AP 0564: How Many Podcast Episodes Do I Launch With? How Do I Schedule Episodes?

AskPat 564 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 564 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Okay, here's today's question from Travis.

Travis: Hey, Pat. This is Travis over at DronesMotor.com. I'm looking at launching a podcast with about 10 episodes in the queue. Want to do the WordPress self-hosted, along with SoundCloud for actually hosting the media files. Curious how you actually go about scheduling them out so you can upload them all today and have them maybe go out over the next 10 weeks or so, and adding more in the hopper down the road. I appreciate your response, and have a great day, Pat. Thanks. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Travis, what's up, man? Thank you so much for the question today. Love the sound of your voice. I am curious to know what kind of mic you use. But whatever it is, your podcast listeners thank you, because you have a great-sounding voice, and you got all the right equipment, so you're off to a great start. In terms of how many episodes to start with, there's a lot of conversation about this. Here's what I would do. And then I'm going to talk about your SoundCloud and upload release later, kind of thing.

But the big thing is, having episodes in the can when you first start is a great idea. Obviously, it's good to a bunch and batch record a bunch of episodes just so you have in the hopper, like you said, ready to fire. But, when you actually launch launch, when you go live on iTunes, for example, you'll want at least three episodes already live for people to consume on day one, when it goes live on iTunes. So when it gets approved, after you submit that RSS feed from SoundCloud or Libsyn or other hosts, you then make sure there's three episodes, at least, that they can listen to.

I made the mistake of launching with one, and that's why some of the one-star reviews exist on iTunes. That's because—this is for smartpassiveincome.com. That's because, one episode, this is a big moment. You've just launched your podcast, and if you just give people one chance to listen to you, and they're going to want more. Trust me. Especially if they love your stuff. If your talking about drones, gosh, I want to consume everything that you do, because I'm into drones right now and I'm in the market for one.

Anyway, here's the thing. People are going to want to listen to more. And, to gain the most exposure, to climb the highest in the rankings when you launch, you want to have as many downloads, subscribes, ratings, and reviews as possible in the shortest period of time. You're leaving those on the table if you only launch with one episode. If you launch with more, you have more opportunities for people to download more, obviously. More cause to actions in those episodes to subscribe. More opportunity for you to have at least one of those episodes connect with somebody who maybe wasn't into one of the other ones.

Have three different episodes go live, have them be three sort of…they're wide in range, in terms of the different kinds of people within the niche that you're in. That way, you grab ahold of somebody, you get them to subscribe, and they just love what you do. Plus, you get the higher rankings that time, too, and more downloads, and run some contests. Just make a huge deal out of the launch. But, please, launch with at least three. Chris Ducker and I have debated this. I say three, he says five, maybe four. But I like three or five. Just launch with more than one, that's the main point there.

Now, in terms of in the can, having up to 10 is great. I've launched, I think it was AskPat, where it was like 20 in the hopper when I launched. I launched with five in February of 2014, and I had 15 in the can, and it was great to have all that there.

In terms of scheduling them, scheduling them, uploading them all at once is something that you could do. However, I will say, with SoundCloud, there's a few concerns. For one, when you publish an episode on SoundCloud that you've previously uploaded, iTunes will show the date of upload, not the date that it gets pushed out publicly, which has been a huge hassle. It's been two years with SoundCloud, and this has been the number one request that I and so many other podcasters have had, is the scheduling thing. To share the publish date, not the upload date. It just doesn't. They don't, and I've been kind of disappointed in them.

Not only that, there's a lot of headlines nowadays, you can look it up, where SoundCloud seems to be in millions, in tens of millions of dollars in…losing money, essentially. Not profitable at all. A lot of people chattering about whether or not they're going to be around much longer, so I would hesitate to move to SoundCloud for those reasons.

Libsyn is great. Use the discount code SPI to get some off your first month, and I also would recommend at this point Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout. This is a company that I've got connected with very recently, and I'm very impressed with what they've done. We're currently in the middle of potentially moving from SoundCloud, which is where AskPat is on right now, to Buzzsprout. I know for a fact that you can upload episodes ahead of time, and when you publish them, it shows the date that you publish them, which was like the first thing I asked them, if it did that. And, yes. They have a lot of other great features, too. They just make it really easy.

Anyway, I'm not here to pitch different hosting companies to you. I'm here to tell you that scheduling them ahead of time is something that you could do. My team and I do that, and we upload into Libsyn for Smart Passive Income quite early. For AskPat, we don't do it. Mindy actually goes in every single day and uploads the ones that are required because of that darned date thing.

But anyway, going back to Libsyn, we do schedule ahead of time, we upload ahead of time, we write the blog posts ahead of time with all the show notes and all that stuff. We even get the transcripts done ahead of time, too, and we have them scheduled to publish on the day that they're meant to be published. That works out really, really well.

But when you're just launching out, you're going to want some published on your site already. You can launch them back-to-back-to-back, all three at once, or maybe back-to-back-to-back every day or for three weeks, just to get them out there, to tease it to people, and then actually have a launch day where you go live on iTunes. They're already going to be live on your website, and then you're going to go live on iTunes. That's going to be the big one, where people can then subscribe and download and all that sort of stuff. Because they need to be on your website. They need to be in that RSS feed at some point before you submit to iTunes. That's what you want to do.

I hope that answers your question, Travis. Let me know if it didn't, and use the handle @PatFlynn on Twitter, and I can further clarify and follow up with any questions that you might have. Happy to answer them. Yeah, just wishing you the best of luck. Good luck with the drone podcast; I think it's awesome. Of course, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.

I also want to thank everybody else out there who's been asking questions. If you have a question that you want featured here on the show, and you can also get a t-shirt, head on over to askpat.com. You can ask right there on that page. Thank you so very much. And I also just want to thank all of you for being awesome.

If you have a moment, please head on over to iTunes, look up AskPat, and leave a review. Leave an honest review. They help out so much. They help with exposure, they pump me up, they motivate me. If you've been listening for a while and you're looking for a way to pay me back, that would be a quick and easy way to do it. Head on over to iTunes, go to AskPat, leave a review. That's it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Have an amazing, amazing weekend, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Bruce Lee. He says, “Don't fear failure. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.” Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye.