Dave Jackson: Back To School

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about, podcast and broadcast, starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
Well, would you look at that. This is episode 400 I never thought I'd ever get here. The first episode was released back on June 12 2016. And alongside the 400 episodes, there have been nine bonus episodes and a trailer. So for this episode, I've decided to go back to school. Dave Jackson is the owner of the School of podcasting had a podcast education at Lipson and host of a number of podcasts that will teach you how to be a better podcaster. He's also in the podcasting Hall of Fame. In short, he is one of the OGS his podcast range between the podcast rodeo show, which is where he listens and reviews someone's show, until he can just take it no more to the future of podcasting, which she co hosts with Daniel J. Lewis, it covers podcasting 2.0, and more. He's also got asked the podcast coach, which he does with Jim Collison, which basically the whole thing is free podcast consulting for you. And he also has an entire podcast dedicated to the effective use of podcast websites. And now, Dave Jackson joins me from Akron, Ohio. I don't even know where to start with this show today, because I have so many questions to ask. And so much has changed in such a short period of time. But I want to start with where you start when anybody comes to you with a podcast. And that is the why one of the things you always ask is, what is your WHY for doing this podcast? So what sort of answer are you looking for? When you ask that question? Well,

Dave Jackson  1:48  
I want to be seen as an expert, I want to reach a global audience because I can't get any media press. I want to grow my network, I want to make some money. Those are the typical ones. And you know, then there's the other one, I want to have fun with my friends that people kind of overlook that. I'm like, sometimes that is the payment. I had two guys last night on the podcast review show. And I'm pretty sure the reason they do this is they've known each other for 50 years. And they're both improv guys. And they love to just get together and riff off each other. And now they're just letting the world listen to it. So yeah, those are the biggies, you know, it's some combination of all of those usually. But if you don't know what it is, then you can't like if I want to be seen as an expert, then maybe I'll do a 20 minute episode once a week and kind of look, look at what I know will give me you should hire me. But if if my goal is to keep my brand in front of you, that I might do a daily show, that's five minutes, that at the end says and I there was a show and I don't remember the name of the show, I just remember it was brought to you by the Association of Christian Athletes. And that was the way they ended every single episode, the show has been brought to you by the Association of Christian Athletes. And so five days a week that got beat into my brain, I can't remember the name of the show that in the the host name was Jimmy Page. And every time they said that I think of Led Zeppelin, you know, just so that was kind of fun.

Matt Cundill  3:12  
And usually podcasters have an expectation that after a certain amount of time, it could be seven episodes I find often it's like 17 episodes or six months. I want to monetize. And then it gets a little bit complicated, because maybe not everybody should, can will. And the big question they asked you is how do I monetize my show?

Dave Jackson  3:32  
Yeah, cuz usually at that point, 17 episodes, you may not have a huge audience yet. And depending on what your content is, you can't monetize dust. And so Kevin Schmidlin, over grow, the show had a great point, he goes when you want to monetize, you're asking your audience to take their their credit card out for something. And he goes, that either means they're buying a product or service from you, which is what I always recommend. Or if you have sponsors, they have to buy something from the sponsor, because if not, that sponsor is not coming back. But you have to figure they're going to be buying something somehow they're paying or they're you know, doing a Patreon, or crowdfunding or whatever it is. And the bad news of that, at least for when I was looking into crowdfunding. It's if you're lucky, if you're really good, you'll get 3%. And so when you have, let's just for easy math, say 100 listeners, okay, three of them gave you $7 a month. Okay, you paid for your hosting. But your goal was to quit your day job after 17 episodes and like not a bad dream. just way, way, way too early. And then you get really bad expectations. Like I did a YouTube video on how to do a podcast like Joe Rogan. And I got a lot of thumbs down because they said Okay, number one, start your career about 17 years ago, you know, and then he did I think it took him like seven years to make a comedy album. And then he was on TV, and then he did fear factor. And then he didn't you know, and I'm like so Oh, that's all you have to do is, you know, take, Mr. Beast I just heard out, found out the guy on YouTube. It's like the number one YouTuber, like first first seven years, he couldn't figure out really what he wanted to talk about. So when you're coming in at 17 episodes, you know, and I hate to, I don't want to discourage anybody, but I'm just like, it's just not the way it typically works.

Matt Cundill  5:20  
So I'm thinking back to that longevity where there was Joe Rogan or Mr. Beast and what really used to go on in rock and roll and and music is it used to take Well, it took Metallica seven albums, before they took off, it took REM seven albums before they got signed to Warner and really began to take off. And that model still still holds true today. Last time you were on the show, we talked a little bit about three years to build an audience. Does that still hold true?

