[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not.

[00:00:04] Grace Duffy: And I’m Grace Duffy. And this is the show that keeps you up to date in the world of social media and today’s show I’m so excited. I’m so excited to talk about today’s topic. Jeff. I’ll let you introduce it.

[00:00:16] Jeff Sieh: Shannon Hernandez. With us again, and we’re going to be picking up right where we left off the last time he was here.

[00:00:22] So last time we covered podcasting trends and getting started, and this was just a few episodes back. So if you miss that one, make sure you go back and check it out because Shannon dropped a ton of great info and tips there. So today we’re getting started into all the tools and the tech and monetization and motivation that goes into a successful and profitable podcast.

[00:00:46] Shannon, how are you doing today? My friend, I’m so excited that you said you were going to come back even after the last show you decided, Hey, I might as well come back.

[00:00:54] Shannon Hernandez: I had a lot of fun last time. So thanks for inviting me back. I don’t know. I would imagine that I’m in. An upper tier of GP.

[00:01:02] Yes.

[00:01:03] Jeff Sieh: There aren’t that many. I think Lou was one. I think Ian maybe have been in another, so yeah, you are in like a special class now we’ll send you, we’ll

[00:01:11] Shannon Hernandez: send you the book later. Yeah. I feel like I need to make myself a plaque for this.

[00:01:17] Jeff Sieh: We should color it in and make some crowns,

[00:01:19] Shannon Hernandez: know, I’ve got three pens ready to go right now.

[00:01:24] Jeff Sieh: So if you guys don’t know Shannon Hernandez is a 20 plus year radio veteran. He’s a podcaster and a podcast producer with his work in radio broadcasting. He’s got the knowledge and the experience to bridge traditional. Tactics and strategies with the developing online content and marketing. So you can find his videos on podcasting and podcast marketing on YouTube.

[00:01:47] He’s got a fabulous YouTube channel and he currently hosts holds down the weeknight time slot for a 98 KUPD FM. And is the sound design and editor for guy Kawasaki is remarkable people podcasts. So Shannon, welcome to

[00:02:02] Shannon Hernandez: the show. My friend, thanks for having me. I

[00:02:03] appreciate

[00:02:04] Jeff Sieh: it by the way another we did a big shout out last week to them, but I’m going to do it again is our friends who make this show possible, who are over on Ecamm.

[00:02:15] So you can find out more about Ecamm at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm That’s what we’re using to produce the show, send it out everywhere and chop it up, all that stuff that Ecamm allows us to do. They are doing something really cool right now. They’re calling it vlogmas.

[00:02:30] You know, vlogmas this right now in their community. So if you happen to grab ahold of that, really cool, a black Friday sale and need some help getting started, make sure that you do a search on Facebook for Ecamm live community. And you’ll find some they’re putting out videos every day. They’re really helping train people in the software.

[00:02:46] So make sure you guys go check out. Ecamm. If you didn’t get part of the sale, you can still sign up for it. You will get the black Friday pricing, but I tell you I would do it anyway because it’s such an awesome piece of software. You can find out more at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm

[00:03:01] Thanks for them for helping make this show possible. Grace let’s jump right in this because we’ve got the comments are humming already. People like absolutely. And

[00:03:11] Grace Duffy: I have to say Shannon was, there was a huge demand to have Shannon back because part one of this podcast series we’re doing was just so amazing.

[00:03:19] So we want to kick off today’s show talking about the tech and the tools that you need to create a professional podcast with or without a fantastic sound designer, just like Shannon. Shannon, could you give us some tips on the best podcasting tools for getting started? So let’s start with the equipment like Mike’s and audio recording.

[00:03:40] What do you recommend as far as Mike’s and recording this beautiful audio that we have.

[00:03:46] Shannon Hernandez: So we’ll just make it simple, go download my guide. And that has everything there for you done. No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

[00:03:54] Jeff Sieh: Do you have a guidance? Great. And they can find that isn’t it on Shan man? Yeah, it’s on

[00:03:58] Shannon Hernandez: the Chan man.com.

[00:04:00] So you can go on over there, but you know, for those who are watching, who don’t have time to download that guide has basically the equipment that, if you’re looking to get started, especially if you’re a business podcast trying to get. And wanting to get started into the new year.

[00:04:15] This was a question that came up in one of the Facebook groups yesterday, where someone was looking for affordable equipment.

What Equipment Do I Need for a Podcast?

[00:04:22] Shannon Hernandez: Now there’s a difference between getting affordable equipment and just getting equipment, and so, uh, starting out and getting your equipment. It can be a kind of an investment when you look at it, but you have to remember that the investment is a one-time purchase.

[00:04:34] It should last you a pretty long time and you shouldn’t have to buy. Other than maybe cords that might fail and whatnot. But if we were to start from ground zero and you wanted to start on a very, very, very basic level you would, could really just get, a USB microphone and use zoom. That’s as simple as it’s going to get.

[00:04:56] If you’re not using zoom, you could use probably a Google meet that might work. There are many different services that are out there. You could use you know, Ecamm, restream, these different services might be able to help you out, but that’s really the basics of starting up a podcast, a microphone, a good microphone.

[00:05:13] And maybe a service that can capture the audio. If you’re someone who’s just oh, I just don’t know exactly. I don’t want to play in equipment too much. It’s too complicated. And I’ll tell you that when you’re using when you’re using say equipment, it’s not as complicated as you think. In fact it makes the audio sound a lot better.

[00:05:31] This was a topic that I had brought up a few weeks ago when I spoke to a class, an entrepreneurial class at Arizona state. And you know, there’s a difference in between, the sound quality, the sound quality that. I would say like a zoom is a lot lower than say recording direct into a software like Adobe audition.

[00:05:50] But if you were to start from the very beginning and start to say I want to get equipment, I want to get microphones. I’m going to have a group of people that I’m going to be bringing around into my own home studio. Just like that comment was in the group yesterday. You know, you can start very simple.

[00:06:07] You can start with four microphones and the microphones can be very simple as far as you know, prices concerned. So if we were going to say let’s say, we’re going to have two microphones, one for you and a co-host. All right. And maybe you’re doing calls remotely. You got to first budget out for microphones, two microphones.

[00:06:24] There are a number of different microphones that are out there. There are the 80, 2100 X. Those are two great microphones that you can use or USB capable or you could use a short SM 58 microphone. They’re about the same in price about, you the quality is great on both of them. The only thing I think you would have to worry about with the the 80 2100 X is that it may malfunction at some point.

[00:06:49] So Mike B SM 58 2. So just know that the equipment will sometimes bug out on occasion, I’ve had the same equipment for years and it hasn’t bugged out on me. And then anytime I have to buy something brand new, it’s not like it’s a major investment. That’s like maybe once every 10 years. Uh, it’s not something that is major.

[00:07:08] The other thing that I would consider is getting a mixing board. Now, Jeff and I have two different types of mixing boards. I believe Jeff uses a Roadmaster pro for this podcast. I use a Yamaha mg, 10 X, you mixing board. That’s a live mixing board. In fact, when I first had I first started podcasting, I was using the analog version of that mixing board.

