← The Abigail Peugh Podcast
The Abigail Peugh Podcast
56. 90K Downloads in One Year?! Here’s How I Used My Podcast to Sell More Digital Products
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You're listening to an episode of the Abigail Pugh Podcast with, you guessed it, Abigail Pugh. I'm an introverted mama who took my online business from zero to seven figures in 15 months, selling my own digital.
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Products on social media.
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And guess what? I did it all with my 3 year old daughter no less than 3ft.
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Away from me at all times.
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Now I'm bringing you everything I've learned about building a wildly profitable online business that supports your life while allowing you.
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To truly live it.
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Get ready for raw, honest conversations with entrepreneurs making thousands per month selling their own digital products and people just like you who ditch self doubt to create the life they've always wanted. If you're ready to make more money, have more impact, and still have time for the things that matter most, you're in the right place.
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Grab your sneakers, head out on your.
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Hot girl walk, and let's dive in.
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So it's officially been one year since I launched my podcast and today I'm sharing everything from my experience, what worked, what didn't, and whether it's actually helped me sell more digital products, and whether or not I think it's worth it for you, my lovely listeners, to start your own podcast and shout out to all of you that have been listening since day one. Your support truly means the world to me. Podcasting isn't like a social media platform where you are getting that feedback from comments or story DMs, so it's been hard to gauge what people are loving or not. So again, your DMs, your reviews of the podcast, and even y'all that are telling your friends about my podcast, you don't even know how much it means to me. So first off, let's talk about why I even started a podcast. Now, if you know me, you know that I am a firm believer in starting with one platform first and nailing that platform. Like knowing exactly what you're doing. Your strategy is working. You've got it under wraps, right? So what I did first was Instagram. Well, if you've actually been here for a while, you know that I actually started over on TikTok, but I was there for, I want to say, five or six months. And then I came over to Instagram and now Instagram is my ride or die platform, right? So I spent around two years, I think, I think it's exactly two years, honestly, but I spent a good amount of time growing my Instagram and getting very comfortable on the platform. And then Threads came out and I feel like Threads is kind of an extension of Instagram. And I mainly use threads for, you know, just like, getting my thoughts out there and just having fun. Fun. I love to test things over on threads and then if something like maybe pops off or people really seem to resonate with it, I will bring it over here to Instagram. But all that to say I really had my Instagram strategy nailed down. And then it felt like it was time to kind of decide what is the platform that I can continue to grow my audience on next, right? And I tried YouTube before, and it was just. It was way too much for me. It was overwhelming to have, like, the video and the audio, but I knew I wanted a longer form platform. Like, I wanted something where I could yap a little bit more and connect with people on a deeper level. And so I knew YouTube wasn't for me and wasn't going to work for me in this time of life. Right. And I still 100% stand behind that decision. Doesn't mean I won't ever do YouTube, because I see the value in it. But for me, definitely it's. It's not it for me right now. But podcasting sounded amazing, right? Like, I listen to podcasts all the time. I love them. I love that I can, like, listen to them on the run. And I. I go through, like, phases of being, like, hyper obsessed with one podcast at a time. And I listen to, like, every single podcast they have. But that's kind of what helped me make the decision, like, okay, I want to start a podcast. Like, let's do it. And I'm not going to lie, when I first started, I didn't necessarily have this, like, perfect outline of what I was going to do with my podcast. I really just wanted to kind of dive in headfirst, start messy, which is what I always teach people to do. Right? Instead of sitting there and overthinking your plan, just go for it and start and dive in, even if you don't know exactly what you're going to do. But my plan from the beginning with this podcast was basically to connect with people more and also just be able to talk more with you guys about certain subjects, because you know how it is. Like, on Instagram, there's only so long on a reel I can talk and really get my point across. And so with the podcast, I am able to yap even longer about things that I love and that I know you guys want more information on. Right. Something else that I kind of decided in the first year with this podcast was I wasn't necessarily going to Monetize the podcast super strategically, right? Like, I knew I didn't want to have a ton of sponsorships, and I knew that I didn't