How Scott Porch helps podcasters grow and monetize their audiences

He helps podcasters launch on YouTube and also connects them to large advertising networks.

2024 was a big year for the podcast industry. Several podcast personalities signed huge nine-figure deals, and the medium wielded significant influence in the US presidential election. These days it’s impossible to open YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram without coming across podcast clips, and the market is still poised for significant growth in the coming years.

But if you run a small-to-mid-sized podcast, it’s still incredibly difficult to make a living from your work. You need to join an advertising network to generate significant revenue, and most networks won’t accept you unless you meet a minimum audience threshold.

To deal with these challenges, many podcasters turn to Scott Porch. Scott runs Big IP, a podcast management company that helps podcasters grow their audiences and monetize their content. In a recent interview, he explained how he chooses which podcasters to work with, what value he brings to the relationship, and why he’s bullish on paid subscriptions for podcasts.

You can watch the interview in the video embedded below:

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This interview was actually part of my live Office Hours series. Every month, I invite my audience to join a Zoom call and participate in the interview. As you’ll see, my guests regularly piped in with their own questions and insights.

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Transcript

2024 was a big year for the podcast industry. Not only were there several huge deals signed, but podcasts wielded significant influence in the U.S. presidential election. These days it's impossible to open YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram without coming across podcast clips, and the market is still poised for significant growth in the coming years.

0:18

But if you run a small to mid-sized podcast, it's still incredibly difficult to make a living from your work. You need to join an advertising network to generate significant revenue, and most networks won't accept you unless you meet a minimum audience threshold. To deal with these challenges, many podcasters turn to Scott Porch. Scott runs Big IP,

0:36

a podcast management company that helps podcasters grow their audiences and monetize their content. In a recent interview, he explained how he chooses which podcasters to work with, what value he brings to the relationship, and why he's bullish on paid subscriptions for podcasts. Hello, I'm Simon Owens, and this is The Business of Content,

0:53

the show about how publishers create, distribute, and monetize their digital content. If you want to listen to an audio version of this interview, subscribe to The Business of Content wherever you get your podcasts. This interview was actually part of my live office hours series.

1:06

Every month, I invite my audience to join a Zoom call and participate in the interview. As you'll see, my guests regularly piped in with their own questions and insights. There's only one way to join these calls, and it's by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack newsletter. Subscribers get to book a half-hour introductory phone call with me.

1:22

They also get access to exclusive interviews with some of the world's most successful media entrepreneurs. Subscribe at simonowens.substack.com. That's simonowens.substack.com. Or just Google the word Simon Owens and newsletter. Okay, let's jump into the interview. And yeah, okay, let's jump into it. So the person I have on this week is Scott Porch.

1:43

Scott runs a company called Big IP. And the way that I would describe you is basically like a podcast manager. You're kind of like a catch-all. You work with podcasters. almost as like an agent slash manager who helps them with monetization, helps them grow their audiences. And we'll talk about what all that entails going into it.

2:05

But just to kind of start with, to just figure out how you got into this and how you built your business, tell me a little bit about what you were doing before this. Because you came into the podcast industry completely sideways. You spent the whole beginning of your career as a lawyer, right? Correct. So, I mean,

2:22

my education is both as a journalist and then I went to law school and I've kind of gone back and forth between the two. You know, when I was an undergrad and when I was in graduate school, I was a sports reporter for a couple of different scripts, now Gannett newspapers,

2:39

and really all I ever wanted to be was a sports reporter. Yeah. And I wound up going to law school and have dipped back and forth between writing and practicing law for the last 20 years. And as I was writing, I don't know, maybe seven or eight years ago. So just to back up.

2:57

So like you were you were like a sports reporter right prior before you went to law school. Right. Correct. Yeah. So then you went to law school and then you went into law and it was like it wasn't even entertainment law. It was just like like you were working for like insurance companies. Correct.

3:11

Yeah, I was like an insurance lawyer. And I would do this like freelance stuff like home magazines or, you know, book reviews, or I was always writing a little bit on the side. And I don't know. And for like really big publications like the New York Times and the Daily Beast and stuff like that. Yes.

3:31

So that's what was like six or eight years ago. I stopped practicing altogether to write full time. I was selling a lot of freelance work. And so I was writing about the TV and media business for the New York times and decider and fast company and wired and, you know, lots of magazines and, and getting lots of,

3:50

uh, reps and lots of experience and lots of contacts, not really making that much money. Uh, But I kind of fell backwards into a relationship with Starburns Audio because I had been writing some about the podcast business and I was producing a couple of shows for Himalaya Media,

4:12

which was a now defunct startup that Starburns Audio in L.A., which was Dan Harmon's sort of the podcast arm of, of Dan Harmon's production company and started producing a couple of shows for them because. So like, I just want to make sure I get this. I understand this correctly.

4:30

So you were, you were writing journal, you were doing journalism pieces. You were, you were covering entertainment. And I think you like wrote about the pod, like your entry was, you started writing about the podcast industry because like there was like this whole ecosystem of like game of Thrones podcasts and stuff like that.

4:44

You were writing about game of Thrones and, And that led you to writing about podcasts, right? And then you said that you got connected to someone at Himalayan Media, which was just like a few years ago. I think they had like some $100 million investment. I don't even know if they're still around. They're not. What did they?

5:01

You're still a huge Chinese company, but they're not here anymore. So how did you writing a little bit about the podcast industry as a freelancer then lead to you, while you're still an insurance lawyer, doing moonlining work for Himalayan Media? How did you get into that, and what were you specifically doing for them?

