Welcome to this week's blogging podcast, the first podcast ever recorded that starts as a podcast rather than as a YouTube video. It's my first official foray into daily or at least almost daily podcasting. And I'm really thrilled to share with you why I've made this transition and why I would love for you to also consider it regardless of what your blogging niches. 

My name is Lesli Peterson, and I help bloggers turn their modest websites into thriving online enterprises with SEO, email marketing, and a little hard love encouragement to always move forward consistently and with a plan.

So we're just returned from a really popular travel writer's conference. If you're in the space, you know, TBEX. If you're not, TBEX has been around for, I don't know, maybe 20 years. It's a really popular travel bloggers conference, one of my favorite. And I had the privilege of speaking there. Usually when I speak there, I talked about SEO. And this time, I got to talk about email marketing, which was really fun. 

So it was a great conference with spectacular speakers. And I'll be sharing with you over the course of this week, several of the key takeaways that I got from the conference. But I have to say that the best conversation for me wasn't a keynote. It wasn't with one of the CVBS or DMOS that were there. It wasn't in one of the breakout sessions, and actually happened in the hallway with a fellow long time blogger, Gary Arndt. Now if, again, if you know the travel space, then you might know him for his spectacular photography, and his blogging stories which can be found at http://everything-everywhere.com. 

And I just happened to be, you know, having really what started as a small talk and kind of in passing, we were just talking about how we handled the COVID crisis in our business, because we haven't seen each other since then. And what he began to share with me was an incredible lesson for me, on the power of podcasting. So stay with me, even if you're not in the travel space, even if you've never heard of TBEX. I want to tell you some of the things that Gary shared with me. 

So he started his podcast, which is https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/, and I'm going to link to within the shownotes. He started that during the pandemic, and he said that that podcast has been life altering. Okay, those are his words, those are not my words. But with more than a million downloads under his belt, it's not hard to see why. 

So I really hope to have Gary on to the podcast soon to talk with you about his successes and his frameworks. Certainly he is more a master at this craft than I am. I've been dabbling a whole two weeks in podcasting, as I record this, but in this episode, what I can share with you are two things. 

Number one, a few statistics that literally blew my blew my mind, Gary shared some of these with me. And I went and dug into the research and found more of them and, and validated that they were still on point for 2023. So I'm going to share this with you. 

And then I want to share with you five takeaways that I got from my in the hallway conversation with Gary that were compelling enough to make me change my own business model, virtually over night. 

Okay, so let's start with those statistics. And now these are Apple statistics. And as you know, there's Apple podcasts and Spotify. And Google has a podcasting platform. And really, the the software, the podcasting software that's out there on the market right now lets a podcaster easily share their podcast on their own site or their own URL, and with all of those different channels very easily. So I imagine this is just me, but I imagine that a lot of these statistics are the same for all the different platforms out there. But this research happens to be Apple based. 

So 2.5 million podcasts on Apple right now, if that sounds like a lot, it is nothing compared to the number of blogs that are on Google right now. But listen to this

As of this 2.5 million, only 450,000 of them are active. So if that doesn't say, jump in now, nothing well, but I'm gonna keep going. Okay, so how, who's listening? How much are they listening? I think those are really important questions. Here's what I learned.

About 50% of people, these are adults, I think they were in the 12 to 55 year range. So they're, they're mostly in the bar, you know, and buyers and not retired yet.

About 50% of those people have listened to a podcast in the last month, 41% of those people listen to podcast monthly 

28% of those people have listened in the last week. So that's a huge, huge number of people. 

And 80% of those people who listen to podcasts, generally listen for about seven hours a week. Now, I have no statistical data to back this up. But I'm guessing those people are not reading a blog post for seven hours a week. Now, they might be searching it on Google and hunting and pecking around, maybe, but but listening seven hours a week. 

And this was interesting to most of those people are listening to eight or more podcasts. Eight or more podcasts. 

And what I love about that, is that it means that, that podcasters don't have to compete with each other. There's, that's a huge, that's a huge number of podcasts being consumed on a weekly basis. 

So that means that let's say, we're gonna talk about this in a little bit. But let's say you have a podcast on, you know, Thanksgiving recipes, your maybe your whole podcast is about that, or you've got a food podcast, and you're talking, you know a little bit about Thanksgiving recipes. You don't have to be number one. You don't have to be number two, in this sort of SEO world of podcasting, because people are consuming as many eight or more podcasts a week. And they're giving equal attention to all of those podcasts. 

So the other interesting factor to me was household income. So household income on my blog, for example, is primarily above $150,000, a year or more. Social media household income is generally much, much lower podcasting, the average household income $250,000 a year. 

And what that means is that, especially for high end products, advertisers are really anxious to put their money into podcasting. And we'll talk about what that means in a little bit.

74% of people who are listening, are listening to podcasts because they want to learn something new. 

38% of people are saying they just recently purchased something because of what they heard on a podcast. 

