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Building an indie business in the center of venture capital. I am Alex Edmonds, also known as supremerumham on the internet. And this is the building an indie business podcast. Okay, so this is another Thursday person episode, which is what I'm calling these Thursday episodes. Um, and I want to talk about how I am stepping away from open podcasts. Yeah. Okay. So let's get into it. The reason why I'm stepping away from open podcast and the open podcast community is because the, the sales of the book for a little discouraging for me. And it made me reevaluate some things. So my goal was 25 sales, and I only got two sales. That's a very, very bad, in my opinion. Part of the problem was, I made a lot of mistakes in promoting the book. I didn't, um, there are some things I didn't do, I didn't start growing the email list. As soon as I announced the book, which I should have done, I should have also, um, optimized the blog for emails to collect emails, the first two blog posts that I wrote on solo podcasting, and interviewing, those didn't have any email forms to capture emails. And then I should have released all of the blog posts. Before I launched the book, or before I released the book. And that didn't happen. I think I finished launching or releasing every blog post in September or August. And I launched the book at the end of July. So yeah, there are a few other things that I don't want to mention or bother mentioning or didn't think of to mention before I started recording this. I think this is important episode. Because I'm building an indie business as a struggle, it's not easy. And I think it's important to hear that I failed. I failed in this project, especially the book because I didn't reach 25 sales. And that was the goal. So I failed. I think that's important to say. So I'm failing to launch the book made me are failing to reach my goal of 25 sales made me really reevaluate some things. I took a look at the podcasting market and targeting podcasters specifically, and it made me realize that the podcasting market is very small. There's 1.4 million podcasts as of October 2020. And you think about how many of those podcasters you can reach? Right? So, um, and for the book, specifically, it's how many podcasters want to improve their podcasts. So out of this 1.4, let's say it's 150,000 of them want to improve on their podcast, and are in my market, because like Joe Rogan, isn't gonna want to read my book and improve his podcast with my tips, especially because I use stand up comedy, and he's a stand up comic. So he already knows this stuff. And he has a much larger podcast than me. Fun fact. Okay, so then, let's say 150 of them, of those 1.4 they want to improve their podcasts. And there, they want to take my advice. And so let's say 1000 of those 150 they're willing to buy the book at the 1750 price point. So those that 1000 that's a $15,000. For me, that's not sustainable. I'd have to keep writing books and writing books and writing books. And then even if I have five books a year, that's whenever five times 15 3045 60 that's $60,000 a year. And then who knows if that's sustainable for a book because, you know, most of the money, you're gonna make it in the first year. Right? So I don't know, that Smit. That's one reason why I yeah, and then I didn't want to continue. Um, I'm not done podcasting, I want to be clear about that. When I tell people I'm done with open podcast, they're like, Oh, so you're done podcasting? No, I will. I'll continue podcasting. I'm always gonna, podcasts I like, I very much like it. Okay. And then another reason why I kind of felt discouraged, is the newsletter, the open podcast newsletter, there's not much growth there in terms of subscribers. I've been stuck at 50, around there, between 50 and 60, for a couple of weeks now. And, um, it kind of makes me feel discouraged, because there's no growth. And I've been promoting my content more, or I've been promoting my content every week and new content. So I promote the content, and people don't think it's an they don't, they're not interested in the new content that I'm going to be writing, right. And I understand that. I'm nobody, right? I'm just a 24 year old, with, with ideas, right? And so it's gonna take me a little bit longer to grow an audience. But it's not my current audience that bothers me. Like the number really, it's the fact that there's no growth. So like, there's not one person subscribing new person subscribing every week, it just stays flat. So that makes me feel like it nobody wants to read the content in general, in general, it's not that it's I don't know what I'm talking about, or they don't think they should be taking advice from a 24 year old. It's that they're not interested in the content at all. Yeah. And then my blog posts, they get hundreds of views every week, and no one subscribes, like, the most subscribers I've ever gotten is from me how to write a podcast episode, a blog post, the week I released that, and I got 10. So that's not very much. And plus, like I said, I'm getting hundreds and hundreds, not hundreds and hundreds, but every blog posts, gets, let's say, 100 views, right. And I only have 50. And I released 24 blog posts. So that's a very, very low, super low conversion rate. So that leads me to believe that no one wants to read podcasting content. And then I checked the keywords of every everything I write from now, I started doing this recently. But I checked all the podcasts and content I've been writing. And no one is searching for this content. It's zero searches a month. So that might be like one person, every once in a while is searching for my content, or like, the subjects I'm writing about. But it's not many people. So that leads me to believe the market is very, very small. Right? I'm actually some people, they look for solo podcasting, and how to interview someone. So I get traffic from there, but it's not a lot. It's like, one person a day. And that the people who look at that, or who are searching for that they don't subscribe, right? So yeah, that's another reason. So I took down the forum. Because not even I used it every, every day. I used it every week, because I posted the new episodes thread. And I put that in the newsletter. So yeah. Um, it was expensive to run for me. It was. Yeah, it was $10 a month. And I think that's expensive. If no one is using it, because that's $120 a month. on the blog. I'm going to keep up. I'm going to, um, I'm also going to leave the email newsletter, like the email list. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep that to it's gonna be open. And if people start subscribing to my stuff, then It's enough people that I think, Okay, I need to start writing more, then I'll come back and I will start writing podcasting content again. Yeah. So my one problem with this and why struggling with, should I leave? Or should I keep going? is I think I might be leaving the project a little early and kind of giving up. But then I look at all the numbers, and it tells me that, yeah, I'm too early on this. So I don't know if I just, I should stick with it or just try something else? Because there are people that are making a living, writing podcasting content. So I'm just I don't know if I'm not optimizing my content enough, or, and Am I too early? And yeah, because I only started optimizing my content for SEO. I'm in July of 2020. And I'm recording this in October. So I might be too early, and I just might need to keep going at it. And then eventually, it'll hit. So I think that's why I'm not saying I'm I'm leaving the project, or I'm getting rid of it. Because I might come back. And yeah, I'm I'm not totally. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just not completely convinced that this is the wrong thing. thing to do. I like talking about podcasting. So yeah, that's why I'm saying I'm stepping away. I'm not leaving. I'm, I'm taking a break that just say that. So the blog is still up. People can still find the content, they could still sign up for the newsletter. If there's, if there's an uptick in the email subscribers, I'll come back. Right. So right now there's like 55 people, let's say, and if I leave for two months, and suddenly, I have 100 people and on the email list, then yeah, I'll come back and I'll start writing more. I'm still monitoring, monitoring the blog traffic. So I'll see that too. I have one article left. And as soon as I finish, or that'll be the first thing I write when I come back. So it'll help me get back in the motion of writing podcasting content. It's the podcasting and SEO, plug or podcast episode that I did. I haven't written that one up. The podcasting market is still growing, right. It was just a million podcasts a few weeks ago, or a few months ago now. And now there's 1.4. So maybe by the end of the year, it'll be 2 million. And that means that people might have an interest in my content, or search for my content. More. Right, so I'll get more traffic. Right. And then also, I just renewed the domain recently, like, let's say in the last four months, so there's no reason for me to not, you know, keep it up, at least, for the block, at least. So yeah, that's, uh, that's what I'm doing. In the next episode. I was talking about my new project and what I'm working on. So yeah, stay tuned for that. One. Is Thank you for listening. Have a nice day. Bye.