(upbeat music)

- How much is that?

(grunts)

- Welcome into the Podcast Editor Mastermind show,

the podcast by editors for editors

about the business side of podcast editing.

I'm Jennifer Longworth.

You can find me at bourbonbarrelpodcasting.com.

And the one that starts with the letter B is...

- Bryan, you can find me at toptieraudio.com.

- I am Daniel.

You can find me at rothmedia.audio.

- And we have a special guest with us today.

Rick is here because he's the digital associate

at the Lexington Public Library Northside Branch

here where I live in Lexington.

And he did a killer presentation

for the Lexington podcasters a few weeks ago.

And I'm like, "Hey, we were talking about

maybe we should have a guest for our next show.

I think I found one."

Thanks for joining us.

- Yeah, hey, I'm Rick Sellnow.

I'm super excited to be here.

- Before we get started,

this episode is brought to you by Riverside.

And yes, we are using Riverside right now.

If you don't know,

Riverside is a remote video recording software system

that records directly in your browser.

Still getting used to it,

but so far it's actually been quite a pleasant experience.

So you don't have to worry about any hardware

or like super complicated tech.

It's simple.

You send your guests the link

like we did with Rick tonight,

and they hop in and click of a button.

You can go live or record your interviews.

If you want to record your episodes,

or if you're interested in being like a producer role

or helping your clients record episodes in high definition.

And if you use the code Yetis,

you can get 15% off of your order.

So check it out now.

- Speaking of Riverside,

that brings us to the topic of the day,

which is video and video podcasts.

And Daniel, this was actually your idea

to do an episode on this.

So why are we talking about this?

- I see the pull and the move to video.

For the longest time, I was a podcast purist.

Like, hey, podcasting is audio only.

Don't even think about calling a video a podcast.

But it's like at this point, it's like,

you know what, we lost that war.

You can have a video podcast, I'm giving up.

But I also see just like how big video is,

and it's only getting bigger.

So I'm trying to get my clients to do video.

The problem is trying to get them to understand

like the importance of high quality video.

Because Zoom, everybody knows Zoom, everybody uses Zoom.

It's really easy to do, but it's awful.

It's so bad.

So my biggest issue is just trying to get my clients

to actually use something like Riverside

or recording like video locally on their computer

or something and not use Zoom.

And that's where I'm struggling.

But I think just like as an industry, as podcast editors,

I think it's important to see the writing on the wall

that like video is huge and there's a huge benefit

having video, one, I grow in your shows,

but also just like as people who edit podcasts for money,

like there's a huge market as a service

to offer your clients.

- Yeah, I was the same way.

It annoyed me to no end when YouTube made their big play

that they were like, "YouTube has podcasts now."

I'm like, "What are you talking about?

YouTube has done talking head shows since it's existed.

That was the first thing that happened."

Love it or hate it, like no one can deny Joe Rogan, right?

Probably the biggest podcast in the world.

And that's a huge chunk of his business model.

And that's what makes it seem undeniable.

Like yes, content wise, they are a podcast

and tons of people still listen to them on Spotify,

but the video is a massive thing.

- Yeah, I was super annoyed too.

But the fact is video is valuable.

I'm not sure how valuable it is.

- So Rick, you had some stats about the impact of video

and maybe why we should nudge our clients that way or not.

Can you share some of those with us?

- So Westwood One, who you probably know at least

in like audio mediums, big for a long time,

and they came out with some interesting numbers

in partnership with like Cumulus Media and some others.

But basically as far as podcast downloads

for new podcast listeners, when they broke it down,

the three major players were YouTube,

Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

YouTube was 24.2% of new listeners.

Spotify 23.8, which is something that I think

Jennifer's talked about a lot and things like that.

Like when you're looking at younger audiences,

that's maybe where they're coming to you from

as opposed to like the old guard like us

who are still on Apple Podcast

or whatever podcatcher we're using.

And then Apple Podcast was all the way down in 16,

which is not bad.

And I would never ever tell someone

to stop being in audio format

because I still think that's what podcasting is.

Like there's something valuable to,

at least for me personally,

the main way that I consume podcasts is

I listen on my commute.

I listen when I'm walking my dog.

I listen when I'm exercising.

Things like that that I can't do a video

or in those situations.