Dave Jackson  5:46  
I have a folder of clips of people saying, yeah, things didn't really take off till about and it's usually three years. Occasionally I'll get one somebody that said to but it's like when did it really start somebody and ask a panel or whatever? When did you really start making money? And I can, if I was a betting man, I'd buy care put, you know, put 100 on three years, it just seems to be the the most common answer because it just takes a while the first year you're kind of finding yourself. The second year you found yourself. And now you've got your audience starting to promote your show. And by the third year, you've got enough people telling their friends about it that it's kind of self propelling at that point. One

Matt Cundill  6:25  
of the things I find about podcasts, I mean, you could be monetizing your podcast right now and not even know it because it's a form of marketing. You know, here I am. Here's what we're doing. Here's the value in the show. And people know about you. That's a form of marketing.

Dave Jackson  6:40  
Yeah, I mean, I work at Lipson, because I have a podcast, I got hired at Chancellor university because I knew about podcasting. I was hired for the New Media Expo, which at the time, this was pre Podcast Movement was a huge conference. And the guy called up, I didn't work at any of these companies yet. But he called Spreaker, blueberry and Lipson and said, Who should we hire to run the podcasting track, and they all said Dave Jackson. So welcome to humblebrag theater, but it mean that it's true. And so he finally called me and he goes, I'm tired of talking to people who say, I should just call you so I'm just going to call you. And that's because your podcast can be like this cool little digital resume that lets people, you know, you get to prove I know what I'm talking about, you can somewhat prove that you have an engaged audience on different metrics. And, you know, so when you go, Oh, by the way, I can do this. Hopefully, people, when people on occasion will contact me, they're like, Hey, can we get together and just pick your brain? I want to make sure we're a good fit. And I go, Look, I have 928 episodes of the School of podcasting. If you can't figure out we're a good fit. We're not a good fit. I'm like, just you know, so that's, it is, it's a great way to, I always kind of joke, it's a great way to meet, you know, 1000s of people without meeting 1000s of people,

Matt Cundill  7:56  
I could guest for another podcast sent me a note saying, Can you give me some background and what we're gonna be talking about? I'm like, well, there's 300 episodes inside this podcast already, you might want to listen to a few of those episodes, you'll pretty much understand the line of questioning that we're gonna have for you today. Just

Dave Jackson  8:10  
an idea. Yeah, I love when I get the Fung Shui expert who wants to be on the school of podcasting. And I'm like, unless somehow moving the furniture is going to help me grow my audience. I'm not really sure you're a good fit. So yeah, a little research always helps both on the on the guest side, and both on the host if you don't know who the guest is. So

Matt Cundill  8:31  
I'm glad you mentioned Fung Shui because a nice niche idea, like let's say basket weaving, if you're gonna start a podcast about basket weaving, and we're probably only gonna get about 100, maybe 200 downloads per episode. What should I be looking at, as a way to monetize?

Dave Jackson  8:48  
Well, would that functionally, because I mean, I know what it is, but I don't know that much about it. But there's again, it's either, maybe you're a consultant on how to set up your living room, that would be the easiest way. And then maybe there's your favorite ergonomic furniture that might want to sponsor the show, there's got to be other ways to do that. And then, you know, there's always bonus content, if you have people who really love your show. There's affiliate so if there's some sort of functional a product that ties in, you know, there's affiliate marketing, there's all sorts of different ways. The the fun news is all of those work a little bit. So it's always like, Well, which one should I use? I'm like, no, no, it's not which one, use them all. You know, I have some months that remember, somebody bought a big screen TV at Amazon. And I think it makes a whopping 4%. But all of a sudden, I'm like, wait, what, what did somebody buy? Because all of a sudden, this check came through and I was like, huh, all right, well, thanks, whoever that was. So it's it kind of comes and goes sometimes my consulting, I'm super busy and other days it kind of dims down and then affiliate stuff will come up or all of a sudden a bunch of new patrons will show up. So it's kind of like a stock portfolio by having multiple streams of income if one goes down may The other one will go up. So

Matt Cundill  10:01  
I felt that podcasters did a pretty good job right up until about 2018 2019. really conveying and expressing what an RSS feed is. And this is what podcasting is. And then along comes YouTube to really muddy the waters and create this confusion. And at Podcast Movement in 2023, one of the big sessions was the new rules of podcasting, which sort of shows how video is integrating with podcasting. They're calling it podcast, but it's not audio in an RSS feed. So tell me about the confusion that's involved with that. And really what it's led to.

