And thank you, Peter Rad for that opening jingle.
Check out Peter's work at RadTunes.com.
That's R-A-D-D, tunes.com.
And we're back for another episode of Podcasting for Radio Dummies after the one week break
for Thanksgiving.
This is episode number 16.
Our final episode of season number one.
My name is Ed Ryan, editor of Radio Wink Magazine.
And our goal with Podcasting for Radio Dummies is to make you a better podcaster by interviewing
the experts in the space.
Right now we are live on Spreaker.
And if you're listening on Spreaker, we also have a chat box that you can log into and
ask questions of our guests today if you'd like to.
We are on the Radio Wink website.
Well, you'll find a player behind the Podcasting for Radio Dummies logo on the right side of
the page.
We're on the Apple Podcast app.
And of course, we're on iHeartRadio.
All shows are immediately archived on RadioWink.com and the Apple Podcast app as well as Spreaker.
Our guest today is Andrew Olloman, the founder of PodcastGuests.com.
Both Andrew and his wife are podcasters.
He says one of his biggest challenges was finding great guests.
And that's why he created PodcastGuests.com.
Andrew, thanks for coming on the show.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
So how did you get into podcasting?
Let's start with that question.
Sure.
I've been in podcasting, I guess you call it maybe four years now on this run.
I was doing it before I think we had generally called it podcasting.
But I run a blog about the domain name industry called DomainNameWire.com.
And I saw that more and more people were interested in spoken word content.
And it was a neat way to really go in depth with people that I couldn't do through written
stories.
So I started a podcast.
And it's a niche.
It's not a huge podcast.
But my wife also has, she has a much more successful podcast.
And so the combination of those things really got me interested in podcasting and learning
more about it.
So when you launched, how did you do it?
What was your equipment set up and your hosting service?
How did you get everything off the ground four years ago?
Sure.
So one of the things, I really over thought it, which is kind of a recommendation I have
for people not to do.
But I set up, I rent a room from a friend, rent an office from a friend who has a small
office building.
And he was interested in getting into podcasting too.
So we worked together to create a little studio room, so we put some sound dampening equipment
on the walls and such.
So yeah, really overdid it.
But just a basic ATR mic, you know, $100 mic in a cradle.
And then I used Libsyn for hosting, started there and continue to use them.
And the other thing I did, of course, I had some podcasts cover art made.
I also had someone do an intro for me, like a spoken word.
I've actually nixed that since then.
And when I say I over thought it, I think that a lot of people, if they try to replicate
that sort of setup, it's a lot of work.
Whereas really, when my wife started her podcast, she's like, okay, I'm going to go into our
walk in closet where their clothes that absorb the sound and I'm going to record my podcast
in there.
And she really just started that way and hers is very successful.
So I think a lot of people look at the things you have to do to start a podcast, which let's
face it is more than starting a blog.
And if you add too many things to that list, it becomes really too difficult to get started
and you can kind of run into kind of a paralysis and not actually get off the ground.
What is the name of your wife's podcast?
Hers is the Internet of Things podcast.
It's on, of course, all the major services, but it's also at iotpodcast.com.
So what is the things that she talks about on the Internet of Things?
So things like the Amazon Echo or Amazon Alexa, as some people refer to it, basically connected
devices, any sort of device that's connected to the Internet or connected to other devices.
And hers is it gets about 25,000 downloads per episode, whereas mine is maybe more like
a thousand because there aren't that many people in the world interested in domain names.
Gotcha.
Well, that's a lot.
So when you first started, how did it go?
How were the first few?
It went well.
Another thing I did was I did outsource editing because I tried for 10 hours to figure out
how to edit and then I decided it wasn't worth my time.
So it was it was fairly good.
My model was, hey, I'm going to go through some of the news I've written about in the
past week about domain names and then I will add I'll have an interview segment, which,
of course, is a very common platform, much like this show.
And it went well.
It went well for a long time.
I'd say the first 40 or 50 episodes, I really tapped my Rolodex to find guests that I knew
personally or knew from the industry.
And then it started to get to a point where it's like, OK, what's next?
I've interviewed the people I know.
How do I find some new and interesting guests for my show?
And so how did you do that?
Did you pivot to something different or rehash some older interviews or change all completely?
Well, that's kind of where podcast guests dot com came into the picture.
So I started to look around for a service that would help me find new and interesting
guests for the podcast.
But since I'm in a niche, it was still kind of difficult.
So there were some services out there that do connect you.
They're kind of I call them do it for me services where they find guests for you.
