How many listeners does the average podcast get?

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[00:00:22] Download numbers are not the most important metric ever. It's a vanity thing. Work out what it is that is most important to you and that's the thing that you should be concentrating on. That's Charles Commons, founder of Vibrant Sound Media. He's in the hot seat for Ask the Expert this week. More from him in a bit. Hello and welcome to The Podcast Advice Show, your go-to place for the latest tips and takeaways.

[00:00:51] Whether you're a seasoned pro hitting a plateau or just starting your journey, The Podcast Advice Show talks to industry leaders who've cracked the code to podcasting success. From mastering audio quality to growing your audience, we uncover techniques that actually work. I'm Damien St. John. He's Ant McGinley. Together, we'll share battle-tested insight to help power your show up the charts. As always, you can find out more at getpodcastadvice.com.

[00:01:18] When you said takeaways then, I instantly thought of Just Eat and maybe we should rebrand and get a sponsorship. Just podcast. This episode is called How Many Listeners Does the Average Podcast Get? Give us an answer. What do you know? Used to be 124. I think it's about 142 right now. I say about, this is quite inaccurate. Most of this goes to Tom from Medicine Research. He provides a lot of my statistics in life.

[00:01:46] Do a lot of those in a podcast graveyard then, do you think? Does that drag down the number? So, yeah, because there's going to be a lot of podcasts out there that just have no listeners anymore. There'll still be occasional people will find it, but there will be people that put out a podcast. Oh, yes, let's do a podcast. This will be a great idea. I think it's a podcast graveyard. Seven or eight years ago, did three episodes and then was like, oh, this isn't for me. And then they had it on a free platform. So it still exists. It's still there for people to go to and listen to.

[00:02:15] So when on listings, it is there, but they're not actively doing it. They're not actively promoting it. The people involved in it and their guests may be just names that people aren't searching for either. So they're not coming up anywhere. So these are what you would say in a podcast graveyard, which actually is a podcast, by the way. There's a podcast called The Podcast Graveyard where the host interviews people who used to do podcasts about the podcast they no longer do. Let's get them on.

[00:02:43] 120 to 140, right, we'll say is broadly right. It doesn't really matter. There is that threshold of 1, 2, 4, 1, 4, 1, something like that. The top 1% of podcasts will often pull in tens or hundreds of thousand downloads. I hope you're sitting down for that. Yeah. But that skews what most people would say is a normal amount of downloads.

[00:03:06] A lot of shows, I will include this one in the following, a lot of quality shows are in the middle class of podcasting that kind of get between 500 and like 5,000. We talked in another episode about the race to 1,000 being the hardest. I think also as well, we need to be clear. There's a lot of, when you say that figure, it can mean several different things.

[00:03:32] So some people will say per episode. So that's how many downloads, listens they've had to that episode since it came out. Some will be in the first two weeks and some will be monthly. The reasons for those are based around the advertising statistics that people graph mostly towards that statistic. So you will always have, over the length of your episode, more people have listened to it over time than in that first two weeks.

[00:03:58] But as we've seen historically, even going back to cinema, that opening weekend is so important in cinema receipts as well. This is what people focus their eyes on. It's a very good indicator of how successful that is or how much promotion that has gone into it. That's a good point. You are struggling with the word statistics a little bit. I check A, you're not having a stroke and B, you wouldn't just prefer to say numbers. Can I say when you crunch the numbers? Would that be better? Statistics.

[00:04:28] Yeah. It makes you sound almost professional when you say that. So this brings us to what actually matters in podcast measurement. Downloads, one metric, arguably not the most important one, although nice to show off on social media. So what should you be tracking alongside download numbers? Completion rates will tell you if people are listening all the way through. I think that was something that I found really valuable when we started doing Wrestling with the Champ,

[00:04:57] was looking at the drop-off point. And it would say for us, people listen mostly to about 85% of an episode, which surprised me because it was a storytelling. So people got that close and then went, I don't want to hear the end. Or, and we'll talk about this, whether it was too long for somebody to listen to, there is a phrase, time budget.

[00:05:24] So whether an episode was beyond their time budget, you can't really legislate for that. But what you can do is then think, right, well, if it, what if it was 15 minutes instead of 20, that would allow a higher completion rate and maybe a bit more satisfaction at hearing the end of a podcast episode. There are many ways you can do this as well. Like you might think, well, it has to be this long. Well, why? Yeah. Can I throw into that?

[00:05:51] I don't really know how to edit at a granular level and what to leave out. And they might start editing and they think, well, if I take that sentence out, you know, you and me come from a radio background where you're editing on the fly. A lot of indie podcasters don't have that muscle memory to edit. So they'll think, well, is it worth taking out the breaths and the ums and the ahs? And doesn't it sound a bit naff? And interestingly, a lot of what you hear on radio, for example, certainly packages or pre-recorded interviews have been edited. The key is they don't sound edited.

[00:06:20] So maybe people aren't fully aware of like basic editing techniques to, you know, to do that. The other thing is, is the perception of value in length. Stop it. Um, the idea that, you know, it's got to hit a certain point, but that comes back to, I'd bring that back down to time budget. I don't want to trample on our ask the expert appearing on this week's Ants Surring Machine.

