← School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
Who is Peeing in the Podcast Pool?
00:51:56
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- [00:00]
Dave Jackson
The school of podcasting uses chapters in their episodes. So if I'm talking about a topic and there are many in this episode, feel free to skip to the next one. Today I kind of want to do a year wrap up of podcasting, the Good, the Bad and the ugly. And of course, that means we're going to start off with. And now it's time for a power rant. Actually, let's not do a power rant. What I'd like to do, because it's Christmas time. Let's start off with a fun Christmas story. This is called the Cridland Boys Choir. Mildred Broombaugh had finally become the superintendent of all the schools in Cridland. And she had one mission. You see, when she was just a little girl, she had seen the Vienna Boys Choir and she wanted to create one in Cridland who. So she reached out to all the teachers in Cridlin and said, I want to put on a Christmas concert. Everyone who meets this criteria will be in the Cridland Boys Choir. They will be between the ages of 9 and 14, have a red sweater, black pants, and be able to sing. So the teachers went through all the classes and there were 27 boys who met the criteria. But that was a long way from. From a hundred. So Ms. Broombaugh, she changed the criteria. She said, well, you can wear any color of pants as long as you have a red sweater and a boy who could sing between the ages of 9 and 14. And this got her closer to her goal as there were 34 boys who met that criteria. But she was still a long way off of her goal of 100% people. So she changed the criteria again. And she said, okay, I'm going to change the ages from 9 to 27. And the teachers went out again. And it turned out there weren't that many older people in the elementary schools. And so it only got her up to 50.
- [02:08]
Steve Goldstein
Fine.
- [02:09]
Dave Jackson
She said, I need this quiet to be 100 people. I've got it. This will work. Find dogs that can howl. They don't even need sweaters. And so some of the children brought their dogs to practice and the howling was awful. But at this point, she was up to 82 people, or 82 participants, and still a fair amount to go to reach her goal of 100. Now she was beyond frustrated, and she was walking down the halls one day of Cochrane elementary with when she saw a cleanliness engineer mopping the floor.
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Show Announcer
That's it.
- [02:43]
Dave Jackson
She said, prop all the mops up and put a red sweater on them. And someone said, Ms. Broombaugh, mops don't make any noise. They can't sing. And she quipped back, but it will have a red sweater. And that's close enough. So the night came and the choir assembled with a bunch of creepy dudes with mops standing in the back row, dogs howling over a few talented boys who you really couldn't even here over all the ruckus. But Ms. Broombaugh had achieved her boys choir. And then the concert was over. And it turns out the entire audience had left because, well, they expected to hear a boys choir. And, well, it was awful. The end. Now, what does that have to do with podcasting? I'll explain in just a second. Hit it, ladies.
- [03:39]
Show Announcer
The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson.
- [03:45]
Dave Jackson
Podcasting since 2005. I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you are new to the show, I am so glad you're here. You are in the right spot. This is where I help you plan, I help you launch, I help you grow, I help you monetize. If you want to your podcast, my website is schoolofpodcasting.com you can use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. So, Dave, what the heck was that? Well, this is in remarks, and I need to say this up front. I'm not picking on Steve Goldstein. I like Steve Goldstein as a person. I've met him. Really nice guy. I remember one of the first calls we had was probably back in 2007. And so he's been around a long time. And I'm just letting you know you're allowed to disagree with people even if you're friends. And I cannot disagree more with Steve Goldstein and some of his statements. And this goes back to two years ago when he announced that if you weren't on YouTube, well, you were going to miss the boat, in fact, in his presentation.
- [05:04]
Steve Goldstein
And YouTube has moved rapidly. We've seen studies over the past couple of years as it's growing and growing, and now it is dominant, but it is different. It is a bit vexing for most podcasters because it does involve video. There's no RSS feed. There will be.
- [05:22]
Dave Jackson
And yet this was two years ago. There's still no RSS feed out. You have to watch YouTube. On YouTube, it's a closed system.
- [05:31]
Steve Goldstein
It's video based, and 3.7 million people are uploading content. Videos are uploaded every day, 500 hours, every minute. I mean, it's just incredible how big it is.
- [05:43]
Dave Jackson
And I've never argued that YouTube is not huge. It has a huge number of people that are watching it. More people are watching now on their television set. But they came out with this, the new rules of podcasting on YouTube. And it was Steve Goldstein and Jay Natchless. And here's what they said about the whole podcasting. And in this case, they were talking about defining it.