They charge you anywhere from, say, five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a month to book
your your guests for your show to reach out and find them.
I wanted something that was more a do it yourself platform where I could go find these potential
guest experts for my show that wasn't quite so hands on and quite so expensive.
And that's where I came came across the idea or came up with the idea to launch this service.
So how did you get it off the ground?
I did it very simple at first.
So I modeled it a little bit off of help a reporter out, which some people know is is
Haro or Haro, which is a service where PR actually excuse me, journalists can post,
hey, I'm looking for someone with this expertise or this experience.
Let me know if you know someone.
So a journalist could say, I'm looking for someone who has a mortgage where it was difficult
to get the mortgage close, something like that.
They're working on personal finance story or I'm looking for someone who's an expert
in artificial intelligence.
And so that was basically it still is, although it's enhanced a little bit.
It's a daily email that says this is what we're looking for.
And if you're interested, you you can respond to it.
And so I modeled it off of that.
I just set up an email account at MailChimp and created people that were podcasters to
sign up and said, hey, what are you looking for?
What do you want as a guest on your show?
What qualifications do you have?
And then I list those in the newsletter and send it out to the subscribers.
And at first it was mostly podcasters on the list.
But of course, podcasters like to be guests on on other podcasts.
It's a great way to grow their show and started out with, you know, 100, 200 people.
And even at that, I was making some great matches.
Some people, you know, even with those few numbers, they maybe get 10 interested parties
that were would be good guests for their show.
And then it's really exploded from there.
I now have over eight thousand people using the service.
It's a combination of podcasters and people that are really experts in some particular
field.
So authors, speakers, business owners, you name it, that use the service.
So who pays the fee?
Which side is paying the fee?
So everyone can use it for free if they want.
And what that free service is, is each week I feature a handful of experts in the newsletter,
as well as six podcasts that are looking for guests.
So if you want to get booked on a podcast, you can say, hey, oh, here's here's one
of the podcasts this week.
They're looking for experts in golf.
Well, I'm a golf expert.
I'll submit myself to this.
The paid component is that if you want podcasters to come to you and invite you on their podcast,
you can create a one sheet and a profile in my directory, which has, I think, now a little
over 200 people in it.
And from that side, you pay a monthly fee, you get a nice mobile friendly search engine
friendly directory listing, which doubles as a one sheet, which I don't know if you've
talked about that on your show in the past, but essentially a pitch page for you as an
expert what your interests are, what your expertise are, some sample questions that
people can ask you.
And then that way, podcasters that are looking for guests can look through the directory,
find people and invite them directly.
So podcasters never pay, to answer your question.
Experts can optionally pay.
So do they see the value in that?
Okay, I'm going to get on this show.
It's worth the fee to pay to Andrew because I'm going to sell some product on this podcast.
Sometimes yes, sell some product, but I encourage people not to be at direct, right?
First and foremost, your goal as a guest on a podcast should be to add value to that podcast
in this audience.
If you go around just pitching a product, then people will eventually stop inviting
you, right?
Because they don't want to give you a 30 minute infomercial.
So how can you add value to that podcast?
And I would say that people from a couple different, the guest expert want a few different
things.
They want the notoriety.
They want people to know about them.
At a minimum, they're going to mention, hey, go check out my website or here's what my
book is about.
A lot of the times though, it's podcasters and a podcaster doesn't necessarily have
something to sell other than their own podcast.
I think being a guest on podcasts is the number one way to grow your own podcast because everyone
who's listening is a podcast listener, right?
And so they're in an app or they're online listening to a podcast and if you add enough
value to that person's day through the podcast you're on, they're likely to check out your
podcast and subscribe to it.
Gotcha.
So what is the most popular category that you have right now that people are requesting
as guests?
So I would say entrepreneurship, business, startup are by far the most common.
And so I think if you look at any of the major podcasting platforms, you're going to see
a lot of those as well.
When I feature a podcast in my newsletter that's looking for people that are entrepreneurs
or have a business experience in general, maybe CEOs, founders, that sort of thing,
they can get up to a hundred responses from experts that want to be on their show.
It's not always that much but I compare that to, I mentioned golf earlier.
If it's a golf podcast, maybe five people will respond.
There just aren't as many people out there that fit those genres, if you will.
And so certainly things along the business side, self-help is a big category.
Diet and nutrition is also a fairly large category.
