Colin Gray on Why Podcasting is a Great Business Strategy - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 37

Colin Gray : 0:03

Like one of the most common ways that podcaster may earn money is sponsorship. So a product gets in touch with the podcast, they say to the host, will you talk about our product, we'll give you this amount of money per thousand listeners, that's how it tends to work. So for sponsorship, you tend to need at least a few thousand listeners every single episode. Usually the interest starts around, you know, up to 3000, if not up to 5000 or so. And by that point, your your usual rates are two for one product sponsor. Sure, they'll pay you maybe $20 ish, per thousand for the pre roll, but 25 ish for the middle. So it works. So once you put it all in maybe $40 per thousand listeners per episode. So let's say you've got 2000 listeners, that's $80 per episode. So it's not a great deal of money at that point. But I mean, that's not nothing to most people. It covers your bills, certainly. And this starts to pay for a few meals and a few beers, that kind of thing. So it's quite nice.

Steve Brown : 1:01

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the ROI online podcast where we believe you. The courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible heroes of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown. And this is a place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together. Welcome everybody to the ROI online podcast. And today. I'm lucky or I counted as lucky. Because Colin gray is on the ROI online podcast. Colin welcome.

Colin Gray : 1:47

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Steve Brown : 1:49

Yeah. So. So Colin, you're from Scotland. And I think that was a main reason I invited you. I just wanted a contrasting accent to have a con. No variety, but a little bit of variety. My Texas accent you know, as it gets a little bit dull. But Colin, you have this really cool platform called olotu and it's a podcast hosting platform. You also have a website called the podcast host comm got a great YouTube channel, you've got a podcast called pod craft. And you've been doing podcasting for a while even this is I found really interesting you taught podcasting in university. I didn't even know that they did that.

Colin Gray : 2:40

Yeah, it was it was actually for the lectures. So it wasn't an official university courses such it was teaching lecturers how to use podcasting as a teaching tool. So I taught all sorts of technology for for teaching purposes. And podcasting was just the one that's really self calling for me, actually. And that that was the basis of pod craft as well. It's funny that actually the fact that pod craft our our podcast on podcasting is no, there's no seasons based, you know, it's kind of we do a season, which is a course essentially that's because of back at the university days when I I created one course and episodes, which was how to launch your first episode. It was funny how it all kind of, you know, you start one thing, and it definitely doesn't end up the way you expect. Always it branches off into all sorts of different things.

Steve Brown : 3:28

So why why in the world? Do you kind of get excited about podcasting? Now? This is back in 2007? Or earlier? Is that correct?

Colin Gray : 3:40

That was 2007 2008. Yes, that's right.

Steve Brown : 3:44

Yeah. So why, why are you such a cutting edge? adopter of this radical technology, right is?

Colin Gray : 3:54

Yeah, well, you know what, there's a really specific reason back then. And it's bled into so much of what we didn't know as well, back then my main job was to teach lectures, like I said, so teach the teachers how to teach, which is very matter. But that was my job. And lecturers at universities, teachers, professors, maybe that's more what you call them, the US professors at the universities, they are busy, like they have a lot of stuff to do. They've got everything from teaching, to research to like student mentoring, all that kind of stuff. So it was always so hard to get them to come to our workshops, to learn how to teach more effectively. They were all like the old norther stuff. They're so good at what they do, but very few of them had actually been taught how to teach. So that was the trouble like they know their subject, but they don't necessarily know how to actually teach that to the students. It was a really funny kind of, they call it to me, I always phone then universities that. So So that was my job to help them to teach. And I was more on the technology side using technology to teach and there were many other people like me, who taught more of the techniques and the strategies and that kind of the theory of actually teach. So the technology side was more And because they were so busy, we ran these workshops, you'd have very few turning up. And in the end, podcasting really caught up for me caught on for me, because I ran a couple of courses, I designed them online, and I made them so that it was just a little online course where you logged on to this little space that the lecturers had access to anyway, he did a 10 minute lesson each day, and it had an audio component. So that was me recording a 510 minute class, and they could listen to it anywhere anytime they want it to their phone or device, wherever that might be. And we got so much more engagement with that, than we did with any of the in person stuff. You know, they didn't have to turn up to a two hour workshop, all they had was, you know, 10 minutes, they download it to their phone or their mp3 player back in those days, and go for a walk and you listen to it. And or often we found that they would listen to on the bus or you know, in the car driving to work or something like that, really, that was what spurred me in the early days. The fact that you could create this content that was so much easier for people to consume. So easy that these really busy people, suddenly they were actually taking part in the things that we were creating. So and that's that's kind of gone right into everything we do these days as well as the podcasting. Really, it's that speaks, isn't it, where it's taken up that waste of time, you know, you're ironing your clothes, you're walking the dog, you're hoovering the house, something like that. But you get to listen to something you get to learn, be motivated, or just be entertained. So that's that's a big part of why I love it.

Steve Brown : 6:30

Yeah, so I was relating, because, you know, we serve entrepreneurs, business owners, and that's part of one of my things. They are busy doing their thing, but I need to help them adopt some technology to grow the value of their business and help them accomplish their overall goal. Yes, of starting the business. Yeah. podcasting is like this thing that really becoming more and more popular, people are accepting it more while tell us a little bit about the statistics, the reasoning behind it. What's going on in the industry?

