Rob Walch is the VP of Podcaster Relations of Libsyn, the podcasting host for my podcast, the Alain Guillot Podcast.

Rob Walch got into podcasting because he was looking for a hobby. The hobby became a passion, the passion overwhelmed him and then it became the career.

Rob Walch started podcasting in late 2004, he was doing his podcast out of his own computer server, but he had a high profile guest at his podcast show podCast411 and he was afraid his computer server wasn’t going to be able to handle the traffic, so he opened an account with Libsyn on 2005.

there is more time to consume audio than there is to consume any other medium of communication.

Podcast has been continuously growing throughout the years, one of the main reasons is that there is more time to consume audio than there is to consume any other medium of communication.

People listen to a podcast while

• Driving in the car,
• Working out,
• Walking the dog,
• Doing chores around the house

People can easily listen to a 30-minute podcast and feel engaged, while the attention grab for a social media video is about 3 minutes, and the engagement with other social media is just seconds.

When it comes to blogs, the ratio of blogs to a podcast is about 1,000 to 1. There are 1,000 blogs for each podcast out there. 42% of the US population read blogs in a given month while 32% listen to podcasts. So while there are more bloggers than podcasters, the consumption is closer. This means that there is a higher opportunity to deliver a message to people as a podcaster than as a blogger.

As a business person, imagine that you get the opportunity to sit in a room with 500 of your clients, or prospective clients, and you get to talk about your product, and you get to talk to them each week. Would that be interesting to you? How much is that worth to you? How often do you get up on stage and talk to 100 people? would that be good for your business?

That’s what podcast podcasting does for you. You get to speak to your customers, your audience, you get to educate them about your product, entertain them, inform them, answer their questions, help them with their problems.

If one of your goals as a business person is get up and speak publicly at events like this one or trade shows,  you are more likely to be chosen if you are a podcaster than if you use any of the other social media. If you can go to event organizers and give them a link to your podcast, that will give you a distinctive advantage over other people who are also trying to speak.

The equipment to start a podcast is just a microphone (Samsun Q2U) and a sound editing software such as Garage Band, Adobe Editions, or Audacity (Free). Your whole podcasting equipment would cost you less than $100.

How big is podcasting?

• Sirius XM 35 million monthly subscribers
• Spotify is about 65.4 million subscribers
• Pandora is about 63 million
• Podcasting is over 104 million subscribers.

Can a person make money with podcasting?

Most people never make money.

• Only 7% of the shows get up to 5,000 downloads per episode which are where people need to be to start monetizing.
• The medium number of downloads per episode is 140 downloads per episode

How can a person grow a podcast?

• Do a show of a topic that you like.
• Commit to doing a podcast long term
• Do it regularly
• Engage with the listener
• Listen to feedback
• Improve

Which are the biggest shows in English?

• The Joe Rogan Experience ( from 150,000 to 3 million downloads per episode.)
• Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History (Multiple millions of downloads per episode.)

Is it better to have a long episode or a short episode?

The biggest episodes tend to be longer. Dan Carlin’s episodes are about 6 hours long. Joe Rogan’s episodes are about 2-3 hours long.  Those show getting over 100,000 downloads per episode, 84% were 51 minutes or longer.

The average time a regular American listens to a podcast is 6 hours and 39 minutes.

The average American listens to six podcasts per week.

This means that generally, each podcast they listen to is over one hour long.

#1 tip for podcasters

Have fun.

Where to find Rob?

• rob@libsyn.com
• LinkedIn

Thank you Rob and Elsie Escobar for hosting “The Feed” the best podcast about podcasting.

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