It kind of mirrors probably the, I don't know the exact stats on categories of podcasts
in iTunes, but I'd say it probably closely mirrors that with a little bit of an extra
boost to the people that are doing entrepreneurship and business podcasts because they're the
ones that are the most, I'd say savvy generally about marketing and they understand how you
market your podcast and how you market yourself.
So they're out there doing it as opposed to maybe someone who has a golf podcast, who
is really a golfer at heart and maybe not, but maybe a business person at heart.
So how do you prevent a guest from being a dud and keep those guests from getting on
more shows?
Have you ever gotten feedback from podcasters that say, man, this guy you sent our way,
he's a sleeper?
Right.
So first of all, the people kind of apply to be on the show.
And so I asked them several data points about themselves.
And one of the things that I have on the one sheets in the directory profile are what are
some other podcasts you've been on or media appearances.
And so the podcaster can actually go listen to a few snippets and say, oh yeah, this person's
good or yikes, I don't want this person on my program.
So if someone's been on a lot of good shows, that's a pretty good sign that they're good.
But I always encourage people to go listen to a few minutes at least and make sure that
they're coherent.
They can speak well.
They have a good audio setup.
As a podcast host, you probably come across this where someone comes on your show and
you're calling in from the airport on your cell phone or something like that.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
So people that have experience being on podcasts are generally pretty good at being on other
podcasts.
And so that's one of the key things I think that podcasters look for and it's how you
prevent duds from coming on your show.
But frankly, part of the responsibility falls on the podcaster to do their due diligence
and look into the person.
Again, listen to at least a few minutes of a podcast they've been on.
Listen to or read their application.
Is it coherent?
Are there a bunch of spelling errors in it?
You don't need to be able to spell to talk, but it's a good sign that perhaps this person
isn't quite as polished as what you're looking for.
And frankly, I'd argue some podcasts aren't as polished as what some guests are looking
for.
I've listened to a lot of bad ones.
So yeah.
So is it your opinion that, kind of taking a little bit of a step back here because I
understand fully what your website is about, but is it your opinion that you think that
interview shows are more creative and popular than someone that's doing commentary or so?
It's certainly so much harder to do an hour, whether you're doing a talk show or a podcast
with nobody else to talk to.
Right.
Yeah.
You get tired.
So here's why I think most podcasts are in that format.
One is what you just stated.
It is, as a podcaster, man, when I do those occasional episodes where I don't have a guest
and I'm talking for 30 minutes, I am wiped by the hand.
And I'm sure people are bored of just hearing my voice as well.
I think the reason we see so many that are in that format is because it helps grow.
It's not boring, but it also helps grow your audience.
So this podcast, for example, which is obviously live, but then turned into a podcast, I'll
include a link to it in my newsletter and my social media and say, hey, I was on this
podcast last week.
Check it out.
Right.
So that helps grow your audience.
And it also helps teach your audience more than just what you know.
Right.
So you're an expert, but getting people that know a particular aspect of podcasting or
a particular aspect of whatever the topic is, that can be interesting.
And it adds to the conversation.
So I think it's kind of a self-fulfilling loop, if you will, and that having a guest
on your podcast helps grow your audience.
Right.
It helps grow their audience because they're on here talking to a new audience, your audience,
but it also helps because that person is going to promote the show to their audience.
And in fact, one of the things I ask in the application to be on shows is what will you
do to help promote the show that you're on?
And so people can say, hey, I've got 30,000 social media followers that I'll pitch it
to on Instagram or Twitter or whatever.
I'll include it in my email newsletter.
And I've talked to a lot of podcasters and they say a lot of times, the people that come
on their show are all about me, me, me.
What do I get out of being on your show?
And what really gets them excited to have a guest on is when that person is like, hey,
here's how I can help you.
Here's how I can help your audience.
Here's how I can help you as a podcaster.
Got it.
So how is your business growing?
Tell us how it's gone from the beginning and is it growing every month?
Is it growing every week?
Tell us how it's catching on.
Yeah, it's very stable growth, sometimes with spikes.
And so I think I'm coming up on issue number 135 or so and it's weekly.
So coming up on three years of using the service and it's grown very well organically by word
of mouth.
I've also done some advertising around it.
And so as of this week, I think it's about 8,200 subscribers to the newsletter and around
200 that are paying members that are paying to be in the directory as well.
And so those are people that pay a monthly fee which helps fund the rest of it.
To be honest, most of the money I make from the service goes back into promoting it and
growing it which makes it better for everyone.
And so I would say it's strong growth.
Has it been worth it yet as an entrepreneur?
I've learned a lot and obviously it brings in a nice or decent monthly income but it's
a lot of work to trying to grow a service.
