Should My Podcast Be On YouTube: Facts to Help

Oh, I know what you're thinking. Not another episode where Dave goes, YouTube's not a podcast. Another episode of Curmudgeon Corner. Nope.This is my presentation from Podcast Movement Evolutions where I present just facts on audio versus video. And I know there's no algorithm on the audio side of podcasting. Or is there the school of podcasting with Dave Jackson, podcasting since 2005.I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast.My website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener. That's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription.And what we're doing today is something I did at Podcast Movement Evolutions. And I was talking with the people as they kind of got ready for me to do my thing.And they talked about they were going to have a mic for people that asked questions. And I said, okay, great. And I said, and it's not my first rodeo. I always repeat the question anyway just for the recording.And they said, this isn't being recorded. And I went, okay, I now have an episode for the school of podcasting.Now we're going to do something a little different than what I did at PME and for all the that's cool kid talk for Podcast Movement Evolutions, you know, because also, Americans can't say three words. We have to abbreviate it. It's in the manual. And I'm going to also talk about what do you do? Cause some of this is fun with math.So I will explain that because you can really lose your audience when you just start talking numbers in an audio podcast. Now, I will probably eventually turn this into a YouTube video, but that day is not today. And so what are we talking about?Well, the title of this talk was should your podcast be on YouTube? And the fun part was I was speaking on a stage that was sponsored by YouTube. And what I did was I just presented facts.And in occasionally, if I had an opinion, I would say, this is an opinion. And as I never want to waste your time, if you're thinking I have a definitive answer, I don't.I'm presenting facts to you so that you can make an informed decision. And so there are two sides of the story.The first one, and I think this is a great quote from the one and only Podfather, co inventor of podcasting, co host of the no Agenda Show Adam Curry. He said, not every book needs to be a movie. And I was like, man, that's a good line.And then you're like, oh, so you're saying I shouldn't be on YouTube, Dave, again, that's not really the argument we're going for here.But if you look at Shawn Menendez, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Kate Upton, the model, Soulja Boy, Ed Sheeran, Arnel Pineda, and if you're like, who is that? That's the lead singer of Journey and Megan Thee Stallion. And you're like, okay, well, what do all those people have in common?They were discovered on YouTube. So, again, these are facts. You make up your own decision. Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about is people always talk about Joe Rogan.And I will put a link to a YouTube video I did that actually made a lot of people mad because, again, I just presented facts, because the video was called how to do a Podcast like Joe Rogan. And step one of that is be Joe Rogan.And a lot of people don't realize Joe started his career in 1988, and it took him a while to get his career going, just in general. And then he got on TV not once, not twice, but three times. And then he started with AMA or whatever that is, the whole, you know, fighting thing.And then he started his podcast. And so it's not like he started last week. And he'd also been performing and making people laugh and entertaining them in general for decades.And then the other person I wanted to bring up from YouTube is Jimmy Donaldson, who is better known as Mr. Beast, who makes something ridiculous like $500,000 a day on YouTube.And if you study Jimmy in his teenage years, he literally studied YouTube almost frame by frame for 18 hours a day. Like, if he was awake, he was watching and learning and dissecting YouTube.And that's one of the reasons why he's very, very successful on YouTube is because, you know, they talk about whatever it is, the 10,000 hours. Yeah, he put in about 400,000 hours into studying YouTube. So if you want to be the next Mr. Beast, that's what you're up against. So keep that in mind.Now, the other thing I'm just going to briefly hit on this. We're not going to land a lot of time, but there is an actual video podcast, and I'm going to call that open an open video podcast.It's delivered via RSS. And this has been going on since 2004. And so apps like Apple, Podcast, Podcast, Addict Podcast, Republic Pocket Cast, Podbean Audios.I've never heard of that one. Dog Catcher, Downcast High Cast, Eye Catcher, podcruncher, Pod Est, Podurama, Primecast. Those are all apps that will play the actual video.There are a whole other list that will play the audio of the video, but they won't actually play the video. And then there are some POD kind of apps that go, I don't know what to do with no video. And they don't do anything.All right, so those are all the places an open video podcast can go, delivered via RSS. A YouTube video podcast goes to YouTube and YouTube Music.Now, if