And when we go into analytics, we can see lots of things.

But when we talk about growth and things like that,

like it's one thing to find your fan base and demographic,

but that's an immediate area for growth.

When you look at like, okay, how do I keep growing?

Do I go for breadth or depth?

Do I continue to just try to scoop in more of the people

who are already listening to me?

Or do I try to spread out and do different things?

So like for my friend and I do a sumo wrestling podcast

that also is on YouTube.

I joke all the time that like, okay,

we got 50 year old white men.

That's taken care of.

Now, can we get anyone else?

So this idea that like, oh, this person's my best friend

because he walks my dog with me

and he drives to work with me every day.

We know that's not true, but that's still why I listen.

And if they can see your face,

that's one more vector by which they can connect with you.

So to refer back to that report,

if we're going to look at it from a marketing perspective,

it's like Apple Podcasts dominates everything

on heavy podcast listeners,

but the podcast newcomers, the growth demographic,

it's YouTube 27, Spotify 27%, Apple Podcasts 6%.

- So if somebody came to you and they said,

hey, I've got an audio podcast.

I want to grow it and I'm thinking video.

- Yeah.

- What would you point them to?

- So Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok

are the greatest discoverability out there

because you're literally asking someone

to watch you for 20 seconds.

That's not a hard ask.

Also, they will find you by accident.

So like the discoverability is enormous.

And the number of content creators that a user on TikTok,

Shorts or Instagram Reels can be put in front of

in a 60 minute window is unfathomable

in a podcasting sense, right?

Like how would, there's no way you could ever expose me

to a hundred thousand people in an hour, but TikTok will.

If you, for instance, make your long form content

and you cut that into Shorts,

you can use your Shorts as a driver

for that full length video.

That's what most people do.

One example, Two Bears, One Cave.

It's a couple of comedians, Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura.

They're just a couple of standups

and they started a podcast together,

but they are also a video podcast.

There's lots of laughs, lots of jokes.

Those are things that in video drive engagement, right?

They take that mentality and cut out the 20 seconds

where Tom made Bert laugh hysterically.

And then people are like, wait a minute, what is this?

Click, and you've got someone moved over

and it's up to you to retain them.

So I think it's something that some of my clients

in the future might be interested in.

It's not my sweet spot, but it's something I see coming.

When I look at the mechanics of it,

you can start with a hundred dollar microphone

and free software too.

You can start with a hundred dollar microphone

and a hundred dollar camera and look like poo poo caca,

but sound okay.

And then file storage, like all of the things,

it all starts adding up.

It's not 2X, it's like four to 5X.

When you start talking about wanting to do it well

at every step of the game, from the gear to the software

to the like all of this stuff.

So part of me is like, how can I prepare

and how can I do it well and not have it be a burden?

- Yeah, because you have all the issues of audio

with like trying to dampen the reverb

and like have good audio quality.

Then also you have to get good lighting

and have a decent background and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

When we talk about setup, 'cause you're a hundred percent

right, additional equipment and even storage space, right?

Like do you need to buy a second external?

- Or a third.

- Now, because you have all this video footage,

those are real concerns, but ways you can limit that is

if you treat YouTube as your platform of choice,

but setup can be as easy.

Almost all cell phones shoot in 4K now.

So as podcasters or podcast editors,

especially podcast editors, our stuff's prerecorded.

So what we're doing right now on Riverside,

you don't need to have everything plugged

into a Blackmagic interface or something.

That's a thousand bucks you can save yourself right there.

You can literally go to Five Below

and buy a tripod for five bucks

and take the cell phone that you probably already own,

sit at your kitchen table and mount your,

the rear facing camera, not the front,

never the front facing camera,

but it probably shoots in 4K.

So that'll get you high quality footage.

If you have a guest on, presumably they have a cell phone

and they can record themselves as well.

Now you have an A cam and a B cam,

so you can switch between it

because nobody wants to watch something static, right?

They want things changing.

Other simple things you can do,

there's Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons.

You can find high resolution images of topics

you're talking about or short clips of B-roll for free.

You can pay for a Storyblocks subscription if you want.

That's another website where you can get a lot of B-roll

and things like that.

If we're talking about storage,

once you upload to YouTube, you can make it their problem.