Dave Jackson  10:40  
Yeah, as a guy with a teaching background, my job is to make things clear to understand, and a big giant gorilla walked in and just muddy the water. And people are like, well, you're anti YouTube. And I'm like, No, I'm anti, you know, making things hard to understand. A great example. This is country music used to be Womp womp weren't, weren't, you know, my truck, and my mom's in jail, that whole nine yards. And then they changed what country is now the country now is AC DC with a fiddle. And I listen to that. I'm like, That's not country. That's rock with somebody with a twang, and a mic. But now country, in quotation marks, which is really rock is now the top selling genre. And everybody's going, you know, Beyonce just released what a country album. Why? Because that's where the money is. So YouTube, and Facebook, you know, Google and Facebook had a really good handle on advertising. And along came this little thing called tick tock. That took a big bite out of their advertising. And so I'm picturing these guys at YouTube going, hey, you know, we got to do something to get people talking about YouTube. And somebody's I don't know, Larry, what do you got Larry's like, I don't know, podcasting seems hot. So they're like, great. YouTube is now podcasting. And that's really what they did. They just took out a magic wand and said, You're a podcast. And so what I hate about this is number one, I was helping to podcasters last night, and they're like, Well, we're thinking we really need to get into video. Because you know, and I'm like, Hold on, I'm gonna ask you a question. They're, like, I said, why? I said, you guys are having fun. Your podcast is successful for you. Why do you have this need to do video? And I'm like, I don't know, just, there was really their answer was, I don't know. Everybody just says I need to do video. And I go, I'm here to give you permission to not do video. I said, Now, if you have, obviously, it's the number two search engine, everybody quotes that that's absolutely true. But if you have the time, and the budget, and you want to do video, by all means do video, what I don't understand is why that's not called being a YouTuber anymore. Now, everybody's a podcast. And so when I hear people say, Oh, I have a podcast. And I go to Apple, and I can't find your show. And I'm like, wow, who is advising these people? They're not in the number one podcast app. And I find out later, oh, it's a YouTube thing. So that's, that's what just drives me nuts. It makes things very confusing. And you have, the thing that I hate is I have people and they'll tell me their idea for a podcast. And I'm like, That sounds amazing. It's unique. It's gonna be great. And I'm like, Yeah, I just, I don't know, I just can't do video though. And I'm like, Okay, well, don't do video. And they're like, Yeah, but don't you have to do video? And I'm like, no, no, you don't have to do video. So people think I'm anti video. And I'm like, I'm only anti video, when it stops somebody with a great message and a great passion. But they don't want to do video. That's what drives me nuts. And the fact that, you know, when they come out now with reports, my favorite is when they'll say, people are finding video podcasts on YouTube. And I'm like, okay, video podcast in English is video. So you're basically telling me more people are finding videos on YouTube? And I'm like, is this really reveal? Is this like some major reveal? Like, oh my gosh, but because they're calling a podcast now. It's like, oh, people are finding video podcasts on YouTube. And I'm like, well, so I always say there's, there's a Spotify video podcast, it only goes to Spotify. There's a YouTube video podcast that only goes to YouTube, and YouTube music. And then there's me what I call an original video podcast, which goes to about 20 different apps. And I'm like, so you know that again, it just makes things confusing.

Matt Cundill  14:28  
Yeah, so you just pointed out something that's kind of obvious. That's I know, it sits there, but I don't really care about and that you could put your video into an RSS feed. You can put your video on Spotify, and you can put your video on YouTube. But when people say I want to be on video, they really only talking about YouTube. I don't think I've ever watched a video on Spotify. If you told me to put this video up on Spotify think oh great. There's something else to do. And I'm not sure anybody's going to find it anyway because it's not the world's number two search engine. And I don't think anybody would want to download this show nothing against what we're doing. But that's a heavy download to go into any device. That's

Dave Jackson  15:08  
why YouTube took off because you can have a true video podcast. But video files are big. Most of the media hosts are based on how much we store for you each month. So your bill is going to, I don't know, double, at least, you know, and that was back when Apple had used to have a tab and Apple podcasts, it said audio and then another tab for video. And because YouTube was Well, YouTube, anything video just went to YouTube. I have I think right now 15 episodes as a video as a test on Spotify. Because if you listen to Spotify, guys, you know, press releases, everybody's watching video on Spotify and right, well, not my stuff, I literally have less than 20 downloads, and I probably have 15 episodes and I'm gonna say, you know, 13 of those are me. So, you know, at least for me a podcast about podcasting. They're not watching video on Spotify. And I always say if, if you saw somebody in the grocery store, like hey, did you see that video about that kid that did the thing. You're gonna go home and go to YouTube, you're not gonna Spotify to look for that. So I wish look, I love Spotify for music. I'm a subscriber, like stay in your lane YouTube, I love you for video. And for YouTubing stay in your lane. You know, Audible, love you for audiobooks stay in your lane, because the more you add all this stuff, it gets all clunky, like YouTube music is not a great app now for podcast. I I do listen to audiobooks in Spotify now. But I do notice they don't have like a bookmark feature. So it's kind of clunky the way like if you accidentally, that because what they do is after you listen to a chapter, they kind of hide it from you. So you can't go back and listen to it again. And I was like, Yeah, I didn't ask for that feature. I want to bookmark so I can go back to that part. So yeah, I kind of wish they would all just like instead of trying to be everything to everyone, just be the best at what you

Matt Cundill  17:00  
are. The YouTube made a mistake getting rid of Google podcasts. Oh,

