The Impact of Stickability - Behind The Pod

This week I grabbed an enjoyable and informative coffee with Luke Kemeys from the Keep the Change podcast, and he came armed with numbers.

"I was looking at some podcasting stats the other day," he said. "And apparently, 'above average' is 120 downloads per episode. So that's the bar - internationally."

It gave nostalgia. And took me right back to the beginning. 

Before there was Marc Ellis and Jeremy Wells and Lisa Carrington, there was Aaron Scott, Paul Nixon and Ross McKenzie.

In November 2019, Between Two Beers may have been the world's most amateur podcast operation. We had one microphone plonked in the middle of a shitty old desk in my Hamilton garage, which was connected to my laptop, where we recorded the hour-long conversations in my built-in voice recorder app.

We didn't even have a podcast feed, so just put the audio from the first few episodes onto Soundcloud and Facebook.

And I so clearly remember checking the numbers after each episode.

"Holy shit Che, Macca's done 30 downloads in a week". 

We thought that was fun. And tried to guess who the 30 people would have been that tuned in.

But at the same time, we didn't really care.

And I think that's the main reason we're still going strong after 4.5 years.

Because in those early days, there was no expectation of audience or income. Asking interesting people interesting questions was simply our favourite part of the week.

This anecdote sits in the shadow of our current week.

Our episode with Ali Williams has been our second most popular of all time (Marc Ellis). It did 7,500 podcast downloads in 24 hours and 5,000 views on Youtube. And was also one of our favourite eps.

And it's been one hell of a ride.

The lesson here is that if you do anything for long enough, and you can find a way to keep making it the most enjoyable part of your week, you will find success.

Focus on the stickability - and don't get disheartened by the numbers!

- Steve

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