networks come in because the networks basically pool all these shows together of similar genres and will contact… Like, I’ve got Jade Black sunglasses on my table right now. Jade Black probably wouldn’t advertise in WordPress, but let’s just use them as an example.
Bradley Denham:
So basically a network comes along, let’s say they have 30 shows and they’re doing 10 million downloads a month and they approach the sponsors and they reach out. They get a response from Jade Black. They’re like, “Okay, well we want $25 CPM and we’ll do a three-month campaign.”
Joe Howard:
And CPM is?
Bradley Denham:
Cost per thousand. So the cost per a thousand downloads.
Joe Howard:
Cost per a thousand downloads.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. So for the generalized show that tends to hover between $18 to $25. And I’ve seen so many new podcasters, “Oh, we do a thousand downloads. How can we monetize them?” I’m like, “Ah, you’re not going to to hear this.”
Joe Howard:
Do you want $25?
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. Which is why 30,000 is the metric. Because at that point I forget right off the top of my head, but I think that’s $10,000 a month because typically standard practice have three to four minerals per episode within two breaks. First, eight minutes in the first 20 minutes. So four ads total, which if you can book out that entire thing, I think is 10 to 15 grand. And then considering that networks take anywhere between 20 to 50% of that, that’s the point where it’s, “Okay, it’s good enough to staple along with these big shows so we can sell more Jade Black.” So that’s kind of how that works. But when it comes to the more tech stuff, yes, that is a world that I’m not super familiar with, but I guarantee you they’re going to want more than a thousand downloads because even if only half a percent convert, that might not be enough for them to break-even.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. Understood. I want to dive a little bit more into podcast analytics as well, because we talk a lot about CPM is cost per thousand downloads. I hear this question a lot and I actually continue to have this question around analytics, which is, okay, if I have a show with, it’s a thousand downloads, what if a thousand people downloaded the show and listens to five seconds of it and then turn it off. How does the analytics around podcasting work around… Is there really a difference? Are there tools out there that can tell you the difference between actual downloads, which is one metric, but also what’s the engagement of your show?
Joe Howard:
And what’s the listenership? Like how many people are listening, halfway through the episode? How many people are listening to three quarters of the way through the episode? Downloads versus actual listenership engagement. They’re slightly different things. So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about that and see if that’s a pain point for you as well or if that’s something that maybe there’s a solution out there for?
Bradley Denham:
Analytics right now in the industry is laughably bad. Basically, you have two options. You’ve got a whatever’s in your hosting platform, which just shows pure… like how many people actually click downloads. There’s also podcasts connect, which is a iTunes service. I’ll have to show you when I on that login on that, but it shows the average consumption, but statistically, most podcasts are consumed between 60 to 80%. I forget the exact number. I can find the study. There’s a big, what’s it called? I think it’s called the infinite dial. Let me look this up real quick.
Joe Howard:
Sure. I was just thinking about how I listen to podcasts and I have on my podcasting app, what’s it called Downcast. It’s just a podcasting app, right? So I just have my app here and I have all my podcasts here. I download a lot of podcasts that I subscribe to. They automatically download on my phone, which I would assume that counts as a download. But half the shows, I probably don’t listen to. Probably like 80% of them, I don’t listen to. So maybe that download just means it downloaded onto someone’s phone and they never actually listened to it. I don’t know if a download means they actually press play at some point to start it. But to me, I don’t really know what downloads means. I could have someone pay me for CPM for 30,000 episodes, but it’s if I just have 30,000 subscribers who never actually listened to the show, that’s going to convert badly. And then I can’t keep that sponsor for more than a month or something. So yeah.
Bradley Denham:
Well that’s the biggest issue in just digital media advertising as a whole, right? It’s same with page views. It’s like you don’t know if somebody just accidentally clicked on your site or. It’s the same thing.
Joe Howard:
That’s what I think about every single mobile ad. It’s 90% of those must’ve been someone accidentally clicking because no one clicks them. I don’t know. I never clicked those on mobile.
Bradley Denham:
Which is why they need the volume. That’s why they need to know they’ve got a very large pool of people to pull from and it can feel disheartening at first. But once you know that there’s actually other ways you can go about it. I know Nathan Latka, I recently reconnected with him. The way he does his sponsors is pretty atypical from what the networks do because the networks do have that carpet bomb approach of like, “Okay, well we know we’re doing this many downloads and we hope that we’ll continue doing this many downloads because we promise so many downloads for the sponsors at this CPM,” whatever.