Colin Gray : 7:11

Yeah, it's growing fast at the moment. Well, no, sorry. I see. Even I fall into this trap. podcasting has never grown fast. This is the this is the trouble with podcasting. It's not a bad thing, though. Because it's been a slow, steady growth. That's what podcasting has always been, it's never had that. That huge inflection point that YouTube had, or, you know, blogging had back in the early 2000s. It never had that, like that hockey stick curve. But what it has had is over the last 15 years, since 2004 2005, is slow, steady growth every single year. And this year, the last two years looking at remember looking at the stats, there's a survey comes out called the infinite dial it shows podcasting stats, and listenership has grown faster the last couple of years, though, than anything, you know, before that. So we're up to now let me try and remember the stats off top my head, we're up to approximately a third of US citizens, because it's mostly us surveys here of US citizens listening to podcasts on a regular basis. So that's one in three people no less than on a monthly basis. As far as I remember, it was around 20%. So around one and five lesson on a weekly basis. So I mean, that's quite good numbers really, like, That surprised me when I saw it. Because I would have thought, you know, if you go out and talk to the average person, it's not going to be one in five that lessons every single week, two podcasts. That's I mean, that's really good stats there. And that's up from like, one to 10 or one and 15, you know, five years ago or so. So it's growing, it's doing well.

Steve Brown : 8:46

You know, I'm, I was shocked that I think it's just assumed, yeah, you need a YouTube channel, and we should you should put putting videos on YouTube. And, and that's, that's even difficult for most brands to enter. But the number of YouTube channels compared to the number of podcast channels, yes. is exponentially more on YouTube. Yeah. And if you're looking for a great way to start producing content, and have a competitive edge in a relatively on an crowded forest or platform, it's podcasting wrong.

Colin Gray : 9:27

Absolutely. Yes. No, absolutely. Yeah. It's just, it was the it was the hype around YouTube, wasn't it? Remember, I couldn't tell you the year but say 2012 13, something like that YouTube, just like it just took off. It was suddenly mainstream. There was a huge curve there wasn't there. It just went from zero to everyone knew about it, no time whatsoever. And I think when any medium does that, and it's happened to so many social medias over the years as well as it like Twitter like Instagram, suddenly everyone has heard of it all at once. And that's when you know more And companies and, and seals, companies start throwing their weight behind it. And that's when all the businesses go, oh, we're missing out here quick get onboard. And they do it. But maybe they pay somebody else to do or they do it badly. And it's funny because I think that's a strength of podcasting. And it's never had that. So people that do podcasting, they're like, Oh, I quite like this medium. I'm going to, I'm going to try and do this well. And so we've never had that influx of rubbish of nonsense. We get rubbish podcasts, obviously. But we've never had that same kind of just millions of just terrible things coming on. And so I think that's a strange that medium.

Steve Brown : 10:37

You know, one thing that was kind of funny to me, and I didn't think about this, but like, everyone knows what the number one search engine is. It's Google. And everybody quotes what the second biggest search engine is YouTube. But you know, what the third largest search engine is?

Colin Gray : 10:55

I don't know.

Steve Brown : 10:56

It's Apple, iTunes, Apple.

Colin Gray : 11:00

That's good to know.

Steve Brown : 11:01

And that's that was like, wow. And you see Spotify, they picked up Joe Rogan. And you see these other platforms that were designed for maybe something else, all of a sudden they're starting to position to really onboard a podcasting audience and deliver podcasting content.

Colin Gray : 11:24

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the last that I say that YouTube is sorry, podcasting has never had that influx from marketing companies, sales companies, but I have seen big growth in that in the last year or so. There has been an it's stories like you're talking about, they're like Spotify spent 500 million on podcasting companies on investments. It's it's other companies coming into is a lot of money coming into podcasting. And suddenly, suddenly, there's no awareness. So, yeah, it's good and bad, isn't it? Like a lot of a lot of the old school podcasters motorboat x, it's, it's the claim, it's taken away, the freedom of the medium is corporatized doing it, it's all that kind of stuff. But I think in a way, some of that's true. But the more money that comes into podcasting, that means the more investment in the infrastructure and the tools and, you know, if there's more advertising dollars, that's going to filter down to the smaller podcasters as well, it will, oh, the law has been more of it goes to the top shows, but the indie podcasters are still going to see a better thought I believe. So it has to be at least partly a good thing for us.

Steve Brown : 12:31

So let's say your brand and someone's been encouraging someone like me is like been encouraging you. You need to adopt podcasting as a content, production, commitment or activity. You know, it used to be blogs that it was hands down, you need to be publishing blogs. But more and more people are like backing off on that. And I see the podcasting as a way to diversify your content production and delivered across multiple mediums. But what would you say? What's the attitude or strategy that you would coach a business person to consider before they they decide to step in and do this?