want it to be, like, so strategic right in the beginning because I wanted to have some trial and error. I really just wanted to try everything, right, see what I enjoyed, see what my listeners enjoyed, and kind of just get into a rhythm without this pressure to have, like, year one be super strategic and, like, super huge roi, which we'll get to that a little bit later. So I did guest interviews. I brought on some incredible people onto my podcast that, you know, like, to this day, I'm so honored that they chose to be on my podcast. And I also brought in some students of mine and people that were successful digital products. And again, just, like, so grateful that they wanted to come on the show and just yap about digital products and yap about their journey. But basically, I wanted to try everything in podcast, everything that you could try in the world of podcasting in that first year. And while I absolutely loved this last year of podcasting, going into year two, I want to do things slightly differently based on the data from this last year of podcasting. But before we dive into all that, I just want to say that I was scared out of my mind to start this podcast, and I was really scared that I wouldn't be able to be consistent every week and that people wouldn't listen. Like, I. I feel like I was, like, so nervous that it would just be this huge flop, right? I literally almost shut down the whole thing and canceled the whole podcast launch because I got so nervous that I couldn't do something consistently, but I did it. And now, after a year of podcasting, I have 57 podcast episodes and over 90,000 downloads, which feels insanely wild to even say. And I actually thought it would be really fun to share three of my favorite episodes that I recorded in the past year, which kind of feels like picking a favorite child, but I'm going to do the best I can. So probably my favorite number one episode to listen to and to record was episode two, where I got to interview my husband, Trevor, and I've actually been thinking of bringing him back for another episode because it feels like our life has changed so much in the past year, or two years even, and we have really gotten into such a good rhythm of him being, like, the default parent while I run this business, right? Like, I am the sole breadwinner of our family. And I feel like this past year we got into such a good rhythm and it was a very different dynamic for us. Like, this has never been how it's been for us. So we've just really enjoyed it and worked through a lot of changes as a couple. So I think it'd be really fun to have him back on. But episode two, such a good one. I love listening to his voice. He's such a guy. I love him. But my second favorite episode was episode 23. And not only did I love the title that I came up with for it, but this guest journey with digital products was just so freaking cool with a topic that I feel like a lot of people think is boring. So the title was Sewing her way to 838,000. Yeah, you heard that right. Instagram followers in less than a year. And you'll just have to listen to that episode to know what it's about. Episode 23, I'll link it down below for you. I'll actually link all three of these down below for you. Okay, now for my third favorite episode, it was episode 43. And this one is where I interviewed one of my friends on trial reels. And this episode, it's so funny, when trial reels first came out, people didn't really like them. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't really like them either. I was mad that they came out. And another feature that I felt like was useless for Instagram, like, I was just, like, frustrated with them for coming out with something else. But then I saw my friend talking about trial reels and the success she was seeing with them and her students were seeing with them. So I very quickly, it was like, I think it was a Sunday night or maybe a Saturday night. And I messaged her and said, oh my gosh, I have to have you on my podcast. Like, this is such a relevant thing. So I think we recorded on Monday and it went live Tuesday or something like that. Like, it was a very fast turnaround time because it was such a relevant topic and not a lot of people had figured it out yet. So that was like the first time or the first episode that I felt like I was able to jump on something super relevant and take advantage of that for the podcast episode. And to this day, that episode is still one of my best episodes yet when it comes to downloads and how many people have listened to it. So I know it worked. I know it worked jumping on something relevant. And I was just so grateful that my friend was so willing to record with such, like a last minute notice and kind of just jump on a subject that people were desperate to Learn about. Okay, so like I said, those were probably my top three episodes. It was so hard to choose. There's so many good ones. I just looked back and I, like, forgot about some of the episodes that I had recorded. It's crazy. 