AP 0962: How Many Episodes Should I Have Before I Launch My Podcast?

AskPat 962 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 962 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Cool. Now here's today's question from Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hi Pat. Jonathan Gaby here from JonathanGaby.com. My question is this. Your recent cheat sheet on starting a podcast has inspired me to start one, but I'm curious, how many episodes should I have already ready to go before I publish? I don't want to succumb to the dreaded pod fade, and I think having a nice buffer would be a good start. Hope to hear from you soon, and thanks for all you do.

Pat Flynn: Hey Jonathan, what's up? Thank you so much for the question. I talk about a lot of these things related to the launch of your show at my course Power-Up Podcasting, which you can find and sign up for the waitlist for at PowerUpPodcasting.com, but I'll tell you what I tell the students in the course. I always say, “Launch with three.” The reason why you want to launch with three—like literally when you begin to start pushing your show out there and using the tactics I tell you to kind of make big deal about the launch of your show, you want to have three episodes available. I only had one available at the start and that was a mistake, because that's the time at which I made the biggest deal about it, and so if you only have one to go into, well you're leaving a lot of potential listens, call to actions, a lot of subscribers, downloads, on the table. The more episodes you have, the more likely it is people are going to go and binge-listen to more, especially if they like what they hear. There may be one topic that might resonate more with others than some of the other shows that you have, and so there's a lot more possibilities that happen when you launch with three.

Now, launching with three is different than how many should you record, because very smartly, you are knowing that there is the possibility of you starting to fall behind and starting to lose energy, which is a real thing. It's called pod fade, like Jonathan said. But, a few things will help you through pod fade. One, having a number of episodes in the can, especially at the start, because then you can focus on growing your show, marketing it, while you already have episodes already recorded and potentially even scheduled, and then the other thing that helps is just remember why you're doing this in the first place. Also thinking about featured guests who you can have on, collecting feedback from your audience as you are going, reviews and things like that, it's all really motivating to help push you through a lot of that pod fade, but I typically recommend anywhere between three additional to five additional episodes at the start, so by the time you're going you have six to eight episodes already in the can, including the ones that you launch with, and that gives you a nice buffer for almost about a month, typically, if you're doing one episode per week. It's up to you, really. I know people who have recorded thirty ahead of time and just had that available and ready to go, which was good for several months.

It's really up to you, Jonathan, with what you're comfortable with, but what I would recommend is anywhere between five or six to eight episodes already finished and completed by the time you launch, including the three at least that you're going to launch with, and there you go.

Jonathan, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate you. Good luck to you and your podcast, and again, like I said, for everybody who wants to start their podcasting journey, I have a course, it's proven, hundreds of students have gone through it, many at the top of iTunes for their category and thousands of downloads now, many starting literally from scratch with no audience to begin with as well. If you want to check that out, go to PowerUpPodcasting.com.

Then finally, here's a quote to finish off the day. Actually Jonathan, first I'm going to send you an AskPat teeshirt, and then also anybody else who has a question, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. But now for that quote. This is from Herbert Bayard Swope. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: try to please everybody.” Alright guys, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.