Everything You Need To Know About Podcasting with Joe Casabona

Content Is King

One of the main challenges faced by new podcasters is making sure they’re consistently putting out enough quality content to keep their audience’s attention.

It can be hard to build a loyal following when starting out, but delivering regular high-quality content is the key. 

Joe releases two seasons a year, each containing between 22 and 24 episodes. For Joe’s podcast, this is enough content to keep his viewers engaged. The amount you need to produce, though, will vary based on on your podcast topic and how long it has been running.

How Do You Find Guests?

The best way to do find guests is through networking. Going out to meet people, making connections with them, and sharing contact details.

Joe spent a few years attending WordCamps, which enabled him to build up a network of people that he could reach out to. After asking over 100 people, only four or five have declined to be guests on his podcast, which proves that it’s really just about putting it out there and asking!

Common Mistakes to Avoid

There tends to be a very steep learning curve when podcasters first start producing their shows. But Joe was already a developer, which gave him an advantage.

Many first-time podcasters upload their audio file directly to WordPress. However, this isn’t the best way to go about it. Instead, they should be using a specific audio hosting provider like Libsyn. Libsyn and other similar hosts use a plugin to build the feed for you. This is really helpful down the track when a bunch of episodes are uploaded to multiple websites.

Another important thing to note:

Putting your podcast on iTunes is not enough

This is why many podcasters fail early on!

Having a website for a new podcast is essential, as it expands your range of audience exponentially. In Joe’s case, for example, only 60% of his listeners downloaded his podcast through iTunes while the rest found him through other sources.

Some other good avenues for placing your podcast are  Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Podcasts and Spotify. This is all vital knowledge. Every podcaster must know how to pick the right platforms, understand web hosting and work out the best domain to buy.

And this is just the beginning. There are still those guests to schedule (that you networked so hard for), then there’s all the technical stuff involved, as well as the research for the content you want to cover.

Motivation

It can be hard to stay motivated at the beginning of your podcasting journey when there are so many technical difficulties that will arise and almost no way to tell if anyone’s actually listening to your show.

You need to really believe in what you’re making, and be confident that you’re producing something that others will find value in. A good idea is to do 10 episodes first, see if you like the end product, and go from there.

Podcasting is a grind, it takes a long time to build up an audience.

What Should You Outsource?

Editing can be the most labourious part of making a podcast, but it can easily be outsourced to a reliable party.

Joe went from spending hours chopping up audio and removing a countless number of ‘ums’, to finding somebody on Fiverr who agreed to edit and mix the entire podcast for just ten dollars!

How to Monetise a Podcast

There are many costs involved with starting a podcast and you need to be ready to invest in at least around $200 at the beginning. You will need to pay for your hosting, the technology you use and your equipment too. Unfortunately, all of these together means it isn’t a cheap endeavour, so monetising as early as possible is essential.

There are three main strategies you can follow to monetise your podcast:

1. The most obvious path is through sponsorships. This means finding companies who will pay you in order to advertise their product on your podcast.
2. Podcasts are also a great way to build your authority in a certain area. Once you’ve done this, you are seen as the expert for hire.
3. Affiliate links are another great stream of revenue.

Building an Online Course

It is very important to have an audience in place that knows and trusts you before you begin building a course. The biggest problem that people run into when producing online courses is that, even if a course is amazing, it requires an audience that has been nurtured.

People love shortcuts. Instead of offering an intense amount of learning, course creators should position their course as a shortcut that makes their lives easier. This will make it much more attractive to potential students.

Instead of the prospect of hard work, they will think of the course as making their lives easier.

In other words, your students (and potential future students) have a problem they need you to solve. They trust you and believe in what you’re saying. You need to prove to them that you’re good at what you do and that your content is worth buying. Do this by sending them free content, this will build trust and show you know what you’re talking about.

Closed Enrolment vs Evergreen 

Having closed enrolment courses is a really useful way to create scarcity; closed enrolment means only allowing people to enrol in your course during a certain period. Unfortunately, running a system like this can be exhausting and stressful work. It also leaves a window in which people can’t enrol, making it more difficult to learn or test anything new.

Having an evergreen open enrolment model allows for a more rapid learning cycle, but you lose all sense of scarcity. A good way to combat this is by having bonuses or price hikes that reward people for taking action immediately.

The number one thing that motivates people to take action is scarcity or urgency. That’s the biggest motivator of human behaviour.

What Is Joe’s Course?

Joe provides a three-day course for people who have already recorded their podcasts but need help knowing where to go from there. He makes websites for podcasts and talks about all the different technical aspects that podcasters need to wrap their heads around – everything from setting up web hosting to submitting your podcast feed to different websites in order to achieve maximum exposure.

Listen in to hear how Joe created a massive audience for himself, so that he was able to make running online courses his main business.