5:24

So it was just this bouncing ball of... I wrote this long piece for the New York Times about sort of the TV review media ecosystem of YouTube channels like New Rockstars and podcasts like The Ringers podcasts that are covering film and TV. And I wrote this long story about that.

5:49

And I was writing other stories, and I wrote a story about one of the executives that... I wrote about when he was at CastBox before he was at Himalaya. And then when he went to Himalaya, he called me about, you know, it's just this bouncing ball.

6:04

And I started getting more interested in sort of the podcast side of the business as it related to film and television, which was really emerging at that time. This was 2017, 2018. And so I started, you know, I produced a show with Hugh Atchison, who was a big James Beard award winning chef and published, you know,

6:27

you know, kept writing about the business while I was doing some of these podcasts. But I met. So like so like this guy at Himalaya, he's like, oh, how about you come work for me? You could produce shows. What does that mean? You were producing shows. I didn't know what it meant.

6:40

I just knew, I knew media and I knew entertainment because I wrote a lot about it. I mean, I was writing, you know, for the New York Times and Decider mainly about TV shows and sometimes interviewing people just about their shows, but also... about how that fit into the business of shows.

7:00

I wrote about a big halt and catch fire on AMC when it was getting a big second window viewing on Netflix. And I think a lot of people at the time didn't realize that what it was doing was stealing the show from AMC. Those viewers weren't going backwards to AMC.

7:18

They were just becoming viewers of the show on... Netflix. And so the more I wrote about this, the more people I met. And I started working with a handful of YouTube channels that were covering film and TV. And I wouldn't say I invented the idea, but in a number of different places in the podcast business,

7:40

people were figuring out that if you were doing the same thing on YouTube that you were doing on audio, you could charge advertisers on for the aggregate number of impressions across both of those platforms. And a company called Podcast Ad Reps that handled the advertising for Starburns Audio started handling the shows that I was handling.

8:03

And Anthony Savelli, who now runs... uh, uh, advertising for, uh, Libsyn, which bought advertise cast, which bought podcast ad reps, which was the company he worked at at the time that was handling my advertising. We figured out that we could sell advertisers, both the podcast and the YouTube channel by putting the same content on both.

8:29

And we've, you know, figured out how to sort of Get them to talk a little more like it worked with video or without video, you know, that they weren't referring specifically to things on the screen that didn't make sense if you weren't in audio. And we just started adapting YouTube to audio and selling them that way.

8:50

So was this for Himalaya or this was after Himalaya? This was after Himalaya. So you just started working with podcasters and saying, hey, I'm going to try to sell. I'm working with these different ad networks and stuff like that. And we're going to try to sell, you know,

9:08

help you monetize through selling advertising across the YouTube versions of your show and the podcast versions of your show. So I wasn't really making any money doing this. I was still practicing law during the time, making a little bit of money. But during the pandemic, the whole business sort of, I wouldn't say the business model,

9:28

the production model of the podcast business changed on a dime. And so instead of me going to Los Angeles to develop a podcast with Jason Smith at Starburns Audio, everything started happening remote. And Jason and a film writer named Cliff Dorfman were hosting a podcast themselves during the pandemic called Stuck at Home.

9:53

And I was producing that show and helping them book guests on that show and even appeared sometimes on that show if a guest fell through to talk about what was happening on the television business. And this was in, you know, late 2019, early, 2020. And in March 2020, Jason Smith,

10:15

who ran Starburns Audio and was hosting this podcast that I was producing, had a heart attack and suddenly passed away. And he had told me for a long time, if you stick around and you learn what you're doing and you sort of figure out where the money is in the business and you get better at producing,

10:32

you're probably going to be able to figure this out, find a big show and have your own studio. And that's exactly what happened. I was working with John Campia show, which was a big YouTube channel at that time, I'm still working with him. Um, and you know, when podcast ad reps got bought, uh, by, uh,

10:56

what is now Libsyn, we signed a bigger deal with the company and that started making more money and we signed some other shows and those started making more money. And so up until about I don't know, maybe a year, year and a half ago, I was really a studio.

11:14

Everything I had was handled by Libsyn and I had an output contract at Libsyn where without a lot of heavy lifting in my contract, we could just add another show as I signed another show. And it was really almost like a captive studio at Libsyn. I owned the studio.

11:35

I paid all the creators their money and all of the advertising came through and my contract and their web interface and everything. And it worked great until I started. Go ahead. So just to kind of like recap, like you just basically accidentally stumbled your way through into becoming like a full-time podcast entrepreneur. You were a

11:57

You were a lawyer, insurance lawyer. You were writing about entertainment for these big media outlets. You wrote about podcasts that led to connections to Himalaya Media, gave you some experience producing podcasts. And then just through your connections there, just started kind of linking up with podcasters who needed some kind of support and just kind of like slowly...