[00:07:27] So this makes you board that it’s. It’s now USB capable. So I can record directly through that mixing board from my microphone to that makes me bored into my recording software, which would be Adobe audition, but you could use it also on zoom calls. You could use it on stream yards. You can use it on restraints.

[00:07:44] You can use it on just about any S service that is out there. Other things that you would probably need, you would need to get some chords so that you could plug in your microphone into those mixing boards. And then a couple of other things you might need to get some mic stands, or maybe even some mic booms, and you’re pretty much good to go.

[00:08:01] So when you think about that and you think about the pricings behind the pricing behind all of that equipment, it’s really going to vary, and it’s going to depend on your budget. Just have to remember. You just have to remember that you’re going to purchase this once it’s a one-time purchase. And that would be that would be good for you.

[00:08:18] Some things that would recommend that you stay away from, and it’s not that I don’t like the products but they just aren’t. I would say that they’re just not suitable for podcasting. There are podcasts out there who try to do a lot of. On the cheap. All right. And so when I, it’s just my opinion that you stay away from things like the focus, um, that, it’s, it’s a little box. People say, oh, it’s perfect for podcasts, but that they want to do. And they want to advance into more things. They want to advance it to doing live streams, the one advanced into mixing in more sound. And that box just won’t do it for you. It won’t have that capability for you.

[00:08:53] So I would recommend that the base level is the Yamaha mg, 10 X. You, if you want to go a step higher than I would say, go into the Roadmaster pro that’s about I think $300 more. Um, you know, if you’re looking for pricing you know, you could go download that guide on my website and of course he could tell you everything there.

[00:09:10] I see in the comments that one of my, one of my viewers on YouTube bird uses pop filters. Don’t forget pop filters are, those are optional. You can get pop filters if you want. I don’t personally use pop filters. You know, just because I know how to use a microphone pop filters are really more about you know, it’s a preference really.

[00:09:30] And especially if you’re doing voiceover work, if you’re doing voiceover work for a podcast that has acting, maybe doing an audio book, you might want to have a pop filter, but if you know how to use the microphone, you know how to stand, you know how to have a distance between you and the microphone. You don’t really need a pop filter, but I know a lot of people like to use podcasts.

[00:09:46] It makes them feel cool. It makes them feel like, Hey, we got that. But you know, there’s some people who do notice maybe a difference in using a pop filter do just kinda, gauge it on what you feel is necessary. If you’re just getting started, maybe you don’t need a pop filter. Maybe you do.

[00:10:00] You’re just going to have to gauge that on your own. And then of course, maybe a lead a camera most laptops are equipped with a camera. You know, I have, I use a logic tech C nine 20 when I’m in this room and I’m plugged into my computer. And then of course on my laptop, I’m just using the normal Mac book pro cameras.

[00:10:18] So those are the things that you can use when you’re starting up a podcast, as far as equipment is concerned.

[00:10:24] Jeff Sieh: So I have some questions really quick about this. So one of the things you said about. Is that, a lot of this stuff lasts for a long time. Uh, I mean, you told me when we were, I’m going to bring up, Dustin’s watching Google plus one more time.

[00:10:42] Back when I first started, you said, Hey, get this Yeti the pro and I did cause you were using, you’re using it right there. And I used it forever until Hile was nice enough to send me this PR 40. So I mean it, when you’re investing in this, it is an investment. It’ll last longer than your computer.

[00:11:01] You’ll upgrade your computer before you will your, your audio equipment for the most part. The other thing I want to ask you about would be headphones because how important those are, like, when you start doing this, do you need to have, like a $400 set of Sony, cans to put on your head, what do you

[00:11:18] Shannon Hernandez: suggest.

What Headphones Do You Need for Editing A Podcast?

[00:11:20] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah, you don’t need, you don’t need those super expensive headphones. I know people who I work with, they’re like, no, I’ve got to have $400 headphones. And I’m like, I don’t know why you’re just listening, but that’s what they want. They want those $400 headphones, these headphones, these are the Sony MD.

[00:11:35] they’re the MDR 7506’s and these are perfect. I’ve been using these, this brand since I started in radio. So you can use these, I use a different brand at work because I had bought those at one point in time and I was like, I’m going to use those. And I ended up just bringing these home because these sound really great.

[00:11:51] They got really good, low end. And of course they are noise canceling as well. So these run, anywhere between, I think, 80 bucks to a hundred bucks, that’s something that you can deal with, for about 10 years. I mean, let’s put it this way in perspective, the headphones that I was using that I’m using at work, I’m on my second pair of those.

[00:12:12] I had used them. I thought I really liked these, but I still had these at home. I really, these are my good headphones, but I’m on my second pair of those, Those burned out, I think within five years and these continue to last, they just keep going and going. remember that some of the equipment, you don’t have to buy super expensive stuff, but if you get a decent pair, you can use it.

[00:12:34] Don’t use earbuds because what happens, especially if you’re using, if you’re doing audio through a mixing board, if you’re using earbuds, those that have the sound cancellation in the headphones, and when you get close to the microphone, you can hear feedback. And I know there’s a lot of podcasts out there.

[00:12:50] They like to use the earbuds. If that’s all you can afford. Great. But it’s going to create problems later on down the line. I had a call with someone a few weeks ago where we were just actually just catching up and she was using her ear buds, her, apple earbuds, and, they were cutting in and out and they just weren’t the best sound quality.

[00:13:11] and she couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear it was more trouble than what it was worth and she just ended up taking them out, turning the Bluetooth off. And just started talking between me and her or her and her, camera microphone. So, just know what you’re going to be getting into.

[00:13:25] If you’re just going to be using, plugged in earbuds or, Bluetooth, earbuds. They’re not going to be the same as if you’re just plugged in. It’s all preference though. I’ll you?

[00:13:35] Jeff Sieh: One of the things is I, these are just monitoring headphones phones, but they’re plugged into my board because I used to use, I thought, oh, that’d be cool.

[00:13:42] And I’ll use the new apple iPods and they cut out during a show and you can’t hear anything. So if you’re doing an interview, Stipe, a podcast, then You don’t want to have your guests, you can’t hear them anymore. So it’s really important, I think, to be wired for even a, any sort of interview thing. So the last question,

[00:13:59] Shannon Hernandez: a lot of recording artists use, they use a lot of those.

[00:14:02] And so those are great to have because they fit molded to your ear and it’s really, you can get every sound basically in

[00:14:10] your,

[00:14:11] Jeff Sieh: and these are actually like, only, like they’re not for like really high Def stuff, but they’re just for monitoring, but they’re like 15 bucks at Amazon. And so if you’re watching Amazon they’re in my queue, they’re really cheap.

[00:14:21] One of the questions I wanted to ask is let’s say you’re really sold on podcasting. You enjoy it. You like it. You’re starting to see some traction. What would be the thing that you would upgrade.

