Speaker 0 00:00:05 Hey, it's Matt. You're listening to the audience podcast today. I'm joined by a good friend of mine. Fellow podcasts are now almost as long as I have seven or eight years, maybe nine time flies. So fast. His name's Bob Dunn. He has done a lot in the podcasting space, specifically in the WordPress world. If you're somebody who builds WordPress websites, woo commerce websites, designing WordPress websites, you might have come across an article for a podcast or two of Bob's work. But Bob has done something that a lot of podcasters are seeking out. He's monetized a podcast, he's monetize a blog. He's monetize a newsletter. He's monetized his brand personal brand that he's built over the years. Building trust in a niche market. That of WordPress. A lot of what Bob and I talk about today is something that you can repeat in your own podcasting world.
Speaker 0 00:00:52 If you're talking about sports, if you're talking about fishing, if you're talking about accounting, there's a lot of threads to pull on here, to replicate and introduce into your own monetization schemes for your business. We talk about the importance of direct sales, the important of podcast, hardware, software, and equipment, and how to get the word out there for your podcast. It's a fantastic episode. If you're looking for ways to grow your podcast and monetize in really who isn't these days, you're listening to the audience, podcast, your home to stories and lessons for podcasters, looking to take their show to the next level for people just getting started with podcasting to brands and celebrities monetizing their audio experience. The audience podcast has it all, never missed another show by subscribing castles.com/subscribe that's <inaudible> dot com slash subscribe. Okay. Enjoy today's creator spotlight. Bob Dunn, everybody welcome back to another Castillo's creators, spotlight Castillo's customers who are podcasters creating well podcasts and the business of podcasting around their brands, their efforts, their organizations, and I am ecstatic to talk to long-time friend, longtime podcaster and Castro's customer Bob Dunn. Bob, welcome to the, thank you. This is
Speaker 1 00:02:06 Going to be great. I love talking podcasting. So I'm, I'm ready
Speaker 0 00:02:10 For this and was called you by your code name, Bob WP in another world in another platform. That's how you and I would be talking, but, uh, for folks who don't know who you are, Bob, what is your podcast focused on? What are your many podcasts focus on? And then we'll dive in from there. I've
Speaker 1 00:02:25 Done several podcasts since about 2014. I'm not going to get into every one of those. If you want to talk about any of those in the show, we can do that. But currently I am doing two podcasts in a way. One is called do the blue, which a lot of you may not understand, but it is based on WordPress and an e-commerce plugin or solution for WordPress called blue commerce. So it's called do the Wu and talk to a lot of people who build products and build websites using woo commerce. And it's a bit different than, you know, it's very niche down. And I also do a side kind of news podcasts. It's a branch of that. Not really anything, but basically to separate a little bit of the news weekly, but that is primarily it. And it has really grown in some interesting directions within that one podcast
Speaker 0 00:03:20 Itself. I think there's an overarching lesson here. I kind of know the backstory, but let's fill in the audience or fill in the listener here. You niche down into WooCommerce specifically because maybe many of the folks listening to this might not realize the WordPress space for as many people who actually care about where breast, which is a small audience or small in the grand scheme of media, right? Like we're not covering, you know, the fresh new Nike's that are, have been released or world political news or anything like that. But there's a lot of content in the WordPress space. And you started off, let's say throwing out the general blanket of WordPress stuff, Bob WP, you know, many, many years ago, but you found that better success for the podcast would be, would come from focusing on just woo commerce. Where did you learn those lessons along the way where you said, you know what, the general WordPress stuff, not my thing anymore. Let me focus it in on WooCommerce.
Speaker 1 00:04:18 Yeah. About 2016, like you said, I'd been doing a lot of more generic WordPress stuff, really to beginners. And a lot of what I did before I even started this podcast and a lot of the others was monetize my site through content. I'm like, you, I'm a, you know, if there's a content scientist, the crazy hair sticking out, that's both of us, you know, trying different content, trying different medium. And I decided at some point, a lot of that had, was drew affiliates through sponsored posts and it was not an epiphany. It was like, wow, I'm writing all this content. But the content I'm writing about e-commerce people are actually spending money on, which was like a no brainer. So it was natural for me to segue into woo commerce. So I focus my content more that started do the blue actually in 2016, but switched it over to a more generic e-commerce podcast.
Speaker 1 00:05:16 It was called the WP e-commerce show. So it was still based around WordPress. But my, a lot of my content was still primarily blue commerce. And I brought do the Wu back a couple years later. And basically that was the Genesis of it was the audience is out there. It's still in my knowledge base. It's not a weird transition that people are suddenly saying, oh, Bob talked about WordPress. Now he's talking about horror fiction. It was an easy transition. And that really was it. It was how do I drive this? And how do I drive my business? Because my business is based all around content.
Speaker 0 00:05:53 And from a scale of one to 10, 10 being the greatest, how important is the podcast to the brand for you right now? Probably I'd give it a nine. And really what I'm hoping for listeners to get out of this is the podcast. A podcast can be a major driving force for monetization of other ways. Right? So let me tell you, just take a step back. There's a lot of people who come into Casos who start a podcast and they think that the podcast itself will be the thing that they monetize. Like they think of X amount of downloads and I will get sponsorship and I will get, you know, people running advertisements. And I, and I do want to pick your brain about that because you do do that, but this is also a force for a lot of the other things that you do, like affiliate sales, like sponsored content, you were doing courses at one point, like it's also a driving force to all of these other verticals of monetization, which a lot of people sleep on when they first get into this game because they only, they only think, well maybe the only thing this might be the only thing they know.
Speaker 0 00:07:01 They, they see things, they see podcasts like a Joe Rogan or whatever insert your favorite podcast. Or, and they're like, oh, the only way to monetize is big download count times sponsorship reads. And that's simply not the only thing that you do to monetize this brand. If I step
Speaker 1 00:07:18 Back to 2016, when I started the podcast, I had a, another one previous to that was kind of a lame little podcast. I'm not even going to get into, but I decided on the get, go to give sponsorships, which was very unique, but I had also built up a community and a lot of people supported me. So I depended upon not so much somebody looking and saying, Hey, Bob, I'm here to look at ad clicks, you know, or what whatever's going to be. The metrics, same measure, the success of being a sponsor. They said, we support you. We've supported you for years. So I had that benefit that already built community. But at the same time, I knew I needed to continue to write content and do affiliates and sponsored posts. So this, it was, it was just like, okay, I'm just bringing this tool in here.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 It's, I'm going to make money for it. I told myself I'm going to do it. And I was lucky enough to be able to do it. But then over that course of five years, there was times when I dropped sponsorships. It's like, we both know it. It's tough. Sponsorships are tough. And the more your money you ask. And when I started my most recent community oriented site, that was a little bit different angle back in the fall. That was when I really had to up the sponsorships and focus on how can I get creative with these? Because you know, if somebody sends you, you know, and your listeners might experience this, they say, Hey, I'm going to sell sponsorships for this. I should be able to make this much money. And somebody sends them this spreadsheet that says, okay, fill out all your metrics and you're looking at it and going, oh no, you know, they're asking for this, this, this, this, I have these numbers or it's going to look really lame. So there's so many. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. And to depend on it, unless you're, portionate enough just getting into it, that's going to be a huge challenge because yeah, getting sponsors is tough and it's very competitive
Speaker 0 00:09:10 In the cast dos world. I feel a lot of these questions for new customers coming in when people, you know, if we're on a, uh, our community call every Thursday at 12, or maybe I'm doing a sales call with somebody for castles productions, they say, well, why should I pick Castillo's because I'm looking at, you know, X, Y, Z podcast hosts, and they have built in ad networks. They they're telling me I can sponsor my show with just the click of a button and money will start pouring into my PayPal account. And then I say, oh yes, welcome to the world of like ad inventory and what these advertisers will pay you, which will quite literally, maybe 8 cents a download. And there is such a disconnect. There is such a gap in the value of a podcaster. Who's sticking it through and creating content in a niche market.
Speaker 0 00:10:01 There is such a value in that trust from that podcast, or no matter if they have 10 downloads, a hundred downloads, a thousand downloads that trust factor in a particular market is immense and almost immeasurable for an advertiser. We're so used to hearing things about whatever your favorite mattress, you know, memory foam mattress company, right? Or some kind of, you know, Coca-Cola Pepsi, whatever. Like whoever's sponsoring these big shows. They have millions and millions of dollars, and they're just going out and sprinkling it across all of these things. It's nothing for them, but why I love the WordPress world or any niche product. This is what podcast creators should be thinking about. Niche, product categories, WordPress being one of them where trust is so important to the users. You can turn a business with direct ad sales. Now that's a long way of getting to the question, direct ad sales for you. It's a tough game, but you have leveraged that a fair statement. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 00:11:02 Because I had that community trust and I've, I've noticed that in the most recent times, when I'm looking at boosting my sponsorships up and comparing to the numbers, I could compare them to other podcasts. I'm thinking, okay, I'm asking a lot for a little, but it's a niche audience. It's important that they understand. So I have a hour conversation with these sponsors and I've actually talked some of them out of it because I said, you know, this is not going to be a value. What you bring. I don't say this literally, but what you bring to my listeners and in turn, it's not going to bring value to you. So we, you need to look at it from this way. Cause I, I talk to developers and they have a very different mind. I don't know what it is, you know, they approach and listen to ads. Totally. And you've got to really creatively find ways to reach them. And it isn't expecting them to hear, oh, 10% off the next hosting service, you know, go visit so-and-so it's like, no, they they'll tune that out right away and move on to the rest of your show.