And whenever you're growing what's effectively a marketplace where you have people on both
sides, podcasters as well as people that want to be on the podcast, that's tricky to get
off the ground because it's a chicken and an egg question.
So you need podcasters in order to get people interested in joining the service to be a
guest on those podcasts but then you also need guests that are looking to get on podcasts
in order for the podcasters to be interested.
So that was tricky at first.
Now with over 8,000 users, I've got a good mix there and it's working well.
I also have a very supportive advertiser who advertises each week which helps.
And for the first 100 weeks, I was doing the newsletter completely myself.
I've hired someone to come on and do a lot of that work in the background so that I can
spend more time doing things like being on shows like this to talk about it and just
answering kind of support queries that come in and really spending my time growing the
business as well instead of or in addition to the weekly grind of putting this together.
But it's really helped me focus on the value add stuff by having someone working on kind
of the task, the weekly task of creating the newsletter.
So podcasters that want to be part of it just go to the website and sign up, correct?
Exactly.
In fact, anyone who wants to be part of it at the free level just goes to podcastguests.com,
enters their email address and they're signed up.
What happens if you're a podcaster, well everyone gets an email afterward explaining
what to do next.
And so if you're a podcaster, it will say there will be a link to submit your podcast.
And when you submit your podcast, you get some details about the show, how many episodes
you published, general information about your audience, who they are, what they're interested
in and then your qualifications.
And you really have free reign on what your qualifications are.
Of course, the more specific you are, the fewer responses you'll get because it eliminates
a lot of people.
But that's fine, right?
If you need people who run a business with a thousand or more employees, obviously that
eliminates a lot of potential guests.
But if that's your goal, then by all means, you should say that that's what you need,
right?
So, and then you get added to a queue and the queue to be featured as a podcast in the
newsletter, it varies from time to time.
Sometimes it's only a month, sometimes it's six or more months.
But that doesn't, we don't just go down the list in the order that people apply.
We want to get a good mix of podcasts in each newsletter.
I don't want six business ones in each newsletter.
I want to have some variety for the people that aren't interested in business podcasts.
So we reach out to every person, every podcaster before we feature them just to verify that
they're ready and still looking for guests.
And then we include them in the newsletter and we send a link to them to a Google Sheet
where as people fill out the applications in real time, that Google Sheet becomes populated
with every single person who's responded.
Now by registering at the website, does that mean, let's say if I did it, would I be getting
the newsletter automatically?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes, you will get the newsletter.
The newsletter is sent out every Monday morning at 1030 Central unless it's a holiday, a major
holiday or if I goof, which I did a couple of weeks ago.
I start getting these emails, where's the newsletter?
Where's the newsletter?
Did you forget what day it was or something?
My assistant said, you know you scheduled this for Thanksgiving, not the Monday before
Thanksgiving.
I was like, yikes.
That's not a good time to send out a newsletter.
So every Monday morning, unless it's a major holiday, so at 1030 Central time, the newsletter
goes out.
And so if you sign up, it's the same sign up form if you're a podcaster or you just
want to be a guest on podcast, but you sign up and you get the intro email, which tells
you what to do next.
Gotcha.
So Andrew, what is your overall opinion of the podcasting industry right now?
So it's interesting to hear even that term podcast industry because I think a lot of
times, I've read some articles when like Blue Apron was running into financial troubles
and everyone's like, oh, what's going to happen to the podcast industry since they
were sponsoring so many of them.
I think that I look at the industry, there's an industry and then there are the creators,
the people that are creating podcasts, the one-off people that are doing it.
And I think it's very different.
I think a lot of people get into it and they realize it's not as easy as they hoped it
would be.
And I think a lot of people get into podcasting for the wrong reason.
I think creating a podcast with the idea that you're going to be one of the top podcasts
and you're going to attract all these advertisers that are going to pay a lot of money is not
the right reason to become a podcaster.
Makes sense for some groups, venture capital groups, radio stations, radio groups, that
makes a lot of sense.
But for the individual that says, hey, I want to start a podcast about X, like in my case,
domain names.
I have advertisers but that's because I also have a blog where people advertise and my
audience isn't big enough for a big company to say, hey, we want to advertise about our
coffee service or something like that.
It's just too specific.
So I think the reason to get involved, if you're looking at it from a business perspective,
to create a podcast is to grow your audience and your other business.
So there are two big benefits that come out of being a podcaster if you're not going to
have a huge audience and advertisers.
One is that it gives you an opportunity to speak to someone who otherwise might not speak
to you.
