🎙 Podcasts: Social Podcasting, Monetization, Discoverability

In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about how to get more listeners for your podcast, using AI note-taking tools, how to get booked as a guest, podcast monetization and more.

💎 Why It Matters

You can be a fly on the wall for conversations between great minds.

🔍 Problem

Ambitious people want to grow and learn on-the-go.

💡 Solution

Podcasts help listeners turn “mindless” time into learning time.

While hosts build connections with listeners through long-form audio.

🏁 Players

Podcasts

CTO Show • Mehmet Gonullu discusses the latest trends in tech and entrepreneurship.
Indie Hackers • Get the latest tactics, opportunities and stories from the best podcasts in the industry.
How I Built This • Stories from innovators about how they built it all.
Earn Your Leisure • Delve into financial success stories from diverse backgrounds.
Indie Bites • Bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses.
Promise • A show dedicated to the underdog driven by purpose to make the world better.
She Did It Her Way • Talks and interviews with successful female entrepreneurs.
Yo! Podcast • Spotlights incredible designers, developers, makers and entrepreneurs building their own future.
The Bootstrapped Founder • Arvid Kahl talks about starting and bootstrapping businesses.

Podcasting Platforms

Patreon • Earn from giving your fans a space to connect and discuss your podcast.
Podcast Hawk • Get booked as a podcast guest on auto-pilot.
Spotify for Podcasters • Free platform with creation, growth and monetization tools.
Podbean • Free podcast hosting and monetization platform.

Podcasting Tools

Transistor • Publishing tool to share your podcast.
Glow • Simple tool for podcast memberships.
OnPodium • Create a website for your podcast with premade templates.
Podpage • Use your RSS feed to generate your podcast’s website.
Zencastr • Record your podcast guests in studio quality in your browser.

🔮 Predictions

AI-powered note-taking apps will make it easier to get key lessons and highlights from podcasts.

Note-Bytes uses deep learning to convert notes into podcast episodes.

Snipd lets you tap your headphones to save podcast moments to your library with an AI-generated transcript and summary.

Kris built Podcast Highlighter to make it easy to automatically highlight and transcribe takeaways from individual podcasts.

Social podcasting will allow audiences to participate rather than just listen. Leading to a more engaging podcast experience for everyone.

Intuit uses Riverside.fm to let customers call into their radio-like podcast.

Weekends Unplugged accepts short voice recordings from listeners via SpeakPipe.

Ronen built a reputation for facilitating conversations on a variety of Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. He quickly earned 3,000,000+ followers.

Wolf Financial has hosted 3,000+ of Twitter Spaces on FinTwit. Audience members are often called up to the stage to ask questions and provide their own insights.

More podcasts will sell subscriptions. Subscriptions are a growing alternative to advertising for niche podcasts. Many will use both.

Peter Attia went ad-free for The Drive in favor of a subscription model. His fans loved it.

Ben and John sell $5/month memberships to Dithering, their 15-minute weekly podcast.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti thought it would take a year to hit 1,000 subscribers for Breaking Points. It took two days.

☁️ Opportunities

Start a branded podcast to appeal to your target audience even if they don’t know about your product. You can sell in a high-trust, low-pressure environment.

Inside Trader Joe’s shares the insights on running a grocery store.

The London Vermouth Company uses AudioHarvest to create and market its own podcast.

Softr started the Generation Builders Podcast that features conversations with product, growth and community experts.

Sephora’s Lip Stories features interviews with guests who tell stories that in some way relate to one of the brand’s products.

ZipRecruiter hired Shark Tank’s Daymond John to feature on “Rise and Grind”, a business-focused podcast for entrepreneurs.

Now What? podcast by Wix features interviews and tips that inspire its community about what to build and how to build it using Wix’s tools.

Offer services to help hosts grow and monetize their podcasts.

Podcast Lister charges $50 to list podcasts in directories on their behalf.

James Carbary helps B2B businesses build podcasts to grow their media brands.

Rory, Ben and Lizy started The Podcast Coach to offer bespoke podcast coaching.

Sam Laliberte offers growth consulting. She helps hosts launch, market and monetize their podcasts.