Speaker 0 00:12:09 There's a, there's also a disconnect too, of how people understand. And Bob, I know this, we'll probably talk about it a little bit, but your background is in brand marketing and advertising right from, from many moons ago. And a lot of people are disconnected from how advertising works and maybe a specifically in the small business category. So I'm a huge fan of if you're looking to monetize a show and get into the podcasting game, I would even look at your local market first, if that's of interest of you as a creator, because you could start in capitalize, cause there's a ceiling. If in your, in your local market, I know this because I run a local podcast, you know, whatever, if big major city area, Boston, New York, San Francisco, whatever, you know, there's a certain ceiling, probably a pretty large one. But if you're in some small town in rural America, there's probably a smaller ceiling, but a lower ceiling.
Speaker 0 00:12:57 But the point is is you can own a segment. And if you own a segment, you can turn to, let's say a small businesses and set the stakes. You could set the price and say to advertise on my show is 50 bucks an episode or 500 bucks. An episode really depends. And if you can really niche down and capitalize on that, you can win. But the disconnect I'm getting at is that a lot of people just think as the advertiser, well, will I sell 20 products on this? Every time you read this, will I sell 10 items or 10 widgets? Or in our case, 10 plugins, it doesn't work like that. You know, advertising does not work like that. This is a, this is an investment of constant repetition to build up trust for that user to eventually buy, you know, the 20th time Bob says sponsored by WooCommerce or whatever. And then finally somebody goes and they buy that ad
[email protected] or whatever it might be. You know, this stuff takes time. There has to be a give and take for both the advertiser and the listener. Is that a fair assessment? Or have you been able to measure that at all for your advertisers? That's exactly
Speaker 1 00:14:02 It. I almost sometimes I feel when I'm talking to somebody and they start asking all these metrics, I want to just put my head back and laugh loud and, and just, you know, but I don't, that's very rude to do, but inside I do that because, and I'll just step back and I'll say, this is what I'll bring you, but you have to do this. Or this is the best way you're going to get your value. And it's not going to be counting those numbers. You know, how many people are bought at this this week or this month or whatever. And for a lot of advertisers, that'll shut the door right then. And you have to be strong enough to just say, yeah, this isn't going to fit because in the end it's going to be a disaster or a yield. Just be worried about it all the time, what they're thinking. So there is, there is that disconnect of what, what your expectations. And I really lay it out. I, I hate the word transparent, but I've noticed that with a lot of the people that have approached me companies and they've, they're not even often questioning the cost of it. They're saying to me, well, we see the value in it. And I say, but here, let me tell you more about it. And at the end they say, thanks for being so honest, because it totally makes sense what you're saying. And right now this isn't a fit
Speaker 0 00:15:17 For us. So what I'm hearing direct ad sales, if you're a podcast creator, especially if you're a new podcast creator and you're looking to monetize the show and you want to do it through ad, read sponsorships, that kind of thing. Direct ad sales, direct sales, picking up the phone, or sending out an email might be a thing you have to do. So you have to take a deep breath. If you're not used to it, you have to build up some courage, but also with podcasting, especially if you have a body of work like you and I, Bob had podcasts for a while. You could turn to a podcast or, and say, we have hundreds of episodes under our belt, right? And that's a body of work that you can feel confident and you can stand on. You can turn to and say, Hey, look, this is why you're paying me. If there's a person out there, who's like, ah, man, I only have a dozen shows. I only have 20 shows. What would your tip be to sort of build up that confidence boost first in order to knock on that sponsor's door and say, Hey, I've got something that might be of interest of you. Do you have any words of wisdom or encouragement with
Speaker 1 00:16:15 Them? Because I'm not a born salesman. I failed as a vacuum cleaner door to door salesman in my younger days. And it never got any better for me after that. But I did start to learn how to at least say, okay, I'm going to approach people. And what I, what I decided to to point with my site is that I'm not going to be cocky. I'm not going to be forceful, but I have set a price. I'm going to just trust myself to deliver it in a way through a conversation. And I'm not going to, even though, you know, you may be desperate for money. It may be a time in your life where you're like, oh, you know, I, I, maybe I should, you know him in the hall through the conversation and see if I can cover myself down the road. It really is being honest.
