Top 12 podcasting myths BUSTED: 7-12

[00:00:02] Welcome to part 2 of our 12 indie podcast myths busted or not busted. We're going through the 12 most common things that indie podcasters might think are true and need to be about their podcast but aren't necessarily all that important. I'm Damien, he's Ant, this is The Podcast Advice Show. Let's crack on with number 7. A few hundred downloads per episode means

[00:00:28] your podcast is tiny, yes or no? It depends on your definition of tiny. If you have 126 listeners per episode around that, you are in the top 50% of all podcasts listening. Now, bear in mind that is if you put every podcast next to each other in terms of listening and that's on a weekly or monthly basis. But if you're getting 126 episodes, you're in that

[00:00:54] top 50th percentile, I believe statistically is the way to approach it. Now that's great, but then it's very much an exponential curve. So as you go up, to go up the next 10%, you're talking about adding another 1,000 listeners and then the next 10%, maybe 10,000 listeners. So it's a steep curve after that. But arguably, you've made a big achievement to get to that.

[00:01:22] Yeah, this might be one of the most psychologically useful myths to bust for indie podcasters. Buzzsprout in August of this year said the average episode got just 27 downloads in its first seven days. Now, just quickly tell me why an indie podcaster would hear that stat and say, that's rubbish. Is it because they'll look at the big shows that are trawling in tens of thousands,

[00:01:48] hundreds of thousands and see them as skewing the industry down or they just see it as a success versus failure metric? I would say they would say that because we are, as podcasts especially, but also potentially as the generation that we are, we're addicted to figures and we need more. We need it to be bigger and bigger and we're not really thinking about what that is. Those 27 people are actual people that have listened to the show and listened to the whole thing. That's very

[00:02:16] valuable. I flip it around. If we were doing one of our live shows and we had 27 people in the audience, we know that's enough people to make for a really great show. Yeah, you might say 30 people listening, right? Or 27. And you might go, yeah, well, that's just my friends and family. Here's another myth. They probably don't listen. And I don't mean that harshly, but it's probably different people. The idea that you pump it out and they like it on social media doesn't mean they listen.

[00:02:43] You've anecdotally drawn those dots together. 400 listeners puts you in the top 10 of podcasts. If you're getting that every month, pat yourself on the back. That is an incredible achievement. Busted! You need 5,000 to 10,000 downloads an episode before you can monetize. No. On some platforms, you might need to get 1,000 to 2,000 before you can opt into their

[00:03:06] advertising. But you can always go directly to a sponsor. I have experience of selling sponsorship for a podcast with an audience of only 250 listeners to the show. And we were able to effectively sell our audience at around 50p per listener, which is way more than you were going to get for just a generic advert on a generic marketplace. Oh, it's pennies. It literally can be a penny per

[00:03:33] download sometimes. It is a myth that you need 5,000 to 10,000 downloads an episode before you can monetize. Acast will ask you to hit 1,000 before they'll consider you for marketplace. Spotify will want 1,000, but it's got to be on Spotify. There are other platforms where you can buy in your own advertising as well. And obviously nobody is stopping you at 10 listeners from setting up

[00:03:57] Patreon or Supercast or something like that. So no, you don't feel your podcast isn't successful because it's not turning on the magic money tap and bringing in the big national sponsors at 5k or 10k. There are plenty of other ways for you to go and find that money. Busted! Number nine, book a big guest and their audience will become your audience. Yes or no? No! 20 years! 20 years ago, I first thought this with a podcast that I made and I thought,

[00:04:26] oh, they've got 500 followers on MySpace as it was and they've got 500 followers on MySpace. So if we get them both on my show, then they'll all come and listen. And it's simple maths. Simple maths. I'll have 1,000 followers by the end of it and it will grow and it will grow and it will not work. Even if your guest is very good and shouts about it when they've been on the episode, which rarely happens, it doesn't automatically convert into that.

[00:04:54] Yeah, I'd bust the guarantee that it will. What you're going to learn from having guests with bigger audiences is you're going to learn more about your audience as to whether or not they find that guest interesting. So you might say, let's take big band or let's take big person in big space and put them on. What you ask them about might not be particularly relevant or whether your

[00:05:20] audience really cares about them or not is a different matter. They might know the name, but they might go, eh, a bit. No, not for me. So I'd bust the guarantee. I'd say if you are building a show around guests, your audience expects you to have a certain calibre of guest. You can't expect that number maybe to ratchet up every week. If you're doing a show, use the Graham Norton show

[00:05:44] as an example. You expect three or four guests on the sofa every week. You tune in because you think there's going to be chemistry and a degree of entertainment. Or you've got these preconditioned feelings that you expect to get from that shared sort of community experience on the sofa with one or two little crazy features. They're probably not seeing massive spikes unless they're pulling in

[00:06:09] top, top Hollywood A-lister. But even then, if they had Harrison Ford next to Romesh Ranganathan, arguably what you're getting is probably what you're losing. Do you see what I mean? You're just never going to hit that sweet spot. You've really just got to go for guest consistency rather than they didn't bring their audience over. The other thing to remember with that is the average person listens to five to six podcasts. So if you're bringing somebody in from a podcast environment,

[00:06:36] you're introducing your show to them, but you're equally sort of hoping your premise is enough to dislodge one of their all-time favorites. And it might not be. It might just be that they came, they had a good time, they never went back. And just let me emphasize, I'm sure I've done this before, but let me just emphasize this. It's great to grow. It's great to add listeners, but do not forget about the people that you've already got. Do not forget about your ride or die. Those are the people that have been with you since the beginning, since episode three, since whenever. And they are