12:18

started building up like basically a client roster of different shows that you were working with and and I think like a recurring kind of theme with you is it's not like you you don't like you usually work with like some kind of show that has had

12:33

some level of success but like needs to get to the next level and you're like that's where I come in perfectly is like I can take you to the next level would that be kind of like the value proposition for you that that you would describe yourself Yeah, exactly. And in fact,

12:50

now sort of to go forward from that point to now, it became clearer that other shows I was signing had different needs. Some of them weren't looking for new distribution, but they were looking for help growing the show or they were looking for help with subscription or they were looking for help booking guests or, you know,

13:11

and so it became what I what I began doing, and really most of what I'm doing now, particularly in the first six months to a year of working with a show, is almost a best practices arbitrage. It's like I'm finding things that they're doing that are structurally

13:33

impeding their growth impeding their revenue impeding the listen through on their individual episodes all of these sort of structural things that if you just fix a few things you can grow faster or make more money or book guests more easily or whatever those individual things are for those individual shows that that's really

13:53

most of what i do now is identifying these structural impairments and podcasts and YouTube channels and sort of helping orient them toward whatever it is they're trying to do. Yeah. And so how do you identify a potential show that you want to start working with? Like,

14:13

what's kind of the sweet spot of where a show is that when you kind of stumble upon it and say, I could help this show? A lot of it has been referral. You know, I would say almost all of the shows I handle are in film and television. So And that's changing a little bit now.

14:33

I just signed the first sort of purely tech show that's not related to film and television, Brian Tong, who's really about a 300,000 follower YouTube channel that mostly writes or mostly talks about Apple products and other sort of consumer competitor products. products to Apple. But up until then, it's mostly just been referral.

14:55

Or when I talk to somebody, they're aware of the shows that I work on and they know what I do and they start asking questions and I make the pitch. In some cases, it's just a cold pitch to somebody who I know is friends with, you know,

15:13

someone I already handle and they'll tell the person that I'm going to email them. And so there's, you know, some awareness when I do email them and some of them have come, you know, some of them have come that way. And like, would it be true to say that like a lot of your clients,

15:29

either they have a YouTube channel, but not a podcast and help them get into podcasting, or vice versa, they have a podcast, but they don't have like a video YouTube component, you're helping them expand into YouTube. Like, is that usually the way that you work with a lot of them? That has happened in most cases. Now,

15:45

when I started working with John Campia's show, he already was doing his show on an audio platform. But almost everyone else I've worked with either came from YouTube or from a podcast, but didn't have the other platform and certainly didn't think of platforms as like multiple places to do the same thing. Yeah.

16:06

So like on the audience growth side, give me some examples of like what you're specifically doing to work with these podcasters, like helping them do things that they weren't doing before. So it's been my experience increasingly so, I would say, with very few exceptions, that most podcasts growth of a trying to decide the right word here,

16:33

piece of content, podcast, YouTube video, most of the growth of that creator is on that platform. So a lot of it has been really shifting the There's one big exception here with Pop Apologist that I can talk about, but most of that has been trying to shift the idea that social video or Twitter and

16:57

threads and Instagram and TikTok and like, these are not the places for the most part where your new listeners or new viewers come from. Most of your new listeners and new viewers come from the platform where they natively find you. yeah so a lot of what i try to do from a growth standpoint is lean into that

17:22

sometimes across platforms sometimes on a platform by platform basis that can be having guests uh that are also on that platform you know where or going on other shows really is more valuable that you know if i handle a podcast and there's another podcast of similar subject

17:45

matter the host of the show that i manage can go on this other show as a guest or as an expert or and are you like pitching them to go on that are you actually like emailing that other youtuber or podcaster and saying hey i have a great guest to come on your show Yeah, absolutely.

18:01

And what is emerging now is almost a more sophisticated version of that where, you know, there's a couple of startups. There's Swap FM, which sort of is a booking and measurement service where we can place... a promo of a certain number of units, 100,000 or whatever, 50,000, of one show against another show, and also the reverse,

18:30

the other show against the first show, and have both of those promos running at the same time, and actually on both ends measure the efficacy of that promo, because these... what they call pixels or prefixes, a piece of code that we put actually in the feed of the podcast that can tell when

18:52

you listen to podcast A and in the next 30 days, listen to podcast B, we can make some inferences that they discovered it from the promo or from the guest on that one podcast. So the sort of you know, haphazard, let's, you know,

19:10

let's guess a lot and hope some of it works is kind of now giving way to a little more metrics driven approach. And it's one of the reasons that Megaphone bought Chartable, you know, which they've now more or less shut down for everyone that's not using Megaphone is

19:27

that that's how that's how Spotify measures the efficacy of advertising, but also one show's performance against another show. So, you know, if I do a hit on a podcast with 25,000 impressions and it way outperforms what it does on other shows, I can go back and do more or I can pitch being, you know,

19:46

being a guest on that show. And so the tools have gotten better. The level of sophistication has gotten better. But sort of the core point is still the same that most people that listen to a show on you know, the new show they're listening to on Spotify, they discovered it on Spotify in most cases. Yeah.

20:06

Reminder, anybody can throw questions into the chat at any point and I can call on you. So like how much are you rolling up your sleeves and like designing YouTube thumbnails or like taking the video version of their recording and editing it for them? Or is that or is that not the kind of really like produced?

20:23

You're not as hands on that hands on. it depends i mean i wouldn't say i'm a thumbnails expert you know i mean we suddenly for one show in particular are in the process of hiring a youtube consultant to help us with essentially the first 10 seconds of episodes and the

20:41

thumbnail and really to sort of help us with some research in the particular genre of this podcast about you know what's more effective i mean i'm a kind of a jack of all trades by design. I'm not a master of none, but I would say a master of, you know, not everything that I'm dealing with.

21:00

But I mean, I've developed a lot of best practices from listening to good shows, from talking to producers of good shows, from trial and error on my own shows about what titles work. how to structure the first 10 seconds or 20 seconds or 30 seconds of an episode to

21:18

get a first time listener to stay a little bit longer. Cause the longer they stay, the likelier they are to finish the episode and the, you know, finishing the episode is the best indication of listening to another episode or following. And so all of these things come from these tiny little, these tiny little nudges, like,

21:37

you know, better titles and, you know, a better first 10 seconds of the episode. So yeah, some of those things I'm very involved with. I spend a lot of time, as I said, on this sort of best practices arbitrage, getting shows oriented toward growth or oriented toward doing things in a little bit different way than what they

22:00

have been doing. And then in a lot of cases, the next step is taking them to distributors and negotiating a new advertising and distribution deal. So that's, yeah, that's kind of my next question is like, how do you help on the monetization side? Because like, you're not,

22:16

you're not like going and pitching individual sponsors to come on shows, right? No, I have, I work with a lot of different, you know, where it used to be all Libsyn, you know, basically an output deal where Libsyn would just attach to every new show I handled.

22:31

Now, in a lot of cases, those shows are either coming in, they already have advertising or or they're coming in and they don't have advertising yet, but we want to fix some things first and get their, you know, get their download numbers up or, you know, we're taking them immediately, you know, out to market.

22:50

So, you know, it kind of depends on the show, but yeah, I have shows at Realm. I have shows at Podcast One. I'm in discussions with Sirius XM and Studio 71 about a show right now. And, you know, I have a show at AMP. So there's shows, you know, kind of all over the place,

23:08

depending on what's in the best interest of that show. And in a lot of cases, I mean, it's the creator's decision, but in a lot of cases, it's, you know, who's offering the best guaranteed terms. on that show. So, you know, it's different things for different shows. In some cases,

23:28

to go back to your question about sort of how am I finding the people I work with? A lot of this is driven by my own interests. I'm very into film and TV. I'm recently very into, you can't see them because they're on the opposite bookcase from here, but into this sort of version of film

23:47

blu-ray packaging called steelbook i don't know if you've heard of steelbook it's like a packaging of blu-ray that's made out of metal and it's like this new sort of niche collector and i'm like very into it all of a sudden so i've met some of the

24:02

people that are the youtubers that you know are big in that area and so i've you know there's a couple of those i'm probably about to start working with so i mean a lot of it's driven by my you know by my own interests and You know,

24:17

I my sort of vow from the beginning of this is that I'm only going to work with creators who shows I actually like and feel like I can actually get engaged in as a listener or a viewer. And I've, you know, for the most part, stuck by that. Yeah. And then like some of the ad agents,

24:34

ad deals that you're selling, it's like purely an ad revenue share, like they're selling advertising and stuff like that. Are you doing any, like, are you, are you also like trying to sell like big, you know, you hear about these big podcast deals that like Spotify signs or iHeartMedia or Sirius XM,

24:50

are you like trying to sign any kind of like deals like that where it's like some kind of like large payouts in advance? Like, is that kind of in your wheelhouse? Well, the Kelsey brothers came to me and I said, y'all are sports and that's not really what I did. No, totally joking.

25:09

Yeah, I'd love to have some, you know, there is a there's a stratification of shows where those shows are definitely at the very, very top end, uh, you know, uh, Joe Rogan or a Bill Simmons. And yeah, I mean, I, I have some bigger shows, you know, I have a show with a $300,000 minimum guarantee, you know,

25:31

per year at the show's network. I don't have a $6 million a year guarantee what some of those shows have, but yeah, I mean, definitely, um, The bigger I've gotten and the more experienced I've gotten, the more at-bats I've gotten with bigger shows. In fact,

25:53

my dad and I yesterday and then my wife and I last night were sort of having the conversation that I don't know how big I want to be yet. I mean, I'm mostly solo. I work with another... producer, you know, slash marketer on a handful of shows.

26:09

I have an agent named Andy King at Buckwall that helps me on a number of my shows with distribution specific to YouTube, where he is much better versed in sort of YouTube distribution where I am. on audio. So, I mean, I do have help on some of these shows, but, you know,

26:27

what my dad and my wife and I've been talking about is if push comes to shove and I've got opportunities to start taking on much bigger work that's going to necessitate having partners or having employees, I don't know the answer yet. I don't know what I want to do.

26:43

I know that the thing I enjoy most is working on The shows I like and the creators I like talking to and the parts I don't like are chasing down distributors on money and, you know, the administrative parts of it. So I don't I don't know.

27:00

I don't you know, I don't know the answer yet to what getting bigger would look like. And then just to clarify, so like when it's like a $300,000 guarantee, that means the ad network owes that money to your podcast regardless if they can fill all that inventory. That's right.

27:16

So most of these contracts are going to be, they're mostly 70-30. They can be anywhere from 60-40 to 80-20. And so what that effectively means is if they buy bill and collect $100,000 worth of advertising revenue on that show for that month, then they owe us 70%. Yeah. $70,000. Well, if the minimum guarantee,

27:42

what they've guaranteed me every month is $25,000, then they're paying me the $70,000. If what they bill and collect is $10,000, then they're paying me the $25,000 we've agreed to. And that's what the business generally calls MGs, minimum guarantees. Yeah, it's It works like book advances where once you earn out the advance,

28:02

then you just start earning royalties after that. Paola, I'm sorry. I apologize if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly. You had a question?

28:12

Yes, I did. No worries. That's fine. So yes, I was just wondering. I work as a marketer for an online media outlet. And it's a small brand. We've got about 30,000 subscribers on YouTube, and we are on any online platform you can think of. We mostly produce films, like video content, so our main platform is on YouTube.

28:46

We are not yet monetizing our content, and that is something we want to do on 2025. And I was just wondering if you guys can provide any details or recommendations on how I can start working on that or things to take into consideration when doing this.