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Jay Natchless
Big headline from this study today. The definition of a podcast is changing.
- [06:12]
Dave Jackson
Says who? Coleman Insights. Because you interviewed a thousand people, There are hundreds of thousands of podcasters. That's not a great sample size. I mean, look, I love Mariah Carey. She's majorly talented. But I did not get my ballot when it came to voting her Queen of Christmas, because I've had enough of that song. And I did not get my ballot when they said, hey, we're going to change the definition of podcasting. Because I would have said, you're wrong.
- [06:40]
Jay Natchless
You know, we hear all the time everybody's got their opinions of what a podcast is, particularly in the podcast industry.
- [06:46]
Dave Jackson
Now, why is that? Because there is a definition of what a podcast is. It's audio, video, or PDF delivered via rss. And we all agreed on that because, well, you know, it's a fact.
- [06:59]
Jay Natchless
But we thought it was really important in this study to take it outside of the industry and figure out, you know, what are podcast consumers saying?
- [07:08]
Dave Jackson
And I guess my question is why? Why do we care what the consumer says? Because we are also the first to say the consumer doesn't care how we define it. But the thing that drives me nuts is a. There was a study called the New Rules of podcasting on YouTube. And right there, we should have said, hey, guys, I appreciate the work you put into that, but I don't know if you know this or not, but podcasts aren't on YouTube. We did not push back. And everyone believed this whole thing about YouTube.
- [07:46]
Jay Natchless
There's been some major shifts, and as a podcaster, this really impacts your marketing plan and how you get your podcast out there. It's a YouTube world. We're just living in it.
- [07:58]
Dave Jackson
Ugh. No. And why were there major shifts? And by saying there are major shifts, you're kind of going, hey, look, our report was important because nobody pushed back to say, hey, I don't know if you realize this or not, but YouTube's not a podcast. All right? And I'm going to point out just one thing, and this sounds kind of mean, and I don't mean it to be mean, but we're taking podcast Advice from guys that sound like that. Because I know you're thinking it, and I just said it. These guys are telling me how to grow my audience on YouTube. I would tell them, figure out how to work a microphone. They got a background in radio in some cases. That's some horrible audio. Sorry, just saying it. So the reason people aren't pushing back is because of the massive megaphone that is YouTube and Spotify. So with YouTube, the advertising market, they were losing a small percentage, but nonetheless a percentage from TikTok. And they're like, we gotta get people talking about YouTube again. And so they said, oh, I know. We'll just say that YouTube is now a podcast. Now, why would they say that? Because every report. In fact, there was one that came out today that said how YouTube advertising on YouTube is not as good as advertising on a real podcast. And that's the part that kind of makes my blood boil, is the fact they're hijacking our reputation. All right? And for those of you that are like, oh, who poked the bear? There is new information that I'm just like, oh, are you kidding me? Because if you look at, like, a clock, 12 o', clock, that was normal. That was where things made sense. 10 o' clock was when we said, sure, YouTube's a podcast, and nobody pushed back. And now we're going even further away from common sense. YouTube is a wolf in podcast clothing that drives me nuts. And now it's filtered over. TikTok now is calling itself a podcast. Why not? If YouTube can do it and nobody's gonna push back, we're a podcast, too. In fact, this kitchen timer sitting right here on my desk is. It's a podcast. I'll tell you more about that in a second, because now there's this show on TikTok featuring Demi Lovato, who I love, and they're calling it a podcast. There's no RSS feed, but it's a podcast. And James Kridlin from podnews.net made a great point. So figure this. You're a marketing person. You want to spend your marketing dollars the best. Here's another report that shows how podcasting outperforms everything. And you're like, I gotta spend some money on this podcasting stuff. TikTok comes along and says, hey, we're a podcast. Now, here's the thing. When that comes down to reporting, is that gonna be classified as money spent on a podcast or money spent on social media? And I can't answer that question. Only the marketing director that's sponsoring that show can do that. But I just know that people in the podcast industry are jonesing so hard to get over the $2 billion mark that they will call anything a podcast. So that marketers will spend money on podcasting so they can say, look at us, we're growing. And they don't care if their actions actually are a detriment to the whole podcasting space. They. They're going to get their money, so they don't care. But that report about podcast on YouTube, we should have pushed back on that. I don't understand why we didn't. I don't know if Steve and the guy from Coleman Insights have friends at YouTube because this video is such an advertisement for YouTube. And so the new thing that came out, and this is such bs, this is from Amplify Media, and it's Steve Goldstein. And again, I don't dislike Steve. I just really disagree with his opinion. And this is what he says. He says podcasting is no longer a one size fits all medium. And I would say it never has been. It's always been from day one, audio, video, and PDF. The video thing is not new. He says it's become an ecosystem. A podcast can be a YouTube show. No, it can't. Not without an RSS feed. He says it can be vertical clips, newsletters. And that's the one I went, that's it. We got to talk about this. A newsletter is not a podcast. And you might say, but, Dave, some blogs can be delivered via rss. And I would agree, and I would say that's why it has a different word. It's not a newsletter, it's a blog. When you have a different definition, you have a different word. Live streams or even a live