Yeah. I would like to make a custom theme song
for this show I host called PO Duty in the News. Each
week the host, Jeff Revilla shares new stories about live
podcasting and live streaming. On episode two, I covered the
following topics. Setting up your home recording studio on a
budget, pre roll, mid rolling, post roll ad placements,
cyber security. Live podcast. Shaq hosted a live
podcast.
Shaq hosted a live podcast. Thanks for
coming out, battling the WrestleMania crowd and the Easter, all the
traveling going on today. I do have some, I,
I have some interactive slides. These are fun. I don't
record your, I don't record your name or your information. Don't worry,
I already got it when you did your tickets, so don't worry about that. This
is anonymous. You can put a fake name in if you want. But I have
some fun slides that are interactive. Like your experience level helps me
gauge the, you know, how I should take the direction of the show. This
is our sixth, I think Pittsburgh podcast meetup. Typically it's about
a 20 person event. Like I said, I think we have some
competition today, which is okay. We're having a good time, a lot of people
with family traveling. My agenda for tonight, like, what are we going to do tonight?
What is the Pittsburgh podcast? We have one. You've already experienced the first hour
where I fed you, right? That's part of the fun. You get some really good
pizza. In fact, the less amount of people that come, the better the
pizza quality is because I can, I have a certain budget. So you get really
good J and S pizza tonight. If there's 25, 30 people
plan for, you get foxes. So if you want to call ahead and say, hey,
how many are coming next week? Let me know. I got some news
updates. I'm starting this podcast called Pduti in the News. I wanted to call it
Piduti Lewis in the News, but I figured that might get Copyright
violation by American Psycho, the movie. We
have get to know you. We got a series of interactive questions I'll be asking
and then I'm going to go into like, why did I do this? Like, what
is the. Why am I here in Tarentum with this little 40
seat theater? It's only three rows deep and this like
boomerang shape and really brings you in. If you like me and you're having
fun, click the little thumbs up. The thumbs down, I'll cry. But the,
the heart, the cat. I don't know why there's a cat. So
you can click the kitty cat. I don't know why
somebody's having a meow good time. And then there's questions
at the end too. So if you're sitting here thinking, you don't want to interrupt
because I'm really having a great flow and the energy is good. And you can
click that little question button. I think it says open up questions when you
tap it. Let's look at that. You can type a question at the end of
the slides. They'll be there waiting for us. So the news.
So pduti in the News is a new podcast I'm starting. I want it to
be a live news source. Unfortunately, I'm getting old and
I have to wear glasses now. I just got these. Oh, I
haven't even worn them on stage yet. And I also still print out in
18 point font. So this is where you're sitting at right
now, which is right where that dehumidifier is. Was
what this place looked like one year ago yesterday. So when
I came in here, this was a men's clothing store that was abandoned.
We started tearing things up. It's hard to believe that this that you're sitting
in fits in this that you're looking at here. And this was
a exactly a year ago yesterday. And then
by the first Tornum Night Market was May 9th,
May 8th or 9th, within what, two and
a half, three weeks we were at this, right?
So now for months I was
gathering all these things that you see around me and storing them in my basement
and driving my wife crazy. There was these chairs we got from a
Catholic school that went out of business for $2 apiece. The
stage I bought from a karate school in Greensburg. There's actually a
fourth section. The trust came. I had to buy that. That was cash.
The and then MacBid became a big part of my life. At this
time last year, all the lighting you see I got for $30
on Mac bid. All the pipe and drape, which is like
$170 frame. I was buying these for
30, $40 at a pop. So I
got Mac bid also does a year in review like Spotify does.
So I got my. I should have. I wish I should. I'll pull it up
later if you don't believe me. But I got my Mac bid year in review
when. Because last year is when I invested all this for this theater. I
saved $5,000 buying all these things that
you're sitting in from MacBid compared to buying it at
retail. So I Probably spent like 800 to $1,000 total
to like accessorize this area. And you can see there's not a ton of stuff
in here, but the retail value of everything I purchased was over
$5,000. So my year in review was pretty crazy. The reason why we
had the stage had to get ready for was May 9th or something of last
year was to rent them does a night market. And up until
last year, they closed off all these streets in front of us, food
vendors, artists, crafters, musicians,
DJs, a nice party atmosphere.
And so we wanted to get something ready to show the public.