Bradley Denham:
But Nathan has an interesting model and he talked about it on the Indie Hackers Podcast. And that’s that he tries to beat the company’s CAC, which is customer acquisition costs. So his pitch isn’t, “Hey, I’ll get you this many downloads.” “It’s essentially like, “Hey, pay me more than you would have paid me for the downloads. But what I’m going to do is get you more customers at a lower cost.” So he’s just cutting to the chase.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. The CAC is the customer acquisition. Pretty much it’s customer acquisition costs for folks listening. So it’s how much does it cost you to acquire customers at $10? And so what you’re saying is Nathan will say, “Oh, it costs you $10 to get a customer. I’ll do it for five. I’ll get you customers for $5. I’ll give you 1,000 customers. Will you pay me $5,000?” But I got you 1,000 customers.
Bradley Denham:
Right, and that’s something that I haven’t really experimented with, personally. But basically the more creative you can get, the better. Because the quote is everything popular is wrong. Right? So it’s very difficult to get enough downloads to monetize the show in the traditional sense. But if you get creative, there’s infinite opportunities.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. Actually, I’ve been on Nathan’s podcast and I listened to his episode on the Indie Hackers Podcast. I thought that was a super interesting model. I’m always interested to hear what people are doing that’s atypical from what most people are doing. That’s a very interesting model and clearly it’s working because I think he said on the Indie Hackers Podcast, he makes $750,000 a year just from the podcast. So clearly that’s a pretty good model. I know he records a ton of episodes and all his episodes are 15 minutes. I think chanting at Indie Hacker said, one time he saw Nathan’s calendar or something or a screenshot or of his calendar. And it had 10 episodes being recorded in one day because he was like boom. And he obviously, I think he has like 15,000 episodes he’s released.
Joe Howard:
Something crazy because he does such short episodes that you can just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom work through them. But clearly something’s worked for them there. So that’s a good example. I think of people thinking a little bit outside the box in terms of what’s the value of a sponsorship? Like my value if I wanted to sponsor something, “I don’t really care about the number of downloads [inaudible 00:23:56] people. I care about traction. I care about momentum. I care about the impact on my business. How does that actually grow my business? Like, what’s my return on investment.” If it’s from one download that gets me one listener, that gets me one huge customer, cool. Unless that’s obviously there’s a risk there to having one big customer, but if I get a million downloads and no one listens, I’d rather have the one, right?
Bradley Denham:
Well, you got to think too, Joe. It depends what department you reach out to. Because if it’s a marketing department from a business, it’s like yeah, they get this budget and their entire goal is to make an ROI on the budget, right? But if you can get someone on the executive level that understands that CAC, like it doesn’t matter how many people you carpet bomb. It’s how many people actually convert the customers. And if you can reach that higher level and pitch that instead of just, “Hey, we’ll get you this generic arbitrary number.” Instead say, “Hey, I will do whatever it takes to get this ROI for you.” That’s a whole different conversation.
Joe Howard:
Agreed. Yeah, this is a very good point. And that probably has to really do with who you’re talking to. You have to really know who you’re talking to and know not just your audience of listeners, but your audience of sponsors and to know what do they want? They want an ROI. So that’s a good point. I’d to switch gears a little bit and talk about something else that you’ve recently started helping us out with more, which is using our podcasts in multiple ways. So for about 100 episodes, we just did audio probably because I was lazy and because I the audio version and I was like whatever video. Okay, I understand why you want to do video, but I just never got around to it. And then we started actually publishing… Allie came on board and she started our YouTube channel.
Joe Howard:
So we’ve got a YouTube channel with a bunch of tutorials. And I was, well, it’s a whole waste to whatever in this app riverside.fm and be recording video and not just do some editing and throw it somewhere and try and grow that as part of the YouTube channel. So now folks can listen to this podcast on their app, but they can also listen and watch on YouTube. And I think this comes into this whole world of multipurpose content. Like maximizing your content. So we you have audio, but there’s also video and there’s social, you could turn it into a blog, you could turn into an ebook. There’s a lot different stuff you can do and we probably always do more. But right now we’re mainly focused on the audio and video. And that’s the big thing right now. And that’s something your company has been doing, I assume, for other folks as well. You help with all the audio engineering and the podcast is fantastic. Obviously, I already talked about it like super professional level, sounds great.
Bradley Denham:
Thank you.