29:11

So how many views a month are you getting on YouTube?

29:16

I was just going through the data. Monthly, let me take a look because I was just looking at the data for last year. So you want to know monthly?

29:31

Yeah.

29:32

Okay, let me take a look. So like last month, we've got 67,000 views last month only. Yeah.

29:45

Yeah. And are you part of the YouTube partnership program where they share revenue with you?

29:51

Yes.

29:52

Uh-huh. And Scott, like what's the kind of landscape? You don't have a podcast, right? It's just like YouTube is your main, other than like the website content, like YouTube is your main kind of multimedia distribution?

30:07

Correct. We also do run newsletters.

30:10

Uh-huh. And so, Scott, like what would you is it like pitching a sponsor by sponsor or is it finding someone like you or hiring someone like you that would like so that they could like identify potential sponsors and start trying to sell ads across YouTube and newsletters and stuff like that?

30:35

I would say this very and I don't know specifically the sort of genre of the, you know, the content or the market or who listens to it. But this can vary quite a bit based on both the form of the content and on the subject matter of the content. And I would say generally. You know,

30:55

the word podcast, I think, used to connote audio to a much greater degree than it does now. I think the public sort of understanding of that has also changed quite a bit. Also, that a podcast is generally recognized now as sort of this long form talk format where it's

31:17

two hosts that's talking to each other or one host talking to camera or a host and a guest or a panel show where it's three or four people talking and that, that sort of form the advertisers that I mostly work with are looking for that particular form.

31:36

That's not the only form of content or the only form of advertising that lives on YouTube. I mean, I think another example, And, you know, or another way of looking at it is by interest group. If you are a music producer or, you know, something, you know, in the architecture industry or, you know,

32:00

something where there's a high concentration of a particular person. vocation or interest in the listeners that listen to your show, you have a great audience for subject matter advertisers. This is why you see variety and The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline that are all owned by Penske.

32:22

That business is built on the For Your Consideration ads for the Emmys and the Oscars. That's the biggest revenue stream in that business. And the reason for that is... The studios know that those are the publications that have a high concentration of people that vote in those particular awards organizations.

32:46

So, I mean, it's a good match of the advertiser and the audience. And so you can charge really high rates because you've got this ultra-specific audience. I mean, I would say generally, I don't mean to give you like a it depends answer,

33:03

but it can vary a lot based on the kind of the format of the content and based on the subject matter of the content and the kind of listeners you have. The advertisers that I work with are, for the most part, exclusively looking for podcasts. Now, they may also advertise on TikTok or billboards or whatever,

33:25

but the contact, the person that I'm dealing with at that company is primarily someone who deals in podcast advertising. So it may depend a lot on what you're doing. Yeah. And like one thing, so like I'm working with like an advertising person right now. We're in kind of the beginning stages of working together.

33:44

And what I did for him is I created like a big spreadsheet of all the like competitors in my space who are like writing or podcasting or YouTubing about the stuff that that I write about as well. And so and I'm having him basically go through their entire archives for the past

34:04

year and basically add every single advertiser that that those outlets have had in the past year. And then using that as a starting point of the potential advertisers that will advertise against my newsletter or podcast, because these are people who have already spent money on my competitors. So they're already primed.

34:23

They're already educated about spending money on newsletters and podcasts and stuff like that. So you don't have to educate them on the value of that. And you can kind of lead in with saying, hey, I saw you advertising on X. I have a similar audience to that.

34:39

I think that's a good starting point in terms of identifying advertisers. But yeah, as part of your subscription, you get a half-hour introductory phone call to me. So you should definitely... shoot me an email and I'll send you that Calendly link and I can look at your website and your YouTube channel, um, specifically,

34:56

and maybe give you some more specific advice. Uh, Ava, you had a question.

35:03

Right. So I have a lot of nonprofits as clients. Um, first, firstly, and the ones that I'm working with are actually in the conservation field. So it's not sports. It's not, it's not insurance. Okay. Yeah. But, um, I'm wondering about the efficacy of actually having them who are looking for donations advertise on podcasts and YouTube podcasts.

35:31

So they do sort of classic stuff. They haven't really reached out to that. Or does it make more sense for these nonprofits to just be a guest and hope everything goes according to plan that someone actually is interested in their nonprofit?

35:44

So you're actually thinking about spending money to buy an ad on a podcast, encouraging people to donate?

35:49

Right, right. So, I mean, Scott, not, I mean, I'm going to be really critical here, but it sounds like everyone's taking each other's wash, right? You are on my podcast. I'm on your podcast. Okay, we get more whatever. So that's not going to work for this particular group.

36:07

I mean, the conservation nonprofits can't get out of each other's way. They're always sort of on each other's So I'm just wondering what you think about not entertainment, you know, other kinds of advertising. That is also narrow, okay, but it's narrow in a weird way. People interested in conservation, consumer resistant conservation, they're hard to identify,

36:30

but it is a narrow interest. So just, you know, just in general, like what's the money piece here that's beyond trying to goose your listeners or your views or something.

36:43

I'm still not sure I understand the question.

36:46

So you talked about advertising or being guests on each other's podcasts.

36:51

Yeah, yeah.

36:52

The money piece is what? And if I'm not a guest, if there's no option for me to do an exchange. Yeah. I want to spend money on a podcast. Do you know if that makes any sense? Promoting a podcast? Yeah, advertising on a podcast because my experience in my business is that it doesn't get you much.

37:13

You advertise and you feel good, but you don't get much. If you're a guest, it's a little bit different than it's earned income.