Colin Gray : 13:19

Do podcasting? I mean, I think I would say, this is ironic considering what we do. But I actually I usually encourage people to think blogging first. Because I believe that podcasting does work really well. But it works better alongside text as well. And that's partly because like you say, there. And that's, that's cool to know that iTunes is up there in terms of search engines, but is still a fraction of the volume of searches that goes through Google itself. It goes through text search. So you can grow an audience through iTunes, by all means, but it's, it's, you know, there's limits to what you can do, I would say with that alone. Whereas if you're a business, particularly certainly, if you're a hobbyist, if you're just creating a fun show, or you're just looking to grow your YouTube audience, and sorry, an iTunes audience, then great just per podcast, but if you're a business, you're looking to solve people's problems. It's about being found when people need you when they're looking for a solution to the problem that you solve. And a huge part of that is fresh typing into Google. So for me, one of the the subnormal funnels are in how a business can grow a good podcast is that they start capturing those questions. You're blogging on that, but you're blogging and you're then repurposing that into the other content, as well as a podcast. Perhaps even a video is something that I've talked about a lot in the past as the kind of content stacking approach which is, when you, you think about the content, you're solving the problems you're solving and you create, let's say, a season of content, let's take your first five to 10 biggest problems that you Every business that you know, they always have one or two questions which customers asked them most often. So, think up, it's like sit down for just 20 minutes and write down those top five to 10 questions that you get asked. And often, there'll be a group in there maybe maybe five, four or five, those questions that aren't a theme, you know, you can, you can put them together. And maybe you can create a season of six to eight episodes for that first season, so you can invest in those first 55678 episodes. What I normally do then is I'll create a blog post on each topic, I'll go and then record a podcast episode. But with video as well, often you don't need to do this. But it's a little bonus if you can record that podcast episode based on that blog post. And it's often really easy to record a blog or podcast episode, if you've just written a blog post. And then you speak about it often, it's much more tight, much more easy to do much less mistakes, because you just follow through, it's all in your head. So it just kind of spills over to the page. And if you can do in video as well, then you can take the audio track off to publish as a podcast, you can take the video track, you can take highlights from it, put shorter clips on YouTube, or even the whole thing if you really want to. And then you end up with these three bits of media. You've got a blog post, a podcast, and a video, all three created in much less time than it takes to create any one of those individually. And that's really powerful. And the thing that happens after you've created that first season, see you have six episodes, they're covering one theme, like So for us, for example, if it's podcasting, maybe it's like how to start your podcast, maybe it is that six episodes just show you how to get that first episode out there. That's all it is. Then even if you decide at the end of those six episodes, podcasting is not actually for us, you know, it's not really our medium, it's not something to be enjoyed doing, which is fine, then you've still got this really valuable chunk of data, you've got this really, really valuable content here that can go on the website answers questions, you can point people towards that they can download just those six episodes get a really good bit of learning, and actually valuable for you. But the key thing there is because you've got all three, you can be found on all three of those search engines. The massive net of Google, you know, people are typing in how do I start a podcast, they'll find your blog posts on it. But then they'll also see the podcast player and those blog posts limit lesson to the podcast there. For me, that's one of the biggest missed opportunities a lot of podcasters aren't taking advantage of it's it's text searches, right and good show notes, good blog posts that go along, save the podcast episodes. So people find them in cool search, they see the player, they listen to the show, and they subscribe that way. So that's often how I would recommend businesses go about it. Certainly, if you're thinking about it really for a return on investment, long term growth. That's one of the best ways to get better.

Steve Brown : 17:51

Yeah. When we started our podcast, like, about a little over three months ago, and the thing that excited me is, here I am, I'm an agency, and I'm trying to encourage my clients to get into blogging, and yet I struggle with coming up with topics on the blogs, and I have a whole team that would produce them. Okay, and, and but yet, I can set up a time, have a great conversation, just like this, and get these beautiful insights and a conversation and interview and then take that. And we'll have a video version of it on YouTube for discoverability. We'll also put this into Vidyard. That's our video hosting tool that keeps everything and the data and stuff on our website. But then we'll pull off the audio layer, just like you said, we'll push that out into the podcast episodes, take the show notes, write a blog, and then in that blog post and has a video option. It has the text of the conversation. It has the audio gram or the What do you call it? The the little nice player that's in it.

Colin Gray : 19:08

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown : 19:09

And even the transcript from the conversation as well. And imagine, over time how how authoritative this domain will become because all of these conversations being associated with it around this part of how to empower business owners to get modern, in this age Modern Marketing.

Colin Gray : 19:35

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I just it's sometimes I see I see businesses, particularly hobbyists, sometimes too, but businesses particularly Yeah, they're a covering topics they're doing a podcast episode is great content, you'll listen to it. And then you go to the website to maybe review I often do this. I'll listen to it for 30 minutes in the car. And I'm like, this is really good. I wish I could take notes right now, but I'll go and I'll Have a look at the show notes later. And I go back to the website to review it to go back through thinking about I hope we've got a good summary here I wanna, I want to really think about what they talked about here. And I'm just, they're dying for the information. And I get to the show notes page. And all it is is a sentence saying, hey, and this episode I talked to blah, blah, blah, from blah, blah, blah, have fun. And that's it. But it's such a missed opportunity. Because I'm there and I'm, suddenly I'm frustrated. And like, I want the info. Again, I'm not gonna listen to the whole half hour again, I just want the summary to remind me what you talked about, I would, I would like put my email in here to get some stuff out. If the information was here, I would be so well disposed towards this company right now, I'd probably look around the website, I would see what last stuff you do, what content you have. But instead, I'm just going to hit the close button in frustration, and leave. And it's such an I mean, that's from the customer point of view, but even the search opportunity to is just there's nothing you're not going to be found in search, when you have shows that too. So it's just it frustrates me.