Speaker 1 00:17:05 And it's also being creative. Don't, you know, I think we get too stuck on sponsorships are just, you know, this, this, this almost make it creative for the person you're talking to customize it. And there's no, there's nothing wrong with being flexible, you know, but never cut yourself under where you're just going to be, you know, saying, Hey, why did I do this? It's all this work I really was expecting more. So it is, it's a tough thing. It's, it's really a challenge. But I think just being, setting, setting, you know, setting yourself up where you say, this is what I deliver, this is the value and this is what you're paying for. And some people won't get it. And you got to expect that you're, you're a born salesman, probably heard a billion nos. And that is the way it is. And you just move on because you're going to find that right connection.
Speaker 0 00:17:56 Do you have a sample of back in the day when you price something too low that you wouldn't mind sharing? It wouldn't have to be maybe the price point, but was there ever a time where you were like, it's five bucks, it's a sponsor is show, and then you quickly learned like, oh my God, they'll have way more value here. You know, what was
Speaker 1 00:18:14 Really interesting? And this will be, um, a more recent story. When I changed over to his podcasting, I was looking at, I had the podcasts over on my other site for a good part of 2020, where I was getting sponsorships. And at a point when I decided to move it over to this more community oriented site, somebody said, you're charging way too little Bob. And I said, what? And I had a conversation with somebody that I really trusted. And they basically had me, I would say, I raised it by 10 times. And it was just, I braked out, you know, I just, oh my God. You know? And they connected me with somebody, a very, very large sponsor that came in and didn't bat an eye at that. We talked about it. We figured out the perfect direction. And we went with it, but it was, yeah, I was that this person said, Bob, what you're not doing, what you're not bringing into the picture is.
Speaker 1 00:19:11 And I was maybe still like, you know, regressing to those times of, oh, you know, as anybody, you really look at downloads and all this, but they said, you have this reputation, you have these connections. And if you take that sponsorship beyond just, Hey, I just do an ad role. If you work with that sponsor to help them connect all this different value, you're bringing into it. And it made sense to me. So I took the plunge. And now after that, it's easier for me to say, you know, okay, I've got to look at these other, and that's where that you were kind of talking about it earlier, is that value thing? Yeah, it was like, I thought, man, I did not think I could get this much for the sponsorship. And it, you know, people weren't even questioning the price. They were just questioning what I was
Speaker 0 00:19:55 Delivering. This is branding, but it's, it's branding through, you know, through the lens of like, not to take away from either of us. Cause I fall into the same trap where we're small creators and we don't realize sometimes often because we, we love the craft. We love the work to a degree. I mean, at least I do. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but like I love the, you know, I love the work. I love the craft. And when you take a step back and you look at again, I think I mentioned Nike before, when you look at a Nike shoe that sells for whatever 200 bucks for a pair, you know, that was made for like $4. If that, and then if you actually knew like raw material costs and like what it put together, and if you were that person putting your podcast together, you would say, how am I going to charge 20 times what?
Speaker 0 00:20:43 This just costs me. Like this just doesn't feel right. But in the world, that's what happens. Right? That's my profit margins are ridiculous. That's why things are so expensive, but also to give credit, that's what a L uh, empowers a company to be able to do business because there's so much more than just the raw materials and what the market is. Just like, there's so much more than, you know, what it takes you to just put the podcast together and say the ad read, you got all kinds of other things you got to do, right? You got to make the website, you gotta do the blog posts. You have to promote it. You have to do all this stuff. What else goes into promoting each? And every episode that your ad supporters get value from? Like, what else was Bob doing that that brings value to the table? Well, I
Speaker 1 00:21:26 Had an interesting position because this most recent, where I was able to start really bringing that value up, it was a lot of peripheral things that were okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to, you know, create the ad. I'm going to put on social. I'm going to find ways to repurpose it and create snippets and put blog posts and, you know, cross-promote and everything like that. But again, this really depends on your podcast. I was able to look at them and say, okay, I have a lot of connections in this space. If you want to meet somebody, I can maybe help you make that connection because may they may have been a new product to the space. There were other things that just were not so much podcast related. And that's what I think, people, if they're really gonna invest their time in a podcast, start pulling in that those other elements you're already doing as part of the package, because some of that stuff you don't know, there's so much value to.