event. So let's read that again. Podcasting is no longer a one size fits all medium. It has become an ecosystem. A podcast can be a YouTube show, vertical clips, newsletters, short episodes, live streams, or even a live event. There's one thing he forgot to put, and I would have been perfectly fine if he said, when it's delivered via RSS in honor of my grandma Irene, I have one thing to say. Poppycock. Yeah. I don't understand why people didn't push back. When Jay and Steve are like, hey, guess what? YouTube's a podcast. We should have said, no, it's not. And that's kind of like, now people think that YouTube is a podcast. It's still not. And yet now that causes people. And then they say things like, it's weird. We don't have as many New podcasters, as we used to. Yeah, because you've convinced everyone they have to be on video and people don't want to be on video. Way to go. Congratulations. Here's a question. Are podcast reports from the major companies that do podcast reports, are they better or worse? Are they helpful or less helpful than when people came down from the mountain with their tablets saying, YouTube is a podcast? In my opinion, they are less helpful because they say things like, yeah, well, video podcasts, better known as YouTubers, are exploding on YouTube. Yeah, no kidding. Wow. Then they say other brilliant things like, well, if you. If you're just an audio podcast and you're not using YouTube, you're limiting your audience. Wow, Sherlock. How did you come up with that? Wait a minute. Audio podcasting is a stage. Video on YouTube is a stage. You mean if I got on another stage, I might grow my audience, but a different audience? Yeah. Never would have figured that one out. Adam Curry, co creator of podcasting, said it best. Every book doesn't need to be a movie. And I have people that come to me all the time, and they're thinking of starting a podcast, but they don't want to be on video. As always, if I said this from day one, if you want to be on YouTube, I am on YouTube because I want to be. But you don't have to be. If you don't want to be on video, you don't have to. There are plenty of people who achieve success without doing video. And one more thing I want to point out, because Jay said this, but.
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Jay Natchless
We thought it was really important in the study to take it outside of the industry.
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Dave Jackson
And I kind of go, why did you go outside the industry? I guess if you're trying to do a study on what makes a good teacher, you would ask the students, but you weren't asking what makes a good podcast. You were asking, what makes a teacher? And then people said, well, I sometimes learn when I stub my toe on a chair. So a chair is a teacher. And while that is a lesson, it's not an actual teacher standing up in a classroom. And so do we have the courage to stand up and go, hey, people that do these, you know, surveys, because they have been doing them for decades, maybe they're not asking the right questions. How long have we heard that the average podcast listener listens to X amount of podcasts, and we still kind of have to go, is that episodes or shows? Maybe they're not asking the right questions. It's just a thought. And I know you probably fast forward to this point. And you're asking yourself, dave, why do you care? And I totally get that. Because you know what? The audience doesn't care. They don't care how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage. I get that. Totally get that. And it comes down to rss, and it comes down to control. If you get kicked off of YouTube, you're kind of screwed. But if you're doing a podcast on RSS and somebody kicks you off Spotify, you have a whole bunch of other apps that you. You can still listen to me on. In fact, if I get kicked out of all the apps and I still have an RSS feed, my audience can still consume my data. It's a little more challenging, but I'm not dead in the water. And when the bigger these companies get and the more they dig their trenches in, what they're really doing is they're going for control. They're going for control. They want it to be. They're already putting things in place. Spotify is to where you have to use their ads, and they don't pay much, and they're going through all these different things. It's all about control. And I'm just here to say, the more we water down the definition of a podcast, now it's a newsletter. That is such crap. That is such absolute nonsense. It's idiotic. A podcast is not a newsletter, and we need to start pushing back, because the more blurry it gets, the more we're wasting our time doing talking about what a podcast is when we could be informing advertisers what a great deal it is to advertise in a podcast. And then we would have reports where people didn't have to go, I think this means this, because I don't know if they're doing this. No, the reports would be crystal clear, and we would know exactly what to do to enhance podcasting to make it better and what was working and what doesn't. And when everything's a podcast, you're like, well, wait a minute. This box of Kleenex is a podcast. All right, I'll shut up. All right. And to finally wrap this up, we're going to play a fun game called Is this a Country Song or a Pop song? Ready? This could easily be Def Leppard. I was running all the time. Right? That's off the. And yes, I know I'm breaking the rules here, but that's the number 19 hit from Spotify's Country Hits 2025. The song is called Things We Learn in a Bar. Where I was expecting it to sound like this. Right. Little lap steel, you know, this is weren't for the Wind by Elia Langley. And that to me sounds like a country song. And so if everybody sounds like Cody Koz, then all the pop guys, all the rock people are like, wow, they're playing rock on this station. Notes. New country. You change the definition and all of a sudden, what do you know? It's the most popular genre now. Why? Because you changed the definition of the genre and it doesn't sound like country anymore. Still not sure if you should join the school of podcasting. Listen to the latest message I got from one of my members.