Joe Howard:
But there’s more you can do. Right? There are other steps you can take to continue to grow your audience, not just your podcasting audience, but okay now get some more subscribers on YouTube. There’s more you can and that’s something that Record Edit has been helping with. So tell me a little bit about that piece of your business and helping folks really maximize what they’re doing hopefully putting in about the same amount of effort.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. So the big thing, the most popular thing we do to help people is we offer multi-channel podcasts, which as you’re saying, I always explain it as everyone has their preferred content medium, right? Some people to read, some people to listen, some people like watch videos, some people to just scroll through Instagram and Twitter. And my thought process behind that is be everywhere. Because all you have to do is turn on a camera and you’ve essentially doubled your podcasts, reach from the baseline. But when you take it a step further and you pull clips for social media, that stuff has the potential to literally go viral and could be the catalyst to skyrocket the show. Which is what we’ve seen with the bigger influencer brands, especially when they have that preexisting audience, because then you know that it’s going to get a little bit of traction and then once it hits the discover page or the retweets start blowing up.
Bradley Denham:
So it’s like, if you’re just doing an audio format, the big issue with audio podcasts is they’re hard to discover. Like you literally have to go to Apple or Spotify and type in the exact title of the show to pull it up. It’s not very often that like it just pops up somewhere and you’re like, “Hey, what’s this?” Because a lot of the best content we find by chance, right? It’s that viral TikTOK, it’s a viral, whatever that just pops up one day and you’re like, “Hey, what’s this?” And then you’re a new consumer of that person’s content. So that’s where multi-channel podcasting comes in because from just flipping on a camera, now we have that YouTube video.
Bradley Denham:
Now we have those social media assets and we already have the audio podcast. We already have the blog that comes along with the audio podcasts, but now we’re in four places versus just the two. And one has the potential for exponential returns because just the vitality of social… Like, Joe Rogan. Who actually sits down and listens to a three hour episode of Joe Rogan? People do, but it can’t be that many, but everyone’s super familiar with the Joe Rogan clips. Same thought process.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. It’s JRE clips is a YouTube channel and I know they cut their episode. They’ll have a three hour episode and cut it into eight minute bite size pieces and then throw all those videos on YouTube. I’ve seen some of the views on that. They get millions of views, all those little clips. So it’s a easy way to get millions for him. That’s one of the biggest podcast in the world, right?
Bradley Denham:
It is the biggest.
Joe Howard:
We’re using him as an example it’s tens of millions of more viewers every episode.
Bradley Denham:
Basically.
Joe Howard:
Just because he threw some clips together. Yeah, that’s interesting that you say that. I have other things I want to talk about too, but let’s dive into this a little bit more because we talked about audio, video. There’s a social aspect, which honestly, we don’t really do that well as a podcast. So I think it sounds you’re telling me, “Joe, we should probably some more clips. Maybe video clips to social and do maybe some 30 second clips and tweet them out.” So that we have clips people can watch and just pretty easily retweet. And you link to the podcast episode, people can come in and then subscribe and that might lead to more people subscribing. Is that a piece of advice you would you say, “Joe, you should probably be doing that since you’re not doing it right now?”
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. I would love to do more social media stuff with you guys because you’re right. I think right now you’re sharing just static images, right? I think Twitter is like your place, right? And not Instagram or Facebook. Okay, yeah. So on Twitter, you’re scrolling an auto plays and somebody just has to hit it to hear it. So it’s like instead of just tweeting a link to the show with a thumbnail, it’d be cool to have the best one minute chunk. But I think Twitter is two and a half minutes is the limit. So we do a two minute clip with captions that way people can see and read a little bit before they click on the sound because it’s weird. I think 80% of social media users don’t watch videos without volume. And I know for myself, I’m definitely one of those people. So captions are key.
Joe Howard:
It’s important to have those captions there. Totally.
Bradley Denham:
So, people are scrolling and they see the video first before they read the text most of the time. And it’s like, “Okay, well what’s this?” They read a little bit of the captions. They look up with the link. Maybe they click, I don’t know. But every time you have a moving video, you’re going to get higher engagement than just a static image.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. That’s probably true. And I just watched The Social Dilemma, which oh man, talk about-
Bradley Denham:
Oh, that was great.
Joe Howard:
… being heavy. So I’m very wishy-washy on social right now. I’m like fuck social media. But I also know they said they measure your engagement based on not just clicks, but how long you stay scrolled on something because they’re measuring how many seconds you were watching. I mean, so if someone stays on WP Buffs tweets for longer periods of time, maybe we’ll come up more around WordPress stuff and their algorithm or something. That’s a whole nother conversation around how much invested in social do I want to make after watching that. But I mean, that’s definitely a factor, right? We’ll say that. I had a question about SEO. The way we publish our show, we publish it across other podcasting apps. We have wpmrr.com/podcast. All our podcasts are available right on our website. And you help us out with show notes and transcripts and that’s all right there.