[00:14:31] Shannon Hernandez: That’s a good one. What would be the first thing that I would upgrade if I were just starting out upgrade into my microphone?

What’s the first piece of equipment you’d upgrade for a podcast?

[00:14:38] Shannon Hernandez: I upgraded my microphone and I would upgrade into my software. Software is a very important thing. I think I personally believe if you’re looking for better quality audio. So the question that comes up constantly is how do I get better audio for my podcast? I’m using this, I’m using that.

[00:14:57] And I’m just not getting the quality audio that I’m, expecting to get out of my microphone. You know, you go into these groups and Facebook and they’ll people will be like, oh, the blue Yeti is trash, or they’ll say the ATR 2100 doesn’t work, use this microphone. What people don’t realize that when they’re recording into software, they’re recording into SAS products, software as a service.

[00:15:20] You could, I mean, I could name a bunch of them. They’re all out there. You know, you could, you can name all phonic, you, cause Zencaster, you can name them all that are. You’re still getting quality. You’re still getting audio that is going into that SAS software that is controlled by an internet connection.

[00:15:37] And you’re not getting the best audio quality. The same can be said, if you’re using a stream yard, if you’re using any SAS product. Now, if you’re looking for clean audio on your end, as the host, then it would be important for you to record from your microphone, into your mixing board, into a software like Adobe audition or even audacity.

[00:15:59] If you’re looking for that you know, those are things that you can do to improve the quality if you’re looking to make it more legit. All right. As far as your guests, audio is concerned, this is another question that comes up. How can I get my guests audio to sound better? That is the one thing that is out of your control because your guests audio is based on what they have as far as equipment is concerned.

[00:16:21] It’s based on their microphone. It’s based on their setup. It’s based on whatever it is that they are dealing with. That is, a mindset, a mental thing that they’re going to, that the host is going to have to get over because a lot of us get very dead set in this fact that we go well, our guests audio doesn’t sound great.

[00:16:38] And we know that this can sound better. It can sound better if your guest is willing to make it sound better. That’s the only way we have to remember that when we’re recording remote podcast, remote interviews, that the audio is being fed over a line. It’s being fed over an internet line and you’re going to be losing some of that quality on the transfer, especially if you’re recording it into an Adobe audition.

[00:16:59] Now. If you say to me, well, yeah, there’s a different way, or there’s a better way to get this. I will say, I don’t know if there’s a better way to get it because even in radio we use ISD and lines to do remote recordings or remote broadcasts out on location. It’s still the quality on that is not as clear as if you were doing it direct or a DPI into a mixing board.

[00:17:22] So just know that you’re going to have some of those those inconsistencies in sound, but you can always make your sound better if you’re recording directly into a software like Adobe audition or an audacity. So if you’re asking me what to upgrade first, I would say, upgrade your microphone and upgrade your software.

[00:17:40] Try to start recording directly into your software, like an audition or audacity. Really ultimately at the end of the day, if you’re just doing it on a blue Yeti microphone and a zoom. call And that’s all you want to do. That can be perfect, but I know podcasts just say man, I really want to sound like a pat Flynn or I want to sound, I want to sound like a Jeff Sieh or I want to sound like, a guy Kawasaki, you’re going to have to upgrade their equipment.

[00:18:06] And that’s typically going to come in the form of a microphone, a software, I’m sorry, a microphone, a mixing board and their software.

[00:18:13] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. I want to pull up some questions here because like Nancy, and in fact, we thought about doing this for. And I know like Jay Baer used to do this, the, she grieves about the mic.

[00:18:23] If you that’s not it send them a mic and offer free training. That’s a great one. That like Jay used to send people a podcast mic to make sure they would have it. And then our friend Gary Stockton over on YouTube says there is one guest tech I do with my guests. Audio is terrible. I have them placed to their mobile phone in front of them and record voice member memo while we were talking and send them the file.

[00:18:45] That’s a great act, Gary. I never even thought about that. Yeah. So

[00:18:51] Shannon Hernandez: I have friends in who do a true crime podcast and they, the way they record both their audio on a audition. So one is in New York and the other one is here. And they do their calls on FaceTime. And so they don’t do them on zoom.

[00:19:11] They do them on FaceTime together, and then they record everything on zoom. So there’s all these different hacks that people do utilize my friend, my friends, Dino from the Gary and Dino show. They do something very similar as well to have, if you want to have clean audio, they figured out a way to where they’re just recording the individual tracks themselves.

[00:19:27] And then in post-production Gary goes into heap. He matches it all together. And then it sounds like they were in a studio together well

[00:19:34] Jeff Sieh: and also it’s important to have backup. Like I always say, like, when I say I’m starting the podcast machine, I’m hitting record on that, but ETM also records. It restream does as well.

[00:19:43] But that way I have backups in case, I have dropout on something or something that didn’t hit record. Or there’s something I always have those backups. So grace, you had a question you were going to ask.

[00:19:52] I’m sorry.

For Interviews Do I need To Use A Mixer?

[00:19:53] Grace Duffy: I was going to point out Katherine Long had a question here. She said I’m using a mixer, but switched to an interface a couple years back a years back.

[00:20:01] I’m going to be doing a co-host show in 20, 22. Should I switch back to the middle?

[00:20:07] Shannon Hernandez: Let me read that question again. So I was using a mixture of a switch to an interface a couple of years back. Catherine, can you tell me which interface you are using if you’re looking for better audio and you’re looking to co-host the show and it depends because you have to look at the co-hosting is your color is going to be in the same room or as it code is going to be remote.

[00:20:24] I mean, if you’re doing a co-host remote, I would say you could just be using your interface, like a zoom or anything like that that, you cause it’s just going to be you recording audio, someone remotely. So you just got to differentiate who’s the co-host and who’s the guest. But if it’s someone who was going to be in the studio with you, then probably you have to use a mixing board because there’s that only way that you can capture that audio is by having someone in those, if you have them in the studio or in your recording setup, you’ve got to have that mic there.

[00:20:55] It would not make any sense if you threw them in another room of your house and then you’re doing it on. So you might as well just have the extra microphone ready to go, and then you can patch in, whoever’s going to be doing the interview. If it’s a remote recording, you could do it that way.

[00:21:10] I mean, there’s, there’s a multiple configurations of how you can do this. You just gotta make the one that’s going to be the easiest for you.

[00:21:16] Jeff Sieh: So our friend, Chris stone it gives us advice. He says, upgrading the room, sound treatment is number one for him. So when he went and treated his room, which if you don’t know what that means, it’s like putting those sound absorption panels on I’m lucky.

[00:21:30] Cause in here I have this wooden background and also have a wooden ceiling. So that’s like what you would see at a recording studio. A lot of times they have a lot of wood to absorb that sound. And so it does really well for me. But yeah, treating the room so you don’t have that weird echo or that reverb or something can really help your sound as well.

[00:21:48] Grace Duffy: Uh, I want.

