(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
PR can be scary, but don't underestimate its power:
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PR is scary, but don't underestimate its power. In 2023, Ratepunk got a live TV mention, and 486 mentions in various publications (The Washington Post, CNN, Forbes, and more).
Here are the PR tips and lessons I've learned!
Be persistent and don't give up. PR success isn't going to be fast, and sometimes, you just have to get extremely lucky.
Keep trying, and you will get there eventually. I'm also giving away my email contact list of nearly 2K emails here! It's a great starter database.
Discuss this story.
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from The Hustle newsletter
The pandemic birthed a rise in puppies, planting flowers in Animal Crossing, and podcasts, with 1.1M+ shows launched in 2020 alone. But soon, the podcast phenomenon plateaued. New podcasts decreased a year later, and in 2022, fell by 80%.
Does this mean the podcast train has left the station? Not at all. It just means that your podcast can't suck.
Podcast geniuses Darren Clarke (executive producer of My First Million) and Kal Elsebai (HubSpot's senior manager of podcast strategy) shared their tips on how you can turn your business or niche hobby into a killer show!
Instead of finding a profitable niche, start with your passions. If you can rave about a topic for hours, chances are your enthusiasm will come through, and people will pay attention.
If you're starting from scratch, conduct your research, identify your niche, and figure out your unique take on that topic. Ask yourself what listeners will take away from tuning in to your podcast. Will they whip out the Notes app? Will they chuckle at your wit throughout?
If you already have an audience, find the middle point between your passion and their wants. Poll your customers, newsletter subscribers, or social media followers. If possible, get them on a call.
Before you launch your podcast into the ether, set it up for success:
Figure out a realistic cadence. Can you produce an episode a week? Whatever you choose, stick with it.
Record several episodes before launching. That way, you give yourself breathing room to produce future episodes.
Write a snappy description.
Create a trailer that demands attention. The trailer for your podcast should feature the hosts, your topic authority, and what listeners can expect.
Design compelling podcast art. The thumbnail should tell a story right away. A mixture of cool art and cool headshots seems to be the winning formula.
*Source: HubSpot Podcast Network
Platform algorithms, including Spotify, favor new shows, and will promote them more than older ones. But you only have ~48 hours to leverage it.
Growing:
Guest on another podcast.
Pay attention to viewership spikes. Did a certain topic generate a huge amount of listens? Create episodes around a similar topic.
Collaborate with influencers.
Monetizing:
Podcasts make money through two avenues: Advertising and subscriptions.
Introduce advertisements. "This episode is brought to you by..." brings in ad revenue for podcasts. Listeners dedicate almost an hour of their time to someone they trust on a topic they love. When hosts recommend products or services, they pay attention.
Offer exclusives. Podcasts often offer exclusive content to subscribers, such as behind-the-scenes recordings or bonus episodes. For example, you could record an hour of content and reserve half of it for subscriber-exclusive content.
You can get sponsored advertising for your podcast in a number of ways, including:
Reaching out to brands or small businesses directly.
Becoming an affiliate marketer for Amazon Marketplace, Audible, and others.
Taking advantage of platform-based advertising, such as Spotify's subscription model.
Monetization happens in due time. Prioritize creating compelling content and growing your audience before thinking of sponsorships. Few brands will pay to advertise to a nonexistent, or even small, audience.
Subscribe to The Hustle newsletter for more.
from the Growth Trends newsletter
💻 Meta cuts off third-party access to Facebook Groups.
🌎 The fastest growing countries for software development.
💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.
💞 Maintaining customer loyalty in the face of inflation.
🛠 Trending products for web and graphic designers.
📝 SEO for beginners.
Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.
Sébastien Night built OneTake AI early on in the AI craze, and grew it to $10K MRR. Then, he surfed the AI wave all the way to a big milestone: $500K ARR ($42K MRR).
Two years ago, I was running a seven figure training business. It was so tedious to create lots of high-quality video, and I realized that this was a huge problem my clients were facing also. I didn't build an AI startup because I wanted to do AI. I built an AI startup because I was pissed, and only AI could solve the problem.
So, I built OneTake AI. By the end of 2021, we had a proof of concept. In 2022, we had the MVP, but nobody cared about AI then. I still managed to grow it to $10K MRR after a year, and I decided to shut down my other business. I could see that the opportunity was huge in the AI B2B SaaS subscription space.
The timing was great! Once ChatGPT captured people's attention, we started growing much faster. Growth quadrupled in 2023.
We are an AI startup in the video space, but contrary to pretty much everybody else, we are not trying to play in the generative field (talking avatars, etc.). Our work is purely transformative: Taking real life recordings and editing and translating them.
I believe it's a solid long-term choice, because even after the AI content apocalypse has submerged us in AI-generated content, there will still be people who want to record themselves, and not an AI avatar, for a podcast, conference, course, etc.
We are right on the verge of a lot of convincingly realistic AI content getting poured onto every text, audio, image, and video platform. Get as much human attention as you can in the next few months, then snowball and leverage it into getting more of those AI-picked recommendations.
I understand the needs and psychology of the founders we sell to better than anyone else. This allows me to drive the product, and create useful features that have a "Wow!" effect for customers. They couldn't have described that this was the solution they were looking for, but when they see it, they must have it.
How do I do it? By actually talking to people! We have a chat widget on our site, and I've never used AI for it. Plus, the way I sell is through live webinars and live online challenges. We invite our paid customers to attend, also. In fact, the vast majority of our paid customers come from there.
If you've got 20 paid customers sitting in the room with you every time you talk to a new prospect, two things happen:
We've built a system where customer feedback is impossible to ignore. It's a kind of pressure that makes it impossible to fail!
Discuss this story.
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Justin Albertynas, Darko, Bailey Maybray, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing