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Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you

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launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice

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a week, I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks

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for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning

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intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized

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tip to help you podcast.

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Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. This is episode 68,

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and in today's episode, I want to talk about something that I heard

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recently in the podcasting news realm.

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So there's this comedian that I like and I listen to. His name is

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Theo Vaughn, very popular comedian, very funny. And

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he has a podcast called this past weekend. And it's a

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very popular podcast, not just within the comedy world, but also just in

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overall podcasts. I think he's like kind of around near number

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five most popular. So it's a very big

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podcast. And recently he had an episode come out this week

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where he exploited a situation that has

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been happening to him. And I guess based off of what

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he said, he has a company called Cast

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Media that helps him fill his ads

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and then owes him the money for those ads based off of what

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he said. Again, this is just his side of the story that they

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haven't been paying him in a year or something like that.

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So they basically just stole a bunch of money from him. And

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he wasn't that upset about it. He was mostly

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talking about this because I guess this Cast Media has been

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doing this to a bunch of other people. And a bunch of other people don't

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necessarily have the luxury to talk about that or to

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exploit them on their show. But since Theo, he

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also has his comedy and a bunch of other things. He kind of came forward

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and talked about this, but it just

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kind of got me thinking about how even a show that's very

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independent and he makes his own stuff, but something like the

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ad buys is something that he doesn't do and he doesn't sell ads and

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doesn't do the ad placement or anything like that. And that's mostly how he makes

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money with his podcast. He also has a merchandise line. It just kind of got

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me thinking about the idea of getting paid ads

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on your show and especially any of the popular ads that you

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hear. I don't know. I think a lot of times some

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podcasters who start out dream of that when they can

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start making money and put these ads on their shows. But I don't

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know, I guess I'm questioning whether

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that should be a goal or not. It certainly isn't

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fair the way that they place these ads

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and the agencies that you need in order to be placing these ads.

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I'm actually kind of going through something a little similar, not

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necessarily as much fraud as what happened to Theo, but I do have a

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client that hasn't been getting paid for ads recently on their

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podcast. And we put ad markers in the show and the

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people that we are associated with just haven't been filling the ads.

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And it's kind of a sketchy thing. It's like,

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well, we're doing this. We were told we were going to get paid for ads

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and now we're not. But technically there's no ads on the show.

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So it's like a weird situation of, yeah, I guess

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you aren't stealing from me because you aren't putting any ads on, but you're also

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not paying for the ads that we said that we were going to put

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on. So now we're moving to a different agency and they want all these different

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kinds of rules in order to just put these ads on. And

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it's interesting the amount of effort, I guess that it is to

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try to get paid for these ads. And at the end of the day, it's

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like you're pushing products that maybe sometimes you don't have a say in

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and it could be a product that you don't like or don't enjoy and

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I don't know. It makes me ask, is there a better way to

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monetize your podcast? Right? And there are certainly other ways to monetize your

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podcast. You can do merch, you can have your own products, you can have your

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own services, you can have your own communities. So

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I don't really know what the conclusion of this podcast

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is going to be. I think it's more so just kind of asking, is

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the end goal really trying to get with

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agencies that can fill ad spots on my show, to basically

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exploit my show for its listeners, and is that

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what I want to do to my listeners? And is that how I want to

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make money with my listeners? And I think that there's just a better way

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to be able to make money off of what you're

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doing, but also not in such a crude

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way of just forcing these ads of these large companies

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down people's throats. And most of us might not even be in

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a position where we even have enough listens to get to that point. But

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I think there's other ways of doing it and

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hey, I'll be honest, I haven't been successful in making

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money in my podcast, so maybe I'm not the person to speak about this,

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but I do think that it is worth discussing

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and it is worth trying to think of a better way to

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do things. And some things that I've thought about recently with

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my own podcast is like, okay, sometimes just

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brainstorming and spitballing here. Sometimes I have a podcast, I hit

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record. You usually have a conversation beforehand with a guest

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because my other podcast, working towards a purpose, is an interview style

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podcast. I usually have a conversation before with the guest to kind of warm

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up, see where they're at. We do the interview and then we usually have some

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conversation afterwards and sometimes that conversation is really good afterwards

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and sometimes after the quote

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unquote record button is off, it loosens up the conversation a little

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bit more and maybe some more conversation flows. I'm always recording it just

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because I don't stop until the end, but I don't really do anything with it.

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Maybe one way could be to start some sort of patreon or to start some

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sort of fan group that gets more

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access to certain parts of your podcast or maybe

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they get access to the video parts of your podcast or something like

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that. That in an ideal world it would be nice if you could offer more

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value to your listeners in exchange for

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some money or some subscription service or something like that. Because

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at the end of the day, if you look at like paid ads, you're not

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really offering any value to your listener by

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forcing them to listen to a paid ad. It's like listening to a TV commercial.

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You're not getting really any value out of listening to a commercial. It's kind of

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just like, oh, we have to listen to this thing now and maybe you'll find

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something you like, but chances are you're just going to be annoyed by it. So

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I don't know, I think it's a bigger discussion as far as how can we

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start making a living and making some money off of our podcast

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without just selling to corporations that want

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to utilize our listeners. Another idea would

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be like a newsletter. Maybe you can start a newsletter for

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your podcast and get your listeners to

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transfer over to the newsletter. And maybe your newsletter you have some

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local sponsors or something like that, something of benefit to your

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community or to your niche. I don't know. Like I said, I don't have

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really the answer for this. It's just hearing the story about Theo

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has really questioned

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why a lot of people are striving for that, right? Because he

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got there, he's got the big ads on his show, he makes money on those

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ads. But now someone stole all that money because the

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organization that he was with, that he entrusted to

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place the ads and pay him for the ads basically didn't do that.

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And I don't know, it just makes me think about

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is there a better way to do this or is there a better way to

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monetize your podcast? And I guess it's going to be an ever growing question

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and something that I'm just thinking about more often. I would love to

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further this discussion with somebody. If you want to send me an

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email, my email is always in the show notes. If you've

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ever been able to successfully monetize your podcast without

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selling big ads, drop me a line and tell me what

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you did, and I could share that with the community and

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we can all kind of reach for

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maybe a little bit more ethical way to start getting

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some money from your podcast, because I realize that money is important, and money

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will keep you going. And we all need money to survive. So

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hopefully there are some better ways out there than just

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selling Squarespace ads. So thank you for listening.

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I hope this maybe sparked a bigger conversation

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and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.

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We've reached the end of the episode and if you enjoyed this

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podcast or you got something from it, you might be interested in

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my weekly newsletter that I send out every Monday morning, full of

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podcasting tips, tricks and news. So if you like

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this show, you might like this newsletter. To sign up, just go to the show

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notes and click the link. Thanks for listening and happy

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podcasting. Our

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channel.