[00:06:46] So on the subject of what matters beyond downloads, do you want to bring him in, introduce our super guest star for the week? Yes. So the guest on this episode is Charles Conwin, someone I've had the privilege to work with over the years and part of the Pods Up North team. And the first thing I wanted to chat to him about was this average download number, 141 downloads in 30 days. So I asked Charles, what should we focus on besides that raw download number?

[00:07:17] Don't look at your download numbers. Not so much anyway. They're not the be all and end all. If you're making a podcast, you're doing it for a reason. If you're a business, you're probably using it as part of your marketing strategy. And therefore you're hoping that people will listen to your podcast and will then buy from you. So instead measure it on how many people come to you to buy your thing or service.

[00:07:44] Having listened to the podcast, you can create a landing page that is specific to your podcast listeners. So whenever you talk about, please go and find out more here. You give this specific landing page. So it might be yourbusiness.com forward slash podcast. And then you can track and see how many people are actually visiting that particular web page on your website. If you're doing your podcast for a hobby and you're just doing it for the enjoyment,

[00:08:13] then I would measure the success of your podcast on are you enjoying it? Have you got some listeners and then are they interacting with you? And if they are, great. Ask them what they like about the show. Keep engaging with them. And if they're telling you that they like it and they're getting back to you all the time, then that should be the measure of success.

[00:08:39] I think we should create a landing page to see if people like us. There is. It's called a website. So if you go to getpodcastadvice.com, there's an article up there speaking to Charles's point about the silent audience dilemma, which kind of feeds into the whole thread of this episode. So platform visibility strategies. How do podcasters get seen on major platforms? They're on the Apples, the Spotifys, etc. But how do they get noticed?

[00:09:08] And why is there such a thing as an algorithm that you have to work with? And by the way, algorithm isn't a US politician doing the Macarena dance. We've seen it now. It cannot be unseen. The algorithm. Why do they even exist? And how do we beat them, play along with them? How do we work them in our favor and who benefits? It all comes down to the same thing that we talk about so much. It's growth.

[00:09:35] They're constantly trying to grow their platform and they want more people to come and more people to spend time on the platform. Why do they do that then? Why? It's so annoying. One, you want to bring more people on. And two, you want them to stay longer. And how do you bring more people on? Well, you improve the quality of what you've got by using things that gives them lots of data and more information. That's going to help them shape their model and what they bring over.

[00:10:05] And the way you get to these points is you crunch the numbers. You look at the data and you tweak it and that guides what you do and how you move forward in your business strategy. Who's the Spotify guy we spoke to? Go and get him on. And I want to do a whole episode on algorithms. So as we're talking about big platforms, Charles, do you have any hacks for raising your podcast profile on the big platforms? Big hack number one is to ask them.

[00:10:34] So go to Apple Podcasts, go to Spotify and literally ask them. They both have a form that you can fill out and you can give them all the details that they're requesting in order for them to then look at whether they're going to promote you or not. But alongside that, you should probably work out which one of those two platforms you're going to actually ask first.

[00:11:01] And then concentrate a lot on talking about that particular platform in like your social media content and any episode promotions that you do online. Because one of the things that those platforms will want is a reason to promote you. And if you're helping to promote them, then that gives them a reason to say, okay, we will promote you. Definitely do that.

[00:11:28] The other thing that I'd probably suggest you do is try and do it at a time that makes sense. So if you're a podcast, which is all about, I don't know, women's rights, for example, then put your request in to be promoted before International Women's Day every year, because that will give them a reason to promote you at a time of year when it would be prevalent to promote that kind of thing.

[00:11:57] With a football podcast, maybe ask to be promoted at the very beginning before the season has kicked off or when there's a big tournament going on during the summer. Something like that. Give them a reason. Make it make sense to them as to why that they would want to promote you. Up next on the podcast advice show, we'll talk timeline expectations and adaptation and audience retention. Plus, there's more from Charles Commons, founder of Vibrant Sound Media, after this.

[00:12:34] We're back on the podcast advice show. Let's talk timeline expectations, shall we? One question that you'll hear a lot when you talk to other podcasters is how long should it take to build my audience? And that's an answer that requires some perspective. In a nutshell, what would you say is a good length of time to grow an audience for a podcast? Realistically, I would say as long as a year, maybe even a year and a half.

[00:13:04] And the starting point for that is that no matter how much work you've put into it, no matter how much you care about it, no matter who you've interviewed and the lengths that you've gone to produce this, you have no fundamental right to an audience. You're brutal. You're brutal. Straight in there. No, it's true. It's true. It will take you... You will probably do more work trying to get listeners to your show than you will making the show. That is the harsh truth.

[00:13:34] There is a sort of weird set of time that you'll never know where you'll get better. And I think that's, to your point, why burn yourself out if you know, hey, straight off the bat, I've got to find a way to commit for a year, year and a half. Even if you reevaluate every six months and pivot, that's a good sense check for when you start so you don't burn out. So where are we in terms of the episode title? How many listeners does the average podcast get? 141.