Steve Brown : 21:01

You know, a lot of people are brainwashed on SEO, Search Engine Optimization. And so they're trying to please the robots, and they cram all this text onto that pages to game system. When if actually they just forgot that and decided to have great conversations like this. And put the text in the show notes in there. Then it's handled? Yeah, it's absolutely, super. It's just you produce content for humans. And you'll end up with a much better product.

Colin Gray : 21:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what Google wants. They want. They want good content for humans, because that makes people come back to Google again, and again, if they can surface great content for humans. So and Google is one of the smartest country countries, almost our country, one of the smartest companies in the world, so they know how to surface content that's good for humans. They know how to avoid the SEO tricks and all that. So yeah, just create good answers, solve people's problems, and that'll that'll sort yourself out.

Steve Brown : 22:11

So one of the hurdles that people have to get past and producing content is technology. And I was one of those as well. It's like, all right, so I'm going to record these conversations that I recorded in GarageBand. Where do I recorded them? And how am I going to edit it? I'm not an editor. I'm it. I was just like, that was a big barrier for a while was conceiving how I was going to do it. And so you have this tool that offered me a easy solution to do a professional job to get past that hurdle. Where did that idea come from? And why? Why do you think that you could all of a sudden turn into a SaaS company when you think, people how to do podcasts?

Colin Gray : 23:05

That's a good question. And it was difficult. I mean, the answer to your first question is I, I decided to try and create it because so many people had that exact same problem. And through our teaching through our website, like the website really started to gain a lot of traction, the website being the podcast horse.com. This as the site started back in 2010 11, when I was teaching still at the uni. And it started to get a lot of traction, and therefore we got more and more and more questions to the same. And the top question was always, how do I make editing easier? Like, I just don't want to learn this tool? I don't want to learn audacity or addition or, you know, it's not that hard. But still I don't want to do it's not my it's not my skill, this technology stuff. And there's so much in here like what's equalization? What's compression? What's a bitrate? I don't know, any of these terms. So it was just really obvious that this was a huge, it was one of the biggest barriers in podcasting, it's the thing we are asked the most. And I have always been quite technology literate. I was kind of played around a lot with development when I was younger. I'm not a proper developer by any means. But I know enough to know when something might be possible, and to play around with it. So I just started working with a developer we had, we would start to make a bit of money at that point on the website through affiliate marketing. So I was paying my own salary, but we had a wee bit leftover, not a lot, but a wee bit to pay towards the developer to play around with it. And we've been playing. Sorry to interrupt but to

Steve Brown : 24:38

a American audience, a wee bit is a little bit.

Colin Gray : 24:42

A little bit a little bit.

Steve Brown : 24:44

We're talking with Collin gray. He's from Scotland. This is he's talking about Alitu to this beautiful tool back to you.

Colin Gray : 24:52

Sure. So we had enough to experiment and it turned out that with some existing tools at the time, we could do quite a lot. What's the editing late, we could make some new music, we could chop together a bunch of different clips. And so if the user uploaded five different clips, we can piece them all together, put the music on the start and the end, you could clean it up a bit, do about noise reduction, and level it so the volumes are all level and correct, and then export it and send it off to Lipson or blueberry or bud spray or your publishing platforms. So within six months, it became obvious that this was actually going to be quite possible. And so I started looking for funding at that point, and managed to get some from the Scottish Government, actually, Scottish Government are really good in terms of trying to encourage entrepreneurial ism, whatever that word is, and trying to start a business. And I guess that when you talk about starting that, why did you think we could start a SaaS company, I don't think I even thought about it that deeply. I just knew that we had this audience out there that I know and love talk to every day. And they had this problem. And I thought, if I can solve this problem for them, at least in a small way, I don't think I'm gonna have to worry about trying to sell it, I think this will sell itself. And in a lot of ways that that was true. Actually, there was a lot of speed bumps over there over the last couple of years to get to where we are now. And there's still speed bumps along the way. But people respond really well to seems to go well, it solves that problem. We're putting new features in every day to solving more problems. So it's been it's been fun, certainly

Steve Brown : 26:24

want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released, called the ROI quickstart Academy for authors. Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place, we want to create a great foundation, and we want to grow our business. But the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics, we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with, you have a great idea, you have a great book, but what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors? Imagine working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit ROI online.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now, back to this episode. So as your audience is, you probably get data of your account users. I'm curious that, you know, what's your growth rate? What markets are really adopting Allah to? And then then, of course, I have other questions, but let's go there.