This year, unfortunately for the business owners, they're moving
it down to the river along First Avenue. So they're going to close off that
main road and we'll be two and a half blocks away. I'm still
planning some live shows for that night and have a little party atmosphere,
but we should have a. It'll still be a good time. So if you're in
the area, you can walk down the street, get some, get a funnel cake
and falafel and then come on back. You can eat in here. I don't, I
don't have any. I don't even care if you go next door to the Praha
and get a beverage, a tasty beverage and bring it back over. Now let's get
into the news. Puduty in the news. This is a live podcast recorded live about
live podcasting news. In our first story tonight, I'm filing under a
question one of you will ask tonight. I guarantee it. If you're just starting
out in podcasting, setting up a home studio doesn't have to break
the bank. The team at Fireside, if you go to Fireside's blog,
blog Fireside fm, they shared some tips on creating a
quality setup for under 300 bucks. Covering everything from choosing the right
microphone to treating your recording space. It's a perfect guide to help new
podcasters sound professional from day one. So it's a great
resource. I have all the links for you too. At the end of this, I
can send them to you through email, but you go through, it goes through
lighting and soundproofing and microphones. It's, it's a good little
resource to get you started. A lot of times if when we get asked this
question, like what should I do to get started? And I say, what do you
have? What do you have right now? Like, this is something that you're
experimenting with, is something that you're interested in, that's something that you're moving
towards trying to do regularly. And if you have just a
cell phone and you're going to record audio On a cell phone, you can get
little wireless lavalier mics that are these. They're good enough for what
you're doing right now. You can get a USB mic for a laptop or a
computer. And there's ways to capture audio with free software
like Audacity. We can get into all that in the Q and A section.
But what I try to teach people is you have enough to do a
podcast right now. What you really need to work on is how do
I repeat this week after week? That is just as important
as a lot of times. You'll spend six months, I'm planning this
podcast. I'm going to do it like this and I'm going to do that and
I'm going to do this. And then you release it finally. And then you realize,
oh, I only have seven days now. I spent six months
to do the first one. Now I got to do that in seven days. So
what I try to show people is the process in which you record. How
do you find guests? If you're going to do interviews, how do you get the
recording down so that you can edit it? How do you edit it? Right? All
these things. I say you want to budget about six, eight hours a week at
a minimum to have a decent show. And there's enough
tools out there now in the last two years, there's enough AI
enhancements to almost do a good portion of your editing for
you. So I'll send you the links. This is a great source
blog, Fireside fm.
And I'm going to file this under. The second most popular question
that you asked tonight is as it comes into making money with the podcast and
revenue. And a lot of times you hear about pre, mid and post
roll ads, right? What are they and how do they use them? Well,
Potigi came up with this blog describing each of the
locations on your blog, so or in your podcast. So let's talk about
podcast ads, specifically pre roll, mid roll and post roll. This
guide from Prodigy breaks down what each ad type means and
how to place them effectively in your episodes. Whether you're just starting or planning
to monetize. Understanding ad placement is key to boosting your revenue.
And a big part of this, they start to tell you, you know, your upfront
ad, your pre roll comes right before your show, and that's
obviously going to be the most listened to ad on your
podcast. Maybe it's the highest real estate, maybe it commands more of the higher
dollars, but those people have to listen to that before they get to your episode.
Then the mid roll is usually great for breaks in your content if
you're transitioning to a different subject. Or like I do a
trivia show between round one and round two and round three, that's a
good place for some mid roll breaks. And then the post roll is typically
when people start tuning out. This is maybe an add on. This is
something that you would focus on, you know, as a giveaway maybe,
or know something, you can sell it. But keep in mind
your audience retention is high early, and it goes.
It drains the whole time. You'll. If you have a YouTube channel and you publish
YouTube videos, you certainly see those first 30 seconds are
60, 70%, then it gets a 50. And if you can hold a 50,
you're great, but most of the time you're dropping down to like 33,
25% by the end of the show. So these are something.
These are things you need to learn about. They're not things that you have to
focus on. But we have a lot of focus on advertising at the
Pittsburgh Podcast Meetup. All right, let's file this something
under this can be a live show. Now, a lot of times I look
for what's happening out there. We know that live podcasts are becoming
a thing. Pittsburgh just had the Pat McAfee show, which is a more
of a radio show that filled up the. The PPG Paints Arena.