Your edited video, you can just put on YouTube

and then you can delete all the footage

if you really have to, if that's a major concern for you,

which hopefully you end up doing 50 videos down the line

and then it is a concern.

- As interviews would get 40 or 50 views,

but the first short I uploaded got,

the first day, almost 500 views.

Like 10 times as much as the full interview.

And on YouTube, you can link to the full interview

in the short stuff.

Like easily tap that to get to the full video.

- Yeah.

- So Patrick says, "This all makes me realize

"I'm basically still podcasting in 2014."

And Bryan says, "Me too."

- Yeah, me too.

But I'm trying to drag myself kicking and screaming

into the 21st and a quarter century.

- Yeah, my wife and I, kind of our thing is like

watching more YouTube content,

kind of seeing how people are editing,

what intros are like.

'Cause like, you know, back in the day it was like,

you'd have like, hey, here's like a five second teaser,

like, you know, that hook.

Now here's a 30 second fancy high production intro.

And now a long-winded introduction is like,

yeah, it's like, okay, now I got a 20, 30 minute video.

And it's like, yeah, now that 20, 30 minute video

is six minutes.

There's no music, there's no, it's like immediately

like getting right into it.

- No intro, people will straight up in the comment,

now YouTube comment sections are what they are.

You know, that's a toxic media.

- Completely civil, right?

- It's totally fine, it's the best part of civilization.

But they will post in their intro too long,

you know what I mean?

- Yeah, they'll put a timestamp, like actual here,

like go to three minutes and 27 seconds

to the actual content.

- So true, we all know like click baity titles

or click baity thumbnails and things like that.

And they'll put in the top comment,

we'll end up with like four times as many likes

as the video has views.

And it'll say, hey, he doesn't actually answer the question

in the title, but here's where he talks about it.

And just FYI, for a YouTube video, a certain percentage

of your video needs to be watched

before YouTube will consider it a view.

And even on top of that, YouTube nowadays,

when they monetize you, the way they pay you

is through view hours, not views.

So they aggregate things together,

they actually are tracking the minutes.

So what people were doing is gaming the system

'cause every time they got a click,

the same way the old advertising paradigms online, right?

Like where people just had to click on it,

they didn't care if you bought it.

Now it's stuff like enter Yetis on Riverside.

But like this idea of what used to be a 30 minute

like mini documentary on YouTube now is like smashed.

And that's because it's competing

in this different ecosystem.

But you can still do the other stuff

and you can make it less work for yourself

by having just your footage of the actual speakers,

you and a guest or just you, whatever you're doing,

and then interspersing that with like clips.

Maybe I'm throwing up a clip of a newspaper article

and then I'm showing up the cover of a book that I'm citing.

Things like that is not that hard of an edit.

If you get into an NLVE, a nonlinear video editor,

which is just fancy terms for video editing on a computer,

there are ways that if you're just straight recording

yourself, that's not actually much you have to edit.

What you can do is hide certain things you don't like

in the footage with an image,

and then you don't even have to worry about it.

And then I'm showing up the cover of a book that I'm citing.

Things like that is not that hard of an edit.

If you get into an NLVE, a nonlinear video editor,

which is just fancy terms for video editing on a computer,

there are ways that if you're just straight recording

yourself, that's not actually much you have to edit.

What you can do is hide certain things you don't like

in the footage with an image,

and then you don't even have to worry about it.

There's a statistic.

I don't remember the exact number,

but I believe it's something like they want you to change

what's on screen every 15 seconds.

- Can we take a little bit of a turn here?

'Cause I think there's probably the editor out there

that's thinking, I keep hearing about video, YouTube,

everybody is hammering all of my clients

about why they should do video.

So I'm not really having to try and convince them.

I'm having to try and convince myself

that it's worth doing this,

that the one that I'm not doing them a disservice,

how does it make sense for me and for their show?

Do you have any insights on the value that we can bring

and what that value is to us as editors?

What's the value of adding video

or converting to video for a client?

- Yeah, so from a client's perspective,

the first thing I would say, YouTube will monetize you.

It won't happen immediately and it takes work,

but they will find the advertiser.

So YouTube has live streams

because they want to cut into Twitch's business.