37:21

But not all guests have to. So you want to get the people from your nonprofits as guests on podcasts?

37:28

Yeah, that I can understand. That's earned income. I want to know, should I pay for advertising on podcasts? What's the evidence of the advertiser actually making out? Okay.

37:39

I just don't think that's like a good bang for your buck in terms of like- So then

37:43

what are we talking about in terms of like making money here? So that's what I'm getting to. So if outside advertisers never work, like it's not a bang for your buck, let's just, I don't know, let's pick a consumer product. You don't have to do a donation to a nonprofit.

38:00

Yeah. I mean, no, that advertising works. Like that advertising is really like, like who are your, who are some of the top advertisers that advertise on your podcast every year, every month, Scott? Uh, better help, uh, uh, athletic greens. Uh, these are the, I would say the dominant advertiser on podcasts are advertisers that are paying a

38:24

lot of attention to what they call LTV lifetime value or long-term value that And so they're looking at it, if they're paying a $25 CPM and getting X number of conversions for that, they're trying to figure out is what they're spending on the advertising per conversion more or less than what the lifetime value of that conversion generates.

38:49

Right. Now I get it. That's subscriptions. Okay. And that works for narrowly focused, in your experience, narrowly focused, People who are selling something that's not entertainment-based. Listen to this other sports show. That I get, that I understand, but buy this stuff from me. Those advertisers are happy or they're not so happy.

39:15

The advertising I typically see from nonprofits are more, they're not performance advertising. They're not trying to drive specific behaviors.

39:24

They're more- Right, because there's no proof of it. So they're not doing it.

39:28

Well, that's just incorrect. I mean, there's a million dollar podcast business built on metrics from performance. We know they work.

39:37

That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I just said. So I am being provocative. So nonprofits- don't know if they can drive a donation necessarily with podcasts, right? So my question to you is, right. So then I said, so your folks are advertising. In fact, the advertisers are happy.

39:58

Well, for sure. Yeah. I mean, they wouldn't renew if they weren't, you know, I mean, we would just always have new pod, you know, they would do a six spot contract or a two spot contract and they would never come back if it didn't work. Yeah. And yeah, like most, most podcast ads,

40:14

they have like discount codes and stuff like that, that allows them to track the you know, how many people are buying these products. So like, if you use this discount code, you get 10% off and then some percentage of the listeners will enter that discount code and that helps them track ROI to certain perspective.

40:33

But just to get back to your original point is like, if I were trying to raise money as a nonprofit, I don't think podcasts would provide great ROI for that type of thing.

40:43

Well, but if you do an LTV, just like we were talking about, which is the whole point, right? You have someone who gives you money over many years and so that you can actually justify it.

40:54

I think you could find some sympathetic podcast that would give it to you for free. Yeah, probably. Hey, can I say one thing about this? Sure. Sorry, Josh here. Hey, Josh. Ava, one of the things that you have to think about, though, right, is that these guys are talking about their CP. They're looking at lifetime value.

41:11

The other thing you have to look at is that these are really, really big companies that can, they're looking at the lifetime value. So the lifetime value is $500 a customer. It's nothing to them to go negative $150 on the front end of acquisition, right?

41:22

Right, of course. I understand over time.

41:24

I understand, but fundraising, so what I'm saying is fundraising is fundraising, right? I raise capital all the time. what I've seen that people are doing who are raising a lot of funds using podcasts and again, have a longer cycle, right? That's the thing is that if I advertise on a podcast today,

41:38

you may start talking to me about giving you, I don't know how much you're raising, but for me, I'm a real estate alternative assets guy. Like I might talk to someone and then it gives me half a million dollars in two years. Well, then if I'm already at five grand for that podcast ad, like there's kind of,

41:52

there's a shortfall there, right? There's some period of time that I need to be able to I guess you might be looking for a way to kind of recoup that a little bit earlier, right? As you're still building that thing.

42:04

Now, I just want to know about the test because if it's LTV and it's four or five years, it's a problem, right? And Scott, you haven't been in business all that long. So I get that, you know, that that's the case. So I agree this should be lifetime value. Really super hard to calculate. Number one.

42:20

Number two is four.

42:22

Sorry?

42:23

Is that better? Can you hear me better or no? Much, much better. Better? Okay. I was going to say, this is actually not on podcast advertising, although I think that would be a really cool test to do. But I just think this is a cool one to share.

42:36

I've seen a lot of advertising work really well for nonprofits that are targeting based on particular authors. So if you're doing Facebook advertising in particular, you can sort of narrow down like people who like particular authors. So if you're in the conservation space and you have authors in that space,

42:54

you can retarget ads for people who like that specific author. And it's kind of a nice alignment.

43:01

Yeah, if I were running a nonprofit and I had an ad spend, I would target on something that's a little bit easier measurable than podcasts. I would use, like you said, Tanya, Facebook ads and stuff like that, where you can really kind of test the copy to a much finer degree.

43:20

I just don't think podcasts would be a great... investment in that.

43:27

And that's just because there's not a lot, because the volume is so much lower, let's say, than Facebook. you know, Facebook.

43:34

No, I, well, I just think nonprofits, unless you're like a huge nonprofit, like, you know, United Way or the Red Cross or whatever like that, like you're, you're just, your ad budget is much, much more limited. Whereas like, I think, yeah. Whereas I think podcasts are, are better if you,

43:48

if you were like a really huge nonprofit and really wanted to spread awareness.

43:52

Unless it's like an event or something specific that you're promoting.