Dave Jackson  17:04  
we're all like going, you got to be kidding. 3% of the market doesn't sound like much. But in podcasting, anybody trying to get into that market? Because I used to say you will pry overcast from my cold dead hands. And the only reason I'm not using overcast is because the guy Marco said I never doing this podcasting 2.0 stuff. And I was like, okay, so I found an app that looked and smelled just like his and I'm like, Okay, this is my new app. And all YouTube had to do was make it visible it was there it was on your phone, there just wasn't an icon. And from what I understand, the Android operating system is not like Apple where everybody is more or less on the same version. I guess on Android phones, it's a little different. But I was like, come on your Google, you gotta be able to figure that out. Because I'm pretty sure the same way people are like, what's this purple thing on an iOS phone, they click it? Oh, it's podcasts. And I have lots of people that loved it, because it will also have a really nice web based version. And so for the person that's like, I don't like technology here, copy paste this. There it is. It's on your website. Now you can listen to it. So I was deeply just like, ah, because the other thing is we've had Google, they had, what was the Google Plus, they've had a bunch of things that they've killed Google Glasses, Google glasses, but I remember when they're like, we're gonna put podcasts on the front page of Apple or on Evapo of Google. And for a while they did. And then you know, then they didn't and you're just kind of like, oh, you know, so have fun arguing with Google. I, I don't know. I mean, I talked to some people from Google at these events. And I sometimes feel like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. You

Matt Cundill  18:43  
know, I remember that. They didn't roll it out in Canada right away. They rolled it out in the US and I went to I think it was like youtube.com/podcast or something. And then I saw the podcast, go figure out I don't know who any of these people are. Has there been an another podcast dimension that was created in another faraway planet that we just are meeting now? I thought it was very bizarre.

Dave Jackson  19:05  
And then you look at it, you go, Oh, these are all really popular YouTubers. Oh, that's why I haven't heard of these. And so yeah, it's you're not gonna, you know, Joe Rogan is not on that page. That's the one that really scratches my head, because I'm like, Wait, how? Hmm. And that just means that Joe hasn't gone in and waved the magic wand and said, Okay, you are now a podcast, because you do have to check a little box in YouTube to make that happen. But yeah, I'm with you. And I mean, on one hand, YouTube ads is great algorithm. And if you can figure out how to crack it, you're good to go. But yeah, when I went to that page, I was like, I've never heard of, you know, any of these people.

Matt Cundill  19:41  
I was really looking to see what would happen. You know, when Google podcast goes away, I know it's only been 10 days in the US and it hasn't gone away in other parts of the planet. But the minute the announcement came down, I could sort of see that consumption was dropping, but who's going to pick up the pieces to that and it turns out just apple and Spotify are going to pick up the pieces cuz I just don't see. I mean, Amazon would love to have 3% on their app.

Dave Jackson  20:04  
What Amazon needs to quit doing is when you go to Amazon the first time to consume podcasts, they beat you over the head with, please join Amazon music. And I get that it's marketing. But I'm like, That's my first impression that wow, look how easy it is. You're, you're asking for the sale. And I haven't even made it into the door yet. So I wish they would would quit doing that. And the other thing that I just, again, I just kind of go, this has to be two different teams. The fact that your your link to your show in Google podcast is not doubt not now, redirect to YouTube music. And I thought maybe at first, maybe you can't link to a show and YouTube music, but you can. So that to me is just again, missed opportunity. Sounds like maybe somebody rushed something I was just it's a head scratcher. Because if I was doing that, I always say if you if you quit one show. So let's say you've just, you've done this show for 10 years, you're tired of talking about the same thing, and you're gonna start this new thing, you would definitely let your audience know, because a lot of times people they come for the content, but they stay for the host. When I first started, I have a show for musicians, and a show for podcasting. And I had people coming to the music show, and I'm like, I didn't know you're a musician. Like what do you what do you play? And I'm like, Oh, I'm not a musician. I just I just think you're funny. And I was like, wait, what? So it's, you know, I can't believe they're not redirecting, because that would be an easy way to get a a bunch of new users into YouTube music. And then you can say, Oh, by the way, you know, by our product.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  21:34  
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Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  21:53  
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Matt Cundill  22:08  
I know you have the numbers, and you work with some incredibly successful podcasters. And maybe even some who have gone from video to audio. So do you have any stories of people who really wanted to reside in video, but then when you showed them the way in audio that the numbers were just way bigger in audio?

Dave Jackson  22:26  
Well, for a while Bill Maher was on Lipson. And when Bill was on he he does club random, and he was really into this video thing. He's got this cool little basement in a house next to his house. And we're Rob Walsh was working with him and said, hey, you know, you're gonna do audio, too. And he's like, no, no, we're just going to do video, just like, you should probably do audio. So we talked him into audio, he then hired a team to promote just the video. And when it finally came out, and you know, got off the ground, audio outperformed video about 10 to one. So it's just one of those things where, again, when I hear these people go, I kind of feel like I have to be on video. And I'm like, well, you're you're getting that from presentations from YouTube. Well, of course, YouTube is going to say you should be doing a quote, video podcast, right? In giant quotation marks on YouTube, because that's more stuff that they can run ads on. So you always want to consider your source. Any on anything. I remember when the if you were around for the fat is bad phase in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, that was based on a report that came out from the sugar people, because when you pull all the fat out of your food, it tastes like cardboard. So how do you fix that you pump it full of sugar. So always consider your source when you hear any kind of report that comes out that says, Wow, I I feel like I should really do this now. Like, okay, hold on. Let's let's Where did we get that report from?