Joe Howard:
I would want to know is, again, as someone who’s worked with some small shows, but a lot of big shows as well, probably some pretty high authority shows and websites. Have you seen people be successful driving traffic from search engines to their podcast pages? Because I think we’ve had a little trouble with that. Our domain authority is not super high on that page or on that website on wpmrr.com. And our options are either try to, obviously we want to rank for… If someone searches for WPMRR WordPress Podcast, I think we’re pretty easy to find. If someone searches that branded term, but for this episode, how to start your podcasting 101, it might be hard for us to rank for that or your name Bradley.
Joe Howard:
If you were an influencer, you are an influencer Bradley Denham, the big influencer. People are searching for you online. Maybe they want to listen to this episode where we talked about podcasting. So I want to rank maybe for your name instead. I don’t know if you’ve worked with shows that have been successful, really driving traffic through Google searches using that strategy of trying to rank for either the name of guests or the title of the episode, what it’s about or stuff that.
Bradley Denham:
Typically, the rule of thumb is to include the podcast name in the title. So on YouTube, for example, we’ll have whatever the title of this episode is, it’ll include my name and whatever we talk about, but then there’ll be the line break thing. Like the vertical line space, WPMRR Podcast number, whatever. The number is arbitrary but that WPMRR Podcast gives us that boost of like, “Okay, if somebody searching, Bradley Denham WPMRR Podcasts, boom, I’m there. But in terms of driving cold traffic, you got to think about the intention behind that. Most of the time people are looking for one little slice of information to solve their problem. They’re not really there for a serious time investment. So although personally, I have landed on a handful of web webpages that did have podcasts, I was there for a very specific piece of information to solve a problem. And I might’ve clicked play on the podcast, but I never listened to it.
Bradley Denham:
It’s just like a habit kind of thing because I’m just so used to outreach and stuff and like, “Oh, I’ll listen to a few minutes of that.” But it’s like, “I’m not there for that. I’m there for the information and I move on.” But most of the time, it is a positive brand interaction, but seldom do I even recall who it is or go back. The more valuable thing though, is that social media, because then you open the door to virality and engaging your already existing audience. Because the big issue is people have followings, right?
Bradley Denham:
And they don’t know what to post. This gives you something to post and if you do it right, my proposition is create three social media clips and two graphics, post one every single business day. That way, you’re slowly growing, you’re keeping your community engaged, that kind of thing. Because that’s a lot more controllable than doing whatever it takes to get first page of Google and hoping that you get a relevant audience.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. That’s a good point. I can’t remember the last time I searched for someone and found a podcast episode about that person and then I subscribed to the podcast because I was really just wanting to learn more about that person. I don’t need to subscribe to that podcast right now. So I get that and I think that sounds right to me just based on some of my knowledge, that sounds the right move for sure. I want to talk a little bit about podcasting equipment. I think everybody talks about this topic, right? And I don’t want to ask you the question. What if I want to get the cheapest podcasting equipment? Like how do I start my podcast? What starter equipment should I use? Because I think there’s a lot of content out there around that.
Joe Howard:
Hey, people can grab a blue Yeti. Okay, or you could just use your Apple headphones or whatever. Starting is starting. I want to ask you a little bit, maybe you disagree with that. I want to hear your opinion on that too, but I want to ask you, if someone seriously wants to start a podcast, people who are already running a business and they want to grow their audience through their podcast, they have something to invest in something. If you had $1,000 to start a podcast, what equipment would you use? I think that’s a slightly different question than if I had $100, what should I do? $1,000 is a little bit more. You can invest in maybe a nicer microphone or nicer headphones. What are the important thing?
Joe Howard:
And also to keep in mind, working from home, what can I hook up easily at home? And maybe some mobility as well. People aren’t super mobile right now with COVID, but how can you record here? Like, I want to record here. I’m going to be somewhere else in a different house next week. How do I just pick up, move somewhere else and be able to record from there? That’s important for me as well. So yeah, $1,000. What kind of equipment would you recommend for folks to use?
Bradley Denham:
Okay, First off, I want to touch on the guy that has $0. Because maybe this is something that you think you’re passionate about and you want to give it a shot. I’d never want the money or the equipment to be the thing that holds you back because really the primary thing holding you back really is that mindset, right? Because everybody thinks they need the biggest and the best before they even get started. And then they realize they suck because they just haven’t got those reps in because the truth is, everybody sucks at everything the first time they try anything new. This is no different.