- [20:28]
Mark Lawley
Hey, Dave, it's Mark Lawley at Practical Prepping. We're the prepping podcast with no bunkers, no zombies, and no alien invasions. Just practical prepping. Just wanted to tell you it's working. We're hitting over a thousand downloads in the first week. A couple of episodes have hit 1000 in the first two or three days. Most are around 1630 days, but a couple went over 2000 in less than 30 days. Just thought we'd let you see how your coaching is helping a middle aged couple with a little old podcast in North Alabama that started on a $30 Olympus single track digital recorder.
- [21:06]
Dave Jackson
Wow, thank you so much, Mark. And you've heard what I've helped Mark do. Let's see what you and I can do together. Go to schoolofpodcasting.com listener and join today. That's schoolofpodcasting.com listener. Okay, next subject, Netflix. People are all excited that some shows that are really, really popular are getting on Netflix, but Netflix is dictating how you can consume that subject. And to that I go, no, no, thank you. I mean, we learned that all from Spotify. I mean, they had the Joe Rogan experience call her Daddy, Armchair Expert, Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain, and various Spotify owned shows from Gimlet. Remember Gimlet? Yeah. And what's interesting about that is aside from, well, there's Joe Rogan, but Joe now has his stuff beyond Spotify. You can find him on YouTube and Apple. Same thing with Alex Cooper and Caller Daddy. And they're all, if you notice, they're not exclusive anymore. They're Spotify originals. And so this is where, being an old curmudgeon who has seen things over 20 years, I'm like, yeah, you don't want to do that. They separate you from your audience and then they get mad because your marketing efforts don't work. Why? Because the audience that's going to follow you. Follows you. And the rest don't. And big, large companies don't care when big money gets involved. They don't care about you. I'll give you a quick example. I live in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Browns are our American football team. And the previous owner, in the middle of the night, picked up the team and moved them to Baltimore. Years later, we got a new. We got our team kind of back. We've gone through a few owners in the latest one is horrendous. But the good news is Cleveland, which at one point in the 70s was a horrendous town, has really turned itself around. We have a stadium for our football team. We have an arena for our basketball team. We have a, you know, a diamond or whatever for our baseball team. And the city of Cleveland made a law that said you can't move the football team without our acknowledgment and approval. And the current owner wants to move about 20 minutes from where he is, which would cost the city millions in taxes and local businesses because it drives a lot of traffic downtown. But here's the thing. You got the you can't move the team law, called the Modell law because the old owner was Modell. And then where they want to build the land, coincidentally, the land is now owned by the billionaire owner. They said you can't put a stadium there because it's right next to an international airport. And you're like, well, between the you can't move the team law and, you know, you can't change the flight path at a international airport. Well, this guy's. No, there's no way he's going to get to move. Did I mention he's a billionaire? And, yeah, they're moving the team. So when big people get involved, they don't care many times about the audience. They don't care about really, it appears to be anything but making more millions. And so my favorite Spotify story was, I think it was 2025 when they brought in audiobooks into Spotify, even though there's no bookmarking tool, because, you know, why make it a good app, but you can listen to audiobooks. And when they brought those in, I'm not sure authors were really thrilled because we know how well Spotify pays the musicians. But once they brought them in, they then came up with a plan that allows you to bundle music and audiobooks. And when that happened, it enabled Spotify, who's not paying the musicians very much, to pay them even less. So I say this to say I am weary of when companies with billions of dollars and millions of dollars because they don't give a crap about you, they care about making money for stock owners. And I know that because I worked for a company that was, you know, open or whatever you call it. It's a public company and there were times when many bad decisions were made because they are not serving you the customer, they're serving their stock owners. So I say this about Netflix. If you are like, hey, I got to get on Netflix, that would be cool. A exclusive deals are crap. Unless I guess you're getting paid millions of dollars and you save and invest well, okay, but here's the thing that James Kridlin said that I was like, oh, we got to bring this up. James Cridlin again. Podnews.net if you're not subscribed to that newsletter and then I'm not supposed to give you my favorite show, that's next week's episode. But there's a really good chance that Podcast Weekly Review is going to be my favorite show for I think, the second year in a row. But here is James talking about Netflix.