we talk about a video podcast on Spotify, that goes to one place, Spotify, which is why some people call it a walled garden. So those are facts. Now let's look at equipment. And so if you're starting an audio podcast, you could get a Samson Q2U.You might want to go audio Technica ATR2100X. That one has a USB C input. The Q2U has the old USB. But they're both great. They're both also under 100 bucks.I still love until somebody comes out with a 32 bit float. I love the Podtrack P4 recorder. That thing does everything. It is the Swiss army knife. It's around 180 bucks.So you're looking at 260 bucks in hardware. Now, if you're going to do remote recording, whether that's via ECAMM or Riverside or whatever you're using, I looked at those.They're looking at $36 a month. And your media host is going to be somewhere around the $20 range. Libsyn starts at 7. Buzzsprout starts about 12. I think that's where Blueberry is.Captivate is at 19.And you'll notice I didn't mention any free hosts because if you're new to the show, I don't like free media hosts because free is a bad business model, even if your name is Spotify. But you're starting off with $260 in hardware and roughly four. Oh, never do math live, $55 a month. Right. It's a hobby.Go bowling, see how much it costs. Go golfing, see how much it costs. Hobbies cost money. Now if we look at video, this used to be much higher.You could get a pair of Rode Wireless micro microphones. And I think there's another one called Hollyland. These things are so small. At podcast movement, Daniel J. Lewis was showing these off to me.Hollyland and they're literally smaller than your pinky fingernail. The actual microphone that sticks out and Those were around $150. They sounded amazing. And then you can get your basic dual lighting kit.So these are the big white looks like a. Basically somebody tacked an iPad on the top of a stand. Now notice what I did there. I'm trying to get you to see something.So I took something that everybody knows, an iPad. And I said just stick it on top of a stand. And that's what these lights look like. Now you have a better picture.And those are usually around 200 bucks. And it's a one time purchase. I recommend getting them that if they want to run on batteries, that's fine.But definitely get one that runs on electricity. And I'm here to tell you, get one that has a remote control that will save you a lot. And then cameras.It used to be if you bought a camera it was a fair amount of money. And now you use this thing called your phone. It's amazing the cameras in these phones.So you pay zero because I'm going to guess at least the last time I heard, 98% of us have a smartphone. So you're done. $150 microphone and a dual lighting kit.And if you want to skip the lighting kit, just do this in front of a window and do it when it's sunny out. And so you're, you know, you're good. And so you're looking at again for maybe $40 a month for your remote recording.Again, if you're going to use Riverside or something of that nature, it's really not that much. So one fit, let's four. Yeah. 349 for hardware and you do that once and you're good. And then $40 a month.And here because you're on YouTube, there is no hosting fee, it's free.So when we look at the pricing, right, 349 versus 260, but then you have 55amonth for ongoing expenses versus 349 in hardware and $40 a month ongoing. Now if you wanted to upgrade things just a bit like I don't want to use the bottom bottom line stuff. And really those are great.Everything there is definitely usable. Here's the fun part. With audio you have a Rode pod mic which I'm using right now. That's what you're listening to.They have the new Shure MV6 gaming microphone. I saw those at the show. And look, Shure makes great stuff, but everything on that thing was plastic. I realized the capsule and everything else.I think I would go with the MV7 plus if I wanted to go shure. And then of course, if you. That's 150 bucks, by the way. The rode podmic is 200. And if you want to be the Joe Rogan, I got to be like Joe Rogan.You know, the. The Shure MV. I'm sorry, the Shure SM7B is $400, of which I have one sitting behind me. And I. Why am I not using the more expensive microphone?Because I like my voice on this one better. It's as simple as that. Now, if I wanted to upgrade my video from my phone, I would probably Recommend the Sony ZV E10 II. It is $1000. Yes.That's why I say use your phone.And if you wanted to get a different lens for it, that's like $400 for the lens I was looking at, and I was like, holy cow, I think I'll use my phone. So keep that in mind. That's equipment, you know, that's what you start with. And again, using your phone is fine.Using the $80 Samson Q2U or an Audio Technica ATR2100, perfectly fine. All right, now let's move on to competition. All right, what I want to do here is. This is weird.I'm going to bore you on purpose, but just, just pay attention to your mind. There are 4.5 million podcasts. That's total. And 358,000 that are active. So that means there are a lot of people just going, is this on? Is this on?If we go to YouTube, there are 2.5 billion viewers. And can you see how your brain can't even comprehend that? Like, Theater of the Mind for me was