Bradley Denham:
But I have actually played around with just an iPhone and a closet. I don’t have a T-shirt right now, but I’ve got this mask, right? So it’s like, these surprisingly good microphones. And it’s like if you have a shirt or something to act as a pop filter, it’s literally going to sound as good as most microphones you can buy as long as you’re in a closet. And that can be a very easy way to just start.
Joe Howard:
Mask plus iPhone. [crosstalk 00:37:46]
Bradley Denham:
But if you are serious and you want it as a cashflow positive marketing channel for your business, then $1,000 is still too much. I can break down what I’m using right now. I’ve got only three components to this setup that you see now. I could do a lot more with the set design, but that isn’t as important as just the pure audio/video quality, right? So starting with the microphone, this is the ATR2100. It’s a USB and XLR combo mic. So we’ll come back to that in a second about how the XLR can help because that’s the traditional plugin for a MIC.
Bradley Denham:
And then talking about the camera, I’ve got the Logitech BRIO 4K. It’s overkill. I spent too much on it. Oh, let me break down prices too. So this is a 60, $70 microphone. You can get a bundle with the stand, the shock mount, headphones, all that. You can get that for $120. And that takes care of your microphone done. Don’t think about that. Number two, is the camera. So I’ve got the Logitech BRIO 4K. I think it was like 230 after taxes. And I only got it because of the 4K support because I’m a nerd when it comes to this stuff. But honestly, I think the other option is the Logitech C920. It has similar sensors and stuff. It’ll have comparable quality in 1080P for like $100 less. So it’s $150 webcam. And then off to my left here, I’ve just got a soft box photography light, and I’ve got two diffusers on it and a T-shirt over it to just soften it out a little more because it’s just a cheap light from Amazon.
Bradley Denham:
I think the kit was like $100 bucks. So our total cost is just under $500. You never have to think about it again, literally like the microphone plugs in via USB, the webcam plugs in via USB, the light, you just set it off to a 45 degree angle and put enough diffusion on it so it doesn’t blur your face. The big thing that irritates me right now is this window in the background and your window to Joe, it frustrates me.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. I’m watching my own video as you’re talking about this. I’m like, “I’ve got some ice on my face. Should I…”
Bradley Denham:
But if I had some curtains on these windows, I’d have better lighting, but that’s it. Like that’s the baseline components to any kind of media is just sound, video, light. And this is just the simplest way that I’ve found to get professional results without spending a ton of money. Because you could very well spend that whole budget of $500 on one microphone. Like the Shure SM7B, the one you see Joe Rogan using, that’s a $400 microphone and it doesn’t even come with a stand and cable. So after that investment, you spent $600 on one piece of the puzzle.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. And he is now on Spotify for $100 million deal. So I think he can probably afford a $400 microphone. I really like that answer actually, because I think that you should never think about pricing and things when it comes to starting and trying something out. And as someone who’s worked again on big shows on setting up super expensive podcasting studios for people, for probably tens of thousands of dollars, you say, you don’t need all that stuff. Okay, maybe how do you get to a eight out of 10 audio quality and video quality? Probably spend 500 bucks and do this. How do you get to nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10, maybe then you need to spend some more money. It’s like really good to the top. How do you get super high quality video, you maybe need $2,000 camera or something.
Joe Howard:
But to be fair, I use all the same equipment you do, probably because you told me about it. I asked you, “Hey Bradley, can you just point me to something I can buy on Amazon, a video and a MIC.” And he said, “Yes here too.” And I said, “Buy.” And it came two days later and here we are. So I have the same one, the ATR2100 USB. And then the Logitech BRIO 4K. Yeah, for 300 bucks total about maybe 325. It got great quality stuff.
Bradley Denham:
Awesome. After the show, we need to work on your lighting a little bit because if you’re using the same camera, I could…
Joe Howard:
Yeah, totally. Actually, I think I bought… I asked you about lighting too, and you told me the light to buy and I bought it, but it just never showed up and I just forgot about it. [crosstalk 00:41:55] So I think I get to go into my Amazon orders and just figure out why it didn’t show up. Maybe someone grabbed it off my porch or something. It was such high quality lights or something. I don’t know. Cool. I want to close out a little bit and talk a little bit more about Record Edit because you’ve had a lot of experience now being an engineer.
Joe Howard:
And now you’ve stepped into a new adventure for yourself, which is you’re helping to execute on a lot of this stuff, but you now have a team you’re working with and that’s a whole different ball game. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about how stuff Record Edit is going now that you have a team working with you. How is the actual growing your own business doing this stuff, as opposed to really maybe being the individual contributor and executer at a top 10 podcast company.