[00:14:03] And therefore, how long does it take you to get there? Maybe 12 to 18 months. You might get there sooner, but that doesn't mean your growth is going to be on the same trajectory. You might just strike that a little bit earlier. Just find a way to keep going, even if actually, weirdly, that means slowing down. Rather than stop a mile from the finish line, find a way to go slower and you will get to that finish line. So let's get a different perspective on this.

[00:14:31] Charles works with a lot of new podcasts and businesses to create podcasts. Let's see what his take is on this. How long does it typically take for a new podcast to find and grow its audience? A really long time. Whatever time frame you've got in your mind, at least double it, if not more. Your audience will always be growing. It will either get bigger or it might get slightly smaller and then regrow again. It's almost a lot like the stock market in that way.

[00:15:01] But you are not going to put out episode one and then have your full-sized audience. And in fact, there is never really a ceiling to how big that audience could be. What I would suggest you do is that you increment it and you set yourself goals. So on episode one, you might say to yourself, right, if 10 people download this, that's great. We've got an audience of 10.

[00:15:28] Put those 10 people in a room, by the way, and it looks a lot bigger than it sounds, right? Then on episode two, you might say, right, I want 15. And you just continue to do that. And then maybe you're like me and you're on episode 496 or whatever it is. And you're looking at it and you're saying to yourself, right, this time I would like to get 1,000 people listening to it. Last week's episode had 990.

[00:15:56] So I want 1,000 with this one. Something like that. Audience stays at one size for a serious period of time that that is not success. Your audience doesn't have to be continually growing every single week. Look at it over a longer period of time and you will see that actually,

[00:16:22] oh, we grew our audience by 25 in the last six months. That is growth. So don't expect it to happen overnight. It does take a long time. But keep working at it. Keep doing it. If you enjoy doing it and if you're telling enough people about it, more people will listen. A thanks to Charles Commons, founder of Vibrant Sound Media and Northampton Town fan. Is that who he supports? The Cobblers? It's all Cobblers to me.

[00:16:52] Yes, that's the podcast with over 500 episodes. And that's a great example, actually, because now through that podcast, Charles is actually regularly invited by the club to do interviews with new signings, to host Q&A sessions with the fans. While keeping his independence, he's now part of the club and part of the structure of that. Finally, let's address something that even established podcasters struggle with, evolving your format while maintaining your audience. So if you do think, well, I've kind of hit that 141, 200, 300, 400 number,

[00:17:22] and it's stuck and I want to switch things up, there are ways to do it. The most obvious way I can think is to do it transparently because there is the chance. There is the chance that the thing you've changed is their favorite thing. So you've got to be able to say, we don't do that anymore and here's why. But that as an audience member gives you the chance to go, but sorry, I really like that. And then you've got a feedback loop.

[00:17:50] And I think a really good example of that, that people will be able to relate to is you start doing a podcast like this with you and your mate. And then at some point you realize either A, they're not pulling their weight or two, you don't like them or three, something else happens. Why have you been reading my WhatsApp messages? And so what you do then is you have this thing of going, do I carry on being happy working with this person or do I get rid of them? And then do I replace them? And then how do I communicate that to people? And quite often people just disappear.

[00:18:20] People just vanish. It's like, what happened to them? I really like Damien. Said one person. So in conclusion, where does this leave us with our original question about average podcast numbers? The answer is that the industry average matters far less than your specific goals and your audience. Focus on creating consistent value for a well-defined listener and build relationships rather than chasing download numbers.

[00:18:47] And then you may be able to live your dream through podcasting. What is the dream with this? The purpose of this podcast is to sort of bridge the gap between everyone that has got knowledge in their heads of podcasting or theories that they're testing out or they've done some trial and error and it hasn't worked and they're happy to share their stories. What I don't want is it just to be like from the mountain. Here's what you should do.

[00:19:14] Here's why this is the blueprint because there isn't, there's best practice and there's an important part of podcasting is feeling part of that community. And so I want anyone that's listening to this. If you do a podcast, if you've done one episode, 50, 100, and you haven't made it to the big event, so you're not winning the awards, you are a massive part of the podcast community because you got started. B, you contribute to that average downloads number. Don't drag it down though, please.

[00:19:44] And C, you're going to be the inspiration for somebody to go off and do something one day because they've chosen to put you in their ears and bring you into their life. And that's a really treasured space. So if we can be part of that, I'm living the dream. What's yours? My experiential vision of this is that a couple of years from now, somebody comes up to us and says, I did my podcast because of listening to your show or I listened to your show and it helped shape my podcast.

[00:20:14] And now I make a living from my podcast. And that podcast is how not to do a podcast about podcasts. Thank you for joining us on the podcast advice show. If you found value in today's episode, you can share it with other podcasters who might like to hear what we've said. Reviews to podcasters still ask for reviews? What does it mean? I don't need the validation. I'd rather you just shared it and it was useful for somebody. In the meantime, keep creating, keep analyzing, keep growing.

[00:20:45] Have a great while. We'll be back with another episode of the podcast advice show very soon. This podcast is part of Podomity, the UK's podcast comedy network. Why not laugh at what else we've got?

[00:21:15] Visit podomity.com.