Share your podcast!

Hey! Thanks for creating this group.

My podcast is called Trouble Makers, and it's part of Maker Mag, a publication for indie entrepreneurs and solo founders. Each month, we interview someone about topics such as bootstrapping, open startups, alternative sources of funding, etc.

We make money thanks to a sponsor which we mention at the beginning of each episode.

Challenges are growing the audience - I still haven't figured out yet what are the best ways to promote a podcast.

Yay! So glad to be in this group. Thanks Courtland!

I've got two podcasts: one is RadDadShow.com where I interview interesting and successful dads about their work and family life, and one is SmashNotes.com where each week I share segments from other podcasts that I've found interesting (kind of like Cliff notes for pods).

The first podcast has been around for about two years now, and was my first experiment with podcasting. The second's only a few months old. I've learned a ton and happy to share those lessons.

TLDR: publish fast, and publish often, don't overthink it. Volume >> quality. It sounds awful, but you can learn and improve and get better a lot faster by doing a lot more, than by spending hours on end meticulously improving each episode.

Not making any money from either right now. To get ad dollars in podcasts you gotta get a pretty high volume, 100,000+ downloads to make it meaningful, and since I've not gotten there, it didn't feel like worth the hassle.

My personal biggest challenge is getting the podcast to just the right audience, and having it spread. How about you, how's the IH podcast coming along?

This is awesome, Courtland. I haven't talked much to other podcasters so I'm happy to be in this group.

I'm Hiten and I co-host The Startup Chat with my friend Steli Efti from Close.com and we've recorded 430+ episodes.

I'd love to learn how others are growing their listener base. One caveat for us is that we've never had any guests on the podcast.

I started podcasting because there are a lot of things I'd like to share that don't fit into a screencast format. My goals are to find like-minded people, to learn and finally, to increase the top of funnel for discovering my business. My screencasts won't applicable to most podcast followers but I'll take whatever % I can get.

I've got 3 shows:

• Code and Bootstrapping: where I talk about programming and bootstrapping related stuff.
• Learning Machine: where every episode is about learning strategies or tools useful for autodidacts.
• The Metacast: where each episode is a quick summary of an idea or mental model I pulled from a long-form podcast or book.

Cool idea.

I host StartupsForTheRestOfUs.com, the longest-running podcast for self-funded and indie-funded SaaS and software founders. We've been running since 2010 and are approaching episode 460.

We have several different formats, including: sharing tactics, answering listener questions, founder hotseat, and occasional interviews with people in our non-VC-backed startup community.

I've taken some good ideas from this thread on how to grow. We've focused on shipping every week for 9-1/2 years, but never focused specifically on growing the listener base. It's something I'd like to put in place.

Just had Courtland on our podcast :) https://gettogether.fm/episodes/courtland-allen-indie-hackers

It's about "the nuts and bolts of community building." We break down how all sorts of communities get off the ground, and then scale.

We are on our 17th episode. It started as a way to share our research conversations openly with the audience who reads our book (https://press.stripe.com/#get-together). Each episode will be linked in the footnotes of that book.

But it's been such an amazing way to learn and establish relationships with people we admire that we've kept going.

We've stayed away from revenue because the future felt uncertain. Would we keep interviewing people for perpetuity? Do people dig this content enough to have a long, ongoing series?

Our biggest challenge is just the editing process. We have editors, but it's the biggest time suck I find.

Cool! I'm excited to be in this group!

@excid3 and I run Business Time. We started back in January and are 18 episodes in. We aim to publish weekly, but we don't always hit that goal.

We're not making any money off of it, but perhaps one day we will. I haven't thought about it tbh. We aim to keep things quite casual where the two of us chat about our week and what's been on our minds.

A challenge for me is getting figuring out how to get this in front of folks who might be interested. I've been sharing a lot on LinkedIn and have found that I've gotten some pretty good engagement there vs. Twitter or IG. Our audience has been growing steadily though, so I feel like we should keep doing what we're doing. Each episode has an average of about 100 downloads, which is super exciting for me. 😊

• Podcast : Let's Get Started!
• URL : https://anchor.fm/lgs
• Theme : Entrepreneurs share their story of how they built their startup and provide various insights and learning from their experience.
• Progress : Published 4 episodes in one month
• Money : Do not plan to monetise it
• Challenges :

  • My biggest challenge right now finding and inviting guests.
    I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, searching for suitable founders and pitching to them. I wish to make it more scalable model in future. Would love suggestions from fellow podcasters here.

  • My second biggest challenge is finalising the show structure.
    We are pretty young right now, still getting data and listener feedback. Maybe some of you can listen to an episode and provide some feedback ?
    The structure I follow right now is divide the discussion into 3 segments:

    1. The Startup Journey: This segment focuses on the product. How it started, grew and where it is right now. What were the industry specific learnings while growing the company.

    2. The Personal Journey: This focuses on the Enterprenuers personal life. We discuss how they overcome low moments, manage their expenses (specially when bootstrapped), work/life balance, source of learning (books/podcasts), etc.