And they're estimating that by next year, advertisers will be spending $4 billion a year on advertising with podcasts. So to put that in perspective, $4 billion a year, but there's only 450,000 active podcasts out there. I mean, this is such a new untapped market that we have at our fingertips. Forget Threads, right? Forget, forget the latest, you know, Fly By Night new thing that happens in this is here to stay. It's working. People are spending money on it already. There's just not enough demand. And that's where you come into play.

So, like I said, Gary, much more...much more of an expert at podcasting than I am, obviously. But I did take away a few gems, and I'm not going to share all of his secrets. But I did take away a few gems from my conversation with him. And those are what I want to share with you. 

So the first one is this. You don't have to pick blogging, or podcasting. Now certainly it does take a little bit of time to do the podcast. I mean, obviously there's the recording time and the research time beforehand and you might want to at least put an outline together if not a script. 

I mean my YouTube channel had scripts all the time, which I felt like didn't really give me the room to kind of be my own person. And that's another reason that I'm excited about moving into podcasting. So I'm going with this, not a script, but a, an outline, you might hear a few more uhhhs and ummms until I can perfect that. 

But um, what you can do is continue with your blogging journey, using SEO and all of the tactics and tools that we've talked about. But you can also take any podcasts that you do, and transcribe them and add those to your website. Now that's what Gary's doing. That's what what I'm going to be doing here for my my coaching that SEO coaching business. 

I know several people like Jody is doing transcripts with her Ireland podcast. So it's a really great way to leverage the podcasting, your podcasting audience, and your blog audience. And then those are easier to share on social media. And you can include both the written version and the audio version on Pinterest, in your emails, yeah, all over the place. So there's just that's just a really great way to do both things. So don't forget, if you decide to take me up on the podcasting journey, don't forget to transcribe your podcasts and add them to your blog. 

Now, here's the second thing.

Gary's doing a daily podcast. Now, I'm a consumer of podcasts. I like the long-form podcasts. I might get some heat over this, but I am a Joe Rogan fan. I enjoy listening to those three hour long podcasts. But it's hard, it's hard for me to find time. And usually when I'm doing it, it's when we're on a road trip. So I find myself trying to listen to two or three in one road trip, definitely do not take them in every week. 

But a daily podcast is very is much more digestible. So you're gonna find that it's shorter in length, obviously. And it's easier to finish, it's easier to do. 

Now, if you want to monetize your podcast, if you want to add ads into your podcast, then you're going to find that it's more lucrative to take this approach also. 

Number one, because the time to finish is going to be greater than it would be on a long podcast. And so the podcasting channel is going to reward you for that. But also, and this is, this is what Gary shared with me, it's much more acceptable to have, for example, two ads in a 10 to 15 minute podcast, then to have 12 to 14 ads, in an hour long podcast. 

So same revenue, potentially, maybe not because people might not be finishing the entire hour, but much more so much more acceptable to have just those two ads in it. So I thought that was a really great tip, if you're interested in monetizing. 

Now, I am not sure about monetizing this channel. I haven't even gotten that far yet. But I definitely will be adding my own ads into the podcast hopefully soon, where I'll be sharing with you about new courses that we have out there new lead magnets that are available, any initiatives that are going on with our business. So there'll be internal ads, maybe not ones that are making that I'm making money with through an ad network. But I definitely don't want to inundate you with those. So knowing that I can put one or two of them in every episode is super helpful as again, as opposed to putting 12 or 14 in an hour long episode.

Now, the third thing is that because of the high demand, low supply, because it doesn't matter who's in position, one for a particular term, we're not having to fight with each other and fight Google. The podcasting world is a lot less cutthroat than the blogging world. 

Now, I'm absolutely not advocating a cutthroat attitude with blogging. I am trying to build a community with our free Facebook group that encourages people to be open and honest and help one another. And that is one of my major reasons for creating that group. But the fact is, it does happen. But it happens far less in the podcasting world. 

People are willing to work with each other, help each other out cross promote each other. And again, it's I'm sure there's a few reasons why this is happening. But I think it has a lot to do with just high demand and low supply. There's no reason there's not a reason to cut throat right now.

So I love love that. That aspect of it.

Now, we did talk a little bit about ads, but I want to throw something at you that you might want to consider. Again, if you're looking at adding ads, whether they're for your own products, maybe you sell books, or printables. Or maybe if you're a travel blogger, you have itineraries, or, you know, if you...I can't even think of all the ways to make money right now.. you have a planner that you're selling, or you know, a parenting plan or something like that for your blog, regardless of whether you're utilizing advertising from an ad network, or you're advertising for your own blog, I want you to really consider that there are two types of ways two ways to do this sort of ad inserts.

One is dynamic. And that means that no matter when somebody's listening to your podcast, so this is being recorded on July 24 2023. So somebody could be listening to this, to, you know, tomorrow when I put it out live, or they could be listening to this three years from now, it doesn't matter. What I can do is use a dynamic ad to insert something that's time relevant. So let's say I'm recording this on the 24th. It goes live on the 24th. somebody's listening to it. And you know, December, it doesn't matter when they're listening to it, when I'm ready to say, Hey, I'm launching my new course, then I can have a dynamic ad insert. And so no matter what episode somebody is listening to, they hear that timely ad. And then when I when the course closes, and it's not launching, it's not available anymore, then that ad gets pulled out and maybe gets replaced with another one that is more timely. 

So it doesn't matter when the episodes recorded, you can promote timely things. So I'm just thinking about, I get, for example, my food bloggers who might want to have a podcast, when it comes time to talk to people about Thanksgiving recipes, then you can insert an ad for your Thanksgiving stuff. Then when Thanksgiving is over, you can pull it out and replace it with something about Christmas, or for my travel blogger friends who have maybe a hyperlocal blog, and they have a series of podcasts. Then when somebody wants to buy from you and add about let's say a festival in your area, you can promote that festival through a dynamic ad. So no matter what episode anybody's listening to, even if it's recorded three years prior to when that events happening, they're going to hear the ad about the event. And then they're going to you can pull it out once the events over. So I love that freedom and flexibility. 

The other alternative is to speak the ad directly into the episode. So this episode, for example, is about podcasts. So if I had somebody who wanted to who had a microphone, let's say they wanted to promote specifically about podcasts, well, I probably wouldn't add that as a dynamic ad. Timing doesn't matter. And it doesn't make sense on all of our other podcast episodes about SEO or email marketing or organizing your business or building an editorial calendar. But it really matters to people who have searched and found this episode on podcasting. 

So then I would speak directly into the episode about that again, for example, that microphone ad so that no matter who hears this episode, they're hearing the ad for that microphone. 

So there's just two different ways to do ads. Again, you can leverage the ad networks, you can sell directly with brands you can, you can utilize your own products, all of those things become available to you in your podcast episode. 

And then the final thing I want to tell you is that SEO still matters. And it might not be the SEO that you're accustomed to, we might not be seeing podcasts show up on page one for whatever target term you have going on. But people are still searching for terms inside their podcast software. So inside iTunes or inside Spotify, they're still searching for terms. And so you can leverage the power of having a specific podcasting topic and identifying that topic very clearly. But you don't have to fight with Google over it. You don't have to fight with crazy algorithms. You don't have to fight with a huge supply because there's not a large supply of podcasts. But you can still take advantage of all of the topic clusters, keyword ideas, SEO optimization that we talked about here, when it comes to getting your content ranked with Google. 

So Gary, if you're out there listening, I appreciate you. I appreciate what you taught me and how you're willing to sit down with me for all that time and share with me about your business and I hope you'll come on and share more about that with our audience. 

Now let's talk about some sticking points.

The time to do this is now

Now, if you're thinking, I don't know, should I? Yes, the answer is yes. Now if you're thinking this really isn't for me, then maybe it really isn't for you. But if you're on the fence, I want to encourage you to dabble to try it. So I think I mentioned to you that I just started this world of blog casting, I think I might be at two weeks as of this episode, maybe three. But like I said, this is my first dedicated podcast episode. The only thing I've done before this is to take the audio of some of my YouTube videos and put them into the podcast, so haven't even started driving yet. 

And I'm already ranking number eight for marketing in the Netherlands. And I'm in I'm within the top 200 in marketing in the United States. Now we're in the top 200 marketing within the United States on for my Google blog, you'd be like, "yaaawn That's really sad." 

But remember, I haven't even started trying yet. There's just so much potential, and I don't want you to miss out on it. That's why the time to start is now. 

But here's the other side of that coin when it comes to sticking points. Consistency matters. 

If you've been with me for any amount of time, you know that I always say when you're going to do something, do it consistently. And with a plan. So 2.5 million podcasts on Apple right now, only 450,000 of them are active. Because people aren't consistent. Business owners aren't consistent. But that's not you, that is not your friend. So get started now, do it consistently. 

And do it with a plan, build an editorial calendar, and you know what your editorial calendar is probably going to look a lot like your topic clusters on your blog. So if you haven't done that already, just take just take a take a day or two to do that exercise of building out the topic clusters on your blog. And recognizing those are probably topic clusters that you need on your editorial calendar for your podcast. It's the perfect marriage of sharing content, it's just a different way to do it. So the time is now, consistency matters. Do it the plan. 

And then the fourth sticking point. The do of my list of do's and don'ts is don't forget to collect email addresses. Even though you've got a podcast, even though it's much more
safe, solid place, maybe the landing on Google or landing on social media. It's still not yours, necessarily that audience is not yours. That's why you've got to gather email addresses. So put together a lead magnet, maybe it's the same one that's on your blog. Maybe it's a podcast specific one, and share it. 

So for example, here's my lead magnet, if you are interested in updating your content to double, double Yes, I have had many, many students double their traffic with Google just by updating their content, then head over to Lesli peterson.com and download my free blog post update checklist. And then we will also welcome you into the Facebook community. I hope you'll click through on that as well. 

Okay, get outside your comfort zone friends, okay, it's not it's not flashy and in everybody's face as putting a TikTok video together or an Instagram video together. But it's far more lucrative. And the conversion rate on podcasts is higher than any social media platform out there. So as my friend Amy Porterfield likes to say DSD this. Do something different. Get outside your comfort your comfort zone, and I hope you'll find that it changes your life incredibly, like it did for Gary.

Thanks, everybody.