So if I email the CEO of a publicly traded company and say, hey, I want to pick your
brain, will you give me 30 minutes so I can ask you some interesting questions that I want
to hear, he's probably not going to respond.
But if you say, hey, I'd love to have you on my podcast, which has potential customers
of yours or perhaps current customers of yours on it for 30 minutes and ask you some questions,
then they're going to get interested.
So that's one big reason to be a podcaster.
The conversations, the introductions you get that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get.
The other is to grow your own audience, whatever that is, whether it's on your blog, maybe
you run a business that is related to the blog and so you can grow your audience that
way, you can pitch your product and service gently.
Don't make the whole podcast about it, but for example, a payroll company, someone who
runs a payroll company that helps companies do their monthly payroll, if they just talk
about payroll every time, every week, every day, whatever, they're not going to get a
big audience.
If they have a podcast about small business tips, obviously that includes people that
are running payroll so they can get people in there and they can have a little promotion
for it.
But it also has a value add to those listeners that again, might be their customer as well
or potential customer of the payroll service, but they're not listening to only learn about
payroll, they're learning to listen about how do you deal with problem employees, how
do you hire people, how do you handle taxes, how do you do all of this stuff.
What is your opinion and advice on how to grow listenership in the industry as a whole?
In the industry as a whole, I think discoverability is still a problem and I know some people
disagree with this and say, no, if you have a good podcast, you'll get the discoverability,
but it's not as easy as, look, I've been blogging since 2005.
I built an audience over time, but you have search engines which people are on every day
that help them find your show.
Whereas we all know that iTunes, for example, is really just, the search is really just
based on what's in your title.
It's difficult for people to find an individual show.
If you have brought up different topics, it's very difficult to have people find those.
I think that's one of the challenges.
I think one of the things the industry has done a good job with is we now have a good
number of podcast apps which have some strengths which the Apple Podcast, I refer to it as
iTunes, I know it's Apple Podcast, don't have.
Apple Podcast, every time I open it up, I just shake my head at how slow it is, how
difficult it is to find anything.
Whereas there are some other good apps out there now that people can use that help with
discoverability, but there's still, I think we have a long way to go there.
If there's something we can do from a podcast search standpoint to make it so that people
can find the deep content, like what people find on a website.
They're searching for one specific thing usually, they find it and then they're like
oh, this is an interesting site, maybe I'll bookmark it or if I need more information
I'll come back to it.
That's what we need on podcasting and we don't have it.
We also don't have an AdWords for podcasting that makes it easy to advertise your podcast
on other shows.
I think the closest thing to that is Overcast's sponsorship thing where it's really easy,
it's self-serve, you can go sign up and you can place an ad for your podcast within the
app essentially.
When people are listening to podcasts or looking at your category, they can find it.
I think those things are necessary and so any of the podcast companies listening that
are looking at products and features and what they can implement, I think those are the
things that we need to really help this industry continue to grow.
All right, we're out of time, Andrew.
What else do you want our listeners to know about PodcastGuests.com?
Well, I would just say, hey, it's free so there's no risk in trying it out.
If you go to PodcastGuests.com and sign up, you'll get your first newsletter next Monday
and check it out.
If you have any feedback, if you just reply directly to that newsletter, it will come
directly to me.
Great.
Andrew, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
We really appreciate it and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
That was Andrew Olloman, the founder of PodcastGuests.com.
Both Andrew and his wife are podcasters and we encourage you to check out his website
at PodcastGuests.com and sign up for the free newsletter.
Thanks to Andrew for coming on.
We are ending season one with Andrew as our guest.
We're already lining up guests for season number two, which will begin in early 2019.
If you think you have a great podcast, a great podcast story to tell and would like to be
considered as a guest on our program, contact me directly by email at edryantheditor.gmail.com.
That's edryantheditor.gmail.com.
Have a great weekend everyone and a super holiday season.
We now have 16 episodes in the can that will help you be a better podcaster.
Just head on over to radioink.com and click on the Podcasting for Radio Dummies ad on
the right side of the website and you'll be able to listen on all 16 or you can go to
iHeartRadio or you can go to the Apple podcast app and search for Podcasting for Radio Dummies.
My thanks again to Andrew Olloman for coming on and all of our guests in season one and
of course our thanks as always to Peter Rad for opening and closing Jingle.
Have a great weekend everybody.
Podcasting for Radio Dummies.
A new podcast from Radio Ink.
With your host, Ellen.
And we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Edryantheditor.gmail.com