Matt Cundill  23:50  
The sugar lobby is quite strong in the US, I think. And, by the way, any Canadian who goes down to, you know, a border town, go pull a cereal box and look at the sugar in an American cereal box versus a Canadian one. You'll see the sugar lobby in action?

Dave Jackson  24:04  
Very much. So Yes. Want to talk a little

Matt Cundill  24:07  
bit about podcast websites. You're a big proponent of pod page. I'm a fan as well. But this is something I see a lot of podcasters just skip over. People start talking about, you know, their budget, what they're going to do for a podcast and I said, well, where's the website? What is the importance of having a website still to this day for your podcast?

Dave Jackson  24:26  
Yeah. Can I do a shameless

Matt Cundill  24:27  
plug? Absolutely. Yeah, I

Dave Jackson  24:29  
just literally launched a podcast about this. It's at your podcast website. Because of this issue. I was sitting in a live or a stream or whatever you want to call it these days. I'm old. I want to call it a webinar. But and all these questions were coming up because it was about SEO and getting the most out of your website. And I was like, wow, these people are missing. Like part one. You know, and they we all quote, you know, YouTube's the number two search engine. Yep. You know what the number one is? Google. You know what it looks at websites. I'm like, why are we so I'm just incredibly giddy about YouTube. And we're skipping the number one. And so the other thing is, especially if you're trying to monetize, you have to have someplace to go buy your stuff. And in the first episode, I talked about things like mp3 dot com. And I remember TV commercials saying, build your website on Facebook, no one would do that now because they own it, you know. So things like that you need a place that's your own. And what really just I go, Wait a minute, I'll go in, and somebody's type this huge amount of episode descriptions, you know, the shownotes. And then they'll direct people to the Lipson website, or the Buzzsprout website and like, wait a minute, your your books on your website, why aren't you pointing people at your book? And they're like, Well, I, you know, I just the either a thought they had to use their media host website, I'm like, Nope, just all you have to do is to copy and paste one for the, you know, the text, and one for the player. And it's on your website, and then what people miss is, so now I've got words, I'm in the world of Google. Now I've got words on my page. So I'm gonna get found great. So I click the link from Google, I go to your website, oh, wow, there's a player here. Let's see what happens when I click this. Oh, wow, this is entertaining. So I sit there for 13 minutes, and Google goes, Wow, that's really weird. Every time I send something over to that website, they sit there for like, 1015 minutes, this must be really good content. So then if somebody likes it, they can share it with their friend more SEO juice, you know. So i i It is one of the things that I've realized that it's overwhelming when you first start a podcast because you're like, Look, I just want to talk into a microphone. And now I got to learn social media, I've got to learn how to edit my audio, I might be doing video stuff. And now I got to do a website. So I get it. But it's really one of those things. Especially if you're trying to get engagement with your audience. I, I literally just had somebody say some very nice things about me on a TV show. And I went to the TV shows, it's a video podcast, went to their website, a gazillion links, not one of them said, contact. And I actually had to reach out to them on Twitter, to say, Hey, can I get a clip of that? It was really nice to hear. So you need a website for people to contact you. I've gotten a sponsorship before because I had a website and it was somewhat organized and looked okay. And they're like, oh, yeah, you look legit here have some money. So there are all sorts of reasons to have a website. And by that I don't, I don't mean link tree. Link tree is just a bunch of links. There's no SEO and link tree. And it's funny, because yeah, it's gonna cost you 20 bucks a month, maybe a little more. But it's always funny how, you know, your your little one comes up and you know, little Suzy needs braces. And somehow you find the money for that. Like, why not find that, you know, put down the Starbucks and get a website,

Matt Cundill  27:50  
you're also probably going to use Google to find the orthodontist who has a website who can get little Suzy the braces

Dave Jackson  27:55  
Exactly. And I always love when people go find me, wherever you find podcasts, that's the worst thing you can say. Because most people don't realize I know it, I live it every day in support. You can go in some cases into Apple and Spotify and type in the exact name of the show, and it won't show up. And I'm just like, so you've just sent your audience down a rabbit hole. Why not put links to Apple and Spotify and Amazon on your website. So now it's your website.com/follow. Now we're reinforcing that brand. Again, if people share that we're getting some more SEO, you know, it's just all these things on my cat all starts with your website. And with things I know, you mentioned, pod page, I love it. And I love the fact that I can hit publish in my media host. Go grab a sandwich and come back and my websites updated. So yeah, it's it's not something we have to be a giant geek anymore, either. And I'm glad

Matt Cundill  28:46  
you started this podcast. I know you were soliciting questions at one point in Facebook, I might have thrown you a couple. But I've got you now saw this ask them. So transcription, you've got to have transcription and embed it somewhere into the site. So if I take my transcription for let's say, this show, and I copy and paste it, and then I paste it right into the blog page for the episode page for the show. Google is going to look at that as being sort of a 25 minute read. And I'm wondering if I'm gonna get marked below the line, and maybe not, Google's not gonna send people here because it's such a long read. Is that possible?