    3. Knowledge Capsule: Here, we ask the guest to explain a startup concept/theory, as if they're explaining to a grandfather. We keep this concept relevant to the guest's expertise. For instance, in Ep. 3 - A 10+ years Finance expert, helped us understand about Profitability v/s Growth for new age internet startups (Uber/Amazon). Similarly, in Ep. 4 a YC incubatee helped us understand all about Startup Incubators.

Hello, I run a podcast called Software Engineering Daily, a show about technical software topics that airs M-F. I've been hosting it for four years. I shared the business details in an Indie Hackers interview.

The biggest challenge has been developing sales and bootstrapping a podcast into a wider media business.

The best part of a successful podcast is that you have a monopoly: people are tuning in to hear you (this is true almost regardless of what the show is about, the format, etc). But the worst part is that the company scales about as well as an influencer marketer on Instagram. Which is suboptimal for most people, but great if you are Kylie Jenner.

So my current goal is to be the Kylie Jenner of podcasting.

Hey all. I host FreelancetoFounder.com, which Courtland was on a couple years ago, when I did seasons (Season 3, Episode 6).

The show has has evolved from formal and narrative non-fiction to more of a casual interview show, with my cut-ins periodically to highlight something my guests have said that I think bears repeating.

Fun show. I focus on featuring founders who took something that was a fun side gig and scaled into their full-time pursuit.

Hey everyone! Glad to be a part here.

I'm the co-host of a podcast called The Overlap where we talk about design + web dev, and all the stuff inbetween. https://www.overlappodcast.com

We get into design stuff like Print tips, web stuff like React, and stuff inbetween like Focus and how to charge for freelancing.

I'm a web developer, my cousin/co-host is a graphic designer, so we both try to share what we know.

We're 10 episodes deep now! Kind of proud of that when most podcasts fade after 7 episodes.

Challenges

Like others, it's challenging to grow an audience for a podcast when the hosts don't have a following already. It seems a lot easier to get things off the ground if people are already listening.

Editing takes FOREVER. It might be our format - we're teaching and following more of a script, rather than a conversation where you don't make as many mistakes or do as many re-dos.

My co-host does the editing, and that's one thing I'd want to take off our plates if we could. WIthout listeners there's no ad revenue and no $$ to pay an editor.

It's also tough keeping a consistent schedule with 2 busy hosts.

Hey!

I'm one of the four hosts of the Ladybug Podcast. We talk about tech and our lives in the industry -- we're four women software engineers who have been in the industry for a bit.

We have a pretty good listenership (will most likely have 10k/episode by the 6 week benchmark), but we have only 4 episodes out (we're publishing weekly) and are trying to navigate the world of sponsorships, how much to charge, etc!

Run With It (https://www.runwithit.fm/) brings you business ideas from successful entrepreneurs.

Each episode, we ask our guest to share a biz idea they love but don't have time to do themselves. We talk through the problem, solution, market size, and most importantly, the exact action steps our guest would take to launch the business.

We ask our listeners to follow through on these steps and report back to us. One listener who responds will earn a free 1-hr mentoring session with our guest, and potentially a partnership.

Our guests get to do something with their other ideas, and screen potential partners via action rather than their resumes.

Our listeners get to hear how successful entrepreneurs think about new opportunities, and can get free business ideas.

@Eathan and I would love to hear your feedback!

My podcast is called Code Story (https://codestory.co). On the show, I interview tech leaders/founders about the creation story of their product - ie the road to and through MVP. We dive into topics like getting started, early tech decisions/tradeoffs, mistakes, scaling, team building and launching for success. Take a listen to the latest episode at the link below, and I'd love to hear your feedback!
https://codestory.co/podcast/e8-jon-buda-transistor/

Hey @csallen thanks for creating this topic.

Last week I have started with the new podcast called InsideRemote where we talk with remote work leaders and people who are building tools for remote companies.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-remote/id1475773111?l=en

I have 3 episodes at the moment and few on the waitlist for launch.

My current biggest challenge is spreading the word and getting more people to notice it.

Looking forward to any feedback about the show. :)

AfrodevPodcast.com, a podcast where I interview African Software Engineers about their journey and the cool stuff they are working on. I started this year and I'm currently on the 7th episode.
At the moment, it's more of a hobby and an opportunity to chat with people I admire. I'm not thinking of making money yet.

My biggest challenge has been consistency. I believe this has to do with the editing process being time-consuming but I am getting better at it.

Thanks for the great topic Courtland!

My Podcast: https://thebyte.io - A Byte-Sized Podcast about Containers, Cloud, and Tech

Goal: Create byte-sized podcasts which are informative and direct to the point about Containers, Cloud, and Tech no longer than 10 minutes.

Status: The podcast has now been running for a little over 5 months and slowly growing listeners.

Hint: This week I posted manually all the episodes to SoundCloud and was really impressed by how fast listeners found the episodes considering I never uploaded to SoundCloud before.

Thanks for starting this group, @csallen!

The WPMRR WordPress podcast! My co-host Christie and I are entirely focused on helping WP professionals grow successful WordPress businesses and their monthly recurring revenue. Boom!