Well, as part of their live streams,

if you have built a following,

if you can gravitate over the people

that you already have interested in your show,

they'll directly contribute.

YouTube has memberships because Patreon started

being a profitable way for people to make money.

YouTube's like, "Oh, we'll do that.

"We'll do it all here."

So as an editor, it could behoove you

if you are pitching this to new clients to say,

"Hey, this is an all-in-one money-making platform.

"All these different sources of revenue are there

"from the creator's perspective."

- The biggest hurdle that he and his clients

have to deal with is the cost in time and resources.

Four to six times that.

So you maybe don't have to sell the client on the idea,

but you have to sell them on, the reality is,

this may or may not be a four times delivery on your spend,

but it is a four or five or six times spend increase.

- And I had a client who went to video and she's like,

"It's not gonna take you any much longer time

"than the audio.

"I don't know why you're trying to charge me more."

And I'm like--

- That's so tough.

I would just wonder how long it took them

to see any return on investment in podcasting.

And if they can, like if this is an existing client,

I'm curious about that.

Personal anecdote, I've been podcasting

for like 10 years or something,

but I would very much consider myself a hobbyist.

I never made a dime podcasting

until I started doing one on YouTube.

So it could be that I have a flawed perspective,

but like in six months of taking my YouTube channel

seriously, I got monetized as opposed to 10 years

of podcasting on a weekly basis.

So in my opinion, I'm like,

"Well, I'm not making a lot of money on YouTube,

"but in 10 years I made no money on podcasting as a creator."

So in the world of social media,

small is big is like a phrase you'll hear a lot.

And the idea being like,

it's really easy to get dazzled by someone like MrBeast

who has 68 million subscribers on YouTube.

It's really easy to get distracted by someone like PewDiePie

or whatever, but you don't need 38 million subscribers

to make money, especially if you look

at some of these different avenues.

- Patrick has a question that I wanna hit.

'Cause I think it's really good.

So we're currently live on Facebook and YouTube,

assuming we didn't mess something up,

which is entirely possible.

His question is, based on your conversation,

should you focus on going live only on YouTube

or should you also consider going live on other platforms?

Does that hurt what you're doing?

- I think you should try to find your audience personally.

And the demographics are actually different.

My numbers on this are out of date,

but when I was in college,

the average YouTube user was a 13-year-old female.

So that would be important to know,

that the biggest pot of potential viewers,

that's who you were looking to tailor content towards.

And I think if you look around that era,

the 2015 to 2020, like a lot of makeup tutorial channels

got really big. (laughing)

And you can see that if you study these demographics.

That's why this is important.

So if you bring your audience with you,

it doesn't necessarily matter where you go.

Twitch is a predominantly male audience

and they are predominantly college age or young adults.

And I think the reason for that is a lot of the content

on Twitch appeals to them.

It's dudes streaming Dota or League, right?

And those are the people who are interested

in watching that, esports and stuff like that.

So by the same token as small is big,

that's why it's so crucial to learn to build your avatar.

Creating the concept, using demographics and psychographics

to create an imaginary, a person that is not real,

but the imaginary average listener of your podcast

who is going to be the viewer of your show.

- For our show is specifically for podcast editors

that are in the journey of trying to grow their show.

Typically they're gonna be adults,

not 15, 16 year olds not saying they're not welcome,

but it's gonna be your adults

in probably that 25 to 45 range.

Where would you suggest that we stream

to not only gain the largest audience,

but also help the most people?

- Yeah, no, that's a great point.

I would do YouTube because there is a massive section

of YouTube that frankly is, and I do this too.

If something broke on my car, I YouTube it

and I try to find a video and see what they're doing

with their hands on it.

Like I'm not looking at a WikiHow

because that doesn't help me.

I wanna see someone like actually taking the spark plug out

of my specific car so that I understand

what that looks like.

And I think that there's an element of that.

That's why I think what Daniel described

on his channel is really helpful.

The idea of people who are actually doing that.

The question for me would be either growing that audience

or yeah, making them watch the entire thing.

So you wanna find one person with your avatar.

So if you say that most viewers are between 25 and 45,

that's kind of huge, right?

'Cause when we look at behaviors, psychographics,

not always, and this is changing,

but traditionally a 45 year old will have young children.