[00:21:49] Ian pointed out, training your guests to wear headphones too, is that he says my biggest issue is trying to get my guests to wear headphones. So you’re not getting that echo or what, w we,

[00:22:00] Jeff Sieh: we fight that at guys podcast as well. Yeah.

[00:22:04] Shannon Hernandez: So yeah there’s a lot of post-production that I have to do.

[00:22:08] And by the time Jeff gives it to me, I’m still doing work on it. So it’s, there’s a guy, I guys got a lot of people working on his podcast and, uh, I’m happy to, I’m happy to do that for him because we can make it sound really good. Yeah.

[00:22:24] Jeff Sieh: So I want to get this is from retro a turbine, I think.

[00:22:27] And this is a Superchat that came over, I think, on your channels. Shannon. So I want to make sure that we answer that. I think so. R I D I R one of us did. So I think if you shared it, so maybe it’s

[00:22:38] Shannon Hernandez: not a super chat. Oh

[00:22:39] Jeff Sieh: yeah. Anyway. But he hasn’t been plugging into social media, my episodes, but I want to start doing that.

[00:22:45] Should I do that at the beginning of the episodes or at the. For a podcast

When Should I Do Promotions In A Podcast?

[00:22:50] Shannon Hernandez: You know, so that is, that is preferential. Now you can do it like how we did here in this podcast, Jeff plugged, whatever he needed to plug in the very beginning, typically the highest point of listening. But you also have to remember, sometimes, the behaviors of how people listen to podcasts.

[00:23:08] If you’re someone who’s on the go and you’re like, I don’t need to hear any of this stuff. I’m just going to boom, fast forward all the way through. They’ll just go past one minute because they know that either the spot is one minute or maybe two minutes you know, if you listen to sometimes, uh, who’s podcasts was it that I was listening to while back either way, it was like five minutes of ads.

[00:23:29] And I was like, oh my God. And I just had to keep going and keep going. Cause I just wanted to get to the content because the title of the podcast was so great. So to answer that question about you know, when you should be talking about your social media, you could talk about it at the very end, especially if the content that you’re are talking about is engaging and it keeps people all the way to the very end, or you can always do a real quick mid roll.

[00:23:51] You know, I call it a baked in mid roll where you’re just saying, okay before we go into the next question, just want to remind you that we have you know, you can follow us over on our social media channels, where we share these podcasts out and we share a lot of other great tips and tools that will help you with your, I dunno, could be you know, health and wellness journey.

[00:24:10] So go on over to our social media. You can find us at. Shan man wellness, on Instagram and Facebook, Twitter, wherever. So just, you’ve got to find these ways in which you can get that out, but also the title of your podcast, or maybe even having those inside of your your. I guess podcast page on apple podcast, Spotify or whatever, and the links that go back to your website.

[00:24:33] Those are always great. So the way I try to avoid, like over saturation of saying, go to Twitter, go to Facebook, go to this, go to that. I just say head on over to the Shan man.com. You can find all the information there and you can find where my social media channels are. That’s as simple as it can get.

[00:24:48] Plus you do want to have a website. You want to have a home to where you can get people to go and check out what you are publishing and learn a little bit more about you. That’s your storefront, that’s you. If you’re trying to make this thing into a business, you got to have a website. And uh, you know, if you’re talking about, going back to your question, Grace, you’re talking about like equipment you know, I would almost lump having a website in there as equipment.

[00:25:11] It’s almost like having an equipment, even though it’s software it’s you gotta have that eventually at some point in time, because people are going to want to use or learn more about you, especially if you are assisting the community. Growing and developing, doing whatever. And if your website is that place where people can get that information, then you want to have that website.

[00:25:33] Plus, if we want to get into it later on down the line, we will get into that later on down the line. As a far as a monetization play is concerned, it really comes in handy. Whenever you have you have remarketing tags and pixels, Facebook pixels on your website as well, because you want to drive them there.

[00:25:47] This is a question that came up yesterday in a group that I was reading, someone was asking. How do I grow my podcast and all this, so we can get into that later at some point in time, but, uh, but it was like, can we use paid ads? And, uh, I was like, yeah, you can totally use paid ads, but that comes at a cost so we can get into that.

[00:26:05] Jeff Sieh: So one of the things I do and say just real quick about you know, when to put in your social media and your ads and stuff, I would S you know, when you first start a podcast, if you are really seriously thinking about monetization and this even goes to, like for other types of marketing is you want to train your audience.

[00:26:21] So I’m getting ready to launch a new podcast. I don’t really even have any sponsors, but I’ve put in my affiliates in there to train my listeners from the beginning that this will be monetized. So you want to think long-term too is like, where are you going to put stuff? Are you going to have it? If you’re eventually thinking you’re going to monetize your post.

[00:26:37] Make something up audible, you could go get a thing for audible. And that’s what a lot of podcasts do is they drop that in there. So you’re at least training your audience that this will be an ad break at this time. So anyway, just really

[00:26:50] Shannon Hernandez: no, that’s great. I mean, that is something that I’ve been saying for years.

When Should I Monetize My Podcast?

[00:26:53] Shannon Hernandez: I should have said that, but I’m glad that you said it, Jeff. I learned it from because yeah, it’s a behavioral thing. So if we were to take, what I like to relate to, whenever it comes to podcasts, I’d like to relate it back to radio because radio is basically the blueprint for what podcasts is doing podcasting is doing now these days.

[00:27:15] So when you’re jumping into a lot of these companies where they’re these networks that they’re doing sponsorships and whatnot, you’ll be listening to a podcast and then you hear the ad break, right? So you hear this. So you could do it through there. I’m not a fan of those networks just because, there’s a cut that’s being taken.

[00:27:30] Of course you have to have a million downloads to, to be a part of those. Not all of them, but you have to have a lot of downloads in order to be considered for those. But at the end of the day, when we’re talking about programming and programming your podcast, you want to create a behavior to your audience to let them know that, Hey, this is going to be an ad break.

[00:27:47] Jeff said, this is going to be an ad break. And there is going to be, there are going to be different types of ads that are coming in. So let’s take, for example, like guy Kawasaki’s podcasts that we just, you know, we just, what we Crested over a hundred episodes and Jeff gained me. We’re going to have, we’re moving over to HubSpot.

[00:28:04] We’re no longer doing the remarkable sponsorship. And so he said, there’s a couple of things that we need to do here. How can we do that? In my mind, I went directly into radio mode and I thought this is basically now ad breaks is what they are, but they’re just baked into the podcast. We don’t have to go through a network.

[00:28:18] We don’t have to go through anyone. These are our own ad breaks. So when you’re creating and developing a behavior, the behaviors can be from a tease music to let them know that there’s going to be a break. That’s going to be coming up. Maybe there’s not. But in guys, if you listen to guys podcasts, I always create a music bed where there’s a point that is being made and that T’s music always leads into another teaser, or I guess a spoken teaser about what’s coming up in the podcast in say 20 minutes, maybe 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, depending on how long the podcast is going to be.