- [26:51]
James Cridlin
Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership for top iHeart podcasts. IHeart continues to retain audio only rights and distribution, but the 14 announced shows will be removed from YouTube.
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Dave Jackson
And for me that's a bad idea. I don't want to be exclusive on anybody, but we know we always hear about video shows and things like that. James also mentioned this.
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James Cridlin
One of iHeart's biggest shows is also obviously missing stuff you should know doesn't currently make video versions of its podcast.
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Dave Jackson
So for all those people going, can you even be successful without having video? Yeah, apparently you can. But check this out.
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James Cridlin
How big is Netflix? Well, in 2023, Pod News built a tool using Netflix's own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to podcasts. Our own Pod News Weekly Review is bigger than 1 in 5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite only getting 26,500 downloads a month.
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Dave Jackson
And I'll be at PodFest in January cheering James on as he is inducted into the Podcaster hall of Fame. And congratulations on that. Well deserved some more things that may be hurting the podcasting space right after this. Ooh, now that's a good question. Oh, I do this every year and this might be the last year I do this. So if you want to get in, now's the time to do it. And that is, if you only had one podcast to listen to on an island, what would it be? If you can remember, please give me their website address so I can link to it. And then the big question is, why is it your favorite? And feel free to go as long as you want about the why, because that's really what we're trying to learn about. And then of course, don't forget to say a little bit about your show and, and your website address. I need this by December 26th. Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com? Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
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Show Announcer
The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [29:17]
Dave Jackson
One of my favorite interviews this year was from POD News Weekly Review, where my buddy again, James Kridlin, he interviewed the woman, Janine Wright, behind Inception Point. And if you're like, what's Inception Point? It's a company that uses AI to source and then voice thousands, thousands of episodes per week. And I know a lot of people complain about how it's hard to discover podcasts in, you know, different directories and stuff. They are flooding, they are adding litter. Just think of that. If podcasting is a street, they're coming by with thousands of bags of garbage and throwing it all over your neighborhood. So why is this bad? The one thing that podcasters need. Every year since I have started podcasting, you know what it is? More listeners. And now when we finally get Uncle Merv to try a podcast at Thanksgiving, the chances of him finding absolute garbage, worthless, zero value content is a lot greater than it was a year ago. That's bad. When you look at the technology that powers the actual podcast industry, things like Apple podcasts and the podcast index, this is more data that they have to store about shows that are absolutely worthless. There's one that is supposed to be about Sydney, Australia, and it is for about 50% of the episode. And then from what I'm told, it then switches and starts talking about Sydney Sweeney. Why? Because there's only about eight people at Inception Point AI and they admit, yeah, we don't listen to this stuff, or at least most of the stuff before we put it out. So they're littering, they're cluttering up the podcasting space. Now the other thing that's bad about this is I've said, and reports have come out over and over and over, true podcasting, because of the relationship we build with our audience, it outperforms everything. Say it with me. Everything. And the one thing that will drive the price of ads down if we don't hold tight is, is when you get that idiot that will take the low paying ads. Well, that Idiot is called Inception AI. It's basically spam in the podcasting space. How do we fix this? Adam Curry, co inventor of podcasting and co host of the no Agenda show, said this. Instead of this being a problem, why don't we just block as much as we can? And every single app that uses the index should market itself as slop free. If you want to listen to AI Slop, go use Spotify. And then the other thing that could be potentially bad. Look, I know I talk about advertisers, but look, there are times when advertisers, when they're treated like partners, it's a win, win, win for everyone. It's a win for the podcaster, it's a win for the audience, and it's a win for the advertiser. But in this case, when an audience finds a horrible podcast and they get greeted with with two to who knows how many ads before the show even starts, who's losing there? The advertiser. And so now they're like, well, we advertised on this show and they said they were great because the woman used to work at Wondry. She must know