Colin Gray : 28:20

Yeah, sure. So I mean, we, I think it's funny, people ask me this a lot. And I've tried to be searched. Because I'm quite a data geek. Like I like to know these things I like to the trends, I'm always in the analytics. But the user base really kind of defies categorization, in a lot of ways. Like we have such a mix of people using it. We have everything from hobbyists to big companies using it. I think if I was if I was forced to see it, what's maybe the biggest category, it's it's really its sole entrepreneurs is people like coaches, like coaches, consultants, people that work on their own, that really trade on their personal brand. So it's really about their name, their expertise, their authority. And it's always been, that's what podcasting works almost the best for it's the biggest return on investment for people like that, because it really grows your own authority. So you can then sell, you know, high price consulting and stuff like that. So people that are happy to spend, because that's the thing. So it costs money, it costs $20 a month, it's not super expensive, but it's enough that, you know, hobbyists that are on a really low budget, it's not really it's not easy for them to afford. So but people who are running a business around it, it's a no brainer, because it saves them a couple of hours every week potentially. So $28 is nothing compared to that. So so that's probably the most common person for us. It's there was kind of solo entrepreneurs, there's individuals, they can't quite afford to get a full editor yet which companies can but they can afford to pay for some less to make it easier.

Steve Brown : 29:56

Absolutely. I even think that I mean, we use that In our system, there's a lot to developing and publishing a podcast you, you have to have a publishing platform like buzzsprout, you have to have an editing software, you need to be able to push it on your blogs, you need the creative aspect. There's a lot going on, you have to get set up in all of the directories. But I found that what I really liked was how Allah to integrated with buzzsprout so easily and it was very complimentary. Did you spend time with them to make it easy to adopt? That's interesting.

Colin Gray : 30:42

Yeah, yeah. So we've worked with bas spray a fair bet. I know the guys over at buzzsprout quite well. So they, the I worked with us, we've got the development teams talk to each other quite a bit. And we've worked with all the other hosting platforms as well. And so yeah, they're all quite, they're all quite willing, because we're, we're happy to promote them a little bit as well. And they helped promote us a wee bit. And we all kind of want to make it easier for the whole process to be done as well. The guys at russborough are totally focused on very similar to what we do, which is simplicity, ease of use, just making it as simple as possible for you to get your shoe out there. So yeah, a good full story with

Steve Brown : 31:19

that. That's excellent. So I still have some more questions. I we didn't really talk about how long we would want to talk. But do you still have more time? Yeah, but more time? Yeah, go for it. Absolutely love it. So figure out a way to get paid for doing podcasting is like this other side. monetization was a word I was struggling to come up with. But yeah, so let's talk about monetization. And, you know, when should you consider monetizing? How much game how much, you know, you have your process? Should you six months a year, talk to us about what are proper expectations, monetization? And then how to approach it?

Colin Gray : 32:05

Yeah, sure. One of the biggest questions out there, isn't it. And there's, I mean, there's a group of podcasters out there that never want to monetize, they're just doing it for the love of it. They're just putting their voice out there. And that is absolutely fine. And they're great people, great podcasters. So that never said, there's another group who decide from the very start, I'm starting a podcast, you know, I'm not going to make a living out of this. But I want to at least make a little bit out of it. Maybe I'll, you know, cover some bills, maybe I'll get sent some gear to review and therefore get like free things all the time. And, you know, those people, I believe they should start thinking about it from the very start. I'll explain the stages, though, because there's a lot of different stages along the way. Do you do much in the way of affiliate marketing at all steep? But do you use that?

Steve Brown : 32:52

Yeah. So I'm starting to create those affiliate relationships. I have a book on Amazon. And then when we talk about a book or something, then I'll go into the affiliate market and get someone buys a book, then then we would get a little

Colin Gray : 33:08

to get a commission. Yeah, yeah, perfect. So that is the ideal starting point for podcasters. For me, like one of the most common ways that podcaster might earn money is sponsorship. So a product gets in touch with the podcast, they say to the host, will you talk about our product, we'll give you this amount of money per thousand listeners, that's how it tends to work. So for sponsorship, you tend to need at least a few thousand listeners every single episode. Usually the interest starts around, you know, up to 3000, if not up to 5000 or so. And by that point, your your usual rates are two for one product to sponsor. Sure, they'll pay you maybe $20 ish per thousand for the pre roll, but 25 ish for the middle. So it works. So once you put it all in maybe for $8 per thousand listeners per episode. So let's say you've got 2000 listeners, that's $80 per episode. So it's not a great deal of money at that point. But I mean, that's not nothing to most people. It's it covers your bills, certainly. And it starts to pay for a few meals and a few beers, that kind of thing. So it's quite nice. But like I said, you have to be up at the few thousand listeners by that point. So that's, I mean, most people, unless you're doing really well, unless you have a pre existing audience, it'll take you a good six months to a year to get to that point and most niches, and if not longer, if not longer. Absolutely. There's many people in many dishes that are, you know, 1000 2000 after a year is is a good audience. But what I usually tell people to do is if they're thinking of that maybe they're in long term is thinking about affiliate marketing from the first days though. So treat affiliate marketing as your sponsorship. So get on Amazon. Let's see Amazon Associates, one of the easiest programs out there for you find a few products, maybe some books that you mentioned there, Steve some books that suit your audience and treat them as your sponsors. They are not coming to you to tell you to sponsor the show. But you can see, you can review a book each week on your topic. Or you can see this episode is sponsored by the blah, blah, blah book, which may be really useful to you go and buy at this link. And therefore you get a commission. And the reason for that is it means that you start to learn how to do sponsorships, you learn how to pick the slots in there, and your audience gets used to it as well. So they expect that each episode there's going to be a small sponsor and nobody means that because they know they're getting this for free. The thing that some iPhone some listeners do mean this if you do 50 episodes for entirely for free, no sponsorship, no mentioned any kind of sales, but then suddenly you bring in sponsorship Episode 50 lessons go crazy. They're like, Oh, you've sold out, you're just terrible. So that's another good reason to bring it in early. If you think you're gonna go that way, bring it in early and practice it with affiliate marketing. So that's a really nice way to do it. So yeah, sponsorship affiliate is certainly one. There's a fair few others if you want to go through a few others, Steve Virginia.