57 episodes. But now let's dive into some areas that I use my podcast to make more digital product sales. So the first thing I tried out. Gosh, why did I say that so slowly? Oh, my gosh. Sometimes you say something on a podcast and you're like, why did I. Why did I say it like that? But I digress. The first thing I tried out with my podcast was using a podcast episode to launch a digital product, which I thought was so much fun. And obviously it was the first time I had ever done it. It was basically all trial and error. But I remember I launched. I can't remember which product it was, but I launched one of my products on a Tuesday morning, and the first email or the first story, I can't remember which one it was, didn't go out until like 9am but my podcast got uploaded super early in the morning. Like, I think it was like 3am that it went live. So people had listened to the podcast episode and bought the digital product before it had even gone live, which I thought was so fun and cool and exciting to basically have a new way to reach people in your launches. And the reach people that are like your ride or dies. Cause I'm finding out very quickly that people who listen to my podcast, they are my ride or dies, right? And then we also did something where we migrated over to a new platform. I wish I had launched my podcast originally with them, but whatever it is what it is, you live and you learn. We switched to a new platform called Captivate. And something that was really cool with Captivate is that you can have, you know, advertisements or you talking about your own product that's launching, and maybe it's a launch that when the launch is over, the product is no longer available. So with this new platform, Captivate, you're able to have what's called dynamic ads. So with dynamic ads, I'm able to add in an ad or add in like a little blurb about me talking about my offer into an episode. But then when I'm done launching that product, or maybe the deal I mentioned has gone away, I can remove that little blurb and not have it be in there anymore. So I thought that was so cool and I need to definitely utilize that feature more in 2025. But just having a place to Talk about your products in another way and talk about them to people that are already your ride or dies was so much fun. And believe me, when I say this, in 2025, I'm going to utilize it so much more because I only utilized it a few times because it felt a little nerve wracking to try something new. But I'm super excited to use it more in 2025. Also, this is kind of random, but I got this question after last week's episode and someone asked me how I was getting people to listen to my podcast episodes. So for me personally, I knew I didn't want to create the podcast clip reels because I don't really enjoy those, right? Unless there are. There are some that are like super clickbaity, that are in like, the world of like, celebrities and those like, I know those work, but I don't know. For me, I didn't want to just do the podcast clips. I don't really enjoy those. So my kind of marketing plan each week for sharing the podcast and reminding people to listen was one carousel or reel that leaned into storytelling, right? And then one Instagram story. Again, leaning into storytelling, not just showing up and saying, here's my podcast episode. Listen to it. No, like taking them along through a story and making them feel seen and heard. And then at the end having this, like, level of intrigue so that people wanted to listen to the episode. And then two emails to my email list per week sharing about the episode. So I always did one, like, longer email talking about what was in it, yada, yada, who I was interviewing. And then one short and sweet email a little bit later in the week just basically saying, hey, did you forget to listen? If you did, here's the, here's the episode. And I found that those ones definitely took a little bit longer for people. But I do feel like the reminder email was super helpful because even for me, sometimes my favorite podcast will come out with a new episode and I'll be like, oh, I need to listen to that later. And then I forget. So getting a little email reminder, just be like, hey, don't forget to go listen to that was super helpful for me. So I started doing that as well. And another thing is we actually use the transcripts from my episodes to help me write those emails. So we plug the transcripts into good old chatgpt. I have like a trained GPT on my voice and what I sound like and words I like and words I don't like inside of ChatGPT, and we will plug those transcripts in and I'll say, hey, write me two emails. Write me a slightly longer one that talks a little bit about what's included in the episode, and then write me a short and sweet one. And so kind of just having the outline of those episodes is super helpful. And then of course, I go in and I add my personality to them. I never Advise copying from ChatGPT exactly, especially if it doesn't sound like you. You want to add your personality back in. But that was super helpful just to have those emails ready and use the transcripts that I'd already poured all that time and energy into. So that all seemed to work really well. But in 2025, I'm also really trying to be a guest on other people's podcasts as well as a way of kind of getting myself out there more and letting people know that my podcast exists, right? Because I have found that in the last year, retention of my listeners already has been pretty good. But now I'm like, okay, I want more eyes on this podcast. Especially now in year two, as I'm like diving into it even more, I want more people listening to the podcast, right? So those were a lot of the things that I loved about starting a podcast and kind of the wins and the things that worked. And you guys know that I love taking you along for the ride, sharing all the wins. Yes, I had over 90,000 downloads in the first year and it was wild, right? Yes, I use some podcast episodes to help me launch a product and make more digital product sales. But there's a lot of behind the scenes that goes into launching a podcast and maintaining it. And I don't think that