Bradley Denham:
It’s been an experience because it really is an entirely different mindset and skillset. Right? For the longest time, it felt I was just a freelancer, right? Because I was working the 9:00 to 5:00 job, taking on more and more clients on the side till the side gig overshadowed the main gig and then changes at the company. I’m like, “Okay, well, I’m going to leave because I really like the work anywhere and any time you want kind of digital nomad lifestyle.” And I left. We were hovering around $7,000 a month, monthly recurring revenue. Now we’ve got 12K a month in the pipeline and I’m about to hire our first full-time editor. Right now the team has only three people with me as the producer, CEO. We’ve got an account manager and writer and a multimedia editor now.
Bradley Denham:
And we all work in harmony to make sure that all the episodes go out at the highest quality and on time. And the big thing for me is just continuing to get more and more customers to solidify the brand and work my way out of the day-to-day editing because that goes back to that freelance mindset of you actually recommended The E Myth as the very first episode. And it took me 100 episodes to actually sit down and read it. But it’s that quote of, I forget. It’s something about the technical worker… I forget the quote off the top of my head, but basically there’s a clear distinction between the business owner mindset versus the technical person that’s doing the day-to-day work.
Bradley Denham:
And for me, the hardest part has been extracting myself from the day-to-day, realizing that the most valuable thing I can do is to give people jobs they love and not be the one doing the job every day, myself. Because in order for this to grow, I have to be out there like this, put my face out in front of people, meet people, do whatever I can to bring as much value as possible, help people build their businesses. And that’s how I’m going to grow. Not sitting down and editing everything myself.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. I agree with you, man. It’s a challenge to switch that mindset. That’s probably the biggest challenge you’re going to have is switching from being a sole individual contributor to being a CEO. It’s really super different skillset. I think about it as like, because I’m a math guy. So I really think about it like if you’re an individual contributor, you’re thinking about your own vector. So you’re thinking about where you started and then you have this line with an arrow at the end of it, that’s like that ends where you want to be. Those are your projects, right? The things you’re working on. “How do I make this episode super high quality audio? How do I release it on time? How do I make this customer happy?” Those are individual contributor things you’re doing.
Joe Howard:
Now you’re CEO. You have three people at the company. So you’re not just worrying about your own vector. You’re worrying about three vectors. So you now have to worry about how long those vectors are, how effective they are. Are they all going in the same direction or is one going left and one going right? And like well, that’s not going to be helpful for you. So anyway, that’s a somewhat abstract way of thinking about it, but that’s how I think about it. And that is a different skillset.
Joe Howard:
But I think that the best asset you have is having a lot of industry knowledge and knowing what a really good final product looks because you’ve had that individual contributor mindset. So all you really have to do… Like, there are going to be things you don’t know. You’re probably not going to be great at hiring to start off with because you aren’t really… Like how many people have you hired in the past? Probably not a lot. I sucked at hiring when I started. And so maybe you won’t, maybe it will, but that scenario I sucked at.
Joe Howard:
And leadership and motivation and understanding the individual strengths and weaknesses of different people. And when do you need to work on weaknesses? Maybe sometimes you don’t because they don’t worry about the weaknesses. Don’t do stuff that’s related to that. Just work on your strengths, but maybe there are weaknesses that people do need to work on or should people lean in more on the strengths and who has what strengths on your team and who has what weaknesses? These are all things you’ll learn. And I have no doubt that you’ll learn them.
Bradley Denham:
I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that the soft skills are almost more valuable than the technical skills.
Joe Howard:
Absolutely.
Bradley Denham:
It’s so crazy.
Joe Howard:
I use my soft skills every day and I barely use any hard skills anymore. I’m managing people. I’m probing people. I’m asking questions. I’m reviewing things every once in a while and making sure things that are high quality. Yeah. You said it already, but you’re giving your team an awesome place to work and you’re pushing your team to get results. And you’re holding them accountable because I’ll tell you one thing that I think I made a mistake where I think it applies to a lot of people that are starting businesses, which is, I always wanted to be super nice to people. And I wanted to give people a good place to work and all that. But at times I was too nice and I didn’t hold people to a high enough bar and enough accountable for the work they were doing.