[00:28:51] And then it breaks it into. Commercial break and then we rejoin it with a guy’s brand music, and then we rejoined it by saying you’re listening to guy. Kawasaki is remarkable people, and then it goes back into programming. So I know I went a little fast in that, but if you go listen to guys, Paul West you’ll know what I’m talking about, but it’s all about the behaviors about listening to that.

[00:29:12] Cause then you are, you’re able to maneuver and get whatever sponsorships you want or behave. Or even put in your affiliates in those spots as well. So that’s a good way of doing it. I don’t know you have something else. No,

[00:29:25] Jeff Sieh: that was good. So I just wanted to, since we had that super chat jump into that real quick, because I do want to go back and talk a little bit more, especially for people who are just getting started, it’s confusing when they say, okay, I’ve got to get editing software, but I’ve also got to have a host and a lot of people don’t, they think they can just host their podcasts on their website.

[00:29:44] So let’s talk about the best places to host. Um, and you I teased you a little bit before the the show started about talking about some of these, because you have some opinions on them and it’s really interested on them because you have everything from we use simple cast for a guys I’ve used Libsyn before there’s Burberry, there’s all these different podcasting hosts and they’re becoming, I love con competition because.

[00:30:08] Is best for all of us, but what should we be looking for in a podcast hosts, which is where the files, the audio files live. So you don’t get hit on your podcast and why that’s important.

Where Should I Host My Podcast?

[00:30:19] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. So don’t do it on your website. This has been something that’s been talked about many years. The people who jump in and they start this thing out there and go, oh wow, what they discover is they maybe go to go daddy or they do Bluehost or HostGator.

[00:30:34] And they’re like, wow, I got all this space on my host on my website. I can just start hosting audio. They don’t realize that when it comes down to putting audio on a website, there comes a metadata that needs to be coded for the publication platforms. So what I’m talking about when I talk about metadata, I’m talking about the show art, I’m talking about the descriptions of the individual podcasts, the description of the actual podcast.

[00:31:03] Overall, we’re talking about. Now, especially with the apple and Spotify and everyone jumping into the monetization game. Now there’s all these little things, do you want to contribute to, subscribe to this podcast? So there’s all these little things that go into it. But the other thing that I think people need to think about is whatever, if they’re thinking, oh, I need to put this on my website is that websites will not update.

[00:31:26] If you’re, if you need to update your audio, maybe you maybe made a mistake. We do lose with guys podcast all the time. Maybe you know, we need to change an ad out, or he said something different. He needs to change the intro. We can replace the audio without affecting the statistics of the actual download itself.

[00:31:41] So when it comes down to looking for what you need, as far as hosting is concerned, do not post it on your website, post it with a hosting provider, like a Libsyn simple cast. Buzzsprout you know, I would personally, I would say away from the free ones, I would stay away from anchor, even though they are they’re good for the beginning podcast, or let’s put it this way.

[00:32:03] If you’re serious about podcast, I would stay off anchor. All right. I would. I that’s, in my opinion, I know there are people who have very strong opinions about all anchors. Great. For me, it does all these things, but I stay away from it because I look at this from a business perspective.

[00:32:17] If you’re trying to take your podcast to the next level, you want to have the customer service and you want to make sure that they have the reliability of the service that is going to be publishing your podcast. Some of the comments that come in on my YouTube channel, say well, I tried to contact customer service at anchor and I, they keep sending me these help articles and I can’t move my, I can’t get the podcast to update.

[00:32:40] I can’t do anything like that. Maybe they fixed that. Now. I don’t know. Maybe someone from anchor has fixed that. I just know that because they are now a part of Spotify, they’re really pushing this monetization thing, but, free, sometimes isn’t always free because you’re, it’s coming at a cost.

[00:32:56] It’s coming at the service itself sometimes. Uh, it’ll work for some people it’ll work for, I guess quite a few people, but you know, I see a lot of podcasters that are out there who are doing it, and they’re just trying to figure out the game. But when you’re using a lips and you’re using a simple cast Buzzsprout, whatever, it may be blueberry.

[00:33:13] You’re going to get the service that you deserve and you’re getting the updates that you deserve now for me, I you know, I was using bus sprout for the longest time. And I think, bus bra and simple cast, I believe are the best, but there are other people who will say like Spreaker is the best, it’s all based on your needs.

[00:33:31] As far as business is concerned, I use Kajabi. And I don’t want to make this a big Kajabi ad or anything like that. It’s just the platform that I use is my website platform. It’s my podcast hosting platform. It’s my landing page platform. It’s my email marketing platform. It’s the all in one that we use that I use.

[00:33:48] And when I use Kajabi, it does basically the same exact thing as say Buzzsprout or simple cast. The only difference with a Kajabi is that with Kajabi, I am able to create. Say a paid podcast. If I wanted to do that, so I can have a public podcast and then I can say, have a paid private RSSV podcast that I can send directly to my subscribers.

[00:34:08] If I wanted to do that and I’m getting a monthly subscription. So now this is where we run into the whole monetization. We jump into monetization. I would say when we think about our podcast and we think about the hosting, we have to really come and step it back, step back and ask ourselves, what is the ultimate objective of our podcast is our podcast to get downloads and with downloads.

[00:34:31] What does that mean? Does that mean we’re going to be a lot of downloads so that we’re trying to get sponsors? Or am I just trying to build this into a business so that I can help and serve other people? Maybe the objective is a little bit different. You may be doing coaching programs. You may be doing paid podcasting.

[00:34:49] Who knows what you may have to jump into something that’s a little bit different. You may have to jump into something that you know, that is more like a Kajabi where it’s more sales driven and it’s about you and your brand. But if it’s about sponsorships, maybe you stick with lips and simple cast Buzzsprout you might stick with those.

[00:35:07] And you know that you’re just going to have to work towards getting more listeners so that you can approach sponsors or maybe join some type of network to say oh yeah, this is how I’m going to start making my money. Again, all that stuff is going to come at a cost, usually comes at a cost when it comes down to you’re doing say a Kajabi, there is a cost that you have to pay, not in terms of financial costs.

[00:35:27] It’s going to come at the cost of say, how big is your audience? And maybe your audience isn’t that big, but maybe what you’re offering is enough to start and help develop your.

[00:35:38] Jeff Sieh: That is all great stuff. So that was a little mini course right there folks. So that’s really because it’s really important.

[00:35:45] A lot of people don’t think about this, but another thing that people don’t think about, and I grew up in a Grace, you have this question, so I’ll let you go ahead and ask it

How Do I Distribute My Podcast?

[00:35:52] Grace Duffy: distribution. So I read a stat somewhere where there’s 66 million podcast episodes living online somewhere. I’m sure that number is growing.

[00:36:02] And according to the stat, there’s a half a million of those podcasts are on apple podcasts. It’s still growing. No doubt, but of course there’s Spotify, there’s Amazon music. There’s Stitcher, there’s audible. These are all these different places. I feel like every time I turn around, there’s another platform, another content distribution service that’s offering podcasts.