is really talked about enough. And for me, luckily I do have a podcast editor manager to kind of help me with all of that. Because if I had to be in charge of editing these podcasts, there would be no new ones. Editing is just not something that I have capacity for. But I kind of didn't realize the time commitment that it involved. Just for recording episodes and having a quiet place, like I have a co working space for recording where they have a podcasting studio, right? And I can go there. But this past year I really realized, like, it takes a lot of time to do that. I mean, it's a 45 minute drive there and then I record and have to drive 45 minutes home. And that's time that I'm missing out on my family, right? And I don't want that. Like the whole point of this job is to get more time with my family, so. Or the whole point of this business as an overall thing. And so I've actually been recording most of my episodes in my closet at home so that it's just less of a time commitment for me. Someday I would love to have like a recording studio in our house. Now, we don't currently have one or have room for one right now, but I have also found that it's been hard for me to do the solo episodes because they take a lot more prep for my brain and I'm kind of a perfectionist. I want them to flow. I don't want to just ramble for hours on end. So I like to do an outline before kind of bullet point what I want to say throughout the whole episode. Whereas with an interview style podcast, like, I have my intro ready for the person, I've obviously done my research, I read up on them, and a lot of the people I'm interviewing, I already know them before I'm interviewing them. But if I don't know them super well, like, of course I do my homework, but I don't have some script or outline with all these questions in front of me. I really like to just let the conversation flow. And because of that, guest episodes don't take as much time for me to prep them. Right. So overall, it was just a little bit more difficult than I thought it would be to kind of fall into the rhythm of recording, especially solo episodes. I mean, I'm recording this on a Sunday and it's going live on Tuesday. Luckily, my editor is amazing and always, I always try and give her as much time as possible, but it's just been something that I've really had to learn how to be super disciplined about. And it's hard for my brain, especially because podcasting, to me, like, you have to bring the energy and you have to be excited about what you're saying. And there are some days where I don't have that energy. And so with podcasting, like, you can't get through a podcast the same way you can get through a reel if you're having like a rough day. So there's just like a lot of things that I, I wasn't like mentally prepared for when it came to launching and having a podcast, having something where it's like a weekly thing that I, I get, I'm going to say I get to do because I am so honored to do this and I love it. But before I go into kind of what I'm going to do differently on my podcast in 2025, I want to speak to those of you that are like, oh, my gosh, I want to start a podcast. How did you start? What did you do? What do I need? I know we talked about this a little bit on the last episode with Adam, but I kind of wanted to share from my experiences and from my point of view after a year of podcasting. So first thing I will say is that if you can afford it, if you can save up and hire a launch manager a hundred percent. It was some of the best money I have ever spent. Because you only launch a podcast one time, right? So to me, I didn't want to spend all this time learning how to launch something that I was only ever going to launch once. It didn't feel like a good use of my time to spend all this time learning it and then just do it once, right? Because once you launch your podcast, you don't have to launch it again. It's different from a digital product, where if you launch a digital product once, like, you're most likely going to launch another one. So it's good for you to learn the process and learn how to launch. Right? But podcasting is so different. So I ended up hiring a launch manager. Her name is Jill. I'll tag her below. She was, like I said, some of the biggest, best money I've ever spent. I should say, hiring her was some of the best money I've ever spent. She gave me outlines for when things had to be ready. She helped me with the strategy. She told me which episodes I needed. I kind of had, like, an idea of what I wanted to launch my podcast with. So we launched with four episodes, right? And she kind of led me through what she thought those should be. So we had a trailer and then a few episodes that all went live at once. So I did kind of like, my story or my journey for one episode, the interview with my husband for the second one, and then we did an interview with one of my students. And I wouldn't have known what was typical for people to launch in the beginning of those episodes. And I really wanted to have some variety there for when I first launched it, because when people launch podcasts, they will often do a few at a time for people to kind of just get a taste of what is to come. And I felt like it was so incredibly helpful having someone who knew all of this in my back pocket during the launch. And she did a lot of it, too. Like, I did not upload my photo, like, my podcast photo. I did not upload my trailer like, any of those things. She did all of that she. She even had, like, a designer who helped me design my podcast image, which was just so incredibly helpful