Joe Howard:
And I truly do believe now because I’ve changed a lot, but I’ve become slightly more of a hard-ass not a hard-ass. I want to make sure I say that correctly, slightly more of a hard-ass because people want to do their best. People want to be held to high standards. They want to do a good job. They want to have an impact. And because they’re like, “Yeah, go do whatever.” You know people may do whatever. So I would say, do what you’re doing. Be awesome. Be a good boss, be fun, whatever, but hold people to a high standard. You can be very respectful to someone and still hold them to high standards. And I know you do that because the podcast sounds great. Now you have the teamwork around and so things going in the right direction.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah. My team knows I’m a stickler for quality because that’s the biggest thing that’s helped me get ahead personally is just that attention to detail. And I hope they appreciate it. I feel they do. Before we go, there’s actually something I would ask you more of general business advice as an entrepreneur that’s been there, done that. I feel I’m reaching a point where there’s always something to do. And I’m struggling with knowing when to step back and relax and smell the roses and be more of a person and less of a business person. Because there’s just, when you’re running a business there’s so many things you can do, so many things you can focus on and only a small portion give results, but you don’t know what it’s going to be. So it’s like, it’s very easy to just densely pack your calendar or spend several hours doing whatever. It’s like how do you balance work and life? Is there a balance?
Joe Howard:
Yeah, they’re two questions in there. I want to tackle them both. But one at a time, the first is how do you know what to work on? And this totally comes from experience. You’re right. There are 1,000 different things you could do today to move your business forward. But 990 of them are going to have a little to no impact. And 10 of them are probably going have a big impact. And the question is, how do I find which ones are going to have the big impact? I think you’re very much on the right track on a lot of that stuff. Not because I know at all, what you’re working on, but because you’ve emailed me and been asking me some questions every once in awhile and you asked me, “Hey, can I email you regularly to ask advice?”
Joe Howard:
And, “Sure whenever you want to.” That’s going to be helpful to get some advice from people who have been there before. Not they maybe know your industry, because you’re going to discover all that yourself. But people who know, “Oh, I remember trying that it didn’t work for me. Probably won’t work for you.” Because you’re in the same… So you’re trying the same thing, but maybe here’s what I tried and it did work, take that advice and run with it. I think that’s going to be super helpful. I think you already talked about this in this episode, but you have this good mentality of these lean cycles of try something, experiment with something, execute it correctly, measure it and see the results. Don’t spend 100 hours with one project because of what, if it fails?
Joe Howard:
Spend two hours on it and put it live and see what happens. You get some positive feedback from it. Okay, then you can keep working on it. So those lean cycles are super important because you can do 10 experiments at one time and find the one thing that works as opposed to trying one thing for the same time, it took you to do those 10 things. And then probably it won’t work. I’d say also trust your gut because I think you have good industry knowledge. You know podcasting. Growing a business is a different thing, but you know about podcasting, you know about the industry. That’s a huge step up from someone… If I were to get in the podcasting industry, man I’d be asking you all the questions. I’d be, “Bradley, we got to meet once a week so I can ask you all this stuff.”
Joe Howard:
So yeah, I think all that’s important. Quickly on the second thing, work-life balance. I don’t know. I’m actually a really bad person to ask about this. I think I’m pretty bad at work-life balance. As you can see from this video, my computer’s in the corner of my living room. So I can jump on whenever I want to. Have a kid that definitely helps with work-life balance because it literally forces you to not work as much. I’m not actually telling you to have a kid. I’m obviously joking. But that’s something that has been really helpful for me because I’m really forced. I’ve actually always been really good at delegating, but because I actually really the management of the projects, but I’m not always the best person to do it, and I know that. Now that Morrison’s here, I can’t hop on all the time and it’s actually been super healthy for me.
Joe Howard:
I would say definitely, one thing that’s super helpful for me to be cognizant of my time was having a Pomodoro journal. I’ve written about this before. I think I’ve done a podcast episode about it, but it’s just a journal where literally before you start your day, write down the things you’re going to do that day. And I force my team to do this in Slack. Every team leader in Slack at the beginning of their day hits up in Slack, “Here are the things I’m working on today.” It’s not 10 things. It’s three things and those three things are, “What’s going to make my day successful? What are the high impact things I’m working on?” That way you really have a focus at the beginning of your day, because I remember working and being, “I’ve worked for 10 hours in a day.” And Sterling would be like, “So, what’d you do today?”
Joe Howard:
And I’d be like, “I don’t know. I worked.” Certainly I worked on stuff. Okay. I had a really busy day and I did, but I don’t know what I worked on. I couldn’t remember because I wasn’t present in my work. And that’s the most important part is, and you’ve already said this, right? So being present in your work and making sure you know what you’re working on, because hey, if you waste a day, whatever. But you want to learn from it and know what you could do tomorrow to do a better job. And the whole game is getting 1% better every day. It’s not about becoming a billion dollar company, maybe for some people it is. For me, it’s more about, I just want to get a little bit better every day, continue to be a little bit more profitable, continue to run a little better of a business every day, make my employees a little bit happier every day, that kind of stuff. So I’m sorry. That was a long-winded to both those questions.