Speaker 1 00:22:26 So for example, those making those connections with people was a huge value to them. And that was like a bonus, you know, they said, wow, you know, I, this is one of the reasons we're doing this. Yeah. Because most of the stuff that I do is yeah, typical podcast advertising, but there's ways to get creative and you just, yeah, it's, it's almost like don't, don't look too much at other podcasts and say, I got to fit this mold, really do your thing. And you'll pull in different talents you have. And, and you'll be surprised what you can add to the package that can make you boost it up significantly. I know that's kind of vague, but that's how I've done it.
Speaker 0 00:23:09 You have the sponsorship, right? So if somebody comes, they pay you, you do ad reads on the podcast. What are the other pieces of the infrastructure that you have that people can either pay for to sponsor the show or explain your membership model and how that all factors into the bigger picture of the business and the brand. Okay. So
Speaker 1 00:23:31 I have a very, I, I, I worked on this for a long time to try to figure it out. It was just like one of these things. So, so the big, huge sponsor I had was I, I labeled it, the community sponsor, and this was going to be somebody that pay an incredible amount of money for six to 12 months. And I've kind of changed that model since then. But that model was, you know, you were the person you got, you know, you got the Mo on every episode, you got your ad roll. You got this on the website, you got logos in other various places, not just in the post itself because you are, I structured it around. You are just not the podcast sponsor. You are the site sponsor. And the podcast is a huge element of that. And so I added on all these benefits to that person.
Speaker 1 00:24:22 I mean, they were like my, you know, if you want me to come over and squeeze your orange juice in the morning, if I can physically do that, I may do that this morning. So, so there was that. And then I have a different structure on mine. I call them friends of do the blue, and some of them are supporters. And I created this most recent one that is called pod friends. And I chose to approach 12 businesses in this space. And I said, okay, what you're going to get for X amount of dollars is 12 months of sponsorship. And I am, when they broke it down into the monthly, it was pretty low. And I said, you're going to get one podcast, shout out, or actually two podcasts, shout outs on one show every four weeks, and you'll get additional, you know, I will share news stories, anything that I can give you exposure through social media, but it did for me was not make it where I have to repeat the same, you know, for 12 months during a rotation.
Speaker 1 00:25:26 And I also tell them to always look at their, you call, shout out. It doesn't always have to be selling something. You know, I really try, and this is more to my audience, but I said, you know, if you have a great resource, you're probably going to get much more recognition and brand. If I send them to a great, you know, free ebook you have or something versus you get 10% off their plugin or something like that. So that, that structure has been really nice. And I'm kind of manipulating that right now. I might be adding some more of those, but it really is based how many episodes you do cause I'm doing I'm, re-purposing some events, so I'm doing six to 10 episodes a month.
Speaker 0 00:26:08 And then you have like the, the, the con, well, I'll call it the consumer side, right? That, that membership side that is, if you just want to support Bob or, or get extra stuff, you become a member. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:26:20 And that is, I call them friends of do the booze. So I have a level, there's a pod friends, and there's a community friends, and they're a, they'll pay 499 for the year. And then there's supporters by column builders because of the, um, the space they pay 49 a year. But the sell on that is that okay. They get to the ones that pay four 99 a year, get a profile on my site. So people can go in and see what they're doing. And I have a page set up for each of them, but I, I really push them to say, I'm giving you exposure. Sure. I'll, you know, share things throughout the year membership and stuff, but you're really coming in to support me. And you're coming in as here's this page of people that really believe this and your brand is there and you can, you know, people will start recognizing your brand, hopefully, and those, they don't get any shout outs in the podcast.
Speaker 1 00:27:17 And that's why, you know, I mean, you were talking about it earlier and I want to go off on a side note, but when I first started podcasting, I basically installed your plugin from Casos. And I, shortly after I never was on a platform, I moved to Castle's hosting because of the value I saw in putting my podcasts everything's on my site and I can build everything out and make everything connect and bring in value to those pod Brins or those friends that do the Wu through traffic, through other content. So it was really important for them to not just be okay, I'm just supporting this podcast. I'm supporting this entire community that you're putting information
Speaker 0 00:28:02 Out to. And it probably took you a while. Like maybe a couple of years ago, like that friends of do the woo. You might have thought, how am I going to, is anybody going to do this? Exactly. You know? And just like, I don't think anyone would, and I tell this about people who come into castles all the time. It's never about where will this audience come from? It's what you will do with the audience once you have it, because eventually so long as you don't give up, you don't have to have this wide range of advertising products. Like Bob has, it could just be this one thing that you have a donation page, a private podcast that you're monetizing. You'd just be one thing. And it's a V you will get an audience. It's what you're going to do with that audience. Once they're here, that's going to be the challenge for you.