[00:36:21] I can’t wait for Netflix to launch podcasts, right? This is where we’re at now. And so I wanted to know there’s all these different places that you can distribute to. Can you tell us what is the submission process for getting your podcasts? I guess distributed on these platforms, particularly apple, I know apple tends to, there tends to be a few hoops.

[00:36:44] There’s a lot of articles written about how to get on apple podcasts, but there’s a lot to choose from. So I love tell us about what that is, what it’s like to navigate this process. And how do you decide and choose where to go.

[00:36:58] Shannon Hernandez: So when we look at the statistics and I’m sure you that you can ask someone who’s more qualified about this than I am, who does research on this.

[00:37:06] But when you look at the distribution, as far as how people are listening, aware, they’re listening, there’s been recent articles saying though, Spotify is now, competing with apple at the top spot of the distribution platforms. And so still though, to this day, apple podcasts is the platform that most people are listening to their podcasts.

[00:37:25] I don’t know people here who went might have podcasts, can look at their statistics and they can see that probably the majority of them come from apple podcasts and Spotify. Now, how many do we need to get on? And how do we get on those? All right. So my philosophy on this is that you go where the people are, you go where the people are hanging out at the bar where the popularity is.

[00:37:46] But you also want to be the area where. May, the, you know, there’s total introverts that who don’t want to go to the bar. They want to go to their own little watering hole. Right. And so you have to also cater to them as well. But for the most part, when it comes down to the distribution process I would, I would allocate time for yourself to say, okay, if I’m going to have a hard podcast launch date, maybe you want to soften that up a little bit because the process of getting on these platforms and which ones you need to be on can vary.

[00:38:20] So let’s take, for instance, that you talked about apple podcasts, which ones do we need to be on? Definitely. You need to be on apple podcasts. You need to be on Spotify. All right. So when you go through the submission process if you use a service, I don’t know Jeff, you set up a guy’s podcast on simple cast, but I set them up on I’ve set myself up on Buzzsprout and Kajabi on Buzzsprout.

[00:38:39] I know bus Sprout’s got a really great. Service for hosting where you set up the podcast, you do all the uploading, you get your everything up and ready to go. And then they have basically all the platforms that listed on their website or on their hosting platform that will tell you where you need to be listing your podcast with instructions included in links that go directly to the areas in which you need to submit your podcasts.

[00:39:02] So that is a really cool feature of a Buzzsprout Kajabi does the same thing, but they’re only listing the top podcast platforms that most people are listening, but they’re still working on getting more. I have a guide where I give all a list of all those. So you can get this information from different sources, but what happens is that you are going through and you’re going to have to start submitting through the apple podcast process. All right. So I talked about this hard launch date, right? You set a hard launch date. You say. Drop a podcast on January 2nd. So that’s what I’m going to do it. We have to think about, okay, if you’re going to drop it on January 2nd, are you going to drop it on January 2nd?

[00:39:40] Or are you submitting on January 2nd? Let’s think about this. All right. So when you submit to apple podcasts, you submit and you’ll get the RSS feed from Buzzsprout and you’ll get the RSS feed from Kajabi or wherever. A simple cast you’ll submit that you submit it to apple. It may take it. I’ve had podcasts approved the same day, but I’ve also had podcasts approved two weeks later.

[00:40:02] So it varies. So you have to give yourself some time in order to get all these podcasts approved. If you’re going through a Google podcasts, I’ve had podcasts approved, two days later, and then, other podcasts approved. Just five days later, it just really all depends. Every platform is going to be a little bit different.

[00:40:23] So that’s something that I think you should think about when you’re going into that process of getting ready to launch. You need to have at least one to two episodes uploaded already. It used to be three, but I think they’re cool with now just having one or two, ready to go. So make sure you have that ready.

[00:40:39] So I would say the process would start with first, upload your audio and get your podcasts ready to go and have them kind of hole in a holding pattern on your hosting provider next, go into the difference syndication platforms and then learn and figure out which platforms except the RSS feed. Some will accept an RSS feed.

[00:41:00] Others are just pulling the feed from apple podcasts or wherever. So you don’t have to do any submission there, but apple podcasts or Spotify, you’re going to have to really gauge. You know, a few weeks or maybe give yourself a couple of weeks based on the approval process of getting your podcast out into the world.

[00:41:18] So that’s just something to think about. And then after that, then you can start, you can start promoting your podcast, go hog wild on it, and then start gaining some traction. But I think the most important thing is just to give yourself time, if you’re going to set a hard launch date, set it way ahead so that you know that, or I would say not set it way ahead.

[00:41:36] I would say, prepare for your pre or for your launch date so that you can make sure that you hit that hard launch date. Yeah. So

[00:41:44] Jeff Sieh: exactly. So cause they could be different. That’s one thing. And so Nancy says, she’s not like an iPhone or an apple person. She Spotify for me for listening. And she also says that Lipson will walk you through.

[00:41:56] Distributions to all the different platforms. Kajabi was incredibly easy. The same thing with simple cast, it’s really easy. So that’s one of the things I want people to understand is you don’t have to pick where you’re going to be distributed. You don’t have to say, oh, should I pick apple or Spotify?

[00:42:08] You can do them all. And most of all, these platforms will walk you through the submission process, but Shannon’s point. And since a lot of marketers are watching, is we always like to have a launch campaign? The problem is it may get approved at apple, but it’s not as Spotify or vice versa. It won’t happen at the same time.

[00:42:28] So that’s why Shannon was saying too, you have to wait until they’re approved and they go alive and they’re being distributed. That’s when you want to do your launch campaign, otherwise people won’t know where to go to subscribe to your podcast. And some of the links won’t work and all that stuff. So

[00:42:43] Shannon Hernandez: that’s what you have to figure it out.

[00:42:44] It’s like a lot of miscommunication, many years ago, where there were people saying this is your launch date and you got to do it and you’re going to. The rankings of your podcast. And if you don’t do that, then it’s going to affect your rankings. And I’m like, I don’t even worry about that because at the end of the day, I’m in the, I’m in it for the long game.

[00:43:02] And I know that the approval process is going to be different for everything you, as the marketer, you, as the business owner, you’ve got to have your own playbook in place. Don’t listen to what apple podcasts and the algorithm, whatever have your businesses, the number one thing. So focus on your business and utilize the platforms as the vehicle to.

[00:43:24] Attention to your business.

[00:43:26] Grace Duffy: Yeah. What I love the idea of launching with several episodes too, because it’s frustrating when you find a new show and you’re like, there’s only one episode and when is the next one? And it allows people to, get to know you right away, especially with our new binge culture.

[00:43:42] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And it’s, I think the stats, and it’s probably even shorter now, but it used to be that most podcasts don’t go past the seventh episode. And so when they see that you’re there and you’re consistent, they realize like nothing hacks me off is when I’m bingeing something. And then I find out through the internet that like, oh, they didn’t do the next season.