We're about a year in and have 50+ episodes published with some great guests like Chris Lema, Brad Touesnard, Joost De Valk and others. We've been lucky enough to land guests from cool companies like Help Scout, HubSpot, GoDaddy, startups.com, etc.

We don't monetize the podcast with sponsors or anything like that, but we do drive people towards:

• WPMRR: a robust video course that teaches WordPress professionals how to implement, sell and execute ongoing care plans for their clients and increase their revenue every single month.
• WP Buffs: a 24/7 WordPress website maintenance service for serious website owners and white-label partners.

Honestly, no big challenges! It's a ton of fun :)

Hey everyone! My podcast is called Techish [www.techishpod.com]. It's a light round-up of the latest tech and pop culture news, I co-host alongside my friend @abadesi. It's part C++ part Cardi B lol.

We've got a small but super loyal and growing audience! Thanks for setting this up @csallen!

Hi! I host The All Things Auth Podcast, a show that interviews creators, researchers, founders, and advocates who are working to improve the usability of security and privacy technologies.

So far, I have recorded 7 episodes, edited/published 4 of them, and have 6 guests confirmed for upcoming recordings.

Currently, the podcast is a passion project and I do not monetize because I hate ads.

My biggest challenge right now is time. I am a perfectionist and the show is definitely taking more time to produce than anticipated. I have been working professionally as a software engineer for 9+ years and am diving back into academia next month to start a CS PhD program, which will require much of my focus.

I need to continue working on ways to streamline my processes so that I can produce high quality episodes in less time. I am getting quicker as I practice more, so hopefully the learning curve is a large factor here too.

I'm launching my podcast soon (hopefully this week) It's called 90 Days Of Health. I was obese and lost 75lbs+ with light exercise and changing my diet. Now I'm going for the gold and trying to put on muscle and lift weights and will do 90 episodes of the 5x days I work out with insights, what I learn, my results, obstacles, life advice, jokes, etc. Hopefully, I can get people to start working out as well.

• Podcast: Dusty VCR
• URL: https://dustyvcr.com/
• Theme: My sister, our friend, and I re-watch movies from our childhood to see if they still hold up today.
• Progress: We've published eight episodes in four months.
• Money: Not a goal, but we've gotten one small sponsorship from a local business.
• Biggest Challenges: Chemistry with guests.
  • Each episode, we have a guest (usually a local comedian) join us to talk about the movie. Sometimes we have great chemistry with the guest, and it generates funny conversations, but sometimes it feels like we can't find the vibe and the conversations are just blah. We're trying to figure out what we can do beforehand and during to make more of the conversations interesting.
• Request from the community
  • I'm still fairly new to podcasting, so I'm sure I'm making lots of rookie mistakes.
  • I'd love to hear detailed feedback about one of the show's recent episodes from a more experienced podcaster.
  • I'm willing to pay or to do a skill exchange where I give you feedback about your blog (I've had decent success at building a blog audience, with 5-6 of my posts reaching the front page of HN in the last two years).

Hi! I'm producing the Progression podcast (progression.team/podcast) - really focused on supporting content related to my product (progressionapp.com)

I've found a sponsor which really just covers costs - an editor and bits of equipment. The ROI for me is much more around bringing potential customers on my journey. I don't need tons of listeners (as @mijustin often talks about) and really enjoy chatting more than writing so it suits me nicely.

Great to meet you all!

I've only recorded one episode so far, but more is in the making.

Rapid Breakup Recovery Podcast

My challenge right now is that I'm not sure on what format (monologue vs. interviews vs. something else) to take for the podcast (topic: breakup recovery advice for men).

One of my favorite podcasts in the space of mental self help is the Overwhelmed Brain, and the host does monologues, which are really powerful. Much more so than the interviews I've heard. But it's also quite intimidating. It's a challenge to write a good article on a topic, let alone doing a monologue! So chipping away at this challenge slowly.

Great idea!

My podcast is the Sales for Founders podcast.

The podcast is for founders doing $0-10k monthly revenue, who want to learn how to do sales, build a product people want to buy, and grow a profitable business faster.

The format is still finding its feet. A mix of interviews (including many IH podcast guests), and just me talking to other founders/sales experts about a specific topic.

So far I've recorded ~10 episodes, been live for ~2 months, and get 300-1000 listens per episode on average.

I don't make any money from the podcast directly. But it...

a) helps people learn sales and why sales is important
b) helps more people find out about the Sales for Founders course
c) helps people who are interested in the course feel comfortable giving me their money, because they know I'm the real deal

My biggest challenge is growing the podcast with little time/money input. I'm actually working on some ideas for how to do this and would love to talk to others in the same situation.

Glad to be a part of the group!

My podcast is called Product Journey. I host it with @benmann. It is about our journey starting and building our individual internet businesses. We have only recorded one episode so we're just getting started!

The plan is to have kind of a weekly/bi-weekly standup where we share with each other what we are working on. Hopefully talk through some hard decisions that we are making . Were wanting it to be pretty raw and transparent. Hopefully it will be helpful for others to see what its like from the inside of a business.

No plans for making money from it.