[00:07:06] the listeners that keep coming back. They are not just listeners and abstract forget, they are people. They are your fan base, they are your community. So make sure you were serving them as much as you were looking to grow your audience as well. Do not forget about your OGs. Busted! Number 10, get a clip to go viral and your podcast will grow. Yes or no? No. You'll have a very good viral clip. I'd say you might be able to monetize off that. You might

[00:07:35] even get some interviews and some platforms elsewhere to do other things in terms of media interviews and those kinds of things. But it does not necessarily mean that your podcast will go big. Agreed. Clips are powerful discovery tools. Sounds profitable. Did a survey and they said 89% of podcast listeners watch clips at least sometimes, but only maybe like one in three say clips often or

[00:08:01] always lead them to a specific episode. And about the same number often or always become regular listeners. That's something we've spoken about before, about using video as a more evergreen discovery tool rather than watch this clip for this episode, do this action, convert off platform. It doesn't happen that way. It just does. People just don't move that seamlessly. Go to Waterstones. But now I've told you

[00:08:26] to go to Boots. OK, go to Boots. Right. Well, now go to M&S. People have got their own pattern in life and they don't necessarily want to want to chop and change. I mean, I'd say like have clips and do them, but consider them in a more like sense of the show or expect people to maybe go and find your show, search for it in Spotify. But then maybe they'll choose the episode or the guest that they feel is most relevant for them. Maybe don't try and link those too closely. Busted! Number 11. If the podcast

[00:08:56] is good enough, people will eventually discover it. Yes or no? Kevin Costner. If you build it, they will come. Possibly, yes, once upon a time in the past when there wasn't a lot of stuff out there. However, no. Like, I don't know what the figures are for podcasts. I suppose I should, but I know like just for example, the sideways, 100,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every single day.

[00:09:23] I'll give you some stats, shall I? Yeah, go on. Podcast trailers. And we do think they should be there once, once maybe a show has been discovered. It's a really good summary, like a little promo for your show. But podcast trailers account for only 3% of discovery and podcast advertising. So distribution gets you available, but it doesn't get you noticed. 61% of listeners discovered their favorite shows

[00:09:49] through YouTube and social media combined. YouTube is 40% of that. So if it's good enough, people will eventually find it. No, I think you've got to hang your content out there and it can't just be your trailer and it can't just be promoting. This is one of the things I see on Instagram a lot is, hey, I've got a new episode. Here's my artwork. Go and listen. I appreciate that's probably as far as

[00:10:15] most people can go. But if you pause that, came up with a different template to do it and offer the value within that rather than, hey, my shop is open, we sell X and Y. If you actually did a product demo or you put something in there that allowed me to sample it, a bit of testing, give me a bit of flavor, I think you're going to find that people will eventually discover it will happen because you're telling people what's inside the can, if you like.

[00:10:42] Yeah. I think something which is a hard pill to swallow is that if you just want to make a podcast to make a podcast, then you don't need to worry about it. If you want people to listen to it, the way of the world is such that you have to put more time and effort into promoting it than the actual making of it, which sucks and I get it and it shouldn't be there and it's like, oh, capitalism, but it's just the way of the world. If you want people to find it and hear it, there is a lot of

[00:11:10] competition out there. So you need to, whether that is going out to events where your audience are and meeting them personally and shaking hands, pressing the flesh, giving them a fly, giving them something to listen to it, something that's worked for some of our shows really well, or whether it's targeted placements of social, creating a whole community online. It's not enough to just put the podcast out there. Yeah, I agree. Busted! There are millions of podcasts. Is it too saturated to

[00:11:38] start another one? This is number 12. Oh! Yes. No. There are millions of podcasts. There are also millions of podcasts that are no longer making anything. As a sideways, nobody ever says there's too many books. Interesting point, Matt. Yeah. Around four and a half million active feeds as of September 2026, but only 10% published anything in the previous 90 days. So you've got to, if you want

[00:12:05] to start, start because you'll immediately be in and amongst the 10% of podcasts that are active, which kind of increases your chances, I think, a bit of being discovered if you've got your audience nailed on. It's a bit of a tricky one. I think you should start. I think, should I start a podcast, might be in some people's heads re-asked with, will I be successful? Do you know what I mean?

[00:12:30] Trying to, will it be worth my time? If you've got, like you said, 50, 100, 200 people listening, be okay with that or sit back and work out how you can gently grow that. But I definitely wouldn't let, oh, we shouldn't do a football podcast because there's loads out there. You look at Atletico Mints, they've decided to stop after 200 episodes. Great. Come up with something a bit like that and keep going because those listeners are going to want something else to kind of fill that gap a bit.

[00:12:56] So I'd never let, to your point on books, nobody ever went, oh, another sitcom. Just keep going. Don't worry about saturation. I think it's a falsehood. Oh, another Fast and Furious movie. Okay. Well, maybe in some situations they have done that. Busted! And that will do it for 12 podcasting myths busted. Hopefully you've enjoyed our rollercoaster ride through the top 12. If you've got others you'd like us to go through, feel free to send them over

[00:13:24] and we'll consider it for a future episode. And if you've got future conversation starters for the podcast advice show, come and find us on Instagram, come and find us on Substack and let us know. We're open to feedback. It's a show for you hosted by two indie podcasters that are trying to be a conduit for, I suppose, the industry and what's going on. And also how just to keep making bloody great podcasts in your spare time? I don't know. It just happens. Some people are born with it. Magic, magic.

[00:13:53] Maybe it's Maybelline. Until next time, everybody. I'm Damien. He's Ant. Keep podcasting. Busting. Those myths. Podcasts.