Speaker 0 00:28:49 I don't know many people who haven't given up and, you know, have been doing it for a couple of years and said, man, I don't have an audience. I don't know. No one's listening to me. Eventually you build it. And then it's up to you to, to monetize it. And I like what we've been talking about so far is you don't need to have massive downloads in order to monetize and that you shouldn't do just one thing, because probably you can't rely on one thing. You should get creative to, like Bob has said, and have many channels or many advertising products to trial and to anchor things against too. Right. Cause I'm sure like the, the do the friends of do the, like, it's a great anchor as well as like, well, here's my sponsorship way up here at the golden platinum level. And if you can't afford that, they get this other thing right down here that you, that you, that you can, that you can subscribe to, um, doesn't get you all the benefits, but at least it gets you in the door and supporting your right. And
Speaker 1 00:29:42 It is like you said, it's perseverance is just hanging in there and learning what your audience is, providing more value. And you can build it as that audience starts growing. I mean, you can build that value. You don't have to say, I'm going to produce nine, 16 videos a month for this, open it up. And two people are watching those videos, do it slowly and introduce stuff and build that value because then they get excited about it because they see it starting from here and going to there. And, you know, we both know I've had several membership sites have failed miserably over the years and, and it's, it's, it's a tough thing. But you do, you, you find that just, as you said, you find, you keep delivering and you, like you said, get creative with it and be flexible, be willing to change it up a little bit, you know, nothing drastic, but experiment a bit and ask them, you know, I've asked my, some of them, I say, Hey, I, you know, I'm going to do this. And they say, cool, that would be great. You know, and it's another little feature I've thrown in and it hasn't maybe added a ton of time to my
Speaker 0 00:30:48 Time. Let's segue in. It's a good segue to go into your explanation of how you do ad reads or sponsorships on the show. I'll talk super quick to frame it for me. When I do advertisements for my shows, I'm the one that is in control of the ad read. I invite the advertiser to give me a couple bullet points of what they want to convey in a message from me. But largely I create the ad spot anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute, I don't give a hard deadline or a hard line on essay at least minimum 30 seconds. But generally it comes out to a minute long. Uh, once I put it all together and I do that, so that it comes personally delivered from me, hopefully in a fun, entertaining kind of way. That's like the approach that I take. I don't allow my advertisers to just give me a script to read, but that's how I approach it. How do you approach the art of an ad read? You know, I
Speaker 1 00:31:48 Always ask them to kind of clarify right now. I don't do I do them differently cause I don't have like a mid one that I do very long, but over time. Yes, exactly. The same thing. Even when I asked them, they still send me their blurb and they know I'm going to butcher it. I want it to sound like me. I actually had one guy tell me that he listened to my podcast from my ads, which was great. I thought, at least there's one person, but he said, I just like how you deliver them. And so, yeah, I've always taken, it's really hard. It's going to sound like you're reading it, you know it, and to put a little bit of a human nature in it. One of the interesting things that I do is I have co-hosts for all my shows and I have a variety of co-hosts and so they I'll read at the beginning and they'll read it, then that's kind of how we do them right now.
Speaker 1 00:32:36 Ours are very much shorter right now. So they're very concise and that's because of what they're paying, they're paying for shorter shout outs. But, but an interesting point just for people to think of is that I found out when I had CO's and we were doing a little bit longer ad rolls at the beginning and end, they would bring their own personality into it. And they would maybe go off into a little bit of a tangent, Hey, I just use this, you know, or I just installed this on some site and those were so natural and perfect and brought so much more value to that ad role than just by rote, you know, just that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Speaker 0 00:33:14 How do you deal with long-term commitments, if at all, like, do you look for taking people for six months, three months, a whole year? How do you mix that up in your world? You know, I've
Speaker 1 00:33:26 Done it in the past minimum. I always tell people maybe two months might be the minimum you want just for, you know, something continuous and something to brand interesting thing is that, and this is the question leads to what I'm doing right now. I was selling my community sponsor for six or 12 months. And I think for some models, that is a great, I mean, you get somebody in place, but what I realized is that, and I'm actually kind of seeding that one out, even though it was a big number for me, is that I thought, okay, I am for every episode. And as I build more and more episodes, I am branding this particular product over and over and over for six months. Now, if I go a year, that's a long time. And I thought pretty soon, does Bob become the, you know, XYZ widget podcast?
Speaker 1 00:34:19 I mean, is that what they're going to be thinking? And I actually pulled back from that, even though I think there's something to be said for you, can't just do it one or two times and it's going to work for you so that you got to have that repetition. But for my audience, I realized that, yeah, I don't think I can do that. So I've, I've actually shifted that model because it's, and that's why I liked the model I have. Cause I have these 12 and rotation. So it's not, you're not always hearing the same ones. And it's, I think there's some models that will work with, you know, some podcasts you can have that repetition. It really works fine, but I felt like I was just going to be devoting too much energy and too much airtime to one particular product or service.