Join podcasts as a guest to promote your product or personal brand.

Milly’s tweet looking for guest opportunities led to recordings in Chicago and NYC.

Marc Lou joined the Indie Hackers Podcast to discuss his experience in solopreneur ventures.

Mr. Beast went on a podcast tour with top Twitch Streamers and Youtubers as a brand-building initiative.

Bryan Johnson joined the Lex Fridman Podcast to demonstrate Kernel, a device that can monitor and record brain activity.

Chris Mirabile joined The Genuinely Interested Podcast to share his knowledge on aging and discuss his anti-aging business NOVOS.

Tristan Walker joined NPR’s How I Built This to discuss his entrepreneurial journey to becoming the first Black CEO under Procter & Gamble. He talks about (and promotes) the hair and beauty products he had a hand in creating.

Start an agency to help guests find podcasts to speak on. Getting booked on top podcasts is hard without industry connections and a strong pitch.

Kitcaster is a podcast booking agency that schedules podcast interviews on your behalf.

Speak On Podcasts is a fully-managed podcast booking service for brands and individuals.

Lemonpie is a podcast PR agency for companies and founders who need help getting guest interviews.

John and Phil started Podcast Bookers to fill their own needs of getting booked on podcasts as founders.

🏔️ Risks

Discoverability. Podcasts are hard to grow if you do not have a pre-existing audience to share your podcast with. Unlike easily searchable text, we are in the early days of transcribing and indexing audio.
Accessibility. If you want to build an audience in developing countries, you should be aware of the bandwidth that podcasts take. It’s hard to consume podcasts over a slow internet connection.
Medium-Audience Fit. Unless most of your desired audience listens to podcasts, you will still need to publish content using other mediums. This can dilute your attention and resources._ Is a podcast the best way to engage with your target market?_

🔑 Key Lessons

Repurpose your content. Post your best highlights as short-form content on other platforms to market your podcast.
Entertain to retain listeners. Podcasters are performers first and foremost. If you aren’t constantly engaging people with valuable and interesting content, they’ll lose interest.
Monetize wisely. Different audiences will resonate with different offers. Experiment with monetization strategies based on your understanding of your audience.

🔥 Hot Takes

Short-form podcasts will win. Modern audiences have short attention spans. They crave quick clips and segments.
Don’t tell podcast hosts what to say in ads. Scripted ads come across as inauthentic to podcast listeners. Find podcasters who understand the unique benefits of your product and let them speak freely about it to their audience.

😠 Haters

“Podcasts are notoriously low-converting for advertisers. Trying to get listeners to take action while they're driving, cooking or doing laundry is difficult.”
While this is true, consider that podcasts have a longer sales cycle. Podcast listeners need time to build trust and belief in your product. But once you convert them, they’re likely to be high-value customers. Tools like Plink make it easier for listeners to remember and use information that’s shared.

“It’s already hard to attribute where my customers are coming from. With podcasts, attribution is even harder.”
The best (though imperfect) solution to the attribution problem is to offer custom codes and links for each podcast. If the offer is appealing enough, listeners will be inclined to use the code and give you valuable attribution data.

“Most podcasts are too long and not engaging enough to resonate with the next generation.”
There are ways to cater to new audiences within existing formats. Podcasts like the H3 Podcast are seeing success with live podcasts which have audience call-ins and comments. Others like Theo Von and Gin & Toxic use viral clips to attract new audiences.

🔗 Links

What are your top 3 podcasts? • The tweet behind this report.
The Next Phase of Social? Listen Closely • Andreessen Horowitz’s thesis on social podcasting.
The Complete Guide To Podcast Editing • How to edit podcasts like a pro.

📁 Related Reports

Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Successful podcasts are often one-person teams.
Paid Communities • Paid communities are one of the best monetization strategies for podcasters.
Influencer Marketing • Advertising with podcast hosts is a form of influencer marketing.
The Creator Economy • Podcasters are a thriving component of the creator economy.
Audience-First Products • Podcasts are one way to build an audience before selling a product.

Do you want to get the next Trends.vc Report? Join 50,000+ founders discovering new markets and ideas.