what she's doing. No, they're putting out spam. They're putting out horrible content, and your ads are not going to perform well there. Because the minute the podcast listener figures out this is AI Slop, if it's me, I can only talk about me, I'm tuning out. So it's gonna hurt discoverability, it's gonna hurt the directories, it's gonna hurt the technology, and it's gonna hurt the advertiser. We need to push back. If podcasting is a pool and we're all swimming in it, companies like this using this strategy of just dump out all this AI into the space. That space is us. That's our living room. That's our swimming pool, and we're in it, and the water's turning bright yellow and starting to stink, and everybody's going, hey, anybody else notice it's getting kind of warm in here. We need to kick them out of the pool. And I know you're like, but, Dave, that's censorship. Yeah, but here's the thing. We all need an audience. And when they come in and chase our audience away, we gotta do something or we all go away. So, again, I don't have all the answers. I just know we need to push back. And just to clarify, I'm not anti AI. Chris Stone from castahead.net was showing off some really cool stuff at a group coaching call we did at the school of podcasting. I've done some interesting things with SEO where you can have ChatGPT find the right kind of post you have on your website to link to your main. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff that AI can do. The one thing I wouldn't use it for is generating content unless it was an image. But actually having it write something first, I prefer. So this is one of those, hey, it's Dave's opinion. I like to write it and have AI kind of basically polish it a bit and keep my voice for me. If you think about it, AI is trained on the best stuff, that's a 10, and the worst stuff, that's a 1. And then if it gives you the average of that, that's a five. And so I'm not a big fan of having it generate stuff, but that all depends on who's going to be reading it. But if it's your audience, I would start with you and then let ChatGPT keep your voice and buff it up. But there's some really cool things you can do with AI. I just know I was approached by a company and their whole thing was, you don't even have to talk. You can just basically type in an idea. You know, type in two sentences. It'll write a script. AI will read it, it will publish. It's your media host. And I'm just like, I don't want any part of that.
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Show Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:57]
Dave Jackson
Another thing that is hurting the podcasting, and this is just a case of you don't know what you don't know, or in some cases, you're asking the wrong person, you're asking your web hosting person a podcasting question. And in the same way you wouldn't ask me a JavaScript question, I don't work in that. I'm a podcast guy, so. And that is people are submitting their shows multiple times to Apple Podcasts and all the other apps. So again, this creates a discovery problem. It also makes it harder for you to rank in the charts because Instead of having one listing, that is 500 subscribers, you've got two listings and both of them have 250. And that can affect your ranking in the charts because now we're talking followers. And why is this? This is because people don't understand how podcasting works. And I might actually do a webinar on this in January. But in a nutshell, when you move from one host to another. So let's say you're just tired of your media host and they aren't putting out any new features, and you want to move to Captivate or Transistor or Buzzsprout or whoever, anybody but Spotify. And you take your feed, you import it into the new host. We'll just say it's Captivate. What you want to do is, is redirect your old feed to point at your new one. It's kind of a change of address. You know, you drive by a small business and it says, hey, we've moved. We're now on South Howard street at 4:56. Stop by and say, hi. It's a change of address. And that's fine. And when you do that, one of the things that sees that change of address is Apple Podcast. And they update your listing to keep looking at the new source of your content. But people don't realize that. And what they do is they go, oh, well, at the old company, I went in, I clicked a couple boxes, and it submitted to Apple and Spotify for me. So on the new company, I click a couple boxes and it submits to Apple and Spotify for you. And from Dave Jones, who runs podcastindex.org, he said, There are times when there will be a show with seven different listings. And this is just. You don't know what you don't know. So I have a blog post I put on my website on how to move from one host to the next. But that, again, is costing you money in many cases. It's hurting your discovery, it's hurting your rankings, and it's not that you are stupid, you're uneducated. And there is a difference there, by the way. And it's also then hurting these directories that they have to host multiple versions of your show. And it just is confusing. So here's how you can test to see, have I done that? Go to Apple Podcasts and search for your show and see if it shows up more than once. If it does, figure out which one has the most reviews and then hide the other one.