And it was a radio show with a bunch of nonsense. And different acts came
in and it was. It was something. It was a radio personality, a TV
personality filling an arena. We see shows like Kill
Tony, we see Whitney Cummings,
we see Bill Byrd doing these live podcasts at
different theaters, different arenas. Sometimes they're doing a comedy stop and
they're gonna do a podcast before, like, Doug Loves Movies is a podcast that's been
going on for years where Doug Benson does comedy stops
all throughout the country all year long. And prior to one of his
shows, he'll record an episode of Doug Loves Movies with the other comedians
either on the show or. Or whether they're in town. And he's
utilizing like the afternoon space at a comedy club for
free, right? He's probably getting, maybe getting a little kickback on the tickets, get
a little kickback on the bar and the food. But that's typically not a
time that the comedy club is busy. So he found an idea. He took an
idea of how do I do a live podcast where I'm already going to be
performing there that night? I'll just use the earlier time. And so he's recording a
show, then doing a comedy Act. It's a great routine. So
we know that these live events are happening. We know that people are starting to
go see live podcasts. And this one was just about, I think,
security, like the CISO series podcast is going live
in Boston on May 15th. It's a cyber security focused
show. Will feature audience participation, expert guests, and behind the scenes
look at recording a live episode. It's a great example of
how podcasts can thrive in front of crowds. Now, you wouldn't think, like, I'm gonna
go see a cybersecurity podcast live, but there's different
genres doing different things. And last week we had. Jessica
was here doing audio dramas, which is even a thing I thought about.
But she sent me a list of all these audio dramas and I'm like, this
stage is like, perfect. I turned on all the lights. You
start doing a storytelling podcast, you have actors acting out different
things. And just like when you listen to a podcast in your earbuds or on
your morning commute, and you all of a sudden you feel pulled into that room
that you're sitting in there with the hosts that you're like,
right there with, like, I really know these people now. Could you imagine sitting in
a dark room hearing a story being told on the stage? There's
a whole wealth of different genres that
can do these live podcasting and cybersecurity wasn't
even on my bingo card. So when the CISO series is going to
Boston, check them out. We also have another live
one, Everybody Loves Shaq Diesel. This was on
April 5th, so filed under we missed it, Right? We'll file this one under we
missed it. With the NCAA Final Four descending on
Antonio, Shaq brings his podcast the Big Pod with Shaq to the
Alamo City. The former San Antonio cool high school player in
his show will be in Santana April 5, which I mentioned three times already.
He'll share stories, have giveaways, make guest appearance appearances, and
offer fans a chance to win tickets to the ncaa. Now, you're not going
to be able to do that because we're. It's two weeks past, but this is
Shaq doing his podcast live in front of us. Now he's a celebrity.
He's going to have a bigger name, he's going to draw a lot easier, and
we'll get into, like, why? I think, like, where you're sitting at is. Is
a crucial part of live podcasting, because if you look at this, it wasn't a
huge stage, it wasn't a huge audience, but it was a fun time. It Was
a hangout time as an experience to be able to sit, you know, four rows
away from Shaq and hear him. You know, Shaq is pretty funny
and just is great, great timing, great, great
nonsense. Like he really says some crazy off the wall things.
It would be a great time to be that close and seeing how Shaq
works, you know, see how he thinks in the moment and what some
of his responses are. And you don't get that
when you upload an MP3 file and your audience
downloads it. They don't get any of this. They don't get to see your face,
they don't get to see how you think in the moment. But in a live
performance environment, they're seeing all of that.
And let's go. We were talking about a little bit of money, right?
So this is a statement that a lot of people say to me, I want
to monetize my podcast. Either this is either to be profitable or just
cover your expenses. Is this something that you've thought about
when we start talking about ads, right? We were talking a little bit about host
red ads. We were talking about pre mid post roll
ads. When most people think about podcasting,
they're talking about these host red ads or pre mid and post roll ads.
That's kind of how we think about monetizing a podcast. And
you know, what does that look like? What will I make some money doing that?
And this isn't to be Debbie Downer or
you know, to knock wind out of your sales. This is
stats from budsprout. Libsyn has a very similar model.
They'll tell you about the same numbers if you listen to the feed as Libsyn's
podcast. They're one of the original podcast
hosts back in 2005. They
have a great podcast called the Feeds if you listen to that comes out every
other week. But they'll tell you in the top
5%. I don't know if I can get a little red line. Top
5% of podcasts in the first seven days get 1100 downloads
per episode. So if you're less than a
thousand, you're less than the top 5%. If
you're more than a thousand, you're probably in the top 2,
3, 4%. It really skews this much.
And when we think about
what does this mean if I'm going to sell ads, right.
Is that enough to make any money? Right way
podcast ads are sold, it's in a cpm, a cost per
thousand. So if you can get a thousand downloads, you can
do an ad read for about 21, $25
per spot. So if you do one or two ads, you could
do $50. There's other things you can do, and I'm just
using this as a generic entertainment type of podcast.