[00:43:58] And so you’re left hanging. I’m like, I’m not watching this. And just kind same thing with podcasting is people want to make sure you’re going to be around. I want to go because Shannon, I know that a lot of people do interview style podcasts. Like we talked about guy, Kawasaki’s remarkable people where he interviews those kinds of people like Jane Goodall and some of the other really high profile people.

[00:44:17] So how do you get guests? And I know with you with the radio station, I’ve seen you interview these, top tier bands and Metallica and all these things. But you’ve got some really big ones on there. So how a lot of questions, a lot of people say like, how do I get guests? How do I get good guests for our shows?

[00:44:38] Do you have a process for vetting people? How do you find out how do you get guests when you’re first starting? I know that’s a big question for people who want to start a podcast.

How Do You Find Guests for Your Podcast?

[00:44:46] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. Uh, it, it varies. Because my process is exactly like how I think, a lot of podcasts was processes.

[00:44:53] Are I just go and ask them I’m asking him like, Hey I think you have something really great that you can offer to my podcast audience. Would you like to come on my podcast and start, just talk for about 30 minutes to an hour. And, I typically, if I say like, Hey, can you talk for about 45 minutes, maybe 30 minutes.

[00:45:09] They’ll typically go the full hour, so, um, that’s what ends up happening because if you can engage the conversation, that’s great. There are very different ways. There are many different ways you can get a guest. So I typically, if you’re say you wanna get a big guest, let’s say you want to get a Seth Goden, well, you probably won’t get Seth Godin if you, unless you don’t, unless you know him or, someone who does know him.

[00:45:30] But for the most part, what I would say start doing is that you just start with your little guests, because there’s a lot of people who have a lot of great talents or a lot of great. That can still offer value to your podcast. And so I would start with those people. Some of these people don’t even have to be on the internet.

[00:45:44] They could be lawyers, doctors fitness instructors. They could be anyone, but they still have the knowledge. Everyone has knowledge. Um, you know, you, as a podcaster, you have to think to yourself if I’m going to bring this person on and and they don’t have an audience, sometimes you can say that’s okay.

[00:45:59] As long as the value is there, I can give it. But maybe you’re looking to grow your audience. You’re trying to find someone still, maybe you need to just start getting people to be acquainted with your style of podcasts and get guests that don’t have audiences in the beginning. You don’t have to have a guest that has a hundred thousand people on Instagram who will follow your podcast.

[00:46:19] You don’t have to do that. You’re just looking for the value. And then once what happens is that as you go further down the line of episodes and you start putting in requests to people, and you say Hey, uh, you I do a podcast that has this and that you now have the clout to say 52 podcasts, a year’s worth of podcasts.

[00:46:39] And these are the topics that we talk about. I would love to have you on my podcast. And I would love to see if you would be willing to share some of your information and knowledge to my audience. Sometimes they’ll say yes, sometimes they’ll say no. It just really depends. My process is really more about providing the value because when people jump out of my feed, they see that the value of starting a podcast or, marketing a podcast, those podcasts episodes are going to be there for people to consume.

[00:47:03] That’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for to share the necessary value to them. I’m not in the business of sharing content, just for the sake of sharing content. If it’s going to lose listeners that I want to share content so that I can get it out to them and it’s important to them. Uh, you know, figure out your own process.

[00:47:19] But I know you have a different process of how you do it. Jeff, I know you do too, Grace. You know, my process varies differently at the radio station. It’s typically with someone who is working for the record company, it comes to us and says, Hey, do you want, would Shannon like to be interviewing someone from.

[00:47:34] I don’t know a bullet for my Valentine or whatever, and I get the power to say yes or no, that’s, that’s up to me, but if you’re a podcast or looking to get a guest, I start small start with the guests that, that don’t have audiences just provide value. That’s it?

[00:47:49] Yeah. One of the things,

[00:47:50] Grace Duffy: but on the flip side of that like a lot of business owners, a lot of marketers, a lot of people within organizations want to be interviewed by podcasters because they have information to share. They want to promote their product or what have you. So what’s an effective and reliable way to get your name out there and let people know that you’re open to being interviewed without being super slimy or spammy.

[00:48:14] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. That, that all comes down to the content development that you’re going to create. Also, I mean, I like the bio. The bio is always a great one, but uh, this is really now more, you’re now diving into the topic of you’re trying to sell yourself basically to these people.

[00:48:31] Promote yourself. You can reach out to people on different podcasts, jump into the apple podcast store. There are services out there that you know, say like we can get you on different podcasts. I’m a, you know, I, it’s not that I questioned those services. It’s just, it’s not, I just not trying to be on every podcast trying to be on every relevant podcast.

[00:48:50] So my podcast is about, or if I want to try to promote my business, I want to try and be on. For this instance, I want to be on YouTube channels. I want to be on marketing people’s channels. I want to be on their channels to be talking about what I am promoting. If they say no, they have my information.

[00:49:09] I can always circle back. But when I’m crafting that email you know, I’m not craft, like I got an email yesterday where this guy was like, Hey, you want to grow your podcast. I can help grow your podcast in 90 days and make a hundred thousand dollars. And I’m like, God, this is so disgusting. I hate when people do that because it’s false promises.

[00:49:28] Not everyone can do that. And typically what that guy is looking for, he’s looking for an investment so he can make money. Whereas I’m just looking to help provide value. I’m helping to provide value where I can now do I want to make money in the end? Yeah, I do want to make money in the end, but I don’t want to sound so gross and SA sales-y with that.

[00:49:44] So I just provide my credentials. I’m a 20 year radio veteran who has been teaching podcasting for the past 10 years. I ended up podcasts from small business owners and the most recent one is guy. Kawasaki’s remarkable people, podcasts. You hear the links that you can go ahead and check out. I would love to be considered to be a part of your podcast and help share the knowledge with your podcast audience.

[00:50:05] If you feel that it’s a great fit, there you go.

[00:50:08] Jeff Sieh: And I get those pitches all the time that you mentioned before as well. And you can tell a lot of times they don’t even listen to the podcast. They’re like this guy, this guy, this guy would be perfect for your podcast. He’s a vacuum cleaner salesman.

[00:50:21] What, why would he

[00:50:22] Shannon Hernandez: get what I’ve gotten those in the last couple of weeks, I just have to start throwing them in spam.

[00:50:28] Jeff Sieh: So Mike has his great comment and I think it’s really important. He goes start building relationships today and you’ll find tomorrow’s guests. And I think that’s really important.

[00:50:38] The other thing is, and what we try to really do on this show is we make the show about the guests and we repurpose this like crazy and you’ll hardly ever see me or Grace more than me. On those clips, because I want to make this show about the guests and their knowledge and providing value that way to my audience.

[00:50:58] And that’s what I do with those clips. The good thing is guests want to come on the show because they know that I do that and that they know that I share them out and I try to make the show about them. So that’s one way, if you’re trying to get guests in, when you do get those guests, make it easy for them to share the content.

[00:51:16] Restream does a really great job with that, with this new Paris feature. But make, when you’re making, graphics, whatever, make it really easy for them to share it and then highlight them when it’s. It, that has probably been the best way for us to grow the show because it just, it just works.