- [39:05]
Show Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:06]
Dave Jackson
And this one, I don't know if it's hurting the podcasting space, but it does hurt you, and that is you came up with a show for your name and didn't take time to see, hey, is anybody else using this? My favorite is the title Thinking Outside the box, which over 20 shows have the title Thinking Outside the Box, which shows that they were not thinking outside the box. So you want to go to Google, you want to go to Apple, you want to go to Spotify and search for your show, and if the name has already existed, check to see are they currently making episodes. And if they're not, you might want to try to contact them and say, hey, would you like to sell me your domain and your name? And you take it over. So you're not really even starting from zero, but that is something that, again, it's just causing hassles and confusion in the podcasting space.
- [39:55]
Show Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [40:01]
Dave Jackson
Oh, where am I going to be? January 15th through the 18th in Orlando, Florida, I'll be speaking at the PodFest Multimedia Expo. Then February 17th through the 20th in Nashville, Tennessee, I'll be speaking at the NRB 2026 International Christian Media Convention. For more information, go to schoolofpodcasting.com where.
- [40:29]
Show Announcer
The school of podcasting.
- [40:32]
Dave Jackson
Well, what do I predict for 2026? I think we're gonna see more podcasters who are tired of taking this $3 per 1,000 downloads, better known as CPM. I think they're gonna get tired of that and just switch to premium podcasts. We've had this forever. There's Patreon. I like Supercast. And the reason I say this is is if you gave me $5, and right now, $5 won't even buy you a Happy Meal. Five is like the new $1 bill. And if you gave me $5, that would be the same if I was really, really good of getting a thousand downloads. So the question is, what's easier getting a thousand downloads or getting one person to give you $5 a month? It's been kind of fun because Sam and James over at Pod News Weekly Review, they use Buzzsprout. This is also available from Captivate. You know, again, you could use super cash. You don't have to use this from your media host. But they just threw it out there like, hey, if you'd like to support us, you know, buy us a beer, whatever you want to call it. And I think the last time they talked about it, they're up to close to 25 people. 25 people. And I think they're giving them. You can give them 3, 5, 7. I think you can even name your own price. But just because I hear so many people saying, I wish I could just cover the cost of hosting. Well, I think if you put it out there and you ask, but that requires confidence that you're delivering value. But to me, I think we're gonna see people do that where they're like, hey, if you'd like to support the show, and they're not going to get a ton, you know, you might get 1%. In my book, I talk about how the people that were really crushing it were getting 3%. But I can see people saying, look, this advertising where I'm making $1.17 isn't cutting it. Let's see if we can get one person to give us five. Let's see if we can get one person to give us 10 or whatever it is. I think that's going to be a monetization strategy that I think more people are going to try. I think another thing, and I've kind of explained why, but I think we're going to see AI slop. Not AI. AI slop as in horrible, worthless content I pray is going to get pushed back. I think we should all just boycott it. Just get it out of here. And I know somebody's gonna say, but this is great for someone who was hurt in a motorcycle accident. They had half their jaw ripped out of their head and they can't talk anymore. Now this person. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the person that can't talk and is using, you know, 11 labs to. No, that's not what I'm talking about. Just crappy content created only for monetization and no real value to the audience. I'm hoping, I have faith in the podcasting space that that will cause enough problems for everybody that we all collectively just flush it down to the drain. I think we're gonna see some podcast related companies merge. There's just some weird stuff going on. Companies doing things that really make zero sense. And there's just a part of me that goes, I think they're trying to thin themselves down to make them look more attractive for a potential purchase. So I'm watching a couple companies and I just think we're gonna see that happen. I think we're gonna see 20% of people that try YouTube decide this isn't for me. And I think that's because people expect faster growth. I think they expect it just to be, we're all looking for that 10,000 download kind of switch. And I think they will realize that audio is easier. Audio has a much better completion percentage. So for me, YouTube is kind of mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to actual people consuming your content. And call me weird, I'm kind of offended that my content may not even be clicked unless I have some sort of clickbaity title. And me looking surprised. It almost doesn't matter if your content is good now. It does because you have to hook them in the first 30 seconds. But I think we're going to see a number of podcasters say, yeah, this isn't for me. I tried it and they're going to come back now. I also think probably 20% of those podcasters, another 20 will try it and actually have some success because they'll study the algorithm and they'll study