43:56

Yeah. And yeah, if it's a podcast specifically within the niche of the, the event that you're promoting. Yeah. And the podcast corollary to an event would be something like a branded podcast, which some nonprofits have done, where you produce a six episode podcast about the subject matter of your nonprofit and you market the podcast.

44:15

But the messaging within the podcast is donation. Yeah, if I were working for a nonprofit and I had money to invest, I would actually invest that in creating my own podcast and trying to create a connection with my potential donors and stuff like that.

44:31

But anyway, just to kind of get back to, Scott, some of the things that you've learned doing it. You don't just help with the advertising side, though. You also help with the subscription side. What are you doing in terms of helping podcasters grow their subscription revenue? So subscription was a huge priority last year,

44:52

and it's going to be a huge priority again this year. Pop Apologist is probably the best example show I work with of what we did. When I started working with them like early last fall a year ago, so I've been working with them for about a little over a year, year and a half.

45:11

And when they came to me, they had... say 1,500 Patreon subscribers. They had been doing Patreon all along. The podcast was trucking along maybe 8,000, 10,000 downloads an episode, but they were making all of their money that they were making on the podcast from their Patreon. Apple Podcasts came out with a subscription format called Apple Podcast

45:35

Subscriptions a couple of years ago. And I told them last fall, a year ago fall, let's experiment with this. Their concern, less of a concern to me, was what if it cannibalizes Patreon and we go from a 10% commission on a subscriber with Patreon to a 30 percent commission on a subscriber with Apple podcast subscriptions.

46:00

And we wind up chasing our subscribers from the more profitable platform to the less profitable platform. Yeah. And just to context, Apple podcast subscriptions. That's a subscription product directly within the Apple Podcast app. So there's a lot less friction in order to become a subscriber compared to Patreon.

46:18

But the commission that Apple takes is 30% versus Patreon's 10%. So there's a trade-off there. And in fact, to that point, the argument I mainly hear against Apple podcast subscription to Patreon subscribers is not that they're worried about shows moving from one to the other. They're just looking at it like they're buying a TV.

46:43

This one costs more than this one. And so they're looking at the commission being higher as the reason not to do it. So, I mean, that to your point, I think that's probably the more common reason why people get sticker shock and think, wow, 30 percent is too much.

46:59

But, you know, so we started working with Apple podcast subscriptions. It's there a year later making more money from Apple podcast subscriptions or they are on track to be making more money from Apple podcast subscriptions than Patreon by the middle of this year. And Patreon has still grown double digits over the last year.

47:26

So we now have a brand new six-figure business from Apple Podcast subscriptions in addition to what they have on Patreon that has also grown in the last year. And I would say the reason for that is, Simon used the word friction. I've been calling it friction theory over the last couple of months.

47:47

People are mostly going to stay with you on the platform where they discovered you because that is their preferred platform. And the business... people that do what Simon does and what I do, we think of these as universal knowledge. Everybody is very aware of all of these platforms, LinkedIn and Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

48:07

But consumers, in most cases, not. For most consumers, podcasts are what they listen to on Apple Podcast subscriptions or what they listen to on YouTube. But Or they may have some things they listen to on YouTube that they don't think of as a podcast,

48:22

but they discovered it on YouTube and they followed it and it shows up in their algorithm all the time. And so they follow it there. But it goes to the point that people are very partisan about the platforms that they... that they frequently use and platforms where they discover you.

48:40

And so you'll see in the research that people that subscribe to an Apple podcast subscription show are highly, highly likely to have already subscribed to another one. And same thing with Patreon. And the reason Apple is on pace to outperform Patreon, Simon and I were talking about this briefly before the call,

48:58

is that Apple podcast is a discovery platform and Patreon is not. Patreon is a cash register. Apple podcast subscriptions is a media app. And that's a huge difference between those two things. Yeah, so to subscribe to Patreon, you have to click, you have to go into the notes of the podcast, click on a link,

49:18

sign up for a Patreon account, enter your credit card, you know, then once you've done that and subscribed, then you have to import a feed back into Apple that's separate from the main feed that you're listening to. There's just like a ton of rigmarole, whereas Apple, you're just pressing a button and everybody already has their credit card

49:34

information already uploaded to Apple. So it's just like one click and then it just starts showing up in your feed and And so that's what makes it worth its 30% cut, basically. I think because – That's what they're doing on Patreon too. Is that not true?

49:48

Didn't Apple just say something that they're going to charge because so many people on Patreon are using Apple Pay? Well, because that's for Patreon's mobile app. So they're going to start forcing Patreon because for some reason, Patreon was exempt for years from the 30% cut because they were using their own payment system.

50:06

But now they're making Patreon play by every other app – creator's rules of like, if you want to pay for something within the app, you have to use Apple's payment system that is subject to the 30% cut. That's also why you can't subscribe to Netflix on the Netflix app on an iPhone.

50:27

Or why you can't subscribe to Spotify. You have to do it externally. So I think Patreon is going to give its podcasters the choice of making payments available within Apple. But in that case, they have to opt in to the 30% cut. Yeah. Ava, you had a question about what are the best discoverability platforms.

50:53

So she's just kind of asking, and this is what you were kind of talking about before we got in the fall, you really just have to be on every single platform, right, Scott? Well, I would say for a podcast or for sort of what we think of now as a podcast,

51:09

I'm generally telling people if you've got limited time resources or limited money resources, spend them getting yourself on YouTube and then the RSS platforms, which are primarily Apple podcast subscriptions and Spotify. And it is, I would say, more valuable. It's kind of all valuable, so it's hard to really split hairs.