[00:51:34] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s always about your, it’s always about your guests. If you’re the host, it’s always about your guests highlight them and you make them the star.

[00:51:40] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And who are you again? Nevermind.

[00:51:42] Grace Duffy: The audience and the audience. Jeff. Jeff does a really good job of answering questions and bringing up people up too.

[00:51:51] So that is another big part of that too, is serving the audience.

[00:51:54] Jeff Sieh: So speaking of serving our audience,

[00:51:57] Shannon Hernandez: the audience now with. That’s the new dynamic. Yeah.

[00:52:01] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And speaking of our audience and giving them great information, do not forget about our friends over at Ecamm. She has just move. That was a, you can find out more about them at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm

[00:52:10] She cam, and I hope you guys know by the, what I said last week. And through that, the show is that I love the, it’s not just the product and the service, but it’s the people there that got a great community. They really help you learn the software. They listened to what you guys need. And so I am more, I’m so excited that they’ve been a sponsor for the show from the beginning.

[00:52:28] So find out more about them at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm. And we, once again, you, we may have to do a part three Shannon. I’m telling you we only have five minutes left. And we really didn’t get into monetization. Uh, can you, so I know you get this question a lot, so let’s make it really as short as possible.

[00:52:46] And we’ll have you back to talk about this. Everybody wants to make money. And most of the podcasters that I know either start as a hobby or they don’t even start as a hobby, they go right into the business side of things. What’s the best way for somebody to monetize their podcast. You’re

[00:53:05] muted.

[00:53:06] Shannon Hernandez: The radio station. I meet myself, so there are multiple ways you can monetize your pockets.

How Can I Monetize My Podcast?

[00:53:13] Shannon Hernandez: There’s so many different ways that you can monetize you know, yesterday gray sent me an article on the different ways you can monetize podcasts. I was like, yeah, these are all great ways. I mean, let’s just look real quick at the different ways.

[00:53:25] I’ll just name some off the top of my head. There is, the donation, the subscription model, there is, making money by creating products for your audience, courses, coaching. Mean, there’s, sponsorships, there’s all these different ways you can monetize and podcasters can get lost in the mix of it all.

[00:53:43] Do I have to do it all? Do I have to do monetization through sponsorships and do I need to have a coaching program and do I need to, there are many different ways. So this all comes back to the question. What is your business objective? What is your objective So when I ask about what’s your objective is.

[00:54:01] Yes I want to make money, but we have to ask the underlying objective, who are you trying to serve? What are you trying to do? ultimately, what are you trying to do? So I personally believe that it’s a bad philosophy to follow if you’re just doing it to make money because you’re doing it to make money.

[00:54:18] It looks very self-serving. Yes, we want to make money. We want to help this become a part of our livelihood, but there has to be an exchange of something. So the exchange may be coming in the form of last, like when I talked about the dynamic of what we have with an audience, it’s about a guest, but now it’s about, we have a live audience who’s here watching, but you have to also remember that when people are listening to a podcast they’re consumed in you.

[00:54:43] So you need to make it about. them So you need to always be having it facing towards them. Your content has to be facing towards them. So when we’re talking about monetization, what is it that you can offer to them? Could it come in the form of a funny t-shirt could it come in the form of saying, Hey, look, in exchange for all this great free information, I would love it.

[00:55:03] If you can contribute to my podcast, five bucks a month, it helps me help develop the podcast. So you’re giving free information that is valuable, but hopefully they can do that. Now that’s a little bit different, but you can also do something like, there’s a lot of people who use Patreon And so they give a lot of bonus content.

[00:55:20] They give extra episodes of their podcast because that’s what typically people want to do. you can do that. not every objective is going to be the same. Not every objective is going to be something that works. It’s, not a one size fits all like my friends who, run the crime and sports podcasts and small town murder podcasts.

[00:55:38] They have millions of downloads and all they do How they’re making their money are based off their, Patreon and PayPal donations. And then of course they’ve gotten so big now that they have other lines of income that have just come forth. So I would say in the beginning, figure out what the one thing is that you want to start setting yourself up for when it comes to monetization for me, if you’re a business and you’re not like in the comedy niche, and you’re not in the true crime niche or anything like that, if you’re starting from the business side of things, you need to start developing a building a website so that you can start collecting emails so that you can start promoting that.

[00:56:12] You’re going to eventually start saying, Hey you know, Hey, here’s a plan where you can subscribe to extra podcasts or, things like that. I could get, I could go really deep into this.

[00:56:22] Jeff Sieh: You’re going to have to go really deep on part three with Shannon Hernandez. Because once again, we got so many great questions and so many awesome, you know, topics that we talked about that, you know what you should teach a course on this.

[00:56:35] Oh weird. I know. Where can people build a

[00:56:38] Grace Duffy: business around podcasts? Shannon

[00:56:41] Jeff Sieh: tell people where they can find you and get some more of all things. A Shannon Hernandez.

[00:56:46] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. You can find me@theshanman.com. I have my course on, you know, the basics of, I mean, I wouldn’t even say the basics. It’s just learning how to use Adobe audition to build out your podcast.

[00:56:57] So that is available there for you to go ahead and check out. And I’ve got other products that are up there as well. You know how to monetize your podcast, audio book. I’ve got a, podcasts, launch checklists and so much more that is up there. So go to the Shan man.com. You can find.

[00:57:09] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, it’s got tons of resources and there’s nobody else I go to when it comes to podcasting and audio stuff.

[00:57:17] When guy came to me about doing the the remarkable people, helping him produce that podcast, the first person I called was Shannon. I didn’t even go to anybody else. It was straight there. Um, make sure you guys check him out. He’s got a ton of great information information@thesandman.com, but someone else who is equally awesome and amazing is the amazing Grace, Duffy, Grace.

[00:57:38] Where can people find out more about you and all things, Grace?

[00:57:42] Grace Duffy: I am the video content manager over at restream. You can find out more about restream@restream.io and I’m here every week, which I fix up what I’m not.

[00:57:53] Jeff Sieh: So yeah, so I could not do the show without Grace. She is amazing. This has been so much fun.

[00:58:00] Thank you guys for all your questions and your comments and all your shares and everything that you guys do. This is also a podcast you can find us. If you just go search at any of your favorite podcast, places, just do a search for Social Media News Live. We’d love for you guys to leave a rating and review.

[00:58:16] It really helps us out. And we will be back next week with another great guest and topic. You can find us at YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the places and we would love to know. You love us to talk about, is there some subject that we have not covered yet that you really want to know for 2022, we would love to do that.

[00:58:35] So drop us a DM in the comments. And with that, our next show will be on Friday, December 10th at 11:00 AM. Eastern time, 10:00 AM central. We really appreciate all you guys. Thank you, Grace. Thank you, Shannon. Thanks for all you thankful for all you guys in the comments, Gary Mike, um, Jeff, thank you so much for being here and we will see you guys next week.

[00:58:56] Bye everybody.