Dave Jackson  29:20  
Well, there are a couple things. I always say Google likes good words. And so I am guilty of this, you take a transcript, and you just like, look, I gotta pick up somebody at soccer. So you just copy and paste and you put a thing at the top. This is an unedited version of the transcript. Have fun, you know, well, when somebody then reads that transcript, and it's like, what's the weather like today? You know, all that chit chats in there, things like that. So they do like good words. And I usually say we don't write like we talk and we don't talk like we write. And so usually my episode description is just a blog post. I do that before actual record because it helps keep me up. gonna focus on what the heck I'm supposed to be talking about. I don't read it, because who wants to hear someone read their blog post to them on their podcast? That's boring. But it does. Let me figure out what the heck am I trying to say on this episode, so I flush that out. And then I just copy and paste that. So I put the transcript, but I am guilty of that just going, Hey, kind of like if you want to get the gist of what's in this episode, I write really extensive descriptions from my episodes. But I usually say this is unedited, and I will try to cut out the, you know, cat talk, or, you know, French toast recipes, or whatever we're talking about before we actually hit record for that. But, you know, I could see that too long. Don't read kind of thing. But I don't know, you know, I've read where Google likes, you know, a couple 1000 words for a really like, Cornerstone kind of episode. So that might actually be a good thing. I've

Matt Cundill  30:51  
taken down my Google badge actually did that about six months ago, and I heard they weren't going to invest in it. So I'm not going to invest in them. And I got rid of them. I'm not very keen on putting up any YouTube badge. I haven't really tried the app. I don't want to send people to a YouTube page to necessarily watch us. I hope they discover us there. Because I'm really interested in the download and having clients and dynamic audio insertion get into people's ears. So what badges should I be putting on my website? Well,

Dave Jackson  31:18  
always apple and Spotify by doing that, you'll get 80% of the market. The one that I'm I am sniffing that I still like well, there's there's two one is pod you Rama, and it works on Android, it works on iOS, they have a beautiful web interface. There's one feature missing, and that is they don't do anything in the podcasting 2.0 space. And I was like, Oh, come on. So then I found podcast guru. And it does pretty much everything you want it to do. I'm a big fan of what I call a smart playlist where I can go in and make a playlist called Health. And then I have a couple shows I listened to that are about weight loss and fitness. And I can say when they have a new episode out, put them in the health playlist. And when I'm in the mood to listen to health stuff, I go to my health playlist. And what do you know, there's six episodes in there. They don't do that. There's the other side of that is what's called a queue. And this is where you want your app to deliver a wheelbarrow full of episodes. And you go yep, this one, this one, that one, that one, and you throw it into the queue. And your queue is like just a giant playlist. And so I talked to the guys that podcast guru and said, Hey, any chance you guys are coming out with a smart playlist? And thankfully, they said yes. So they I don't have an ETA. But that is one I like because they do also have an Android and iOS. And they have a web based version, which is kind of handy. I listen to podcast when I can at work, and I love to have it on a computer screen. And then when it's time to go to lunch, I'll grab my phone, and you can just kind of pick up right where you left off. So those are the two right now that I like I know there's Pocket Casts, is has just added chapters. So I was excited about that. Because originally, they came on and said, we're going to do the podcasting 2.0 stuff in like a year and a half later, they've done zero. So it sounds like they're they're slowly stepping up to the game. And there's podcast addict has been around forever. But they again, just going to their website, you're gonna get hit with about four ads, annoying ads, and they're like, I'm just trying to get to the search box. So they're a little aggressive. And I understand people have to eat but as a first impression, I think so. But that's another one there. But I think right now, my if I had to pick one, it's a podcast guru, even though they don't have the feature that I really like, but it's on the way.

