Chris Hutchins: commitment

Transcript context

…I heard a similar number, 3000. The top podcasts are doing millions in episode, but that's like top 10, top 20, top 30. The next tranche of the top 50 are doing probably hundreds of thousands of downloads. But outside of the top two, 300, it's in the 10,000s of downloads per episode. And this is a little bit variable if you have a daily show or a weekly show or something. But I would say if you cross 10,000 downloads an episode, you are now taken seriously by a lot of people. So I had conversations early on with networks like iHeartMedia and different podcast networks that wanted to bring in the show and would do all that, and that all started at 10 to 15, maybe 20,000 downloads an episode. But by no means would I expect anyone to get there right away. Even I didn't get there right away. It took time even with a few friends to make announcements and stuff, it took time. So forget how many downloads you get on your first three episodes because you're probably going to tell everyone in the world and you're going to use all your social capital to boost those. And then look at how many downloads you get on your fourth and fifth and sixth and does it go up? Does it stay stagnant? Apple and Spotify actually give you really cool data about how long people are listening. Do they drop off halfway through? You could start to be like, "Oh, do people stay for the whole episode? " I will say I haven't found a good site for benchmarks, but it's like the average podcast I think probably has less than 50% of listeners by the end. So don't be turned off when you say, "Wow, only 40% of people made it to the end." That's not horrible. I think my best episode, it might be like 65 or 70% of people made it all the way to the end. It's not 99. What I like about those charts is you can see what percentage of people skip the ads and then just keep continuing. It's like a bump-…

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