You know, you figure like $20 per thousand on
average, and you can sell multiple of those,
and you can even do bundles. You could even sell, like, for a month. You
could sell. You could sell banner ads, you could sell placement, your
email. But typically, if you're not getting a thousand downloads
like most podcasters, what just say you sell one ad for your
podcast. You can get $20 per the thousand downloads. Is
that enough? Well, if you have four podcasts a month, that's $80 a
month. That'll certainly cover your expenses. They'll cover your hosting, your
website hosting, and, you know, any kind of little, maybe software you want for
streaming. That's a good amount to take this from
a hobby that's costing you money to a hobby that you're at least breaking even.
So the barrier to podcasting is pretty low.
You get hosting for. I showed you. Transistor starts at
$15, and that's unlimited podcasts. You can create multiple
podcasts there. Libsyn starts at $5, gets
really good, around $15 for Libsyn. So getting an ad in
a thousand downloads is pretty good, and you cover all your expenses.
And if 95% of podcasters aren't getting
1100 views, you know, that's $20 per thousand.
We're talking $20 per episode, and that takes
1000 people. So what does it take to get a thousand people? Some of you
have been doing more than 10 episodes, and, you know, it takes a while to
get to a thousand downloads an episode. It's a lot of effort, a lot of
energy, a lot of repetition over and over again. And if
you think of it in that regard, you know, somebody's downloading
and listening, it's 2 cents per listener. It's kind of what you
make. Whenever you have a thousand downloads and you sell an ad,
1,000 people divided by the $20 is 2 cents per download.
And I'm not trying to get real numbers heavy here, but I think,
look at this guy. I think there's a better way. There's certainly an art
form to this. There's an entertainment. It's a discipline. We talk about
that structure is more important than your equipment right now. If you're starting
out, what happens when you start thinking about events like this
as a live event, podcasting as a live event, and we talked about,
we know other forms of entertainment. People go out to see
it. Like when you want to go see a comedian, you go to a comedy
club. When you want to go see a musician, you go to a bar or
a venue. We people understand that, but we know what's
happening when we talk about these other podcasts. Filling theaters, filling
arenas, this is emerging as a new form of
entertainment. This is emerging as something people will do to go out at night.
It's not $1,000 Taylor Swift ticket. It's a
here, it's a $10, $20 ticket. You know, some of those
theater arena shows are $50, $60.
They're not overly expensive tickets for the amount of entertainment that
you get. You get so much more out of a live podcast than you do
out of when you just upload your file to your server and
then the podcast apps get notified that there's a new episode
and you're on your way into work tomorrow on a Monday, you
download the episode and you listen to it, right? All you get from
that is in seven days, you go look at your stats and it
says, I got X number of downloads. That's a little bit more than last
time. That's the amount of feedback you get. But when you're
doing live shows, you're meeting your fans face to face,
like they're putting a face to that voice, too. Because if you think about all
the shows you've ever listened to, try to picture what that host looks like and
then go find them. You've never been right on guessing what
somebody looks like just from their voice. It's not even possible. Your
fans are giving you real time feedback. They're
like crossing your arms or like body light. I
know the body light. Or looking at your phone, right? These things
are all things that you're getting. You're getting feedback. So
am I a good host? Am I entertaining you? Are you laughing and smiling?
And I don't get that when I just get a
download number at the end of seven days. And you see people
thanking people afterwards. When the Crips and Corks were here,
they hung out for an hour afterwards talking to the people that were here. They
were thanking them for doing the show, for entertaining them, for putting all the time
into putting this together. They hang out afterwards. It
becomes this little community when you perform in front of people
and the instant credibility. We talked about this earlier.
There's. We didn't expect any of this. That whenever you say and you start
promoting the show, hey, we're gonna be live on the main Stage of the Paduti
podcast theater. June 12th. That's my birthday. So, you know, come
hang out. We're gonna be on the main stage, live show. Tickets are available now
to everybody that you've told that you had a podcast, it
changes the way they think about you because they're like, oh, they have a podcast,
okay, I'll download, I'll subscribe and download it. Or maybe you, at Thanksgiving, you
forcefully subscribe them on their phone. It happens.