Bradley Denham:
I love it.
Joe Howard:
Hopefully there was some helpful advice in there.
Bradley Denham:
Definitely.
Joe Howard:
Right on. All right, man. This has been an awesome episode. I know the episode has been really good because I learned a lot.
Bradley Denham:
Awesome.
Joe Howard:
After we hop on this call, we’re going to talk about social media. Because we got to do more around that. I’ll put you into that Slack channel with that team so we can get you more involved with that on the week to week basis. Cool. Last but not least, tell folks more because there are obviously people here who want to start a podcast or maybe you’re probably right now like, “I love recording my podcasts, but I hate the rest of it.” Or, “I don’t want to do the rest of it.” Or, “I don’t have the expertise to do the rest of it. Or, “It’s just not my area that I want to be working on.” Any of that. So Record Edit can help with that. So tell folks a little bit more about where they can find you, where they can find Record Edit online.
Bradley Denham:
Yeah, so whether you have an existing show or want to start a new one, even Joe can talk about this right now. My team, we try our very best to make producing a podcast as light as possible for the host. All we want you to do is just show up and record a great episode and we handle the rest. So yeah, the site is recordeditpodcast.com. You can schedule a strategy session. We can talk for free. I’m always happy to talk and just let us know how we can help. If this is something you want to do, we’ll try and figure out the strategy behind how we can make it a profitable thing for you. Or if you have an existing show, we can onboard you or at least pull the curtain back on our process and how we could help. But yeah, that’s basically it.
Joe Howard:
Yeah. Right on recordeditpodcast.com. Go on to the site you’ll see this amazing review from this incredible guy named Joe Howard, who runs this WPMRR WordPress Podcast, as well as a few other pretty big podcasts, especially making the startup community, which a lot of people here are really involved with. Indie Hackers, Code Story Podcast, clearly you’re involved in those podcasts as well. So, cool. Last but not least, Bradley, I always ask our guests to ask our listeners for a review on iTunes. So if you wouldn’t mind asking the listeners for a little review, I’d appreciate it.
Bradley Denham:
Oh yeah. Reviews are very important. Not only do we ask for a review for WPMRR, you should ask for reviews too if you’re a podcast and here’s why. Going back to Joe’s point about SEO and my point of the limited discoverability of shows on Apple and Spotify, reviews on Apple podcasts help a show rank in the search ability because most new shows, even if you search their name letter by letter, won’t pop up because it hasn’t been validated in Apple system that, “Hey, this is an actual show people listen to.” Because you got to think, thousands and thousands of people are starting shows every day, they do two episodes and it just sits there. So the thing to help it break through is the reviews and the more the merrier. So go leave a five-star review.
Joe Howard:
Yes. Appreciate it. And also very good background knowledge. I’ll give even a little bit more as well for me personally, when I get reviews and they have… If you leave a review, you can leave it with five stars without a comment, but take a couple seconds and leave a comment. One, because I can talk about some of you learn from this episode and I can thank Bradley for review and say, “Hey, Bradley, appreciate it.” Two, it helps us stay motivated to do more episodes, and three, it actually helps us to know what new content we should put out there. If I get two or three reviews on one episode saying, “Hey, Bradley’s episode was awesome. I learned X, Y, and Z.” Guess what? I’m going to have Bradley on again and I’m going to do more episodes around podcasts because clearly people are interested. They liked the episode enough to leave a review.
Joe Howard:
That’s clearly a positive signal for that content. So those things I will add as well. If you are a new listener to the show, we’ve got 120-ish episodes in the pipeline. In the pipeline makes it sound we’re going to do these episodes that we’ve previously published, I guess I will say. So if you have questions on anything WordPress MRR, podcast, growth, running your own business related, go back and check out some old episodes. Don’t get stuck binging your Netflix or Hulu. Go and binge some WP MRR WordPress podcast. If you have questions for us at the show, Christie and I do like to do an occasional Q&A episode. So shoot your questions to yo@wpmrr.com or you can hit us up on Twitter @wpmrrsummit, which brings us to our last point, which is WPMRR Virtual Summit. Just past did our first one, went awesome we’re going to do another one next year.
Joe Howard:
But if you want to go and see all those talks for free on our YouTube channel, you can go to wpmrr.com and all those old talks are there for you from 2020. Everything related to building a successful subscription businesses, especially in WordPress space. So go check out those talks. That’s it for this week. We will be in your podcast players again next Tuesday. Bradley, thanks again, for being on man, it’s been real.
Bradley Denham:
Thanks, Joe.
