Why so many podcasts don’t make it past 7 episodes.
IN SHORT, WHY DO SO MANY PODCASTS NOT MAKE IT?
Podcasting is hard and time intensive, and needs a lot of moving parts every week.
Brands misunderstand what goes into making a podcast and get disheartened by the workload.
Podcasting can be easy by surrounding yourself with a strong team who can remove the friction of logistics and admin.
Here’s something a lot of people don’t want to admit about podcasting and content creating.
It’s actually really hard.
In fact, there are over 4.3 million podcasts worldwide, but only about 400,000 of them are active (meaning they’ve posted an episode in the last 90 days)
Here’s another stat that might blow your mind: If you get 28 downloads on your podcast, you’re in the Top 50% of podcasts in the world.
Okay, let me give you one more mindblowing podcast stat: The majority of podcasts will not make it past 7 episodes.
I’ve been in the podcast industry for nearly 10 years, and in that time, I’ve seen many podcasts come and go.
Often, I see creators hype up their podcasts on social media, with full announcement trailers and promoting it as their next big endeavor. I often note these down and check back in about 8 weeks later, and almost all of them have been quietly discontinued, removed from Instagram bios and never spoken of again.
I have thoughts on why so many podcasters can’t seem to get over the 7 episode mark.
Firstly, there’s a mismatch of expectations of what podcasting actually entails. Below is a post I made on LinkedIn about a year ago about what making a podcast actually involves.
We all want to have fun podcasting, but ultimately, there is a lot of technical and administrative work that goes in to making a successful podcast outside of just sitting down and recording the fun stuff.
To set a podcast up for success, you need to have a clear focus and a clear plan of how you’ll manage all the tasks. This could mean outsourcing the administrative stuff to someone like me, so you, your hosts and your guests can focus purely on making the content as strong as possible.
Where people fall down in podcasting, is believing that there isn’t much work that goes into it, when really, just making one podcast episode from ideation to publishing and distribution, could take well over 10 hours of work.
It starts getting even more difficult when you add video. Larger file sizes increase file transfer, processing and export times, which can further add friction to a podcast’s workflow and momentum.
My number one tip for creating a podcast is having a strong support network to help you with the technical side, so you can focus on delivering on air. Take the friction out of podcasting and focus on the fun stuff.