51:33

But the marginal dollar is generally better spent up to a certain amount on video to be more visible on YouTube than it would be on social. Because on YouTube, you can monetize them where they consume you. And on social, you have to convince them to go to another platform.

51:53

And so it goes right back to that friction point that I'd rather have people... spending their time and spending their resources on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple podcast subscriptions than on social. Now, social can be its own revenue stream once you get big enough. And I do have shows that are big enough on social. So I

52:15

I wouldn't say it's not worth any investment at all. But if the idea is the bank shot that you're going to get people who discover you on a discovery platform to then follow you to a monetization platform, it doesn't generally work out that way. Well,

52:31

what value do you place on like going through every single episode and cutting up the best three minute clips and putting it on TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts and stuff like that? It's incremental. I mean, you will get some benefit from it. Shorts in particular is on the platform where you want them to be.

52:50

So, I mean, if... If someone's a heavy user of YouTube Shorts and they discover you and follow you that way, then you're going to start showing up in their right rail with your podcast. I mean, the conversion, you know, is is worth it there for Instagram. I mean, Instagram is so productive.

53:08

precise and specific now about what grows and what works that i i find it mostly by bra bros is a good example bra bros is a show that i manage that has maybe 30 000 uh instagram followers i would say they have a very very high concentration

53:29

in their instagram of people that are regular consumers of their show on podcast platforms uh apple podcast spotify and youtube and the the function that it performs for us mainly on spotify is reminder and reinforcement like this episode is out now go listen to it so it it can i think it functions better for engagement

53:54

for existing followers listeners to don't forget this episode than it does as a discovery platform. And I think it works really well for that reinforcement for broad bros. Yeah. Omar, you had a question? Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, Scott, just wanted to get your thoughts on any trends, opportunities,

54:15

challenges you've been seeing unfold recently with the increased adoption of AI, specifically in the podcast world or generally in the media,

54:27

as it relates to either the content space or business side, just sort of anything in general as it relates to media and AI that's caught your attention recently. The thing I've been seeing is just use of tools like otter.ai to scan the transcripts of a podcast episode and basically spit out a blog post so you can get

54:47

some additional content diversification for having an article that's SEO optimized and stuff like that so that people can stumble upon that and maybe discover the podcast that way. There's also a number of AI tools for helping with YouTube thumbnails and stuff like that. I think Spotter Studios has one that helps you generate thumbnail ideas.

55:14

Scott, what are you seeing? I see it mostly on the production side. I use a tool called Auphonic, A-U-P-H-O-N-I-C, that's, I think, free for two hours a month, and then they... charge and increments for it, but it's basically a mastering tool for people who are not sort of audio trained people.

55:34

So instead of using a really expensive, fancy audio app where you have to understand delay and, you know, raising all the different levers for the different frequencies. And like, if you're not versed really well in that area, you can go do really, really basic settings in Auphonic, like remove white noise, remove gaps, you know,

55:57

and they're just sort of settings based or levels is a big one where, you if you're recording two people and one of them is kind of faint and the other one is really loud, all phonic can sort of make them sound the same without you having to really know how it works.

56:13

And a lot of that is, a lot of that is algorithmic and AI driven. And so you upload your audio, you tell it the three or four things you want it to do, and then it chugs and then it spits out the audio and it's extremely good. And particularly for, uh, you know, uh,

56:31

What's the way to describe it? Not non-commercial or when you don't have like a professional sound editor, you know, for your projects, it can be a really easy tool. Another one, Riverside, which is one of the big recording apps that people use when they have guests from remote because Riverside will actually make a local recording app.

56:51

of that person and your recording and merge those for you to download. So you get a much higher quality recording of your guests. Riverside now has some editing tools where you can edit in the transcript. You can just like highlight a couple of sentences and move that and it will

57:09

actually associate where in the audio file that is and do the heavy lifting. So it's it's changing sort of prosumer functions to consumer functions. That's that's the area where I see it the most. There have been some experiments of like synthetic podcasts of like it'll read an

57:28

article or a catalog of articles and sort of spit out a podcast. I mean, I don't think that stuff's going to work. I don't think people listen to podcasts for information as much as they listen to it for information delivered in a particular tone or personality or format.

57:48

So I'm inclined not to think those things would work because I'm in the business. But I think that's really my honest assessment is that nobody wants to listen to that stuff. Yeah. OK, well, we're coming up on the end of the hour. So if anybody has any final questions, definitely speak up. Scott, how do you make money?

58:05

Like that's the one thing you've talked about, how you help your podcasters make money. What's the kind of deal that you're coming in with to help you make money? So in most cases, it is a percentage of the revenue that I manage.

58:20

And so for most, for a lot of shows that I work with, they were established on YouTube first. And so I don't take a revenue share in their Google AdSense, but I sort of monetized them with Host Red. So I take a percentage of that Host Red.

58:37

Or in the case of subscription, I might take a percentage of that subscription. And depending on whether they have an agent and depending on what it is I'm working on, that can be anywhere from 10 to 20 points. Yeah, so on top of whatever the platform, the subscription platform or the advertising platform, what their take is,

58:56

you're taking your percentage on whatever the takeaway. If they're taking 70%, you're going to take 10% of whatever that is based on. So you're incentivized to really help your podcasters grow because the more money they make, the more money you make. And in some cases, it'll just be fee-based.

59:17

I'm in discussions with both a show and a network right now for a consulting project that seems fairly certain that those will just be a flat monthly rate because we don't really have something specific to index it to. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, Scott, thanks for doing that. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording.