hosted by: AskPat 372 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 372 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hope you're doing well. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions. Five days a week.
All right, here's today's question from Kirklan.
Kirklan: Hi, Pat. This is Kirklan. I own a cellphone accessory store called [inaudible].com. As well as I've started a podcast with my friend Ty. Called Empowerment Through Knowledge. And one thing that I've struggled with is trying to find, where do I get the data to see how my podcast is doing. How do I see the downloads, how many people subscribed. I did notice that you have that available on the site, that you put in the monthly income reports, but I don't … I've been researching for months and have not been able to find out where that information is based. I love AskPat, I love Smart Passive Income. eep up the good work. And I hope my question gets answered. Thank you.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Kirklan. Thank you so much for the question. And this truly hits a spot for me, your question. Because podcast statistics, podcast analytics are still in the Stone Ages, really. And, as you know, you're looking for information about your podcast. And even simple things, like the number of downloads, or the number of subscribers, or how much listening time is there on your episodes in general—it's not very easy to find. And some of that information isn't available, just because hosting solutions are not keeping track of those things. They don't have things like with video …
For an extreme example, Wistia.com is a great, an amazing, video hosting platform that I use myself for a lot of courses and things like that. And they help you keep track of so many things from each and every individual person. For example, if you have a membership site, you can keep track of who's watching what videos. You can see how far they've gotten through video. You can see how far most people get through your videos. When they're engaged? When they're not? When they're taking action? All those sorts of things. And with podcasts, literally you just know if you got a play or not. And that's it. And even subscriber numbers, you have to, not make things up, but almost calculate them or take a guesstimate, an educated guesstimate of what you have.
Now, there are some services available that can, or that claim that they can help you figure those things out. But it's a lot harder to do and figure out, and know if it's for real. I use a service called FeedBurner on one of my feeds, because it's an old-school feed service provider from Google that got kind of left behind. But it's still alive, and for those of us who have used it way back in the past, a lot of us just don't want to change from it, because things are still working, although it's not quite supported as it used to be. But FeedBurner tells us a few things in terms of how many subscribers we have to our show, based on a lot of analytics between Google and iTunes and Stitcher and other places. And honestly, that number fluctuates by the thousands every day, and it's not true. I don't even look at those numbers anymore. Because they're just ridiculous. Truly, in order if you want to get download numbers for example. Let's just start easy. You go to your hosting provider, whether it's Libsyn or Soundcloud or any other hosting provider who is hosting your audio files. Hopefully you have a host, other than your own domain host, which is helping you serve your podcast, because of the bandwidth issues and things like that. Plus, you just want to make things quick and easy and use a service like Libsyn or Soundcloud or Podbean. And there's a bunch of other ones. All of them will tell you how many downloads you have, or how many plays each of those episodes have had. And that's great data to know. You can see things like, which episodes were more popular than others? How many you get per day? Which episodes are hot button points? Which ones, maybe not? Which ones are accelerating more than others? And those sorts of things. That's great information. You can see how many total downloads you have, and then that's obviously important if you want to start introducing sponsors onto your podcast. Those are numbers that they need.
Subscribers is a different story, and you're going to have to deduce how many subscribers you have based on the download numbers that you have. And I can't remember the exact formula that was taught to me by Cliff Ravenscraft, but it's looking at, for example, how many … Once you start posting more episodes, you can look a day or two after you publish an episode and see how many downloads those episodes have had. And then you can do that the next time you come out with an episode. And then from there, you can take an average to see how many people are subscribed, because when people subscribe, they get those episodes automatically pushed to them, no matter what player they're using, or feed, service they're using, iTunes or other, to listen and download those podcasts. But they get automatically pushed, and that'll give you an idea, at least a minimum in terms of the number of subscribers that you might have for your podcast.
Now, when you're just starting out, the most important thing that you want to do is make sure that you are getting downloads, and then as you are going into more episodes down the road, that you are hopefully increasing those download numbers over time. Older episodes are getting more downloads, meaning people are finding your new episodes and going back into time and finding … And discovering your older content, which is important. And the average number of downloads you get after, or the day after, your new episodes come out is increasing as well. You just want to keep increasing. I think a lot of people get too bogged down in the numbers and, “Oh my gosh, how many do I have of this?” Well, as long as you are always increasing, that's good. And if you are not increasing, if you are decreasing, you want to figure out why. And this is, again, because the analytics are so hidden and secretive in iTunes and all those other platforms. It's really difficult to figure out what to do.
But the most important thing you can do is, talk to your audience. Discover what they like and do more of that. You can get some of that based off of the numbers. Like, you will discover, which topics seem to get a higher download count, which is important. And which guests, for example, who come in your show, draw in a lot of audience numbers. And you can then reach back out to them and say “Hey, your episode was popular. Awesome. Thank you so much again for being on the show. If you wanted to share this here is the link.” You can get more downloads that way, and more exposure.
But again, talking directly to your audience, talking to people who have listened to your show, actually getting feedback from your audience, whether it's through a survey or even a one-on-one conversation through Skype. That's going to give you a lot of information. And that's going to give you the best information in terms of telling you how your podcast is doing. The analytics and the numbers are important. But the thoughts, the feelings of your subscribers, of your listeners, are most important, and if you can make that experience great, the listener experience great. All those numbers are going to increase over time anyway.
Kirklan, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for the question today. We're going to send an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you so much. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much again for listening in today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today. And here's a quote, to finish off, with Michael Jordan. He said, “Earn your leadership every day.” I try to do that, and hope you do that too. Cheers, take care, and I can't wait to serve you in tomorrow's episode of AskPat. Thanks, guys.