In May, I announced that I’m going to start publishing the metrics for this podcast. I’m following in the footsteps of Baremetric’s The Open Project, where SaaS companies publish their metrics publicly.

I have three main reasons why I publish my podcast’s metrics:

1. I believe that being completely transparent will ultimately result in increased trust. And for me, trust is everything, whether that’s the friendships I’ve built or the businesses I’ve worked with.
2. I believe transparency creates better products. Unless you have a Steve-Jobs-like instinct, great products and services are not created in a vacuum without any user or customer feedback. That’s one of the reasons I’m opening the curtains and showing everyone the experiments I’ve been running to improve my podcast – I want to get better at this.
3. Publishing my podcast metrics publicly helps me organize my thought process. I’ve been optimizing to the title, description and overall design of my podcast’s website based on the data I have. The problem with me is that I suck at documenting. So, a month after, I look at the things I’ve done and forgotten why I did them. By going through in actually writing about what I’ve done and why, it helps me keep track of those changes and reasons.

If you have any questions about why I’m doing this, feel free to tweet at me or send me a DM via Twitter @RamliJohn

Let’s jump in

August 2019 Metrics

Downloads: 4,063 (-13% from last month)

Podcast Snippet Video Views: 4,801  (-54% from last month)

GrowthToday.fm Sessions: 643 (-55% from last month)

Most Popular Episode: GMT054 – Juliana Casale – Head of Marketing at Clearbanc – 561 downloads

Most Popular Podcast Player: Apple Podcast

Income Earned: $0

Observations and Reflections

➡️ To put the metrics this month into context, in July, I published almost double the number of podcasts (7 episodes). In August, I went back to publishing one episode a week. It’s more clear with the August metrics, that publishing twice as many episodes impacts the reach of the podcast snippets video (-54% than last month) and website visitors (-55%) and not as much as the actual downloads (-13% than last month)

➡️ This data shows that publishing twice as many episodes results in an increase in website visitors and podcast snippet videos, but not necessarily podcast downloads.

➡️ In terms of the episode with the most downloads and podcast snippet views. Juliana and clearbanc posted up the podcast on their social channels. That made such a big impact instead of them re-tweeting or re-sharing my post.

➡️ This is a lesson learned that guests sharing the podcast on their own does impact downloads and reach. I ask my guests to share it on their own and provide them all my promotion files (podcast snippet videos and images). But, I know they’re busy so if they prefer, I ask if they can just re-tweet or re-share my post on Twitter or LinkedIn about their podcast episode.

➡️ One of the reasons why I do this podcast is to build relationships and friendships. That’s one of my measures of success. Case in point, I’m going to Boston with my wife for her birthday later this month. Juliana, Bill and Josh (all past guests) all jumped into offer suggestions

I’ll be in Boston from Sept 27-29. It’s my wife’s birthday and she wants lobster so I’m taking her there to get some 🦞

Recommendations for seafood places and things to do would be appreciated!

Cc people I know who is/was from there @attackofthetext @inboundy

— Ramli John (@RamliJohn) September 11, 2019

➡️ On to some things I’ve messed up, I realized late last month after finally setting up Google Websmaster that I’ve accidentally set “no index” in all my podcast pages. That means I told Google not to crawl those pages. I quickly fixed that and ask Google to re-crawl my site.

➡️ In terms of monetizing this podcast, I’m happy to announce I have five supporters sponsoring this podcast for $2 per episode starting in September. That’s enough to cover my podcast hosting fees and remote recording tool 🎉. I have episode sponsors coming up in October.

➡️ My main goal with this podcast has never been to turn it into a profit machine. If it does, that’s great. But really, if I can monetize it to the point where I can outsource everything but preparing for interviews and doing interviews, that’s gold! I love talking to people who are incredibly smart and passionate.