and something that I didn't have to make a decision about because there's so many things that you have to decide on with launching a podcast. It was so helpful to have her there. And. And fun fact, my podcast actually hit number 37 on the charts with just the trailer, which was wild. And I am just forever grateful to Jill for helping me launch it. And then after the launch, I ended up paying to have my VA go through podcast editing school trainings. I don't know what you call them. I bought a course for her to go through and learn how to be my podcast editor so that she could do my editing for me because she wanted that task. Right? Like, she wanted more on her plate. She had told me previously, like, hey, I want to do more in your business. Like, I want to be more involved. So I said, great, let's. Let's give you this. Does this sound like something that you want to do? And she was like, yes. She has small kids, so editing is something that she can do kind of while they're sleeping. So I paid for her to train and learn how to edit everything. So having someone edit my podcast every week, like, after the launch is, again, some of the best money I've ever spent. Because editing and, like, listening to myself over and over again, I knew that I would second guess everything I said and I would just feel annoyed with myself and irritated listening to myself talk so much. So having somebody else edit my podcast has been amazing, and I would highly, highly recommend you doing that as well if you do decide to launch a podcast. And then the other thing that I've really tried to do is just not just do educational only podcasts and really just share things that are going on. Yes. In my business and, like, document the journey as well. But also adding in a little bit of my life and having it be business focused. Yes, obviously. But letting my personality shine through too. Right. Like, I listen to a lot of podcasts where the person is, like, the only thing they talk about is their business. And I always leave those types of shows or episodes kind of wanting to know more about the person. Like, especially if they're solo episodes, it's a little bit different. If it's like interview only podcasts, like, that's kind of a whole different thing. But if you're using a podcast to grow your audience or to nurture your audience, they're going to want to know a little bit about you personally. So add that into your podcast. And I'm not saying that I show up here and share everything about my life, right? But I do feel like I've done a good job of kind of sharing my life through the lens of my business so that people are able to get to know me a little bit more, too. And podcasting. With podcasting, you're able to talk a little bit more, right? And add in those fun little pieces of your life that they would want to hear about. And it's been a lot of fun. And it's just made the episodes a lot more fun, too, where I am not just kind of like, put into this business box. And that's the only thing I can do. I can share personal things. I can interview my husband on a podcast. I can have my sister, who is also my VA that I mentioned earlier, my podcast manager, editor, come on and interview me and have some fun with her. Right? So don't be afraid to have some fun on your podcast and let your personality shine through. Now, the other thing I will say that worked really well for me is releasing one episode per week on Tuesdays. I knew I didn't want to do more because I didn't have the capacity for that, but I do feel like I've. I had stopped at any point, I might not have ever started again. So having that, like, weekly, you know, I don't even want to call it a goal. It was kind of like my brain is like, no, you do this hell or high water. This happens every single week, so you need to have one ready. Um, that was just really helpful for me to know. And I don't feel. Some weeks I feel a little overwhelmed, but usually one episode per week works great for me. And I chose Tuesdays because it just felt like it was still the beginning of the week. But Mondays are, like, overwhelming for a lot of people, and they're like, ugh, going back into the work week. So Tuesdays just felt the most natural for me, and I'm still going to continue dropping my episodes on Tuesday. So, okay, now it feels like I've literally been yapping forever, but let's talk about what is next for my podcast. Now, don't worry, it's not going anywhere. But in this next year, I feel like I really want to be more strategic with my podcast now that I have a year of trial and error under my belt and really lean more into solo episodes just like this one. So this doesn't mean I won't ever do interviews again, but there's a few new style of interviews that I will be doing soon that I am so excited for, and I think you will be too. I've actually gotten a lot of feedback on my solo episodes, and I'm doing what I teach my students to do. I'm leaning into what people are saying they want more of, and I'm going to have fun with it. I'm going to just run with it. So I hope you listen to today's episode while you are on your hot girl walk. I am off to get four to five miles in for the day and then do more later. But I hope you enjoyed this episode today and I will see you next week.
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Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. If you learned anything from this episode, I would love it if you could share it over on your Instagram stories and tag me Abigail Pugh until next time.
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Love you, mean it.