Episode 36 — Who Uses Yourcast?

[admin 330]

When we relaunched Earwolf.com, we added a section called Yourcast that would allow podcasters to advertise on our site. For this week's The Wolf Den, we've asked two of our Yourcast users (Jacob Munford from Lobstercast and Cameron Buchholtz from CB Radio) to tell us about their experiences using the service and to teach us about the unique struggles of running a podcast outside of Hollywood. Enjoy, and be sure to peruse Yourcast for what might be your new favorite podcast!

[stk 2]

I think there needs to be a show which exclusively involves Jeff becoming jokingly angered with any guest that promotes a non-EarWolf show. Perhaps Howard Kramer can show up in a dress for the Halloween 'scare tactics' episode?...I've noticed that the sound quality of doing interviews over the phone still isn't completely on par with the in-studio sound. Do you foresee a technological advancement in the future that will remedy this very minor issue or will skype/phone interviews always sound like a skit from The Fugees' The Score album? Also, Bryan Cranston's interview on WTF was splendid today. Head on over.

[SetYourGoals 0]

This is based not on anything I know from being at Earwolf, but I don't think the sound quality of an out of studio guest will make it on par with in studio anytime in the near future. If Howard Stern, with all the money they have, can't make a call in guest sound great, I think there is a pretty big technological barrier. Skype and Google voice are steadily improving though, and I think we sound better than Stern in that department. There are episodes of How Did This Get Made where Jason skypes in and it feels like he is right there with them, just with a worse mic. It's really just a problem that advancements at Apple and Google are going to take care of in time, I think.

[GoodJon 0]

The show seemed especially condescending today. In fact I In fact, i suppose i find the whole yourcast offering to be condescending. I didn't even know about the page until it was brought up today. When I go to the site, I usually head straight for an episode page to look at a picture or maybe make a comment. I am curious as to how much traffic the site gets. The forums don't see much action, and while it's only $5, it may not actually be worth it if no one sees it. These two used it as more of a donation and getting something in return for their donation than an actual service.
*It's been a month since Earwolf joined funnyordie. Why haven't we heard any ads yet?
*Most podcasts record from home. Why did earwolf decide to rent a studio? Do you have plans to rent it out to other podcasts?
*What are some goals going forward? Does Earwolf want to boost the numbers of existing shows? Will you be adding shows? Would love to have a saturday morning podcast and a companion, time slot wise, to HDTGM.

[ErikWargo 0]

I enjoyed this episode, mostly because I list my own show (The Cherry Spitz Podcast) on YourCast. From what I can gleam on Google Analytics, YourCast has only delivered 7 new website visitors within the past 30 days. I guess I could look at it as spending $0.71 per visitor that may, but most likely won't, subscribe and hang around.

Although since starting the YourCast thing, our average per day podcast feed hits have gone from around 21 to 29. That number might fall like a stone next month for all I know, but I'd like to think it's on a steady climb, thanks in part to YourCast.

[jeffullrich 652]

@Steve - The Cranston interview was great!

@Erik - Thanks for sharing. Keep us posted on the progress.

@Good - I'll try and address the condescending part of your comment on the next episode, I got that feedback from someone else as well. That certainly wasn't my intention but I know it came off that way. Regarding your statement, "Most podcasts record from home.", the only show that doesn't record in our studio is Totally Laime which debuts tonight. Otherwise all of our shows record from our studio. I'm curious as to why you thought they didn't? That concerns me if our shows sound like they are recorded without much effort.

We haven't sold any ads yet.

[jakerayfish 1]

I have a show on YourCast also (Terrible Friends Podcast). When we first signed up for the YourCast page, the intent was to use the visibility to bring up our numbers. That has happened, but not to as big of an extent as we had hoped, and probably not worth the $5 a month if we were looking at it purely from a cost/benefit analysis model based on listenership. We've kept being a part of the YourCast page not mainly because of the visibility and potential listeners but more because of the podcast network that we've become a part of. We're starting to bring in other YourCast show hosts as guests on our podcast, and are working out ways to help promote each others' shows. The only sense of competition that I feel is with other shows that I feel don't do as good of a job as we do, whether that's content, audio quality, etc. If we find a podcast that we like, our first move is to start communication with them to see how we can bring our listeners to them, and see if they'd want to bring their listeners to us. When you guys launched the YourCast page, did you envision this type of communication and collaboration, or is this a surprise to you?

[ChaseRoper 64]

I feel there is an entire Search Engine Optimizing advantage to Yourcast that some people aren't aware of or haven't fully grasped. As soon as I have some more episodes in the can, I'll be joining Yourcast. I really wish I would have already joined up and responded to the query about participating on the recent Wolf Den. Yourcast is a win win even if your podcast isn't getting an immediate bump in traffic or downloads. Over time, the link coming in to your podcast's landing page will boost your site's authority and gradually raise your search engine ranking for your podcast. Assuming that you have established a clear topic (or micro niche) for your show.