like, wait, what? How many commas is that?And there are 65 million creators. Those numbers are so big, even if I framed it like, that's 90 different football stadiums, your brain can't comprehend that.And so normally I would cut those out. And what makes more sense when I'm talking about competition is when you do all that math, you can comprehend this.For every One Creator, there are 564 listeners. Again, we're going to call that a podcast. And 38 viewers on YouTube. So one way to look at this.If you are lost and you want somebody to find you, do you feel better having 564 people look for you or 38? Because audio has 564 people looking for your content. Video has 38. That might be a better way to do that.And instead of doing all the math of dividing this into that and cross the I divided by PI, that one's a little easier to understand. And I could even do this.You have 15 times more people looking for your content on the audio side than the video, which is interesting because that leads us to Bill Maher. Now, this is a study of one. And Bill Maher came to Lipson when I worked there.He wanted to launch a video podcast, a true video open, the one we talked about before. And we said, great, Bill, you should probably also launch an audio podcast, because, you know, it's audio. And Bill was like, audio shmodio.And we kind of twisted his arm. We got him to do audio and video. And then Bill hired a PR firm to just promote the video because, again, wasn't really big on the audio.And that's fine. They promoted it. And when the numbers came in, the audio version that had not been promoted was getting 15 times more people listening than watching.Now, that's a study of one. Your mileage may vary, but I think most people. So this is kind of an opinion, but I don't. I really think it's a fact, but it depends on your life.I think most people have more time to listen than to watch. I can't watch your video in the car, but I could listen to it. I can't watch your video podcast while I'm doing the dishes, but I could listen to it.I can't watch your video podcast unless I want to die while I'm walking the dog, but I could listen to it. So there you go.Fifteen seems to be the number that you have, I guess 15 times greater the chance of growing your show, of having an audience on audio. Your mileage may vary. Again, study of one. And I know what you're saying, but Dave, the video.You know, YouTube has that algorithm, and the algorithm is based off of Google. And Google knows you. Like nobody knows you, right? They know everything about you. And that algorithm on YouTube will recommend things to you.And I'm like, you know what? You can't argue with that. The algorithm, if you can get its attention, super powerful people go viral on YouTube. That absolutely happens.And it's based on things like your thumbnail, it's based on your title. Those two things especially have a lot to do with that.So you have to really spend time on your thumbnail and on your titles, really digging into your stats to see what's going to work. So keep that in mind. We'll talk about the algorithm a little more. But let's switch gears.So we were talking about competition, and so it seems like there's less competition. It's potentially easier to be found on the audio side than. Than the video, but the video relies on the algorithm.And so we'll come back to that in just a bit. Let's talk about completion percentage. And this again is a study of one me. I do a show every Saturday. It's 90 minutes long.It's called Ask the Podcast Coach, where I answer your podcast questions live for free. It's free podcast consulting.If you ever want to just pick my brain, come on out Saturday mornings, 10:30 Eastern, go to ask the podcast coach.com live. And so we're talking about completion percentage. How far did people watch or how far did people listen?And so the best, looking at my last two months, the best I could get on YouTube was 34%. That's the best. The worst I did. Using Apple's stats again, how far did people listen? 73%. So the best on YouTube was 34%. The worst on Apple was 73%.So what does this mean again? No right or wrong answer. Depends on what you want to do. If you want to go a mile wide, but an inch deep. Right. Kind of branding.Getting your name out there, then YouTube all day long.If I want people to really consume my content and position myself as a consultant, thought leader, whatever you want to call it, I want them to actually consume my content, then Audio seems to do that a little better. And keep in mind, we'll talk about this. There's no rule that says you can't do both. What I'm trying to make clear is you don't have to do both.And we'll talk about that a little later. So in the terms of completion percentage, audio seems to do that. In the terms of competition. There's less competition in audio.But what about that algorithm? It's hard to overlook that algorithm. It knows you and it recommends things you like.And I thought about that, because audio doesn't have an algorithm. And I thought about what an algorithm does. It knows what you like and recommends things. And we know, per Jacobs Media.Now, this stat is getting a little old. I think it's from 2019, but Jacobs Media said that basically 70% ish of