Speaker 0 00:35:03 But it's funny, you said that, cause I'm always, I'm always looking at the YouTube world now, people who are what they are. I think that the title is a tech tuber, right? Somebody who's doing tech reviews, which isn't, isn't too far off from what we do, you and I on our, on our WordPress shows, you know, they're very much you to get a new device and something's coming out, Apple's rolling something out, Microsoft. There's a lot of hype, people are expecting this. They want to see the, the new and hot hardware coming out or whatever. And I look at what they charge for sponsorship and it is, it's crazy like the numbers in the six figures, right. For, for one video. And I think that that's what potentially brings down the amount of times a brand would potentially sponsor that person so that they wouldn't get locked in, you know, for, you know, 12 years.
Speaker 0 00:35:54 Cause if they were like, yeah, it's 2000 bucks to do this video. I'm sure that, you know, Samsung would be like, I'll take you for the whole year. But if you said, oh actually it's a hundred thousand dollars for a video. Well Samsung might be like, okay, let's do one video instead of giving you $1.2 million for the year. It's an interesting thing. It's, it's the CRE you know, minutes ago before we got onto this recording, this and I am going to probably butcher the numbers. Cause I don't have it in front of me, guy ferry, the famous food TV personality. I saw a headline where he locked in a three year deal with food TV for $80 million. Right. $80 million. Like if you, if you ever had doubts about the content that you put out, you stick with it, man. Because I mean, look what, look what he's done.
Speaker 0 00:36:42 I don't even know the lineage of content that he's created, but it's probably pretty deep. And he's got an $80 million payout for three years to be a guy who goes out and talks about food, right? So it's like these margins, as you build up your brand, as you build up your personality, you can, you have that leverage where that a six month deal isn't needed. It's a luxury even right. And you can charge for it. There's no rules to this game, which makes it difficult for some. But like you said, getting creative, you can start to come up with your own with your own sponsorships here. Yeah. And
Speaker 1 00:37:16 Just to interject a little something, because I think we get tied into these long-term things because we don't want to have to go out and hustle every, you know, because a lot of, a lot of people aren't knocking on the door and we think, Hey, we want to just be set. And I haven't gotten that mind frame AMF thumb except for a year. And that's why I started to get creative and think, well, if I could get set for a year with a group of them, then I could have a little bit more versatility. And you know, if that worked for me financially, that'd be great. But yeah, it's, it's like, oh, you know, somebody wiggles that money at you, especially if you don't have those knocking on a door and you say, wow, for a year, you know, this would, this would set me and I wouldn't have to ever bother with doing this again, but there are drawbacks to it. And that's an interesting, I love that perspective because that's, you know, where you, you start thinking, you know, I'm sure it's already entered some spaces of the Bobcat's world where this could, you know, grow, especially for the big, you know, the ones that really have the, um, the following and the advertisers interested
Speaker 0 00:38:15 Listener. You probably heard me with my ice coffee in Bob and I we've known each other for so long. Like I don't even feel like we're just having this conversation and recording it. Cause we could talk about this stuff all day long. So we hope you're enjoying it. But you know, what I do with my podcast sponsorship is I do it, you know, month to month. And I do it because I don't, I'll say air quotes here. I don't charge a lot of money for it. So there's not a lot of overhead to manage it. And there's not a lot of expectations. That's why I do the month to month thing. But you know, absolutely. I find myself going, wow, four episodes are done already. Now I need to go ask for more dollars again. Luckily I get those dollars pretty quick, but because it's not a huge commitment of money, but it's also like, wow, man, if I just did it for six months, I'd be set for six months.
Speaker 0 00:39:02 I wouldn't be making these new ads every single time. So yeah. Again, creativity, there's no blueprint to, to any of this stuff. What have you learned in the podcast production side of it? Obviously everyone's favorite topic as a podcast or microphones hardware. You're using a Shure SM seven B with a road pro caster. Is that what they call it? You know, looking back to where you start out with investment in hardware, out, many ups and downs and roller coaster rides, or if the person's listening to this, do I really need to invest a thousand bucks right off the rip to get into this game? What are your thoughts? You know,
Speaker 1 00:39:38 I was just talking to somebody earlier because they had a conversation, somebody wanting some suggestions for a microphone and I showed them my six microphones scattered around the room from, um, uh, can you remember those big blue ones? What were they called? The blues something Yetis. Yeah. Yeah, no. And actually the blue, the round ones, it looked
Speaker 2 00:39:56 Like snow snowballs.