Matt Cundill  33:35  
So thinking back to about 2018 and there was a lot of discussion in podcasting about becoming IAB certified. How are we going to count let's learn to count properly. SoundCloud doesn't know how to count they don't even know how to get the categories into Apple. If SoundCloud is easy to pick on, because they haven't changed anything and so long and do not use SoundCloud. But you know, someone like me, I've got a few podcasts that are sitting on megaphone because I'm a big fan of being IAB certified, and you wake up one morning and that morning was Monday, and it is no longer I be certified. So now what? Yeah, that's

Dave Jackson  34:12  
a head scratcher. Because I remember pre certification. And like one was podcast one, everybody. Nobody says this out loud, but I will but their numbers weren't exactly there were little not not in a mean spirited or fraudulent kind of way. But everybody knew their numbers were a little higher than everybody else's. And so if I was a buyer be like, Okay, well, we pay everybody else. X amount of money when you if they're hosted on podcast one, we're gonna pay them a little less because we're not really getting in front of that many people. So what happens is you have stuff like that and that was the whole thing that the IEP was supposed to solve. And so why Spotify? I did hear James Canadaland today say it's based on how much money you make as your your bill is based on that. I did see where they had like 3.8 billion in revenue with a 26% margin. So it doesn't sound like they're cash poor, but according to James, it would have cost Spotify half a million dollars. And I'm like, to me, that sounds like a lot of money. Maybe if you're making billions, maybe it's not. I'm not going to be surprised. Because Spotify as much as they love to say, Oh, we're into open stuff, and then release other things like, Oh, you can do a video podcast on Spotify, Asterix. If you take our feed, though, only the audio goes into the quote, video feed. So there's always a little like Asterix. And so I would not be surprised to hear that Spotify comes out with some sort of standard or something. And they're going to try to get everybody to use their standard because they seem to be a little headstrong about, you know, the world revolves around Spotify. And I'm just I would not be surprised by that. But yeah, I was. I don't get it. I don't I don't get the move. As far as I know, they haven't really said why they just said we're not. And I'm like, okay, so it is. It's odd. And I know, pod Bean was another one that didn't recertify Lipson just did Captivate did a bunch of us did. It is a pain in the butt. And it's not cheap. But we wanted to all be able to say a download is this. And kind of I'll be able to do that. And the whole point of that was to make it better for the advertising industry, because they were a little nervous coming in. So we all became IB certified. And when you have a big player like Spotify, pull out, you're kind of like, Ah, here again, you're not really, you know, not playing nice with others. And I'm sure they're not doing it. Who knows, but I don't think they said, Hey, let's mess up the whole podcasting space. Let's not be IBW certified. I wish they would have come out with like, here's the plan, but it is it is a head scratcher.

Matt Cundill  36:49  
Yeah, I've been a part of some radio groups in the past who don't like the way the ratings were compiled. So they would leave you know Arbitron and go to something else. Or they would try to save the $50,000. And hey, we're not going to do ratings, we're just going to sell on the value that we have. So I do think I was thinking in my head. Okay, how much is Spotify saving with this? I think the 500,000 number that the James says is probably close, because they probably have about what six, seven properties between, you know, anchor charitable megaphone that they would have to in each one of those things can be anywhere up to $50,000 each, perhaps, depending on the amount of data that you have to feed them. So I think the numbers right, but I'm worried that we're going to lose trust in podcasting when it comes to that. But there'll be more on that down the road, I'm sure but let me ask you about podcasting to point out because you've mentioned it twice so far. It's kind of a complicated thing that not everybody understands. But as we turn the page and look at some things that we want to put into RSS feeds to make things a little bit easier. What parts of podcasting 2.0 Are you looking for what sort of features

Dave Jackson  37:53  
man, I love chapters, I hated chapters in the early days of podcasts, because I remember it being an apple podcast. And they called them enhanced podcasts, they didn't call them chapters. And I'd want to go to the next episode, and it would go to the next section of the current episode I was in. But now doing shows where I have multiple topics, I love chapters, I love the fact that you can have a link that you can click on. So if you're talking, I would think sponsors would love chapters, because you can put a trackable link right there. So I love those. I love the pod row feature, where when I hear about this in a pod row feature, if you're around for MySpace, and you had your eight favorite friends, well, now you can have more than eight. And then you can make like a chart based on this the most referred because it's kind of like a recommended, here's a recommended show. Now that could be somebody else, or it could be another one of your shows. But I love the fact that you can then make a chart based on what people are just organically recommending I love that feature. The the one that grabs everybody's attention, is the whole streaming Bitcoin thing, because who doesn't want to make money. And that's actually I'm excited because true fans.fm That Sam Sethi just made it to where you can just take a good old fashioned credit card and put $10 worth of bitcoin into a wallet, because that was a pretty big hurdle. And a lot of times, you know, your bank would like flag it as who knows what and so I was really happy to see that. So I love that feature. And I I'm the youngest of my family. So when I grew up, in 1970, when Jimi Hendrix died, I was the only kid in first grade who knew who Jimi Hendrix was. And I always kind of consider myself this little young baby hippie. And so when I hear about people getting canceled, or you know, I'm gonna go after your advertisers. I love the fact that we can have a direct connection with our audience. And so when they say that's it, we're gonna get you cancelled. I'm like, well have fun with that, because I've got X amount of listeners and you're gonna have to go to each and every one of them and they get to pick how valuable the show is. I just watched a YouTube video there's a really phenomenal blues guitarist named Joe Bonamassa and Joe tours nonstop, and has lots of money, because his tickets are not cheap because he's Joe Bonamassa. But I was watching this video, he collects guitars. And if I remember, he paid $150,000 for a guitar. And I was like, what? Well, a Joe has the money and be growing up, he had some guy on his wall and a poster. And that guitar is the guitar in the poster. So to Joe that has a ton of emotional value to it. And he's got 150,000. And to him, it was like, oh, it's well worth it to have that guitar. And so when you let your audience pick, you know, you might be thinking, well, I'll be lucky if I get, you know, five bucks. And then you're gonna have somebody goes, well, here's 50, because you gave them value that they couldn't get anyplace else. So that's one of those things that I was like, Oh, this could be, it could be huge. And I remember when I first started podcasting, in 2005, I uploaded a file, and I saw it come back down on my computer. And I was like, oh, wait a minute, this could be really, really huge. And I kind of have that same feeling about podcasting. 2.0. My worry is that much like tick tock taking a bite out of the advertising space, if more people start to use this, I can see where eventually, advertisers are going to start kind of like ganging up on the little guy. And we'll see, but I love it. And they're branching into music and things like that now, but it's, it's got a huge potential, I just want to see it get easier. And you know, a couple more years, we'll be there probably.

