Five Reasons Not to Start a Podcast in 2024

[00:00:00] So I wouldn't start a podcast in 2024 and beyond unless I had some sort of business, i.e.

[00:00:06] like a product or service that's interwoven into the ecosystem of the podcast.

[00:00:11] What up, potty people and welcome back to Clipped. As always, I'm Eric, your host. Clip

[00:00:25] brings you the tools, resources and people to help you become a better, more efficient

[00:00:29] podcaster. And in this episode guys, I'm going to be talking about five reasons

[00:00:33] who not start a podcast. It's 2024, the playing field is a little bit different. And if you're

[00:00:38] thinking about starting a podcast, I wouldn't do it unless you have these five things that

[00:00:44] I'm going to mention and for the average Joe, you probably shouldn't start a podcast.

[00:00:48] But before we get into it, just want to give a shout out to this podcast sponsor.

[00:00:52] That's Riverside. Head on over to riverside.fm and take advantage of their online recording

[00:00:58] tools. You can record 4k video and high fidelity audio. You can also use their AI to

[00:01:03] generate show notes, transcriptions, video clips and more. That's riverside.fm enter

[00:01:09] promo code clipped for 20% off. All right, five reasons to not start a podcast. Let's give it a go.

[00:01:28] So I wouldn't start a podcast in 2024 and beyond unless I had some sort of business,

[00:01:34] i.e. like a product or service that's interwoven into the ecosystem of the podcast.

[00:01:39] Maybe you offer some sort of service like video editing. Let's say you own a video production

[00:01:45] agency and within the podcast, you're teaching people how to edit videos, you're interviewing

[00:01:50] video editors, agency owners, and within that you can slowly start to weave in and plug

[00:01:56] your product or service, in this case, video editing. Gone are the days of just launching

[00:02:01] a podcast and trying to monetize through ads. If you want to grow and monetize,

[00:02:05] you're going to need some kind of product or service and your podcast needs to be a piece

[00:02:10] of a larger business. In my opinion, if you don't have that, it's going to be much harder to succeed

[00:02:15] and I wouldn't start a podcast without some of those roots and making the podcast

[00:02:19] one piece of your total content strategy and of your business. Number two, if I were you,

[00:02:24] I wouldn't start a podcast unless I had some kind of basic understanding of SEO. It's getting

[00:02:29] much harder to rank on Google for two reasons. One, because of AI, if you've seen lately,

[00:02:35] you type something into Google and an AI will pop up and give you an answer to your question.

[00:02:40] And number two, Google's been doing a ton of different updates to their algorithm. One being

[00:02:46] the helpful content update. And so if you don't have like helpful content in your podcast,

[00:02:53] if you don't have a website for your podcast and you're not giving like relevant

[00:02:57] helpful information to the people that are searching on the web for that information,

[00:03:02] it's going to be much harder to rank and get your website and or like the landing page of

[00:03:07] your podcast to come up when people type in search terms related to your show. The next are the

[00:03:12] EEAT requirements and this stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

[00:03:18] And this is a factor that Google's now using to rank websites. So if you want to get your

[00:03:23] website, which ideally contains a page for your podcast to the top of Google, you're going to have

[00:03:30] to encompass these things in your content. That's experience, expertise, authoritativeness and

[00:03:34] trustworthiness. And so if you're just having a podcast with your buddies and you're laughing,

[00:03:38] smoking, drinking some beers, talking shit, having a good time, that's great.

[00:03:43] But you're not really demonstrating any of the EEAT qualities. And thus Google isn't going to

[00:03:48] pay as much attention to your podcast and your website. It's going to be harder to rank.

[00:03:54] Thus it's going to be harder to get more ears and eyeballs on your content. And this ties into my

[00:03:58] next one number three, if I were you, I wouldn't start a podcast in 2024 unless you're going to

[00:04:03] host some kind of show that informs or educates entertainment type shows are really hard.

[00:04:09] They're hard to grow those channels are hard to build and get like a loyal fan base because

[00:04:14] chances are you're not that entertaining. There's a ton of talent out there and if people want to

[00:04:19] search for entertainment podcasts, chances are they're going to go to like the comedy section and

[00:04:24] maybe scroll the top 20 shows and pick one or chances are they already have their like social

[00:04:30] media favorites on all the channels that they follow that make them laugh. If you don't

[00:04:35] already have like a track record and entertainment or your maybe you think you're funny, but

[00:04:40] maybe you think you're funny, but you're probably not. It's just hard to build. I mean the talent

[00:04:44] out there these days is crazy and unless you have some kind of track record, it's going to be

[00:04:50] hard to grow a show like that. And number four, don't start a podcast in 2024 unless you plan on

[00:04:56] doing some solo episodes to grow your influence to demonstrate your expertise or your knowledge

[00:05:01] about a topic where you're actually like helping people. People have questions whatever

[00:05:06] niche or genre you're in and you're kind of answering some anticipated topics that people

[00:05:11] that are interested in that genre might be thinking about or asking themselves the more

[00:05:15] like free information that you put out and you help people and you educate them about a subject.

[00:05:21] The easier it is to grow and if you're just doing interviews, yeah, you can pull that information

[00:05:26] out of your guest, but you really want to position yourself as like the face of your brand

[00:05:31] and the one with the knowledge and expertise. If you're not going to do solo episodes,

[00:05:34] I would steer clear of launching a podcast because you want that brand authority

[00:05:39] and interviews don't necessarily give you that. And lastly, if you're trying to just

[00:05:42] monetize through ads, you're going to need a massive amount of downloads to generate like

[00:05:48] real revenue. This kind of goes back to point number one, which is you need to have some

[00:05:52] some sort of business or product or service that's tied to your podcast. If you think it's

[00:05:57] just like put it up on YouTube, put it up on Apple and Spotify and release some clips on

[00:06:02] social and get enough of a following that advertisers are actually interested.

[00:06:09] That's few and far between. I don't have the data, but you'd got to be in like the top

[00:06:14] probably 10% of all podcasts out there to generate actual revenue. So if your goal is

[00:06:19] to launch a podcast just to make money because you hear all these ads and all the shows

[00:06:23] you listen to like better help and legal zoom and whatever chances are that's not going to

[00:06:31] happen. And I'm not saying that to discourage you. It can happen, but it's probably not going

[00:06:36] to happen for you and I hate to break it to you, but that won't be lucrative unless you have

[00:06:40] massive downloads. All right guys, that's it. That's five reasons why I wouldn't start a podcast

[00:06:45] in 2024. Unless you answered those with integrity and strategy and having those things in place,

[00:06:52] then I think you could be on your way, not off to the races, but on your way to slowly

[00:06:57] growing a steady successful podcast that makes money, that builds influence that grows your brand

[00:07:04] and your business. Keep listening, keep engaging, keep creating, I'm out.