thumbnails, and they'll do all the extra steps it takes to make it on YouTube. But I think we are going to see some say, yeah, this isn't for me, and this one isn't really a prediction. It's more of something I want to see. And that is, I want to see a resurgence in creativity. I want to see people getting outside of their comfort zones. I want to see people break the format a bit. And it's not just a chat show. It's not just a interview show. It's not just this. Everybody's kind of doing the same thing. I miss the days when people are being really wacky on their show, and I kind of hope that we break the cycle with true crime. That was the last genre to really take off, and it's really kind of held the crown. And I'd like to see something else step up and be way different. I would love to see something way different without being stupid. I listened to a show the other day that is apparently very popular, and I'm here to tell you, the first two minutes, I had no idea what they're talking about. It was just endless chatter and laughing and inside jokes. I'm tired of that. I want to see somebody be professional, but also be super creative. The only thing I saw creative that I was like, huh? Was Amy Poehler's show where she calls the friend of one of the interviewees and asks them, what should I ask the interviewee? And I know. I think she's up for a Golden Globe. And that whole nine yards now, to me especially, her first episodes were not great, which I was kind of surprised because she's been podcasting not in this format, but in a while. And her first episodes really reeked of, ooh, I should have probably practiced more. I should have done my homework if I realized people were actually going to listen to me. But then again, everybody hates their first episode. So that show is called Good Hang with Amy Poehler. And that was one of the few things that I was like, oh, I've never heard somebody do that before. And it really wasn't that crazy. So I'm hoping to see some people do, you know, again, going back to that phrase, thinking outside the box. Because the beautiful thing of podcasting is you can do whatever you want. If you want to do a three minute opening about a weird superintendent who keeps trying to ruin Christmas with a yeah, you can do that, it's yours. Some of it's good, some of it maybe not so good. But if you need help with your podcast and you're like, dave, I don't have a podcast. Well, then you need to launch, I can help you with that. Like, dave, I've got an idea. Okay, well, I can help you plan that. Great. Okay, well, I've got mine planned. Okay, I can help you launch it. Launching is so easy. People really overthink that one and then you need to grow it. Well, let's go back to the launch. Let's take a listen to that. Because your content's what's going to help you grow. But we got other things we can look into and we got members of the school of podcasting that have tried a lot of things and you can learn, learn from their mistakes and you can learn and watch their success. It's all there. Out@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up. And that could be for a monthly, it could be for quarterly. A lot of the people doing the quarterly thing, I like that, that's cool because you do save over the monthly and if you got the budget, do the yearly thing and then you save a ton and that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. I'm Dave Jackson. I've been podcasting for 20 years. I love to help podcasters. It's really what I do and I can't wait to see what we do together. And until next week, where we will be talking about your favorite podcast and why, if you haven't answered it yet, schoolofpodcasting.com? i need it by the 26th of December. And we will be learning together what makes a good podcast because we're going to really be digging into the why. And of course we'll be putting the links to your website on my website. Thank you so much for listening. Have a Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanzaa, Massica. Whatever you're celebrating, I'm hoping you're taking time to hang out with your family, your friends and make those memories that are absolutely just tattooed to your forehead that you will remember from years to come. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend. Right now. Hey, no real bloopers today, but just a little behind the scenes. If you thought this episode sounded a little. With some weird edits or you thought maybe my voice sounded a little weird, that's because I started recording this about one o', clock, had to run and do some stuff, had to go and sing tonight at a concert, and I ended up recording this. I think. I think I'm on four, maybe. Definitely three. And some of it was good, some of it wasn't good. And so if you're like, man, he just rambled on. But I did. I had poked. I poked. This sounds weird. I poked my own bear. Usually when people say you poked the bear, it's like, no, no. I guess in this case, that article poked the bear. And the first crack at that, I went on for like, 45 minutes. I was like, I'm not even to the other subjects yet. So I was like, we got to do that again. Get some bullet points. What am I really trying to say? And so I did cut that down. But if you heard some edits, like, what's going on with Dave's voice? That was what was going on with Dave's voice. And it's pretty raspy right now. I gave it all I had in the choir tonight. And again, I wish you a merry Christmas. And if you're looking for something else to listen to, check out the website, powerofpodcasting.com.
- [51:54]
Show Announcer
Yeah.