Steve Brown : 36:06

Yeah, no, I mean, I enjoy that.

Colin Gray : 36:09

I mean, the the pile of sponsorship and affiliate marketing are probably the most common, I would argue they're certainly not the most effective or the most profitable, and usually the most profitable. And the most easy to sell as well, in many ways are your own products and your own services. We've talked for example about Allah to so Allah twos, that our SaaS product we talked about our software product talked about a minute ago, and it is our own product. And no, we sell that on our own podcasts. So I mentioned ality a lot on pod craft. I mentioned that a lot, and our blog posts on our videos, that kind of stuff, as soon as you have your own product. So it's easier to sell, because your audience are listening to you, they get to know you, they get to know too late can trust you. And therefore, if they hear that you have created something, especially if it's based really strongly about around problems that they are having, it's a total no brainer for them to buy and use this thing. No, it doesn't need to be software by any means. Like we start with courses. So I i in the very early days, I created a few courses based on how to start a podcast, and I would sell them on our on our podcast or a blog. So you can start with even a little ebook, you know, a 2020 page ebook that costs $5, you can try and sell that on your podcast, upgrade that to a course, a few months later, upgrade that to a suite of courses a few months later, add some coaching all about later, like really high price coach, and suddenly you can start charging, you know, 1000 $2,000 a month for executive coaching or something based on your topic, these things are all really possible with podcasting because of the the authority and the trust that you build. So yeah, I mean, that that's usually where people end up, I would say the most successful podcasters end up as selling their own stuff. We don't really,

Steve Brown : 38:01

I'm glad you brought that up, because in my mind that are any consideration. But you know, I'm not thinking about everyone else. But, of course, you know, I wouldn't encourage an entrepreneur to do that. That would be the main reason you would start to sell, what's one of the best ways that you can grow an email list to have some good suggestions, and I'm in a podcast other than the obvious, hey, send me your email.

Colin Gray : 38:29

Yeah, sure. No, I mean, yeah, you've got to give them a benefit, you got to give them something in exchange, they're giving you something, so you need to give them something. I've seen a few good examples. I mean, the goes from the kind of the simple up to the quite the simple but effective to their hard work, but really, really effective. This simple version is just to create one thing that is of benefit to your audience, which you can give away. So it's those products that we mentioned earlier, but you're giving it away for free in exchange for an email, based on the premise that actually their email address is more worthwhile than five or $10. At this point, that you'd happily pay $10 to get some of these emails to build to, you know, keep them up to date, keep them loyal, and sell them something better later down the line. So like an E book, so 510 page ebook, a checklist, you know, if something's simple, this is what we we give away is actually an eight day guide to launching your first episode. And I've mentioned that a few times. No, because it's, it's it that is the biggest thing that our a lot of our audience want. It's just the simplest, easiest way to get the first episode out into the world. So we've got a printed Guide, which we can send out or download the ebook version of it, which people signed up for. And that's a big part of our funnel. That's how we get people on an email list.

Steve Brown : 39:50

Why? Why not seven days? Why not? Not nine days? Why?