A 25 year old might have an infant

or might have no children or no intention

of having children at all.

And that really changes behavior.

For our channel, we discovered that the best time

to drop videos was 9 a.m. on a Sunday.

And when we broke down our psychographics,

we discovered, oh yeah, dads are watching our stuff

before they go to church.

Like we were able to make an inference for this avatar.

What is it that you uniquely bring to the table?

Does that already exist?

'Cause there's something valuable if it doesn't exist, right?

Then you get to be new, you get to be the first.

But also, okay, why is it working for these people?

So that's why people are watching it.

- We probably need to go ahead and transition

'cause we do have to get to our AI question of the day

'cause that's the most fun part of the show.

Jennifer, do you have a question for us today?

- I do, but I feel like I'm cheating

because you're the one who found it.

- Yes, but I'll go ahead and ask it.

This is our sponsored by AI.

- Yeah, if you wanna sponsor this spot,

we'll take your money.

- We asked Chad GPT for a random question

and Bryan didn't like what it first generated

so he asked it again and again until he got a good one,

which is, if you could have any animal

as a tame, miniature pet,

which animal would you choose and why?

- Okay, I already know my answer.

I don't know, I don't need a miniature version,

but a tame one and that'd be a red panda.

Oh, I actually have like a little kind of

Lego version of red panda.

I wanna get a red panda tattoo.

I love, I just, they're so cute and they're so funny.

If you haven't seen a red panda,

like just like get on TikTok or Instagram Reels

and just like watch videos of them

because they're like the family of like raccoons

so they're very similar to a raccoon.

- But they move like giant pandas.

- Yeah, and when they're scared

and try to be intimidating, like they're like a foot tall,

but they get up real big and they put their arms up

and they try to be so scary and it's the cutest thing.

- Well, mine's giant panda

'cause that's my favorite animal, so.

- They are dopey. - They are so cute.

- I think I have to choose the nunchuck skills

and I've got bo staff skills.

I just need a liger and I would be the coolest guy

in the happy hands world.

(laughing)

- It's perfect.

I just gotta go with a capybara.

They're adorable.

- They're giant mouse things, the world's largest rodent.

I could make them the size of a normal rodent.

That sounds appealing.

You can rub their giant oversized noses.

- They're pretty cute.

- I mean, to be honest,

I might, yeah, wanna tame full-size capybara.

That might be where I'm leaning, but.

(laughing)

- Patrick says, "What are the name of the sea dogs?"

- I have no idea. - Like a seal?

- Not a walrus.

- Or a sea lion?

- I don't know, but there's a brewing company.

I don't think that's what he's going for.

- I know there's manatees are called sea cows.

- Alejandro says something about Kung Fu Panda.

I think he's probably talking about you, Daniel.

- Shifu, the little guy.

- We're starting to turn into people Google stuff

while they're on the air, aren't we?

(chiming)

(laughing)

- Oh, sea lion is what Patrick says.

- There we go.

(applauding)

- It's a miniature size.

You wouldn't have to have a big tank,

but you'd have to have bigger than a fish tank, probably.

But anyway, thank you all for joining us today,

live in the chat, live on Facebook, YouTube,

and also on the replay and on the audio version.

I am Jennifer Longworth.

You can find me at bourbonbarrelpodcasting.com

and the letter B.

The beautiful bald man today is.

- Yeah, you can find me at Top Tier Audio.

I am Bryan Entzminger and I am bald.

It's not my favorite part, but it's kind of obvious.

So there you go.

Next up is Daniel.

- I'm Daniel Abendroth.

You can find me at RothMedia.audio.

- I'm Rick Sellnow.

The inferior bald man.

And I'm just appreciative for being asked to join.

Hope some of this was helpful and just as a parting word,

'cause I really, Bryan's stuck with me there,

like just wanting to help the audience, which is true.

Like I would say do as little work as possible.

Set up your cell phone, don't invest in new stuff.

Just at the very least, use these video platforms,

especially the short form ones,

to drive people to what you're already doing.

If that's the easiest way to do it,

just dip your toe in and see if there are results for you.

- Awesome.

- All right, well thank you all

and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

(upbeat music)

- So how much is that?

(all groaning)

(all groaning)

(all groaning)

[music fades out]