podcasts are discovered via word of mouth. And I was like, okay.And then I thought about it. Wait a minute. Maybe audio does have an algorithm. Mine is called Doug, and it's a guy I affectionately refer to as my brother.And he knows exactly what I like. He's known me my entire life because he is my older brother.And he saw Paul Rudd, I think, on the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, who had a new movie out, and it was a dark comedy. And that's one of my favorites, when you can get me to laugh at things that I probably shouldn't laugh at. Yeah, that's my kind of jam there.And I like Paul Rudd had a bunch of people in it, and he said, man, you might want to check that out. Well, I actually went to the theater to see it, and it was a good flick. I liked it because it wasn't a sequel. It wasn't a superhero movie.It wasn't a remake. You know, it was actually something unique. And so the algorithm, better known as Doug, did a really good job.And so if you want people to remark about your podcast to other people, it needs to be remarkable. Now, I've been going to the theater. The theater. I've been going to the movies because I don't want the movies to go away.And to make a long story short, I've seen probably 10 movies because I got a pass where I can go to as many movies as I want for 20 bucks. And I've yet to really go to one where I walked out going, oh, you guys gotta see this movie.They're all very like, yeah, I could have stayed home and seen this. I mean, they're good. Wasn't a waste of time.But if you want people to talk about your show, you have to, you know, in the immortal words of Bonnie Raid, let's give them something to talk about. So keep that in mind. Now, when it comes to monetization, Monetization. The almighty monetization.Well, first of all, I got to throw out my bumper sticker. You don't monetize a podcast. You monetize an audience.And the more that audience is filled with the right people, not just bodies, the better the chance. Now, with YouTube, you have to have a thousand subscribers. You have to have 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months.You have to have 10 million short views.Now, what's interesting is whatever it was two weeks ago, as I was at podcast movement Evolutions, YouTube announced that if you breathe on a YouTube short, like, if this is me pressing play, I just go, right? Just a quick tap like that. That's a view. There is no limit to the smallest amount of milliseconds counts as a view on a YouTube short.So when you're like, how do I get 10 million short views? You breathe on it, you know, and that's over 90 days. They do have a hundred dollar minimum threshold. And you keep 55%.Now before you go and hey, that seems a little rough. YouTube, why are they taking 45%? I get to keep 55. But they took 45. Holy cow. Well, wait, hold on.So I went around and I looked and Podbean has an unlimited plus account for video. And I was like, wait a minute, what? And I was like, that's, that's crazy. And I found out why.I talked to Podbean briefly at the event and I said, what's the catch? And they basically said they put a Podbean logo on your video. And I was like, there you go. Had to have a catch somewhere. And then I looked.And for my 90 minute show that I do once a week, that is six gigabytes of space. And that is one. I was trying to figure out a visual thing, but it's a lot of space.And on Libsyn, if I wanted three gigs of space, so half of my files would cost me 150 bucks. Does that mean for six gigs it's $300 a month?And this is why people don't do open video podcasting, because video files are ginormous and we're not even talking 4k. It's expensive. And when YouTube came along and said, we'll host your files for free, why wouldn't you put your videos over there? But there is a fee.When they, when you finally make money, you're gonna have to start paying for all that bandwidth that you've been using that whole time. And for the record, I think that's fair. Now for this particular part on monetization, I'm gonna peel back the curtain. This is what it is.Currently on my YouTube channel, I have 3,355 subscribers. In the last 28 days, I had 1,100 views. And the numbers we care about is the last one. Estimated revenue was basically $4.54.So we're going to make this easy. We're going to say I had a thousand views for five bucks with 3355 subscribers.Now when I did some quick research, do you have kind of an older theater where you've got the, you know, the floor seats that go pretty far back and then you've got maybe one, maybe even two balconies. That's probably around 3,000 people. So every month I have a theater of people that are filled, that watch my stuff.And for that I got paid roughly $5 for the month that is.00. So two zeros,.005 cents per download. And so I have a book profit from your podcast. And if you buy one from me, I get $12 in profit.If I sell that for 20 bucks, not too shabby. I'll take it. To make $12 in profit at a cost per thousand, that's.005 cents. I would need 2,400 downloads.So the question you have to ask yourself, if you have the right audience, what's easier to do? Get 2,400 downloads because you know how many downloads you get per episode or sell one book.And if you got the right audience, that's an interesting question. 