Colin Gray : 39:55

Well it started. It started at 20 actually, so it was a 20 day, guys. But it was just too long actually people never stuck to it was too long. And I narrowed it down to eight, because I felt like that was the minimum possible steps to do it in that quality way. Not seven, because actually the one that would mess off that is essential to me not named because you know that extra one I think you could read also, it was disliked whittled it down to the essentials. So yeah, so that's the simple, that's the simple but still effective way, like you're giving away one thing everywhere. And you just mentioned it's everywhere. You're like, if you want to get our ad gay to start your show, solving the biggest problem with podcasting, go to the podcast.com forward slash start. That's it, you know, you you set up a short link that you can give out to everyone, everyone knows where to go. You mentioned every single episode a few times, it's not annoying. People want this because it helps them helps them solve a problem. So they don't mean at all. And people go to eventually, you know, they'll head over there at some point. So that's a simple way. But it works. And the harder work way someone I've seen work really well. And it's what was her knee? I never remember the name of the lady that showed me this in the first place. I'll maybe come back to me. But anyway, she does. She does a podcast. And this lady does a podcast does a different lead magnet for every single episode. Wow. So sorry, by lead magnet, what I mean is, it's like a thing that you give away for leads. So they give you your your email address. Yeah. And she does a checklist for every single episode. So every single episode, she covers a particular topic. And she creates one page, an a4 page nicely designed, which has a checklist, one to five, or one to 10 or whatever, here's what you have to do to put what I talked about on this episode into action. And it's brilliant, it's a fair bit of work. Obviously, it's an extra, maybe an hour every single episode at least if not more than that. But because it's so specific to that episode. Because it's so valuable, because it really helps people put this stuff into action. She gets tons of leads, she gets so many people signing up for that she's growing a huge audience surrender. And, and yeah, just really, really effective. So if you can put in that extra work that extra time, those specific ones worked really well. And just very quickly, I kind of middle of the road is something we do is category based. So they know there's category based capital lead magnets. So what I mean by that is we have maybe five or six main categories we talked about. So one is editing and production. One is equipment. One is how to start. One might be podcast software. So maybe you only make five or six different downloads, five or six different guides. And you mentioned the one that's specific to the topic you're talking about. So maybe on one episode of our podcast, we're talking about microphones. So I say, oh, download our equipment to gate. So it's not totally specific for that episode. But it is specific to that topic, it's definitely more relevant than just giving them the How to star every single time so that it can work really well. It can be less work but still effective.

Steve Brown : 43:14

I was wanting to direct people to that page. And I'm looking for in my 37 tabs that I have open in Chrome here. But you have this, those four categories on a certain page on the podcast. hosts.com. Right. Actually, yeah, what is that URL

Colin Gray : 43:35

for which ones sorry?

Steve Brown : 43:36

the more you have the four categories, or you can click and get a download for each?

Colin Gray : 43:42

You know what we actually we so we've been testing a couple of different things. So they're actually not in the site. Right now. We've only got our main lead magnet on our website right now. But I could send you I could send you a link afterwards to show a few these specific ones. Certainly. So if you wouldn't stick them in your shoulders to give people some examples.

Steve Brown : 43:57

Yeah. Yeah. Promote you here. But yeah, so the plan sos.com. So yeah,

Colin Gray : 44:05

sorry. It's sorry, Steve. Yeah, if you want to look at the general guide, download, it would be the podcast host.com forward slash start. And then in that gate, that's our head start gate at the bottom of that gate. You can see the tape of op tenders that we tend to offer so yeah, absolutely. That will give people a good idea.

Steve Brown : 44:24

Yeah. So that was like the worst mistake you made. Empire

Colin Gray : 44:33

and love I thought you're gonna see in life there that was

Steve Brown : 44:37

I've got up there but in podcasting was like the worst, worst train wreck

Colin Gray : 44:43

that the worst wreck and just

Steve Brown : 44:44

so that we can all kind of relate or avoid. Yeah, yeah. I have.

Colin Gray : 44:51

I have done the so it doesn't matter how long I do this. I have done the standard mistakes again and again, which is for example, only a A few months ago, I did the classic. I've got my I've got it all set up, we've got a really good important interview going on, we jump into everything's going well, and I look down at the recorder, and there's nothing on, it's just not working, it's just not recording, I've just simply not press the record button. I mean, that's like, that's the classic one. But it happens again. And again, like I just, I get excited about things still. And I'm like, I'm skipping over my checklist and not doing it properly. I lost actually, a bunch of files recently, that was the biggest train wreck, probably recently, I was working with a client. And it was one of our one of our long term clients, one of our biggest people we work with. And I was interviewing her. And it was like, the idea was to do about two hours worth of interviews and turn that into five or 10 short episodes. So it was one big chunky interview, one big content creation exercise that turned into a whole CDs worth of content. And it was going really well it all went great. And it was just when I press stop on the recorder, I had press record now not least, but when I press stop, the old recorder just crashed. And I've never seen a zoom recorder do that before zoom recorders are usually totally bomb proof. But this thing just crashed. I think it was a dodgy memory card. And actually, and I lost I didn't quite lose it all, thankfully, but I lost about an hour, I lost about an hour of that whole thing. And I had to phone up this client who is really busy PMS quite a long way. And see to her like, I know this is meant to be my job. This is meant to be exactly what we do. And therefore it should never go wrong. But this completely messed up. Can we do this all again. That was terrible. It was awful. And it just reminded me like quite often I recommend people, you know, have a backup Bell and Bree says you know, have two places your recording and every single one. And I didn't do it that time. Like normally I would have had the recorder recording, but also have the audacity recording on the computer in the background just in case. So you've got two things I hadn't done at that time. And I would get anyone else in trouble for not doing that. But yet I I missed a

Steve Brown : 47:14

call. And I usually keep these about 15 times 16 minutes long. I could I could ask you about 30 more minutes worth question. But so if I got two more questions

Colin Gray : 47:27

go for.

Steve Brown : 47:28

So if people want to connect with you, what kind of clients real quick, what kind of clients do you work with? And how do they connect with you?