Matt Cundill  41:31  
So if I wanted to start doing that, tell me about the app you use to send SATs. And by the way, thank you, you have set SATs to me before when you've listened to an episode that you like, you've done it two ways you sent me some sat Satoshis directly. And as well, you've streamed some progressively towards me as you listen to the show. So there's a few ways to send it to people. But I love the fact that you do send me a little something. So What app are you using to do that?

Dave Jackson  41:59  
Yeah, so behind the scenes, there's a service called Albie, you can get it at get albea.com. And it's weird as much as podcasting. 2.0 tries to be decentralized. We're all kind of using this one service, which is kind of like UI. But what I love is if I wanted to right now, I could go to true fans, because it's easy to fill your wallet there, fill up my my Albea wallet, which is tied to the app I use to listen which is called cast ematic. And I can go in and say Oh, this show and it actually shows you what you're paying per hour. So it's like, oh, I should give this guy at least you know, a buck an hour holy cow, if we could get 10% of their audience to do this, or two bucks an hour or five bucks an hour. Again, depending on what you're doing. Maybe you want to pay minimum wage to $15 an hour. It's there in what I love is when somebody says something, and I'm not driving. And I'm like, Oh, that was amazing. I can go over and there are these things called booths. And I can there's people are getting into all these numerology is like 1701 is a Star Trek boost and 7777 is a striper boost. So all fun ways to do this. And I was just researching how to kind of tie in SMS good old text messaging into a podcast. And right now there's a service called slick text. It's about 30 bucks a month. And I was like, Well wait a minute, we kind of already have messaging with our audience in podcasting. 2.0 It's called a boosted gram. And the beautiful thing is people can pay you, you know, as little or as much as they want to send you a message. It's a message with a value amount to it. So I'm like that's already here in podcasting. 2.0 I'm over here trying to figure out how to, you know, work all this numbers and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, You know what, we kind of already have this and it's, it's free.

Matt Cundill  43:42  
Yeah, I heard James Cridland referred to it as fairground tokens. I know it sounds like minimal, but that's what they are. And they're effective. Did you send me 2112? Yes. You sent me a little rush. Yeah, I

Dave Jackson  43:56  
sent you a rush. Yes. You know, I'm

Matt Cundill  43:57  
a huge rush fan.

Dave Jackson  43:58  
I was Yeah. How can you not be?

Matt Cundill  44:01  
I've sent 5150 before. Not everybody gets that one. That's

Dave Jackson  44:06  
a Van Halen one and or if you know why Van Halen called their album 5150. It is the police call for someone who is not mentally balanced. That's right.

Matt Cundill  44:15  
I sent that to James Cridland. Sent it to him a few times. He didn't quite get it. Yeah. Hey, Dave, thank you so much for doing this. I really, really appreciate it. But just before you go, I just want you to list some of the podcasts where we can find you. I feel like I can find you on Saturday mornings. You're you're live on my phone and on the internet. You got the podcast rodeo show. You're starting a new podcast about podcast websites. What else do you have?

Dave Jackson  44:41  
I guess my flagship show is the School of podcasting. But yeah, you mentioned ask the podcast coach. And the problem is and somebody asked me this, they're like, Dude, you have way too many podcasts. Is there any like one place I can go to see them all. And so I bought the domain power of podcasting.com which is the only time I will use a link tree type website. That's the only time to use it's like here's all my stuff so you can see all my podcasts. I got my book over there. There's consulting. It's all there in one place power of podcasting.com.

Matt Cundill  45:08  
Dave is always thank you very much for joining us. Really, really appreciate it.

Dave Jackson  45:12  
Thanks so much, buddy. Appreciate it.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  45:14  
The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski. Edited by Chloe Emond-Lane. Social media by Aidan Glassey. Another great creation from the Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.