2,400 downloads or get one person in your audience to buy a book. Again, facts, not opinion. Those are just. That's good old fun with math. All right.Well, Dave, let's talk about some tools. Well, I use descript and I basically use ECAMM Live when I do live stuff. And I love that tool.And when it's done, I take the recording, I throw it into descript and I say, hey, remove just the filler words of and that could remove a bunch more.And in 90 minutes, because it's live and we're pulling answers out of the side of our head, there is the occasional, to the tune of about 300 in about 90 minutes. And I will say remove those. And I know people say, great, but this tool so far does it in a way that I don't really notice. And that's the key.You want your edit to sound like nobody edited it. I then go in and say, add chapters to this because it's 90 minutes long and we change topics a lot. It does that.I then export the audio and say, keep the chapters in there. And what used to. I used to get done at noon and now I get done about two. Like it really has taken something. Well, I would get done at noon recording.Let me finish that thought. I would publish the episode somewhere around 5 or 6 o'clock. And now I publish the episode somewhere around 2. And that's because I stopped for lunch.It really has removed a lot of time and I'm okay. Took me a while. Had to be okay. That it may not be perfect, but I'm okay. I'm not really obsessing over it like I used to.Another tool is Riverside, which I want to start playing with.Nothing against descript, nothing against ECAMM Live, but I've had a lot of people ask me about Riverside, and I used Riverside when it was brand new, like Brand new. And I got a demo at pme, and I want to play with it just to see, from what I understand. I've talked to people at the show. They're both very close.They both record live streams. They both. Well, Descript doesn't do live streaming. Riverside does. But they both edit via edit the text and edits the audio.Also, they both have tools to clean up bad audio. It seems very, very close in that. So those are two tools.But the thing you have to keep in mind is if you don't want to do video, I always want to throw this in here. You don't have to. And I realize there's a lot of people. I mean, this event talked about video, video, video, video, video. And this is a fact.You don't have to. If you don't want to do video, you don't have to. You know, some people say you can't wear white pants after Labor Day. And yet some people do, right?It's up to you. It's your show. And so that's what always kills me, is when people say, I have this great idea for a podcast.They'll tell it to me, and I'm like, great, I can help you with that. And they're like, yeah, I don't want to do it. I'm like, why not? That sounds amazing. And they're like, because I don't want to do video.So you don't have to do video. And there are some things that need to be video. Some things are so much better visually.I listened, unfortunately, to a few podcasts that have gone video because, you know, everybody's doing it, and they have forgotten their audience. That is audio only. And I'll be listening, and they'll go, you'll see right here.And I'm like, no, I can't see right here because I'm listening to your content. So be very careful if you decide to add video.I know I do a show with Eric Johnson called the Podcast Review show, where we review your show and your website.And I think in the future, when I publish the audio, I will say, if you'd like to see us review the website, go to our website, because we do our best to talk very visually and explain what's going on, but it's still not really. That's a visual thing you need to say, because we're talking about your website. When it makes sense to do video, do video. I mean, that makes.Yeah, but also, keep in mind that some people like to read, so maybe write some blog posts. Some people like to watch. So maybe do some videos and some people like to listen. And that's where podcasting comes into play.And the biggest thing is if you have the desire, the budget, and the time to do video, holy cow. Be on YouTube.I did run into somebody and it just didn't make any sense to me that they were doing video, but only on Spotify, and that makes no sense to me. If you have the content, put it on Spotify, put it on Rumble, that's another video platform.But by all means, put it on YouTube because again, the algorithm might find you might not, but it might, and it's free. And if you got a decent cable connection, that upload doesn't take that long. So those are some stats. Many of those, you know, a survey of one.But as I've come across, I get it. And my general thing is, if you have the time, the budget, and the desire, absolutely. You know, the best is both. Right, do audio and video.But if you don't have the time and the budget. For me. So this is now my opinion, for me, I choose audio. Why? Because there's less competition, there is more consumption of my data, and it's easier.Like right now, I am up against a bit of a timeline, and I could have made this a video. And like I said, I probably will, but it took me, I don't know, 45 minutes to record