Speaker 1 00:39:58 Yeah. That's it snowballs. And anyway, through the time I've always, I mean, I like good quality, but I think you can go down that rabbit hole. You know, when somebody asks me, you know, I'd like to buy your microphone the same one. And I said, you know how long it took me to convince myself to spend this much money. It took me a long time, several years. And also with the pro caster, I have certain needs that that fits, but it is it's overkill. I think you can just get buried in this stuff and you can think I need the best. There's some decent microphones out there that don't cost an arm and a leg. And you know, I, I think some people just in detect tools, they've got to have the biggest, biggest, and the best all the time and that's fine for them. That's just their thing. But that sound called is so important that you do want to find a decent mic and you want to find something that worked for you, you know, and listening to other people talk on it doesn't help you much because everybody's voice is different. You know, somebody once said, is there a microphone that can make me sound like you, Bob and I, well, no, there isn't Bob microphone. I haven't figured that one out yet. But as
Speaker 3 00:41:09 I said, yeah, it's it's decades of karaoke, hard liquor and cigarettes.
Speaker 1 00:41:16 Yeah. I just go down and down and down deeper, deeper. Uh, but I think people get too obsessed with it. And because of the obsession with the people that are obsessed with it reflects on the people that are trying to get into it and they think, oh, you know, it is, you got to have this, you gotta have this, you gotta this. So I think that you just, yeah, you just need to find something that worked for you and sounds decent when you make that move it's because you're at that comfort level financially to make that move. And you know, is this really going to do it? I mean, you know, is it going to be going from a $200 microphone to a $400? Does it really make that much difference other than you feel groovy now that you have a $400
Speaker 0 00:41:56 Microphone? Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's also about like, if you're heavily invested in this game, not monetarily, but just you're creating a lot. And that's your thing, like sitting down, like I'm not recording in my studio today. I'm at home. I have my window open. You can probably hear trucks. I'm using my ATR 2100. But when you're creating a lot, what I learned in the video world is literally having a camera that doesn't move. It's always in the same location on a tripod. That doesn't move as crazy as that sounds. When you sit down to hit record, you're not like, oh God, I gotta, I gotta put my tripod back in the same location. The camera has to be at the same angle. Again, the settings all have to be exactly the way they are. That's why I got a studio for the YouTube stuff, because I just go in, sit down, hit record.
Speaker 0 00:42:44 And I know it's going to work. I know it's going to look the same again. And that is those minutes of time that you save as a creator who makes whatever, four podcasts, four videos a week, you need that you need that sanity. And that's why you end up paying for the bigger stuff or the better stuff, because yeah, it's a 20% difference in quality, but it's like the settings are there. You know, it's going to work every time it's just in the right place. And you go and you hit record. And then there's all this other stuff that happens after the fact, the production, the marketing, the editing, all of that stuff. And then at mass at scale, that's where it matters. It's true.
Speaker 1 00:43:24 If you can look at something and it's saves you any time and sometimes unfortunately that's by experience and it's, you know, he made the, a purchase or something, but, and video. Yeah. That's another whole whole, you know, I, I know a lot of podcasts are video and that's another whole play into things and yeah, it's, it's crazy that, I mean, somebody was on, oh, this is great. You know, this looks great. Your video, what is it? Well, it's a, you know, $3,000 SLR. Everybody can see everybody's eyes just kind of get, oh my God, you know, this is what I have to do to get that. Well, maybe not necessarily. Cause this person has that SLR cause they loved photography. So there's, there's a lot of variables.
Speaker 0 00:44:02 Well, I felt like we went into the bonus round there. We could go on forever talking about video and live streaming next and all that stuff. And maybe we'll save it for another episode. Where can folks go to find you to check out the podcast, check out everything you have going on. Maybe even copy it for their world. Maybe you're not in the WordPress world and you're doing a home cooking show. You could take and steal some of these ideas from Bob. Where can they find you? Yeah, they can
Speaker 1 00:44:23 Go to do the wu.io and yeah, if you just search Bob WP, that's like a mass. Matt said the beginning. That is kind of my brand for the last decade. Uh, you'll find different things out there that I've done, but yeah. Connect with me Bob WP on any social media platform, I'm there. I'm always willing to chat and love talking about podcasting.
Speaker 0 00:44:44 I'm sure if they just search Bob WordPress. Yeah. One result. As opposed to me, if you search Matt word,
Speaker 3 00:44:54 There's another guy that's out there that comes out first. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:45:00 Everybody. It's the Casto creator spotlight podcast. Find us at casos.com/audience and see you in the next episode.
