Caster Community

I just realized that I haven't provided an update on our community's growth since all the way back on May 27th! I'll admit that I was originally aiming to hit 100 members over the summer, but I'm still thrilled to report that we have 87 awesome people in our podcasting community!

Over the last 6 months, it's been incredible to see some of the relationships that have been built in the group. I love seeing how eager everyone is to help one another, and provide really helpful feedback when asked.

There were definitely a few months over the summer where growth and engagement within the community seemed to decrease. But I think those types of ups and downs are to be expected. Especially in a year like 2020 when everyone has so many other things providing stress in their daily lives.

As we near the end of the year and people debate starting that new podcast though, I really think these next few months are going to be quite different than the last few. We also have some really exciting things coming up over the next couple of weeks that I'll be sharing updates on soon 😉

If you have a podcast or are working on building a tool in the podcasting space, we would love to have you join us!

https://castercommunity.com

This weekend I was traveling to my college roommate's wedding up in Philadelphia and figured I would use some of that downtime to re-design the Caster Community landing page.

I had recently purchased the Carrd Black Friday deal and thought this would be a good excuse to play around with it deeper. My hope is that this will drastically improve the SEO over my old React (client-side) landing page.

Since my ultimate long-term goal is to utilize the community as a lead magnet for my other podcasting tools, I decided to also go ahead and set it up as a subdomain (community) on my new Casts project.

I also wanted to put more of an effort into including some "social proof" on the landing page so potential new members could see the friendly faces of existing community members. I'm also working on getting a couple of member testimonials as well. I'm hoping to add those as a carousel at the bottom in the next couple of days.

What do you think? Any obvious areas where I can improve?

https://castercommunity.com

It's been almost 2 months since opening the doors of this podcasting Slack community, and I'm thrilled to announce that we're about to hit 40 members!

I've been extremely impressed with the quality of members that we've been fortunate enough to attract, many of whom are also members of the Indie Hackers community. Everyone has been very willing to share their podcasting experiences, the highs, the lows, and the lessons they've learned along the way. It's these lessons that will continue to bring value to our small, tight-knit community and encourage us all to grow together.

I'd love to give a huge thank you to all the Indie Hackers who have made Caster Community what it is today!

@StayingGeeky - @jcheng45 - @prhelms86 - @artsmc - @anthmatic - @gordon - @samlebo - @tomhuntio - @GritCom - @annadante - @benas11 - @CaseyAbbottPayne - @CrystalTurnbull - @ccummings - @everyfan_knows - @dremovd - @useCastup - @stew_hillhouse - @s2imon - @neerajnegi - @borzi - @Julianivann - @day1

I wanted to take a moment to celebrate our growing Slack community! We're up to 17 members now, many of whom are fellow bootstrapped, indie developers, building tools & services for podcasters.

It's been awesome to see everyone interacting with one another and sharing stories about what they're building. I also love having a group of fellow podcasting enthusiasts to bounce ideas off of. This is exactly what I was hoping for when I started this project!

I've been talking to a couple of people who have been considering joining our Slack community, and it has become very clear to me that charging (even a small annual fee) for this type of community is not something that is going to work.

It was never about the money. In fact, all the money I made from memberships was just going to be reinvested back into the group. The reason I was charging this small annual fee was also to create a small barrier to entry to discourage people who were just going to join and spam us with their show link or new tool they're building.

Looking forward to seeing if this change makes an actual difference in signups. Part of me thinks it may just be an excuse people were giving to "let me down easy" because they weren't actually interested in joining.

It's all a part of building a business!

If you're interested in joining us, and networking with fellow podcasters who are also looking to improve their craft...

Sign-up Here!

Our new Slack community of podcasters is growing, and we're sending out email invites for people to join our April cohort.

We're currently a group of 6 members, who are passionate about podcasts, working together to improve our craft, white bouncing ideas off each other, and sharing advice where we can.

It's been a great experience so far, and I can't wait to see this community of bright, talented podcasters grow!

We've had the first 3 Caster Community members sign-up and join us in our Slack community! It's so rewarding to see podcasters excited to network with one another, while sharing their tips and tricks. This is going to be so valuable as we all grow our shows together.

I can't wait until our next group of members joins us in early April (join the waitlist!) and things really get rolling!

Day 5 of my journey, and I finally found enough time to put together a simple landing page to explain some of the thoughts in my head. Right before posting this I did notice a few typos, but I guess that's what happens when you formulate a business idea and have a live website within a couple of days!

Today has been a blast, but I am exhausted. It's hard to network, while also building a prototype so you actually have something to show the people you're networking with.

Check it out! Would love to hear your feedback... https://castercommunity.com/

Today I'm taking the first steps in building the Caster Community! My goal with this project is to create a welcoming place for podcasters to gather, share best practices, and discover helpful resources.

I’ve spent the last year experimenting with building podcasting tools, and learning as much as I could about this exciting industry. Eventually it became clear that the only way I could truly bring value and build useful tools for podcast creators was if I actually got my hands dirty and got deeply involved myself.

I’m excited to share my journey, and I hope that this proves to be a valuable resource to the greater podcasting community!