xPromo by Podding

Today we logged our 100th user. The growth was primarily driven by being featured in newsletters and paying for well-targeted Google Ads. Why would we pay for users, I hear you ask? Well, in order to refine our proposition we need immediate access to users for testing. It's a lot easier to test ideas with existing users than approaching podcasters who aren't users for feedback sessions. We're very aware that we eventually need to build some kind of virality element into the product that lets us grow our userbase organically and for free. Right now, we're still more focused on nailing the value prop, so that'll come later.

We set up a Buy-me-a-coffee account and button for xpromo.poddinglabs.com. Today, someone used it for the first time, sharing their appreciation and $5 with us.

This inspired us to run an experiment: We'll feature users who support us through donations more prominently on our site to see if the willingness to pay for our service is there.

Podmmunity is one of the eminent newsletters covering the podcasting industry. If you're a podcaster, you want to make sure you've subscribed. Today, we're honoured to be featured in it thanks to @Riva, helping us reach more indie podcasters to try our product. Check it out and subscribe here: https://podmmunity.com/issues/32#apps

After a few more days of building essential features and receiving positive feedback from our existing users, we decided to start actively sharing our tool with the world. And we started with the IH Podcasters community.

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/we-built-a-cross-promotion-network-for-podcasters-add-your-show-in-seconds-and-get-matched-45a2fc80c2

We're amazed and grateful at how many of the people we reached out to added their podcasts to https://xpromo.poddinglabs.com/

So far, everyone who visited the site ended up adding their own podcast! As of now, we have 32 shows on the site and counting.

Today we released xPromo: a beautifully simple way to find fair and quality matches for podcast cross-promotions. We think of it as a "Tinder for podcasting partnerships".

Search by topic and download count. Add your own podcast and (soon!) get matches into your inbox as new shows are being added. Build win-win relationships with verified podcasters.

• No sign-up necessary
• 5 seconds to add your show
• 100% free

https://xpromo.poddinglabs.com/

We've been working on an analytics tool for a few weeks now. The idea was to build a simple but beautiful analytics dashboard for podcasters. This we would provide for free, while we keep learning about their pain points.

As we onboarded users to this and advertised our product in the various communities we were in, we noticed there wasn't much appetite for this. However, we kept receiving positive feedback on another concept: enabling cross-promotions

Cross promotions are one of the most effective ways to engage with the community and grow your listenership. What's best - given our focus on passion creators - it costs basically nothing. However, finding fair and quality matches, getting replies to your emails etc. is all very hard and time-consuming. Could we build a product that makes this more straightforward?

Over the past year or so, my former colleague Casey and I have been discussing entrepreneurship. After telling her about my research in the podcasting space, I could convince her of the opportunities that might lie here. Being a passionate blogger herself, she is keen to help me shape a proposition to empower the podcasts of passion creators and small businesses.

We started things off with a serious conversation about why we may or may not be a great team and came to the conclusion that there were no major deal-breakers between us. We'll try working together for a few weeks and see how things go from there.

I've been running my own podcast Product Nuggets since Jan 2020 and been looking for effective ways to engage with the podcasting community and grow my audience. I have a feeling that something is missing and maybe I could develop a product in this space.

To find out what to focus on, I'll try to speak to as many podcasters as possible about their experience, their views on tooling for podcasters, and find out what their unaddressed pain points are.