Colin Gray : 47:39

We we work with clients who want to tell stories, we tend to we tend to not do a lot of production these days, actually, we concentrate just on the software and the right thing and the content. But we still love to work with people that want to tell good stories. One of my my first employees, Matthew, Matthew McLean is an audio drama producer. So that's his thing. He creates really cool stories with great soundscapes and actors and stories and all this kind of stuff. And so we love to create that kind of thing. But that translates quite well to actually working with businesses, because to create a good business podcast, you know, if you just do stand up interviews these days with a business with a brand, often it just just doesn't make much of an impact. It's just, it's just too salesy or so obvious what it is, but you can create great stories, you can tell stories, and you can add those audio drama elements to business stories, to make them really pop. To me, they're really great. And if anyone wants an example of that, like, listen to business wars, have you ever listened to business wars? See No, no, but really? What business in my heart? Yeah, business wars. Yeah, it's a business for the business wars podcast search for on iTunes or elsewhere, podcasts or elsewhere. And it's so good. They just tell the story. So we've got one, for example, which is Pepsi versus coke. So it's the story of that business, those two businesses going to war over 50 years. And it's all act today is soundscape. That's all that stuff is just so good. And you can create great shows like that for companies that want to put themselves out there. And so we love clients that that they just want to tell stories, they want to do it in an interesting way. So yeah, that's interesting.

Steve Brown : 49:19

So call him when you do these interviews. I'm curious about what's the one question that nobody ever ask you. Actually, what?

Colin Gray : 49:30

That's a good question. What do I wish they would ask? I'm not sure. If put them in the spot. They're genuine. I'm trying to think because there was a question that I said that to somebody recently, only a month ago or so. I said, you know, nobody's ever asked me that before, was it? I can't remember that. I'm afraid but I know I do know that. Obviously say, I do know that people always just, I mean, there, there's definitely a time five questions of podcasting. There's always the stuff you haven't asked me, which is good actually is very the gear, people always ask about the gear that you use what record? Should you use all that stuff. And that doesn't exist doesn't matter that much. Like, as long as you get something reasonably good quality, pay more than $50. And you're almost certain to get something that will work perfectly well. So, so that stuff just doesn't matter. But people always spend the time on it. So I actually think that the thing that people most often don't ask me that I wish they were that's how to create good content is how to how to think about putting together an episode that actually engages people, how to present well how to speak well, you know how to warm up your voice, for example, it's silly little things like that people don't think about how to warm up your voice so that you sound good on make. And people People often come to us and say like, I hate my voice. I don't I don't want to make your phone. So weird when I hear myself, which is true, you always sound different than what you imagined. But things like warming up your voice, do little vocal exercises, treating, like acting as if you're an actor, a presenter, you know, people, people that go on the news, like news presenters or people that go out there and act on telly or whatever they spend hours and hours practicing their voice exercise and their vocal cords like warming themselves up literally standing up and doing exercises before they speak. Which which people just don't really think about because you think you take speaking for granted. But things like that are so useful. And if somebody if people want a tap on them, actually, I got a good friend of mine, Ian Anderson gray, who teaches live presenting is that he's a he's a musician. He's a singer. But he teaches live video presenting as well. He put together two little vocal exercises for me to videos sorry with a bunch of vocal exercises that so if anybody wanted to check them out, you can go over to I'm pretty sure I will. I'll set up the short link, but it's the podcast host comm forward slash vocal. And I'll set that up just after this. Because I think that that is probably the thing that people don't ask about that. I think the issue is how to sound good on mic. Like how to make sure your voice comes across the best that I possibly can.

Steve Brown : 52:17

Yeah. Excellent. Man. I've enjoyed this conversation. This has been fun. And I learned a lot in your great guest. And I appreciate you. Thank you. So I'm Colin gray co l i n spell grey with an A. And that's altitude. Its altitude. COMM a li te eu? Right, calm? That's right. Yes, absolutely. And then the podcast host comm you're on LinkedIn. Indeed. It's got a YouTube channel. That was the thing that I really enjoyed. I was watching your YouTube yours, your soul calm and your, your Scottish accent but you're very clear, just walking through this thing. And yeah, I appreciate you making that app. It really helps us and it helped us adopt and get into this rhythm of creating these great podcasts. I think they're great. I enjoy the conference. I when can you sit and talk to someone one on one without being interrupted by your phone by is running through your spouse, the waiter right and, and talk about geeky stuff you enjoy so much for spending some time you all the way from now although Collins from Scotland is coming to us live from Australia.

Colin Gray : 53:42

Indeed, indeed. What a thank you for saying that Steve, that does mean a lot. It's it's always so good to hear when people actually find Allah to helpful when it saves you time when it seems your stress, or even the content or the videos or whatever, like we just gonna, I put stuff out there. My team put stuff out there and we hope it helps but it's great to hear when actually does so thank

Steve Brown : 54:04

you. It's helped us I appreciate. Thanks for being a guest and thanks for being on the ROI online podcast. Colin.

Colin Gray : 54:12

Thank you.

Steve Brown : 54:17

Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise that golden toilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.