It’s been 10 weeks since we started I CODE HIRE ME and I’d say things have been pretty good! Not huge success yet, but pretty good. The goal is to build a community of people learning how to code. I’m not sure what that means yet, so the first focus is on growing a loyal podcast audience and start building up an email list. Here are the results so far!
Accomplishments:
- Released a new episode every Friday for the past 10 weeks! BOOOOOM this shocks me actually. It was easier than I thought!
- Passed 1,000 all-time listens
- A single episode reached 315 listens
- Positive feedback and reviews from random people. 5 Stars baby!
- Hit 85 emails on our mailing list (which isn’t THAT good, but hey it’s more than zero!)
Struggles:
- Reddit: Promoting podcasts is hard! I experimented with posting on Reddit, but my posts are always on the edge of self-promotion (which means they are self-promotion)
- Quora: I answered a few questions on Quora and to my surprise generated some traffic from that…so I need to spend more time on that. I haven’t done more of it just due to laziness.
- Written interviews aren’t doing as well as I’d hope and they’re a big time suck trying to get people to fill them out…I’m considering not doing them anymore. I’m going to continue to do them though for now, because I know that some people like to consume written content over audio.
What’s Next:
- Podcast Guests: Guests promoting the show on their network his is BY FAR the best way we’ve been able to grow. So I’ve made a list of 60 people with good twitter/instagram followings very specific to the learn to code niche. My plan is to start with people that have around 10,000 followers and get them on the podcast asap to see if we see a bump in subscribers. If that works, I’m going to work my way up to the ones that have tons of followers.
- Twitter: Even though I’m in tech, I’ve never liked being on Twitter….I stopped using my account around 3 years ago. I think that is largely due to the negativity on there. BUT my analytics shows that a lot of our traffic comes from twitter…so I must go where the market is :)
If anyone has thoughts or advice on growing an audience I am all ears :)
Cheers,
-Sean
Congrats! Launching a new episode every Friday isn’t easy.
Thanks!! :)
Big congrats! Seems like you have some good traction and the consistency is awesome. I appreciate you sharing your wins and insights. I'm curious to know more about the text interviews - were these based the podcasts or totally separate?
One reason I ask is because I am in the early stages of creating a service to help podcast makers repurpose their audio so that it is optimized for text. I've already done this for some clients - so I have the process down. A text version of the podcast can be very useful for marketing since text is more easily distributed than audio. It can also be an added resource for your current audience.
Another excellent way to market your podcast is by being a guest on other podcasts. Come up with a few topical things you can teach / discuss and pitch yourself to other podcasts with similar audience.
Thanks!! So the text-based are completely separate simply because transcription is not worth the money for us just yet. I agree 100% that a text version of the podcast would make it more sharable online. My short-term solution was creating our own podcast episode pages under our domain so that we control the user experience there (http://icodehireme.com/podcast/josh-beckman).
What does the text content look like that you create? Are they straight transcriptions?
For straight transcription, this might be the cheapest option: https://www.temi.com/ It's AI so it comes out pretty raw -- needs some cleaning up.
Ok, checked out your podcast and saw the text interviews. The episode pages look great and the interviews sound solid (but I'm not the target audience).
No not straight transcription. It's more like a curate Q&A focusing on the most interesting parts of the conversation. Think of it like a bit more robust than show notes (so you can get the info you need without listening to a full episode - show notes alone aren't meaningful). All the interviews here --> https://www.gmass.co/gmailgenius/interviews/#.W5LI--hKg2w
are based on audio conversations and edited down. The audio isn't posted. For example, each conversation ends up being about 8-12 pages. What you see on the website is more like 2-3.
Try a bit harder on Quora. I've noticed really good traffic - both in terms of quantity and quality. Congrats on reaching 10 weeks! :)
@stan121 will do :) Glad to hear that it actually works! Appreciate the advice
Subbed! Good luck mate.
amazing! Thanks a ton @MaybeMatt
Love the transparency in this article. Thank you for sharing!
I'm shocked you're not on Twitter as a tech. The tech community is huge on Twitter!
I know...Idk what happened 🤷🏼♂️ Haha but I’m giving it a shot again!
Yep. Twitter is powerful! Try to promote your tweets. That’s how you grow as fast as you can. Promo by tweeter is much cheap than fb.
Funny. My ex-employer sent me a link to your podcast a few weeks ago. And now I see you again on Indie Hacker. Keep it up!
I've been podcasting since April and if I looked at audience growth I probably would have stopped by now. I learn something in every interview and get to have long conversations with people who would not give me anywhere near as much time if I didn't have a podcast.
The benefits are nuanced and it is a definitely a long term play. If you are enjoying it then just keep going...
Pat
softwaredefinedsurvival.com
That's amazing!! Glad you found us again :)
I'd suggest replacing 90% of the time you're spending on promotion with effort to improve the content. Self promotion can help things grow in the beginning, but over time quality and consistency of content dominates everything else.