We know, we all know it happens. But when you start making this
a tangible experience, something that they can come and experience and,
and see you perform and see the work that you're putting into this, it becomes
so real to them. They value what you're doing so much more. Same with your
fans. When they're like, oh my goodness, you're going to be live, I can see
you do this live. What you're doing, it becomes something so much
more than just getting that download number and, and
just a few attendees even right now, if I had five
sold tickets right now, the way my, the business model works here, at
$10 a piece, that's $50. Half of that goes to the house, half
of that goes to the creator. You make $25. So
this room right now is as profitable, it's more
profitable than a thousand downloads of an, of
an audio podcast. So, so think about it in a different way. We
think, we know cars have different values, right? A 1994
Ford Escort is going to be worth a certain value compared to
a 2025 Lamborghini, right? They have different value,
different performances. And same thing with shows, same
thing with audio media. You go through TikTok, some of you fall
asleep. The TikTok, I'm guilty. I'll look at 100 videos.
I couldn't name one creator. I probably could only name 5%
of the videos that I saw. I just consumed and consumed
and consumed and it was no value to it. Same with like
the, the, the downloads that you're getting. They. There is value. I'm not trying to
diminish it, but if you look at the cost per download at $0.02
compared to US hanging out here. We, you know, we had dinner together, right? We
had some drinks, we hung out, we laughed, we did some Q A. Like, if
this was a ten dollar ticket and I would go home with
$25, that's a pretty good night. That's better than
spending months and months and months building up to 1000 downloads
to get $20. So I did that
slide. I didn't even look at it yet. So, yeah. So if you look at
the. We talk about the value of these cars, a Ford Escort versus a
Lamborghini. Well, an in person attendee is,
according to my math, at $10 a ticket, it's 250
times more valuable than an audio download. So
if you're a podcaster, maybe you sell other services. I have a great guy coming
and doing improv classes who's going to teach, you know, how to use improv
techniques to be a better host, a better podcaster. He's going to
spin that off into weekly classes. So a lot of. A lot of consultants
have a podcast just to get more clients. So if you don't think
about the ticket price, think about it as, like, as entertaining.
This is a more valuable way to reach your fans at
lower numbers. And we know the numbers because we see the server logs
from Buzzsprout and libsyn that say 95% of people do not
get a thousand downloads.
So, yeah, like I said, this is very new. I'm running out of this voice.
I only get about an hour of it. So what I'm building here
is the bridge, right, for those of you who are podcasting at home.
And I have a home studio. I still record 90% of my stuff in my
home studio because I know I come home from work, I eat some dinner, I
pop into my office, everything's set up, it's safe, it's
comfortable. I know it's going to work. I can just go on. I can be
guests on shows. I do like two or three interviews a week on other podcasts.
And I know it's going to work and be fine. I don't have to worry
about any of the live things, Right? The live things are the great variables.
There's also these other podcasters who have capitalized on their fame,
obviously, and they're doing theaters and they're doing arenas.
The problem we have is what's in between the
safety of my home office and filling up PPG
Paints Arena. There's no middle ground. And I think places like
this are what's going to start to pop up and fill in. Podcasting
isn't slowing down in far as growth, as far as
people getting interested, as far as people seeing the value of being
their own media conglomerate. Like, you start building this thing, this
asset you own 100% control of. You own the
audio files. And if you don't like your hosts anymore,
moving from host to host is as easy as putting your email into a new
host. They send a verification email and Then
once you verify it, they copy everything over so you're not locked into
your podcast as if. I love Libsyn. I built 10 years with
Libsyn. They were just going in a different direction. I found out about Transistor. I
switched over to Transistor, and I was. Because the reason I
never left Lipson, even though I didn't feel like we were in the same path,
I was terrified. I was like, I don't want to move hundreds of episodes.
And then finally a friend convinced me and I said, all right, I'll do it.
I'll do it tonight. And I blocked off the whole night to move my
host, and I literally entered my email, verified
it, and they said, all right, we're downloading all your episodes. They'll be ready in
20 minutes. I was like, that's it. That's all you have to do. So you.
You are in so much control. The hosts are battling for each other. They're
battling for your business. And it is so easy to jump
from host to host. I'll happily help you because I love it. So
my goal is I want to build this talent, this stage.
This should be the Hollywood of podcasting. We should be able to develop
enough talent that if you bring in five people the first time,
great. Next time we do a show, let's shoot for 10 people, this
for 20 people. And everything here is designed to be live stream. So you can
get 40 in person seats, you can do a thousand virtual seats. And
now you can start to see this thing starts to get pretty lucrative pretty
fast. I hope you join me. I hope this was convincing enough.
I would like to make a custom theme song for this show I host
called PO Duty in the News. Each week, the host, Jeff Revilla,
shares new stories about live podcasting and live streaming. On
episode two, I covered the following topics. Setting up your
home recording studio on a budget, pre roll, mid roll and
post roll ad placements. Cyber security, live
broadcast. Shaq hosted a live podcast.
Shaq hosted a live podcast.
SA.