this. Something like that. And I'm almost done when this is done.I've kind of edited as I went along where I had places where my mouth didn't work, etc. Etc. So audio is definitely faster. And if I decided to do this in my pajamas, I could do that. So just some facts, some things to think about.If you want to be on video, be on video. You don't want to be on video. You don't have to be on video. Should you be on video? That is only a question you can answer.More on the theater of the mind right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is hard to talk about numbers in an audio podcast. Talk about things that need to be visual. That's one.Because nothing more boring than listen to people do math. And one of the things I try to do today, and I realize as I listen back, I'm like, no, this is still kind of boring math.But when you can relate it to something to trigger the theater of the mind.And so I was listening to a show this week, and they were talking about a drug bust and how they had these bags of whatever it was, cocaine or whatever, and they said, it was X amount of kilos, which makes sense if you're outside the U.S. but inside the U.S. we're like, what? And so they said, blah, blah, blah. A bag is about the size of a small child.And that is something we can all relate to. We have all seen a small child. We have all probably picked up a small child. Right. That we can relate to. But you do have to be careful.You can say things like, it's about the size of a checkbook. And I realized one day I said that and I was like, anybody under 30 probably has no idea what I'm talking about because they don't use checks.They never use checks.Or if you say it was as big as that dress that Lady Gaga wore to the Oscars or something, well, okay, you're assuming everyone watched the Oscars and everybody knows. Well, everybody should know who Lady Gaga is. She's amazing. But you have to be careful with what you compare to to trigger that theater of a mind.Especially if you say something like in the movie such and such. Yeah, not everybody. Especially today. When was the last really big movie that everyone was talking about? They barely stay in the theater.There was a movie called Mickey 17 that I wanted to see in the theater, and I'm here to tell you it was their tops four days. And now it's available for streaming. And it's just. That's a whole different scene. The whole movie experience is different.And so when you try to do things to trigger that theater of the mind, try to make sure it's something that everyone should have a clue on what that looks like. I teased an episode and it's still coming, by the way, about running your podcast as a business.I just hid some snags, but part of it, again, is very math oriented. And I was like, how am I going to take all that math?Even though I've got the amazing Steve Stewart coming on to help me with that, how am I going to make that math and make it something that doesn't put people to sleep? And then this came along, how to Go Broke on a Million Dollars a Year. And I went, aha.Now we have story that we can add to this math to spice things up.So that's the other thing you can do is add a story to it so that when you're talking about person A having 36% and, you know, option B having 47%, if you can give those options a name or something to where people can see them actually growing and shrinking, that can help.But realize there are times when you're like, hey, this is one of those things that Dave talked about that this just needs to be video, and in that case, put it on YouTube. If you know someone who is trying to decide if their podcast should be on YouTube, do me a favor, share this with them.Maybe they'll hear the stat they need to hear or help them make the decision they need to make. And of course, if they like it, they might even go to schoolofpodcasting.com, follow and follow the show, and never miss an episode. I'm Dave Jackson.I help podcasters. It's what I do. And until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. If you like what you hear, then come to tell somebody.If you like what you hear, hey, this is future Dave.Just letting you know that as hard as I tried today, even doing things like let's compare this with football stadiums, but then you got into situations where it's like, that's like 90 football stadiums. Yeah. Your brain, when you get into millions and billions of numbers, the theater of the mind breaks down.And so at that point, what I tried to do today is just get to the punchline, like, hey, what's easier to do? Sell a book or get 2,400 downloads? Because some things just don't work in audio, even if you try to make them.You know, oh, this is like lifting a child. And this is like, even the analogy, there are some numbers that are just so big, the brain can't handle them.And so I just got done before I published this. I'm like, that doesn't work. And so I just cut out 20 minutes of what I feel was really boring math.In this episode, as I tried to explain how to somewhat keep math listenable, I was like, yeah, you know what? In some cases, at least from what I was doing, you can't.So we now release you to your next episode, or again, if you want, go over and sign up for the school of podcasting.